HANDSHAKING
  • Home
  • Assets
    • TALLAHASSEE CONCRETE WORK
    • Fort Collins Window Tint
    • Recently Sold
    • Deals >
      • Bay Roofers
      • 604 Window Tint
      • Denver RV and Mobile Home Park
  • How It Works
  • Lead Gen Sites
  • Blog

Why Content Marketing Matters for Growing Your Business

1/23/2017

 
Today, I'm at NamesCon 2017 (Domain Name Industry conference), and learning a ton about domain names and marketing.  There's a session I really wish you could be here attending"Why Content Marketing Matters for Growing Your Business" Sound familiar?  Here are my takeaways for you.
Having blogged weekly for over two years, I'm not a stranger to trying to balance writing content that is optimized for search engines while also trying to make an 'human' post that is designed for you, the reader.

Quietly is a company that 'helps brands and publishers create amazing content,' and they're the guys hosting this session (see team members Sean Tyson & Sam Wempe in the pic)

Before I share three ideas with you, here are two pertinent definitions:
​
What is content marketing?

Content:  "Something someone would consume, like an article, social post, photo or video."

Content Marketing: "Content that provides consumers information to generate awareness, engagement or revenue for business."

Being at the Domain Name Conference, this is obviously relevant to domain name investors because more content on your domain means more web traffic, which makes the domain name more valuable. ​

Picture
These takeaways and ideas will help you if you are a company looking to pull more web traffic.

1. Search is indicative of intent.

Come up with good content ideas that hold value. Your website visitors must continue consuming content in order for you to capture their intent.  

Content has compounding value.  Many blogs and publishers start to see the ROI of investing time and money into creating content start to compound soon after the 6 month mark.  Stick with it and keep publishing valuable content!

Pro Tip:  Google actually measures how web visitors consume the content, so write for the reader so that they spend time reading the whole thing. Don't get too carried away with "SEO" and trying to please the machine.  Please humans, and that pleases the machine.  This was comforting when I learned this today.

2. Use Google Trends and Keyword Planner.

Have you ever considered leveraging regional interest?  How about knowing the volume of website visitors so that you can plan your content more strategically?  Look at the analytics to see what is popular and compare that against content for which people are already searching.

An example that popped out to me was that one of Quiet.ly's customers, Sotheby's, used search tools to generate content ideas and their page views went from 1% to 38%!  And even more impressive was that new entrances to the website via blog went up 64%.  That's some pretty solid proof that aligning your focus using Google Trends is probably a great idea if you'e looking for more quality web traffic.

Pro Tip:  Make sure to use content as a way to relevantly plug your services or products. If you make a plug when it's not relevant, I think we can all agree you've lost the user. If you don't plug your services or products you'll never make enough to invest more into your startup.


3. Distribution and backlinks.

After the presentation, I raised my hand to ask the speakers about content distribution.  Their whole presentation was about creating content, so I wanted their take on where you put it.

I told them that I publish weekly on first handshakin.com, and then Huffington Post, Medium, LinkedIn  BuiltInLA, BuiltInColorado, BuiltInNYC, BuiltInChicago, BuiltInBoston, and by answering questions on Quora.com.

They said I should consider publishing on:


  • Reddit (similar to Quora.com)
  • Relevant LinkedIn Groups

For backlinks, they said that similar to point #1, they are designed to be a result of other sharing your content since it's so great.  Don't try too hard to pump too many artificial backlinks. The main action item I pulled from their presentation was to re-consider getting a wikipedia page up, and I was proud that Handshakin.com has already been mentioned on John Paul Dejoria and on Techstars wikipedia pages.

Learn more about how we can help you launch a personal blog here.​
    Picture

    Handshakin Blog
    By: Matt Holmes

    Matt Holmes
    (@handshakin) 
    is an entrepreneur, speaker, marketer, and world record holder for the world's longest handshake.

    About Matt

    As seen on:

    Picture

    Archives

    February 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    June 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014


    RSS Feed

Get Involved

Podcast
Video Series
Leave us a review

Work for Handshaking

Handshakin Values
About
Contact 
​Jobs

Our Theme Song

Legal/Other

Press Legal
Privacy Policy
Terms and Conditions
Handshaking© 2014-2022  
​All Rights Reserved
  • Home
  • Assets
    • TALLAHASSEE CONCRETE WORK
    • Fort Collins Window Tint
    • Recently Sold
    • Deals >
      • Bay Roofers
      • 604 Window Tint
      • Denver RV and Mobile Home Park
  • How It Works
  • Lead Gen Sites
  • Blog