Content Marketing Blog mint

Content Marketing Blog

5 Ways To Take Your Content From Flat To Fantastic

You need more than just a creative flair for writing to make your content unique, interesting and valuable. Here are five useful tips on Moz.com from Isla McKetta about content creation. (See more at https://moz.com/blog/content-creation)

1. Give Your Team Time and Space for Creativity

Having a schedule will not only help your team stay organized but also gives writers more time and space to be creative. An editorial calendar is a useful tool to plan the rollout and flow of your content strategy. There are many options available and there is no wrong way to setting up a calendar as longs as it suits your team’s needs. For instance, you can use Excel spreadsheets, Google documents or be more detailed with a Gantt chart. Going old school and creating a wall calendar can also offer clear benefits—you can’t miss it if you see it all the time!

Make sure that whatever type of document you choose, it is regularly updated. Also, it is a good idea to start early with the content calendar. This way, you can avoid unpleasant surprises such as forgotten pieces and missed deadlines.

2. Pictures and Videos Are Worth A Thousand Words

“A picture is worth a thousand words”, – this may be an old-world idea but it applies perfectly in the new, digital world. As we access more and more content online and increasingly scan content rather than read it through, it is quick, easy and convenient to grasp information conveyed using graphics, images, videos and of course, Infographics. If you don’t want to spend money on Shutterstock or Fotolia, there are plenty of free photo tools; for instance, Morgue File, Free Images, and Flickr's Creative Commons. Additionally, there is a multitude of tools available to edit pictures or create graphics.

Videos today do not require much of an investment or professional equipment. Most smart phones are equipped with high quality cameras. It helps to invest in a microphone and a tripod so your videos turn out more professional.

3. Guest Writers Add Flavour

Not all content has to be created in-house. Drawing on other writers adds fresh perspectives, varying views and different styles to your digital content. An acclaimed expert with a huge following will also help to attract a greater audience and will be able to give a new spin on the subject matter. Moreover, it will give your regular staff some room to breathe, to try out new content or to dedicate more time to making in-house content shine.

While some experts may be happy to contribute a blog post for free, others will expect payment – this depends heavily on your industry. Also, you have to make sure that they are professional about the deadlines. Briefing them on what you need also takes up time, so don’t be mistaken that bringing on guest writers is fast or cheap—it may or may not be.

4. Don’t Let Your Content Kill Leads

Publishing too much content that adds too little or no value is meaningless. You will drive away leads instead of converting them. Quality before quantity! Make sure that your content is more than information—numbers, facts, reports, studies, etc.—explore some storytelling. Everyone loves a good story, so encourage your writers to add a little emotion.

5. Make Editing Part of Your Content Strategy, Not an After-thought

Make sure that every piece is edited before publishing by at least one other individual – either by peer review or a specially designated editor.

McKetta explains that while copy editing focuses mostly on typos, developmental editing also looks at the inner structure of a piece. Editing as carefully as possible will give your writers valuable feedback they can use for future writing.

Is your content boring, flat, repetitive and therefore, ignored by your target audience? Call MintCopy at 888-646-8003 or send us an email for more tips on how to take your content from flat to fantastic.

Share


Recent Posts

Sheetal Pinto - 3/16/2023 00:00

Content Marketing Best Practices that Garner Attention

Remember the movie, “Field of Dreams”? It made popular the phrase, “If you build it, he will come”. Shoeless Joe and other baseball legends may have magically appeared on a cornfield-turned-baseball diamond. However, when it comes to content marketing, your audience will need more than a field of dreams to attract their attention. If you’re trying to get more traffic to your website, don’t wait for your local SEO efforts to direct your audience. Give them a hand with these proven content strategies.

Sheetal Pinto - 3/2/2023 06:00

How to Use a Pillar Page to Improve your Content Quality

Consider the dictionary meaning of ‘pillar’ – “a firm, upright support for a superstructure”, also defined as “a fundamental precept”. Your content marketing campaign is your ‘superstructure’ that requires a ‘firm, upright support’. That’s the key function of content pillar pages. Without these essential supports, your ‘content superstructure’ will neither stand strong, nor will it attract the right attention.

Sheetal Pinto - 2/23/2023 06:00

Two Proven Ways to Organize Products with Similar Keywords

In business, cannibalization typically refers to a loss of sales. A company introduces a new product that displaces sales of an older, usually more outdated, product. Instead of having an increase in sales, the market growth remains stable. What does this mean in the world of SEO and content marketing? Keyword cannibalization occurs when two products have similar keywords or phrases and confuses the search engines about which page is right for which query. Instead of competing with other businesses for search traffic, you’re competing with your own web pages. Here’s why keyword cannibalization is bad for business and how you can overcome it.

Sheetal Pinto - 2/9/2023 06:00

How to Optimize your Content for a Global Audience

The global market is much smaller than it once was.  Statista reports over 5 billion internet users globally, or about 63.1% of the population. Reaching out to a broader market can help your business grow, but it’s not as simple as updating your website in a new language and simply hoping your audience finds you through search.

Sheetal Pinto - 1/26/2023 06:00

How to Build a Functional Content Marketing Funnel

Most people don’t wake up and think, “oh, today is the day I buy my new mattress,” unless they’ve researched different brands and checked pricing at different stores. Modern customers often take their time with major (and even minor) purchases. Using that information about today’s shoppers can help you design a content marketing map, or funnel, that guides the customer to your product.

Sheetal Pinto - 1/12/2023 15:49

Draw Insights from Your Competitors' Success 

According to Ahrefs, organic search drives over 53.3% of global traffic. Creating an SEO strategy is key to increasing your reach through search. As you’re setting new SEO goals for 2023, it may be useful to analyze what is working for your competitors. Also look at what they’re missing, to build that effectively into your own SEO strategy.

Sheetal Pinto - 12/15/2022 15:14

5 Proven Ways to Improve your Website Ranking

The rules of SEO can often feel elusive, as if SEO is a great big experiment in which the parameters keep changing. Search engines keep updating the algorithm. User behavior is evolving and adapting to circumstances, all the time. You don’t have any control over how pages rank, or do you? Google will never share how it determines SEO ranking. Customers change how they search and shop. We may not fully understand the complexity of search engine algorithms, but we can test different elements of a webpage to see how customers and search engines respond to your content marketing strategies. It’s called split testing.

Sheetal Pinto - 11/24/2022 16:42

Good today and gone tomorrow! That is the way of trends in the world of SEO and content marketing. What may generate interest right now can fall out of favor due to the ever-changing search engine algorithms. What can you do to ensure that you’re up to date? One useful method is to utilize Google Trends to find useful metrics that help you stay relevant. To make your way to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), it’s important to use a variety of proven methods to create quality content. Read below to learn how Google Trends can help you gain insight on popular trends, seasonality, regional demands, and your competitors.

Sheetal Pinto - 11/10/2022 06:00

Revitalize, Refine, Repurpose

The Pareto principle is also known as the 80/20 rule. About 80% of your best results will come from 20% of your efforts. When you apply that to a creative endeavour like content marketing, you might be undervaluing some of your content creative efforts. It can be expensive to create content, from scheduling videographers, photographers, models, or even having quality copywriters write a blog post. Chances are that you have some valuable content that can be recycled or repurposed with a little elbow grease.

Sheetal Pinto - 10/27/2022 06:00

How to Create Content that Ranks Higher on the SERPs

With every Google update, there’s always some concern about page rankings. The most recent update, “helpful content,” is part of Google’s ongoing efforts to make sure that users get quality content in search results. If you’ve been using SEO best practices and providing content that is relevant and useful, you shouldn’t lose page rankings. It’s always a good idea to check your content marketing strategy and make sure it aligns with Google’s algorithm updates.