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The Content Marketing Pyramid could be rightfully called the “ABC” of content marketing efficiency. Why? Because it teaches us how to “read” the efficiency of business efforts and better grasp the meaning of metrics analysis.

From top to bottom the content marketing pyramid moves from dense, high-value content to less pretentious content forms. Although we may feel inclined to evaluate it downwards, the actual road that a business needs to take is from the bottom to the top.

1. The content at the bottom of the pyramid is easier to produce, publish and promote. Writing a blog post is less demanding than writing a press release or a white paper.
2. The content at the bottom of the pyramid has a higher frequency of production and publication. Blogs may be updated daily, but press releases cannot be produced at the same rate.
3. Books and ebooks are the most demanding and costly to produce, publish and promote. They are also the rarer form of content available, precisely because of the creation effort involved.

Direct implications of the pyramid for businesses

In order to properly develop content marketing strategies, the company needs to have full awareness of what lies at the basis of their content marketing pyramid. What is the easiest, most relevant form of content to produce?

Curated content is great to begin with – companies share such content that they have not created themselves. Businesses use curation services to display information relevant to a topic, service/product or area of interest. It’s a cheap solution for a company that wants to engage readers without much staff time and high costs.

Blog post articles are the next step. Such original content may often begin with a reader’s question asked about the curated content published on social media. Writing short pieces of original content functions like a great “introduction” to longer pieces.

Webinars move you up one step further on the pyramid. If you notice increased interest for certain blog posts (i.e. a large volume of comments), you can explore those topics in a webinar, which, in turn, will generate leads and email signups.

Ebooks could be created based on the data provided by the webinar or by combining several related blog posts. People who sign up for the newsletter could download the ebook as a freebie.

Simultaneously working on various levels of the pyramid

Each of the mentioned above steps clearly shows that the path along a solid content marketing plan starts with the very basics and gradually continues to the more complex and demanding content production and publication. In many cases, the content marketing strategies will demand working in parallel on several levels of the pyramid. Even if you already have written ebooks or even printed books, you still need to engage visitors on social media and use tweets for blog posts.

It’s an ongoing cycle that takes you up and down the pyramid. Yet, if you learn how to “ride” the content marketing pyramid, and avoid the bumps in the road, it becomes a vehicle that will take you to success.

For marketers trying to improve their online visibility and website performance, reverse guest blogging might do the trick. While some may reject it as an old concept that is being re-contextualized, specialists are convinced that this is the change we’ve been waiting for to revive guest blogging.

Guest blogging means that you are offering to post content on other sites, whereas in reverse guest blogging, you ask others to offer content on your page. Guest posting is dying because of spam and annoyingly low quality content. Its salvation lies in the use of reverse guest posting, as a way of returning to the long-lost values. And the SEO benefits of this approach are striking.

1. Get voices of authority to speak for you! If you reach out to a writer who is an authority in your niche, you gain incredibly valuable support for your business. An experienced blogger writing for your website represents an excellent opportunity for future partnerships.

2. Eliminate the risks of spam guest posts! The current problem with guest posting is that business owners are “swamped” in offers to get content published on their pages. This inconvenience is over: you get in control of the web pages, lending the voice to authors you trust.

3. Back-links are generated! Much of the great popularity of guest blogging derives from link generation. However, with reverse guest blogging, the writer’s fans are likely to link to the article on your site.

4. Provide fresh content! It is a positive experience for readers to “hear” a different voice than yours. They get a fresh perspective and have access to new and enticing information that you did not previously provide.

5. Free marketing! The person that you profile for a reverse guest post will share and spread the link to the piece too, which brings extra, free exposure to new audiences. This blogging strategy could bring serious outside support from influential people.

 Where to find great authors to guest post?

Although you want to aim high, you still need to keep your goals realistic: don’t ask for someone highly popular to guest post. Instead, turn to a mid-level, yet industry relevant blogger. You may already have a list of names in your mind, but if not, you can search for writers who already have social followers.

However, you need something to exchange for the writer’s content: exposure or money. If you are just starting out, you will most likely have to pay the writer. Here are some steps to follow:

–          Find bloggers that made a name in your niche.

–          Include a write-for-us page on your website.

–          Follow the writers and message them, trying to first initiate communication and, then, build a relationship on that.

–          Use social media channels like Twitter to discover great bloggers for your reverse guest posts.

The obvious conclusion is that reverse guest blogging provides serious SEO advantages that you should not ignore. This is all the more important in the context of dying guest posting because of the spam disease. Whether you have just launched a website or you have been in business for a while, you can target great bloggers in your niche and invite them to guest post for you.

The use of automated tools for content marketing has now evolved into a web trend. Marketers need to provide quality content on a regular basis, while keeping costs low. And they turn to SaaS products for solutions, contributing to an unprecedented development in the marketing tools universe. 

Content marketing tools are incredibly diverse, serving for a variety of purposes. Some of them have existed long before the advent of content marketing and they have just undergone renaming or rebranding to meet the new market requirements. Some instruments help generate content while others work for content distribution.

Although the list of tools and work platforms used for content marketing is huge and versatile, we can still compile the features that would make valuable tools stand out from the mass-crowd.

A win-win solution for both companies and consumers

By implementing marketing automation, business managers can dedicate more time to money-making activities. This is possible by enabling an automatic management system for lead capture, form generation and gated content assets. Here are just two relevant examples of what such an instrument could do for you, with direct benefits for users too:

• Contact profiles may be created automatically from a number of sources: emails, forms and other online activities.
• You can enable access to valuable content only for registered users. The access to the content is granted upon completing the registration form.

Complex tool features

With rising marketing demands, it goes without saying that business managers prefer a unique platform with multiple tools that enable a variety of functions:

• Design, publish and monitor online marketing campaigns;
• Automatic analysis of content performance;
• Generate multi-lingual campaigns (if necessary);
• Analyze user activity;
• Enhance customer engagement;
• Improve the quality of leads etc.

Why is automation needed for content marketing?

According to the American Marketing Association, 90% of traditional marketing materials are unused in the field of content marketing, which means that valuable customer conversations are left to chance. The World Wide Web has evolved to such an extent that only through SaaS products can marketers stay competitive and meet their customers’ needs.

1. Social media marketing heavily relies on the use of valuable content. But can you keep your followers engaged in interactive communications? With the right automated marketing platform, your message gets to your customers.
2. Sales depend on your team’s ability to send personalized portfolios to corporate clients and prospects. Generating and processing personalized portfolios increase clients’ engagement and your company’s ability to influence the target audience.
3. Relevant content is the power engine of content marketing. But how can you tell which is the content that your readers want from you? Content marketing analytics take this stress off your head.

Analytics that directly influence content generation

With the right content marketing software tool, you can determine the level of activity for each of your content assets. This is possible by analyzing:

• How many times a certain form has been viewed and how many leads it has generated;
• The number of shares, comments and likes for each and every content asset;
• The most popular content assets.

Most tools come with demo versions that enable marketers to test functions and features and thus determine which tools serve its purpose best for them.

To sum it up, automation in content marketing has become a must given the complexity of web promotion channels that complement the company’s home pages.

You may have heard the phrase “content is the king” whenever you search for new ideas for your content marketing strategy. Everyone in the online marketing industry now knows the importance developing quality and informative content. As you know the fact that for years, Google has been trying to tell website owners and marketers about posting genuine and fresh content and Google intensified its awareness campaign with the release of Hummingbird algorithm. Several reputed brands have tasted success in creating well-crafted content marketing campaigns and gained more ROI and other related benefits. But creating crowd-pulling content is not an easy task as one would think and it requires relevant knowledge, convincing skills and need to avoid the use of old marketing tactics. If you are running a business enterprise and invested a lot of money and your energy and still didn’t get the results as your expectations, perhaps following explanations may help you to find what went wrong with your content strategy.

• Too much Focus on Sales – One of the main reasons why many brands’ content marketing strategy fails is that they give too much on sales and give enough importance to loyalty when it comes to creating content. It is kind of understandable to say that when concentrating on loyalty you decide to invest in your most profitable category of customers, i.e. the ones who return to you for more. According to experts, you need to invest your money and energy smaller and precise actions instead of spending your resources on highly risky and big budget campaigns like the viral video campaign done by the Canadian air carrier WestJet that became short-lived and forgotten. You need to focus on gaining loyalty of your customers through smaller and well-targeted content marketing campaigns thereby maintaining closer business-customer relationships. 

• Afraid of Testing Your Strategy – Many experts are of the view that if you got an exciting content strategy don’t be to test it and may produce results beyond your expectations. You need to constantly new strategies and don’t get afraid that it will fail as failures will give you the opportunity to come up with better alternatives. 

• Lack of a Well-Organized Plan – To taste success in your content marketing campaigns, first you need to come with a well-detailed content strategy that clearly defines your objectives, roles, terms and responsibilities. Devising a strategy that is clear and with insight is essential for your success. As you are aware, there are lot of things to manage that starts from editorial calendars, training and managing of authors and editors, performance measurement, content approvals and so on. So, you need a well-crafted plan before executing your content strategy.

• Underestimating Your Customers – There are some brands that showcase utterly boring ads which are typical ‘product talk’ that do not attract any interest from the customers. Today’s tech-savvy generation knows what to look for with a sharpened ability to detect whether a brand’s approach in content marketing is genuine or not. To stand from rest of your competitors, you need to come up with a real story that helps in getting enough support for your brand promotion.

Only Informative and Relevant Content Drives More Traffic

For getting more search traffic and thereby getting more conversions, you need to come up with a unique content strategy that is designed as per your customers’ interests and for that you get help from professionals who know how to utilize search engine and social media platforms for increasing the chances of your successful content marketing campaigns.

Businesses love social media marketing as they can churn more traffic to their website when compared to search marketing. In social media marketing, you can post interesting content that consists of visuals such as images and videos for attracting targeted users/customers. We know that the social media sites Facebook, Google+ and Twitter are the major marketing platforms, but in these days enterprises especially in the small and medium business sector prefer Pinterest as it now becoming an amazing tool for reaching new potential customers every day. As users are more interested in visual content, Pinterest help enterprises to post images relevant to their business with intent of attracting targeted users. For ease of searching content in its website, Pinterest introduced guided search to its mobile platform in April 2014 and now the social media site is introducing it to desktop users.

How Guided Search Will Help You

According to Pinterest, guided search somewhat resembles like a search engine but the main difference is that the when you search for something like road trips or summer BBQ, the descriptive guides will assist you in sorting through all the good ideas from other Pinners. Then you can scroll through the guides and tap any Pin that look useful or interesting to navigate your search in the right direction. For example, if you are searching for plants to decorate your home, Pinterest’s guided search will help you in getting more specific in your search – whether you like shade, indoors or succulents that match to your needs.

Pinterest rolled out guided search on its mobile version and after getting positive response from users, they decided to introduce it to the desktop platform. When it comes to desktop version, you will notice that the search bar will become the ultimate tool for finding things easier and within short duration. Also, the social media site made it simpler to filter your search by boards, Pins or other Pinners who might be searching for. For more information, you can check out the video posted in their official blog site. Pinterest will make guided search available in English to everyone in coming weeks and with more languages coming in the near future.

Pinterest Marketing for Small and Medium Businesses

Small enterprises such as startup ventures and local enterprises such as shops and restaurants can rely on Pinterest for creating brand awareness among targeted users. Similar to Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest also introducing new features for helping businesses to carry out their marketing goals and at the same time they can churn out more revenue from advertising campaigns conducted by businesses. Promoted Pins and Place Pins are the main two features introduced by Pinterest, as they help marketers to implement marketing strategies for attract new user traffic.

For promoting your products/services, Pinterest is the best place as you can post infographics, compelling photos and you can even add interesting facts about your enterprise apart from your business oriented content. If you don’t have the know-how about implementing Pinterest marketing, you can hire an expert who is proficient in this area and he/she can offer you cost-effective solution that will make sure you get the conversions that is more than you expected.

Smartphones and tablets are becoming more popular and in some time in the future, they may overtake desktops as the main computing devices. These days, people browse web through their mobile devices for surfing social media sites, booking plane/movie tickets and making online purchases. Also, most businesses are now utilizing this opportunity by investing large sum of money in mobile search marketing in hopes of getting more conversions and high returns. According to a research report published by xAd and Telemetrics, up to 60% of consumers use smartphone or tablet exclusively to make a purchase decision in the categories of entertainment, telecom, auto and restaurants. The report point out that this trend is due to the increase in satisfaction with 61% of customers surveyed saying they are satisfied by the information found on mobile devices. Now, the number has reached 2% with 68 percent of customers showing satisfaction in making purchase decisions. Some other important points mentioned in the Telemetrics report include:

• The online visits made on a smartphone has rose up to 10.6 billion in 2014 when compared to 5.8 billion online visits made on a desktop PC and also the device usage vary time of day and search category. When it comes to search categories, the restaurant category witnessed significant spikes after standard business hours when compared to categories such as telecom, entertainment and auto.

• For about 40% of the consumers, mobile is their most important device for collecting information and about 5% of the consumers cited print media as their important media source.

• For trying to get in touch with local businesses, majority of the surveyed mobile users utilize location and phone number, in which 73% prefer a local number for contacting the local business than using a toll-free number.

• There has been an increase in the number of smartphone users when it comes to online shopping, from 26% in 2013 to 29% in 2014. According to the report, one in four mobile users surveyed used mobile device for the entire path of purchase starting from research, price & product comparison to conversion.

• Some of the most important mobile features/info observed by surveying mobile users among the four search categories include good online reviews, coupons/offers, close business location, access to maps/directions and easy to find contact info.

• The report also points out major factors that influence purchasing decision and few of them are right brand, right price, good reviews and location.

It’s Time for Businesses to Focus on Mobile

Businesses such as online retailers will have to focus more on mobile marketing as their revenue come from online purchases. They have to design their website that is both compatible to desktop and mobile platforms at the same time. Few years ago, search engine giant Google has warned about taking out sites that are not mobile friendly and will rank mobile sites according to their site speed. So, to gain considerable amount of mobile search traffic to your site you need to develop strategies for getting better results. You can get assistance from experts for developing solutions unique to your requirements and can expect high returns.

We all know that social media giants Facebook and Twitter have monetizing their social network by providing ad services to attract businesses for using their sites for their promotional campaigns. Now, the popular image sharing site Pinterest is also following the same path by offering ad service in the name of Promoted Pins with aim of churning ad revenue for its social media network. In May 2014, Pinterest announced through its official blog about a small roll out of its ad service with the aim of getting user feedback. They are rolled out Promoted Pins as a paid test while working with a small group of well known brands such as Expedia.com, Kraft, Nestle, General Mills, GAP and Walt Disney Parks. The test is conducted in the search and category fields of Pinterest’s social media network.

At the same time of the test roll out, Pinterest was looking for big brands which have capability to spend more than $1 million in advertising campaigns. This means small and medium sized enterprises cannot able to utilize Promoted Pins themselves but now it appears that Pinterest changed its track and started to roll out its ad service to reach out more businesses.

If you want to promote your website through Pinterest, then visit their ad dashboard which clearly explains about the new advertising process they have come up with. You can start by choosing one of your Pins that you want to appear in the search or category feeds of Pinterest and for that, you have to set up your targeting and decide on who want to view your ad. According to Pinterest, you don’t have to pay by impressions like on Facebook, but only pay when people click through to your site. Also, Pinterest will provide comprehensive analytics to track which those of your Pins are getting more clicks, repins and impressions, once you set up your Promoted Pins.

Develop Marketing Campaigns Using Pinterest

So, if you have decided on using Pinterest for implementing your marketing campaigns, then you have to join a waiting list by filling out a form available at the business section of the site. In one of the fields on the form, you have to indicate whether your business enterprise spends more or less than 20,000 dollars per month on advertising campaigns. Even though this statement is a worrisome for small enterprises but we can hope Pinterest will improve its policy in the near future. After you fill the form, Pinterest will inform you that they will get back to you when they are ready to get started. If you do not know about Pinterest or how to utilize its ad services, you can always get help from experts who have the experience and skills in providing customer-oriented solutions in the field of social media marketing.