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Client Turns My Blog Post into a Successful MQL Engagement/Re-Engagement Marketing Tool

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On June 29th, I received a marketing email from one of my freelance clients. It included a link to a post I wrote in December for the agency’s blog, titled 10 Hot Digital Marketing Terms You Need to Know in 2018.

I contacted my client and learned that it was one of their most successful recent posts — so much so, that they repurposed it into an engagement and re-engagement tool six months later.

“This blog post garnered a lot of views in the months since it was published,” explained Brianne Rush, VP of Operations at Kuno Creative.

Results included steady increases in traffic flows that reached peak numbers in early June. Within a minute of the email being sent, traffic shot up to the highest point ever.

Based on the high long-tail reader volume the post generated, “we believe it stood out as an opportunity to re-engage with our database. We were right. When we sent an email about the post, many of our top prospects re-engaged with our website within minutes.

These were marketing-qualified leads (MQLs). In other words, people who had engaged with us before, and who were now inspired to return to our website thanks to the compelling blog post.”

Here’s the email that Kuno Creative sent to its MQL database to promote the blog post and engage/re-engage with its leads:

Kuno Creative MQL Email

 

17 Topics Business People Want to Read

With a little research, I discovered a likely reason why my blog post was so successful in attracting readers and re-engaging with leads.

The post’s subject matter falls into one of the top 17 topics that business people want to read — “definitions and descriptions.” This topic works well, because people want clear explanations of whatever they are researching.

I came up with the idea for the blog post after creating a new glossary of digital marketing terms for the agency’s website. For the blog post, I pulled out 10 of the most timely and interesting terms, from artificial intelligence to quality score.

Little did I know then that this content would strike the right chord with readers.

Here is the entire list of the most popular topics that business people want to read identified by IMPACT. I’ve added links to interesting examples of each topic.

1. Cost — Business people want to know what things cost. Yet, many companies are afraid to print their prices. But, cost articles are “easy wins for traffic as well as conversions because they build trust.”

Cool cost example: How Much Does Content Marketing Cost?

2. “Best of” Lists — Basically, we all love ranking things and seeing how they stack up against others. Other words to use: fastest, easiest, strongest, most popular.

Cool “best of” list example: The NewsCred Top 50 Awards — Best Content Marketing Brands in 2018

3. Comparisons — It feels good to put things into neat little ranking order, and even better to let them “duke it out in a head-to-head match up.”

Cool comparisons example: 20 Comparison Infographic Templates and Data Visualization Tips

4. Pros & Cons — A twist on ordering and ranking information, which lets us determine whether the benefits of a product or service outweigh the drawbacks.

Cool pros & cons example: Content marketing vs advertising: which is best?

5. Benefits/Advantages of — Persuasive pieces that highlight the advantages of a product or service.

Cool “best of” list example: The Four Superpowers of Video Marketing

6. Your Problems — These posts address problems upfront, explain them in a better light, and provide solutions.

Cool your problems example: We Asked 1,000 Marketers: “What’s Your Biggest Challenge With Content?”

7. Their Problems — The buyer’s journey begins with a problem or pain your customers are experiencing. Reach out to them where they are.

Cool their problems example: How to Handle 8 Challenging Customer Service Scenarios

8. How-to/Tutorials — People don’t want to guess. They want you to tell them the in’s and out’s of using your products.

Cool how-to/tutorials example: How to Wow Your Audience with Branded How-To Tutorials

9. Correlation/Causation — Speaking of problems, readers want to know what’s causing them. They also want to be sure that a solution doesn’t lead to other problems.

Cool correlation/causation example: Spurious Correlations

10. Definition & Description — As I mentioned above, in my own example, people want clear explanations of whatever they are researching.

Cool definition & description example: 10 Hot Digital Marketing Terms You Need to Know in 2018

11. Types/Classifications — Categorizes products and services for easy understanding.

Cool types/classifications example: Content Classification & Organization in SharePoint

12. Qualifications — Provides an opportunity to educate your audience on what they should be looking for in high-quality products and services, thereby, positioning your company as the expert.

Cool qualifications example: Qualifications Summary — The Crown Jewel of Your Work Experience

13. Laws/Regulations/Requirements — Business people want to know about any laws related to your products and services.

Cool laws/regulations/requirements example: 3 Marketing Regulations You Should Know

14. Myths & Misconceptions — Clear the air once and for all on misinformation, rumors, and untruths.

Cool myths & misconceptions example: 5 Content Marketing Myths to Bust in 2018

15. Reviews — As part of their pre-purchase vetting process, business people typically look for product and service reviews.

Cool reviews example: 9 Customer Testimonial Examples That You Can Use on Your Website

16. Ideas/Trends — People want inspiration and guidance on products in which they are interested.

Cool ideas/trends example: 13 Biggest Content Marketing Trends that Will Dominate 2018

17. Timeline — Provides an opportunity to inform and set realistic expectations.

Cool timeline example: 20 Timeline Template Examples and Design Tips

Now that I know the topics that business people want to read, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to write blog posts on all of these compelling topics for my clients.

What results-driven content do you need today?

 

In SEO, Keywords are Out. User Intent is In. What You Need to Know Now.

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Grand Canyon (South Rim)
Grand Canyon (South Rim)

We all know that the rules around organic SEO are changing rapidly. We’ve all struggled to keep up with Google’s ever evolving updates. (Google made over 1,600 changes in 2016 alone.)

Despite recognizing the need to keep up with the updates, there seems to be one outdated aspect of SEO that many companies can’t seem to let go of — keywords. Sure, keywords used to be the powerhouse of organic search. Use the right ones and you’d rise to the top of the heap.

However, like all good things, hackers abused the tactic by employing keyword stuffing. So, Google started penalizing the black-hat practice. Instead, of stuffing you had to use keywords naturally in context.

But even that practice has evolved. Today, keywords are out and user intent is in.

What does this mean for content creators? Think: deeper and wider.

How to Go Deeper with Content

So, what is “user intent”? Simply stated, it means giving users exactly what they are searching for.

Remember, the primary purpose of search engines: to provide the most relevant results for any search. That’s why top-ranking companies are obsessed with providing customers with precisely what they desire.

To meet user intent, your content cannot be shallow. It needs to have meat on the bones to grab and hold users’ interest. It needs to answer users’ questions fully. In other words, your content needs to dive deep into the subject matter.

“Content depth is measured by expert coverage of a broad range of subjects around a given focus topic,” according to MarketMuse, a company bringing AI and machine learning to content creation. “Article length alone is not enough for depth to occur.”

So, how can you create deeper content? Here’s one approach:

  • Start with a focus topic that relates to the content you want to publish
  • Look at the top SERP results for that focus topic
  • Search for term variants to expand your search
  • Discover new topics and subtopics to include in your content
  • Analyze the distribution of subtopics within your current content
  • Expand your content strategy to include writing about these topics
  • Create content briefs for writers to guide their content development
  • Link the new content to highly authoritative and helpful external pages

How to Go Wider with Content

The starting point for going wider is understanding content clustering. “Clustering helps Google’s search algorithm identify a site as having content that is highly relevant to a user’s search. This is because Google now has, as another part of its algorithm, a matrix of related subjects for any given search. Yes, Google has a topic-clustering algorithm,” says Market Muse.

To successfully go wider with your content means educating users more broadly on an entire topic cluster with the aim of answering each and every question they might have on a given topic. This requires you to produce informational and education content that covers a topic from a wider range of adjacent topics.

Content clustering helps satisfy search requirements of implicit intent as well as direct intent. Implicit user intent includes all the questions a user might be interested in that weren’t necessarily part of the initial search. This is achieved through strategic internal linking from one page to another in your cluster, so users have the opportunity to engage with your subject matter on a horizontal level.

Content clustering will not only hold users’ interest, fully answer their questions, and expand their knowledge on the topic, but also it will raise the ranking of all of your content within the cluster — and, consequently, your domain as a whole.

So, how can you create wider content? Here’s one approach:

  • Find adjacent topics within a content cluster
  • Assess your website’s current content inventory
  • Find the cluster gaps in your content
  • Create new content that widens your content clusters
  • Add internal link to the adjacent content

Gain the Benefits of Deeper and Wider Content

If you haven’t demoted keywords yet and elevated user intent and content clustering, it’s time. Producing deeper and wider content will determine whether visitors will stick around to read your content or bounce back to the search engine result page to find websites that better fit their needs.

The top benefits of creating deeper and wider content are:

  • Rank higher in searches
  • Attract more targeted consumers
  • Lower your bounce rate
  • Build online authority and influence
  • Stand out from your competitors
  • Boost your sales potential

Bonus Pro Tip: There’s one more essential tip to satisfying user intent and ranking higher in organic searches — speed. Producing deeper and wider content alone will not achieve your search, authority, and conversion goals. You also need velocity. This means you must produce more deeper and wider content at a rapid pace to continue to maintain your relevance in today’s content-driven world.

Do you need help creating deeper and wider content faster? If so, contact me today to discuss how we can work together to achieve your marketing goals.

Three Content Marketing Take-Aways from “That Dress”

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The Perfect Modern Digital Media Story

Classic face-vase opital illusion
The classic face-vase optical illusion has been updated for the digital age — by a colorful dress. The viral image came out of nowhere bearing lessons for content marketers.

Everyone from my hairdresser to CNN was talking about “that dress” on Friday. It even trumped the otherwise sure-thing news stories, like Madonna’s fall and the Kardashians’ new $100M contract.

Like the rest of the world, I went crazy for a day trying to figure out why people saw different colors than I saw.

It was an optical illusion, of sorts. But, more importantly, it was the perfect modern media story — and it offers today’s marketers vital lessons on how to get attention in the new world of digital marketing.

My favorite article on the whole phenomenon was written by journalist Ben Fischer at the New York Business Journal.

Thanks to his article, I understand better what every marketer — and marketing writer — needs to know about how to rivet people’s attention in today’s crowded world of content.

As a freelance marketing writer, here are four questions I’ll be asking when I write content for my clients.

1. Does the story have universal appeal?

“That dress” came with a compelling story: A bride and her friends trying to decide the color of the mother of the bride’s dress.

Getting an answer evoked frustration, fear (of going crazy), and humor — all components of universal appeal.

According to novelist Kate Forsyth:

“Stories are the common ground that allow people to connect, despite all our defenses and all our differences … a story only survives if it articulates some kind of desire or dilemma, some kind of predicament, which is of importance to both the reteller of the tale, and to his or her audience.”

What compelling stories can you tell in your content marketing?

2. Does the story have an interactive element?

“Interactive” is a word that gets thrown around a lot in today’s marketing world. What people usually mean is merely content that people will actually read.

However, true interactivity means more than that: It means engaging with the content. What could be more interactive than having people vote (and fight over) the colors of “that dress”?

According to Visually:

“By definition, interactives engage viewers in a very active way – and that engagement can be incredibly powerful to marketers. People viewing interactives spend more time on the page, seeing a brand associated with content that interests them, all at their own pace.”

What engaging elements can you add to your content?

3. Is the story easy to consume?

Among the top five ways to make content easy to consume, according to the Content Marketing Institute, is “eye candy.” The story about “that dress” was nearly 100 percent visual — plus a wickedly alluring headline (another of the top five).

“Humans are visual beings — it’s one of the traits that has kept our species going. Thus, it should come as no surprise that 90 percent of the information we take in is visual, and that we process images 60,000 times faster than text. Even more important for global audiences is that visual content often spans multiple languages, where text-based content may not.”

What arresting visuals can you add to your content?

4. Is the story emotionally evocative?

People got emotionally involved in the colors they saw in the dress. Evoking emotions is the Holy Grail of viral content.

Smart Insights reported on research that investigated why content goes viral:

“… emotional arousal was the single biggest factor in determining whether a campaign went viral. Articles that inspired, caused anger or awe-inspiring emotions, were all far more likely to end up on the ‘most emailed list’ on the site.”

So, the next time you need powerful content that will appeal universally, engage interactively, evoke emotionally, and be easy to consume, let the viral story of “that dress” be your inspiration.