Quality and Quantity: Strive to publish great content as regularly as possible. Some of your articles won't always hit the mark but when they do, they have the potential to go viral and your thought leadership will be shared widely across the social web.
- Size Doesn't Matter: There is no standard issue for the length of an article, duration of a video or number of pages in a white paper. Great content can run to many thousands of words or just a couple of sentences. Just make sure it's relevant, interesting and timely ' and you won't go far wrong.
- Words and Pictures: It might be a cliché ' but it still rings true. A picture is worth 1,000 words and when available you should always use them. If that picture moves (i.e. video) ' even better.
- Get to the point: There is no need to dazzle your audience with endless streams of eloquent prose introducing your latest concept or best practice. Get to the point (starting with a solid headline) or you'll risk losing your audience at the first hurdle.
- Solve Problems: The best content helps to solve your customers' problems and therefore validates your position as an expert. Don't try and second guess your customers problems, ask them what makes their lives difficult and they will probably give you a list to work from.
- Always Include a Call to Action: Remind your audience to do something after or during consuming your content. 'Buy Now', 'Learn More' and 'Register Here' are all good starting points. Remember this is marketing and it should lead to an action that can be tracked and reported against.
- Make it Easy to Share: Make your content easy to share by including social media 'share' buttons on every piece of content.
- Re-Use, Re-Appropriate and Re-Cycle: Could a blog post be turned into a more detailed white paper? Could a webinar turn into a physical event or YouTube video? Great content has legs and screams to be used across a variety of media.
- Don't Forget Email: If your content has value (and it should do) then let your customers' and prospects' email addresses be the currency used to pay for it. Use email gateway pages to grant access to detailed content or include email registration forms or pop-ups on blog posts to drive subscriptions. Email Marketing services like iContact will provide you with all the tools you need to set this up.
- Get Social and Distribute Widely: Great content is the foundation of any social media strategy. Distribute it, discuss it and review it via social media. Social engagement will lead to more ideas, new opportunities and wider recognition of you, your brand and your position as an expert in your own particular niche.
- Online PR: Great thought leadership is highly newsworthy. Use an online news release tool like PRWeb to distribute your content to journalists, influential bloggers and across all the major search engines (this will also aid your SEO efforts significantly).
- Just Do It: Your content needs to be well thought out and planned ' but don't let over planning delay your output. The best content marketers are agile and can turn ideas around quickly to take advantage of opportunities as and when they arise.
Photo credit: katymcc
This article is an original contribution by John W Hayes.
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