Creating a vicious cycle in (with )content marketing

You will hear a lot of me’s and my’s in this blog. Not as bragging just expressing how I implement them in practice.

I’m in Content Marketing for over 3 years. There were a lot of ups and downs where I wanted to leave this field and run away. But in the end, even after primarily working in a different field, I’m still attached to content. This blog is the best part and the result of being in content.

In these years, I have written over 200+ pieces of published content including email copies, social media posts, website landing pages, sales copies, and blogs. Where every piece brought a different experience and aspect to my knowledge.

But website blogging for software products has the biggest pie in this chart. My aim in this blog is to share my experience in creating a vicious cycle in content marketing where you simplify content creation for your team, deliver your message more effectively as a brand, and value delivery for your customers.

So, how to conduct content marketing effectively?

Conducting content marketing is different than creating a content marketing strategy. Not trying to weigh the most important one or figure out which one is most difficult. My point is they require different steps and checkouts.

Conducting is turning the strategy into practice. Where you might sheer from what you documented in the strategy.

1. Watch out for competitors

Obviously, competitor research is very important to rank on search results and gain competitor intelligence. What competitors write in the meantime depicts what they are planning to offer in the near future or probably, already done.

For my account, regularly, if not monthly tracking major competitor websites, using their apps, and also reading a couple of their blogs will give you a sharper edge on the positioning of your marketing.

2. Inject value to your product messaging

I see a lot of startups that “mention” how crucial customers are in their strategies “in words”. Instead of explaining its value of it to customers.

In each of the content that I’m writing, I take my time to effectively explain why this feature will help the user. It is actually very surprising to me how some “pro” writers fail to explain the value of the product they cover. A lot of writers I’ve known don’t even dare to learn the product, the customer, or the market they will write about.

3. Avoid flashy pushy words

Yes, you have done a great job of creating a marketing plan and delegating it to your marketing team. Sometimes, what they understand is to scream about your product in front of customers who are presented with a hundred other solutions.

The words like “you have never seen”, “glamourous”, “alluring product”, “fascinating offer” take you a few steps behind the wheel.

Ordinary words that spell out the problem, the solution, and your product vision are enough to keep the audience on track with your copy.

4. Collect all keywords you covered

You probably keep a list of all the blogs written on your website if not started yet I highly recommend starting no further. Along with those blog titles and their links, add new space to write your keywords for them. What that does is when you come back to your existing content in the content audit, you will see how those keywords performed during the time.

5. List keywords you know you will use

Yes, not like a bucket list you never do. Not everything is organized and pre-listed in practice. We get a lot of valuable additions in the journey.

So do your keywords.

When we do research for competitors, content, keyword, we get a lot of ideas that can be turned into content. There is a tiny little yet hard-to-pass line between great post ideas and great posts called note-taking. When writing your blogs be open to stealing great ideas that you think it is worth reproducing.

Once you roll your sleeves up to define the next content topics or keyword research, start with those notes.

6. Stick future keywords to your existing content

Let me explain in detail. When new ideas come to your mind while writing content, take a list of them next to the content you have written. Once you use the new keywords, you will be more arranged of the topic.

When you cover a new topic, you can go back to old blogs and link to the new content. That’s the point! Your new content will have tens of blogs that are internally linked to it, the moment it is published.

This is an example of us implementing this in our new social media scheduler product blogs. On the side notes section, we write all keywords of all the topics that are or will be linked to. When writing a blog about Instagram reach, we mention Instagram stories and link to a blog about it. While going deep, we also talk about Instagram Live, and Instagram bio which gave us a great idea for covering those topics as well. So, we also added those to the list of mentioned keywords (linked-backed blogs).

Once we covered the Instagram Live blog, we went back to each blog that mentioned Instagram Live and linked back to it.

In fact, this practice was a precondition for this blog to write and then I expanded it with other ideas.

My starting point was this note-supported internal linking was to simplify content audit. When we were running a content audit on other websites, it was a true nightmare. Especially, when we had to change the old URL with a new one. Although redirect works for this, there is still a warning that appears for content that URLs have been changed.

There were times I was checking every blog to replace old old URLs with new ones. With this, it is so much easier when you already know which contains links back to the one that is changed.

Though we started like 4 months, we had couple of errors and broken links due to URLs. And guess what? It was a piece of cake to fix broken links and get back to work.

Just CNTRL +F the keyword which’s URL is changed
Go to each blog that linked back to it
Replace the old URL with the new one

Although I newly started making this, I firmly believe it will positively impact how site traffic, and rankings, and also simplify content audit after all.

7. Explain your feature updates

Updates are cool. When you explain what they mean to users or customers it will be even cooler. I fell into the trap of spicy words to describe product features sacrificing their true value for readers.

Each product has its own audience and proper language of understanding. Sometimes, you need to be 100% technical about your explanations. Other times you need to act like you’re explaining to 6th grade students (although now, they know more than others).

A product is great when it has users. A copy is great when it has readers, specific for updates - converters. To convert readers turn into users you need the right copy.

8. Link to other pages on the website

Don’t leave the whole matter to visitors.

Guide users to take action. Let them check your pages when they need to see them. If you are talking about your pricing and how different subscriptions help users then at the end put a button or just hyperlink to the pricing page where visitors can get more insight into your pricing.

Don’t just crowd every link to your book demo page.

What is the purpose of adding thousands of pages where no one finds it?

9. Timing of the content

They say weekends are not good for emails. I bet it depends. There is no universal best time. Each message has its own delivery time. This is particularly relevant for social media and email content.

When you send them has a great impact on their effectiveness of them. Through trial and error, you learn your best time. But a good starting point to test is to analyze not only the general demographics like age, and country but also the habits and psychological factors as well.

In the same country, in the same domain, people tend to have different habits. I was working for a B2B tech startup where our team was reaching out to business owners for sales. My previous employer reminded us that business owners barely have time during the week or even daytime. The best time to reach out to founding-level people is (can) actually be a weekend or night.

It is a good reminder for me to super-filter the segment before crafting a copy, customizing messaging, and deciding the time.

Wrap up

Everything is content nowadays. It is a real power to know how to use content effectively. Sure there are other crucial things that can be included in this list. I just wanted to keep this blog focused on my experience. Would love to hear yours.