You might have been blogging and utilizing SEO and SEM strategies for some time now but feel like you’re just spinning your wheels and going nowhere at high speed. If this is how you feel, there’s no need for you to give up with online content marketing endeavors. Social media marketing and content marketing on the Web are actually more important and more powerful than they have ever been before. This is, in fact, now the dawning of the Age of Golden Apples for the creative online content marketer. But what this means for you as a creative is that you’ve got more stuff to know about and take mastery of than ever before.
We want to look at some important ways of thinking outside of the usual blog posting, article syndication, and SEO/SEM strategizing. Without further ado….
Your presence is requested on Google+.
If you’re an online content marketer and you’re tapping into the awesome power of social media marketing, resisting Google+ is futile. It’s expanding like mad, and hey–it’s Google. The reasons to be using Google+ are too many and too significant to be summed up in a few sentences. Let it suffice to say that you need to create a Google+ site, you need to constantly research how best to use it and grow it, and you need it to become a core part of your online creative marketing presence.
Blog it like Godin.
Seth Godin is one of the most influential and successful of all very-early-21st century Internet-based “permission selling” marketers. And what he once did was assemble a large number of his best blogs into a book (yes, a book made out of dead tree material, ink, and glue) and started selling that book. Needless to say, it has done very well. If you’ve been blogging for some time now and you could assemble a book of 100+ blog posts, maybe with some added commentary thrown in, why not let Seth inspire you to do like he did?
Post in forums in a mindful way.
Being involved in widely visited and relevant forums is quite important to your online content marketing success. (Remember to become part of Google+ “communities” too.) But when you post in these places, realize that every post you make is, from an online content with your stamp on it perspective, just like publishing a blog post or a syndicated article. Write whatever it is that you write in forums from this perspective. Write things that are smart, respectful, literate, informative, and containing correct spelling and grammar.
Create videos for Vimeo.
Vimeo is fast becoming the place where smart, creative videos are put up. YouTube is still and is going to remain the great hub of finding free music to listen to at will online, but when it comes to quality videos (and quality commenters) Vimeo is pulling the rug out from under Google. If you’re worried that you don’t know how to make videos or don’t have the means, don’t despair. It’s easy to get to learn Microsoft Movie Maker, and there are other free movie making software programs that you can download to either your Mac or your Windows-compatible computer. And one idea that’s used by a lot of smart bloggers is this: take one of your better or favorite blog posts, translate it into a PowerPoint slide show, and then make that slide show into a video.
As you can see, there are a lot of creative ideas for using online content in a marketing way that are beyond merely posting about your company, career, or life on a blog. Expand beyond your blogging efforts and make yourself some real money.
Jason Bayless is a professional blogger that gives small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice. He writes for BestSEOCompanies.com, a nationally recognized comparison website of the best SEO companies in the United States.