10 Content Marketing growth hacks that will double your traffic

Those who are into marketing, Growth Hacking is not the new term for them. If you haven’t heard about it, then you will come to know while reading this post. Whenever you hear – Hacking; everyone relates it to software hacking or unauthorized access to the data. However, hacking simply means to gain the access to your ultimate goal. It’s a path or way out to the end result. Similarly, Growth Hacking is related to the marketing technique developed by startups that uses creativity, analytical thinking, content marketing and social metrics to sell products and gain exposure. We have seen startups making giant space in the market and reaching millions of users so quickly. So, how do these startups do it? What types of marketing strategies do they incorporate to overcome the challenges? Definitely, they follow a Growth Hacking framework. It can help you to achieve the right traffic with genuine users. It is a process of both conventional and unconventional marketing experiments across the channels to achieve an objective of a company i.e. growth. It’s main focus on building, engaging, converting and retaining user base of a business. Now, in this article, we’ll focus exclusively on content marketing. You are probably thinking why? Because content is the basic strategy of any company to be in the competitive league. Creating, publishing, and sharing valuable content with your audience to convert traffic into customers is a good way to gain traffic. But with its growing popularity and competition, content marketing alone may not be enough. To be in the competition, We need to become content hackers. Yes, you have heard it right! And To be an ideal Content Marketing Growth Hacker, all you need few hacks that can help you to build a right content strategy to double your website traffic. That’s why we’ve listed ‘evergreen’ hacks that for you. Let’s get started…

1# Write Kick-Ass Titles

It may sound like a cliche but, Headlines are the first parameter for a reader to get turn on to read your content. They make a great contribution to the success of your content marketing. Many of the marketers are well aware of this rule, however, they are not sure how to make attractive headlines.

The first rule of headlines:

• Your headlines should speak to a need or problem people have.
• Numbers and interesting adjectives work well; For example, “10 awesome ways to learn digital marketing” or “How you can learn digital marketing?”
• Try to start the article with titles containing “what”, “why”, “how” or “when”

The Second Rule of Headlines:

To make it more worthy, you can use a special tool to analyze your headlines. To ensure your headlines are the best they can be, try writing around 25 different ones for each piece of content you produce before choosing the best one. The tool you can use is – Headline Analyzer Tool. Note: Always make sure your headline score should be more than 60. Likewise, the article you are currently reading score is 70.

2# Write Longer Pieces of Content

Anyone who wants to learn something would like to dig deep into the piece of content. And, similarly, Google loves the content which has depth information. In a recent research, we’ve found that the “average content length of a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000+ words.” Therefore, if you wish to stand top in the search fields or move up the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), try investing some of your time in researching and writing longer posts generally more than 1,000 words which are always considered best. Note:

• Emotional engagement can make a huge difference to the success of your content marketing. By triggering an emotional response in the reader or viewer, you can make them want to share your content.
• Content can be in any form like blogs, emailers, campaigns, etc. 
• Never copy any content. Plagiarism is a Big No in the Google World. You can use Small SEO Tools to check the Plagiarism.

3# Make Your Content SEO friendly

Search engine optimization may seem scary to many marketers or businessmen, but it is simply making your content visible to the people who care. Fact: 80% of website traffic begins with a search query. Using the words that the readers/visitors are searching for, makes your content far more likely to cross their path. It can be laborious but adding keywords to your headlines, meta titles, URLs etc. are simple SEO techniques that can make a huge difference. Add Yoast SEO Plugin to your website. The plugin helps you to optimize your website for search engines.

4#  Make Your Content Easy to Share

What’s the value content would have if it’s not shareable? It should be spread and need to be as easy as possible for visitors to go to your site and share your content. Sharing content should not be complicated. By ensuring share social media buttons are included in your posts and placed in prime positions, you can help users to spread your message far and wide. If you use WordPress, you can use plugins such as Monarch, Social Warfare, etc. to add your attractive, eye-catching sharing buttons easily. There are also a various set of free plugins available in the WordPress theme.

Add on:

Try to include videos in your content. No needs to be told that video is taking over all the ways of content marketing. One poignant fact among the million available is that one in four consumers lose their interest in a company if its content lacks video. Social media giants Instagram and Facebook’s algorithm’s prioritize video, especially live video, in their newsfeeds. As per the studies, Instagram’s engagement rate is ten times higher than Facebook’s and 84 times higher than Twitter’s. Being a young sister to Facebook, Instagram has taken all the rollover Facebook. And that 70% of Instagram followers follow at least one business.

5#  Audit and Improve Existing Content

One should never ignore their old hard work. You should work on the old contents and try to keep them updated by improvising the existing one to make it more readable. By upcycling your existing content that is already ranking on search results, you can save your time, money and resources while increasing leads and sales. The improvements could be as simple as:

• changing images,
• links,
• formatting and headings, or
• could involve taking a short piece of content in your posts and covering the topic in much more depth.

A good place to start is your website’s static pages; take a look at what’s already there (e.g. product descriptions) and see if you could add more value in some way.  You can even improvise your best performing posts into a series of content. Use Google Analytics to analyze your most viewed content. 

6#  Test Your Calls to Action

This is one of the most required growth hacks that businesses should never neglect. Include Call to Actions in your every piece of content. What’s the motive to publish the content if your readers or visitors can’t reach out to you through the same? As per the stats, by testing your call to action (CTA) buttons or including CTA, one could increase the conversions by 13 percent. To measure the results, do some A/B testing to find the best colors, positions, sizes, and wordings of your CTAs, and you’ll find that they catch the eyes of visitors more effectively. Content Marketing A great example of a strong, clear call-to-action by Neil Patel. Which says ‘Do you want more traffic?‘. The Motto is simple: Design your call to action in such a way that your audience can’t refuse it.

7# Use a Mix of Media

The human mind can’t be monotonous for long. It keeps on demanding or asking for some change. In the same manner, not everyone enjoys reading long blog posts and even those people that do usually enjoy a variety of media as well. Therefore, it’s best to produce a mixture of content, such as infographics, podcasts, videos, and slideshows. Humans visual creatures, we are not robots, so use images throughout your content and ensure your site will display perfectly on every kind of device.

8#  Invest more in Retargeting

The campaign would have no value if it’s not retargeted. Even the sharpest persona scoping and targeting aren’t going to convert everybody. Retargeting is a form of online advertising (marketing strategy) that uses ads to keep your brand visible even after the user has left your website. Like you must have seen while scrolling Facebook, you keep on looking same products that you might have left in the cart or on your wishlist. It’s the perfect way to get your past visitors back to your website and determine them to complete an action: register for special offers and newsletters or make a purchase. Retargeting is one area where the social networks are only growing in strength. Almost whole e-commerce industry marketing strategies are dependent on retargeting. Facebook and Twitter frequency caps keep audiences from continually seeing the same ads.

9# Mobile can be a blessing

Since 2015, Google’s algorithm has prioritized mobile-optimized websites to provide a user-friendly experience. Smartphones are part of lifestyles and used for even minute search details. It provides the best platform to showcase your business and inherent the required traffic to your website. It’s an acceptable fact that mobile internet traffic first overtook traditional desktop devices back in January 2014  and now accounts for 65% of digital media time. And yet a lot of brands still don’t pursue a mobile-first marketing strategy. I don’t know why? Only one in five do according to one study, settling instead for just ‘mobile-friendly’. The businesses need to understand the role mobile-friendly website can play in your success. ‘Mobile-first’ doesn’t need to be a technical exercise. Much of it is simply employing the classic art of short-form content: shorter headlines, tighter copy, portrait images etc. One important technical consideration though is loading times. Mobile devices lack the CPU of desktops, so your website’s loading times need to be optimized or you risk losing people at the first hurdle. Use Google’s mobile-friendly test to see how your website stands up.

10# Get more readers from Guest Blog

Guest blogging has the power to increase leads and build trust and awareness of your brand. Doing this will enable you to grow your content and increase your readership, with fans of the guest bloggers becoming aware of your business through the posts that the guests will inevitably share on social media and their own sites. Guest blogging has transformed startups and improved businesses. Millions of blogs are now accepting an informational and in-depth guest article. Note: Don’t write a promotional article. Keep it simple and informational and add few genuine inbound links back to your website.

Conclusion

Content marketing can be nuclear weapons that can lead your marketing strategy and help reap the rewards of your hard work. Just follow the right rules and be creative as much you can. Use appropriate content, never go for foul content just for attention as this won’t help you for the long run and affects your brand’s credibility as well.