There is no one magic trick that will skyrocket your blog’s growth overnight. Ha! I said it! There are, however, a lot of content marketing secrets, that when combined, will lead to steady continuous growth – the kind of growth that seems to take on a life of its own.
In this post, I want to mention 3 that are a must if you don’t want your efforts to go to waste.
As you go through these and decide what you want to implement, you should be continuously experimenting to see what works (testing and tracking), and constantly learning from your audience.
It’s rather simple…
Try something new – did it work? And if so, how can you make it work even better?
So, where so we start?
Let’s start with your “audience” AKA customer avatar.
- Who is my audience?
- What do they want?
- What do they fear?
- How can I become so valuable to them, they turn to me and my blog for advice and help?
Let’s get into the 3 content marketing secrets:
Learn Everything You Can About Your Audience![audience content marketing]()
If you are going to connect with your audience you really need to know everything you can about them.
Where is your audience coming from, both physically and mentally?
If you can, interview your readers. You might get them on Skype, send them a questionnaire, ask questions on your blog, etc.
Ask things like:
- What are your biggest challenges in <your niche>? You’re looking for the pain points you can help solve.
- What have you done to overcome these challenges? This will show you how determined they are.
- How do you find the information you need? This tells you where and how they are looking
- What content format do you prefer? Video, written, audio, etc.
You don’t have to interview a lot of people to find the answers. In fact, according to research experts you should see a pattern emerging after just 5 interviews in the same audience segment.
Your goal of course is to learn as much about your audience’s needs and desires as you can.
Get a Bird’s Eye View of Your Blog![content marketing blog]()
Buzzstream put together a list of questions that will give you a good view of your content marketing strategy and help you identify your weak points.
You might go over this list of questions every 3-6 months and make sure you are still on track with your blog.
- Who is your audience? <dog owners>
- What are you offering them? <tips on dog training and care>
- How will they find you? <through guest blog posts and social media>
- Why will they care? <I give great tips they can use immediately>
- How will they interact? <they will watch videos and read blog posts>
- What will be their next step? <signing up for my dog training course>
- Why do they share it? <it’s great info, entertaining and awesome dog photos, too
- They might not share it if… <it’s too dry>
- A solution for this is… <inject plenty of humor and personality>
Use Your Competitors to Find Your Audience![content marketing competitor]()
Finding your target audience can be difficult but it does not have to be.
Find out what is working for your competitors, and you can often use the same sites and techniques to drive targeted traffic to your own site.
First, make a list of websites that are closest to yours in topic and intended audience. If you don’t know them, try searching Google using your top keywords. Or use this Google query (related: yourcompetitorwebsite.com)
Next, enter the competitor’s domain on a service such as Serpstat.com or SimilarWeb.com to see where their visitors are coming from, which social networks they use, total visits, traffic by countries, search traffic and more. You will have to signup to get the information. It may be limited in a free account but you can get some useful information this way.
More content marketing secrets are coming so stay tuned!
PS. Content Marketing has many components. One that is often overlooked is Content Distribution and how to create a content marketing plan.
