Want to Know How to Make Influencer Marketing Work?

The Internet is a noisy, overcrowded place.

Building momentum for your brand is often an uphill battle, and getting your audience to buy in can be daunting.

So, how do you get people to take you seriously?

How can you go from being just a little fish in a vast ocean to becoming a recognizable brand or even a household name?

One strategy that’s proven to be effective is influencer marketing.

The number of brands using this strategy has grown exponentially over the past few years.

In fact, “interest in influencer marketing has risen more than 90x from 2013 to the present.”

Here are some other stats to give you a better idea of the state of this strategy at the moment:

• “Influencer marketing content delivers 11x higher ROI than traditional forms of digital marketing.”
• “Twitter users report a 5.2x increase in purchase intent when exposed to promotional content from influencers.”
• “40 percent of people say they’ve purchased an item online after seeing it used by an influencer on Instagram, Twitter, Vine or YouTube.”

The list goes on and on.

I think we can all agree that influencer marketing gets results.

But when you get right down to it, the term “influencer marketing” can be a little nebulous.

There’s a lot of confusion about how exactly to implement it and take advantage of it.

How can you get an influencer to link to your website, share your content, promote your product, etc.?

I’m going to be brutally honest with you. It’s not easy.

There’s a lot more involved than simply cold-emailing an influencer and saying, “Hey, please give my brand a shout out.”

It doesn’t work like that.

However, like with most forms of marketing, there is a formula. It’s worked for me, and it can work for you too.

Let’s get right down to it.

A three-step process

Of course, there’s a lot involved with influencer marketing.

But when you really break it all down, it involves three basic steps:

1. Finding a suitable influencer
2. Reaching out to them
3. Getting them to share your content

That’s how I approach it anyway.

Let’s begin with step one.

Finding a suitable influencer

This is probably the easiest step, but it does require a fair amount of research.

How exactly do you zero in on an influencer?

Well, for starters, you’re probably already aware of at least a handful of influencers in your industry.

For example:

• Bloggers with sizable followings
• Popular YouTubers
• Industry experts
• Writers who regularly contribute to popular publications
• Celebrities

But if you need a little help or want to know how likely a particular person is to share, I recommend using BuzzSumo.

One of the features I love there is “View Sharers.”

Let me show you how it works.

First, I enter a subject relevant to my industry/niche. In my case, it’s “content marketing.”

Here’s what pops up:

Next, I choose an article and click on “View Sharers.”

Here’s what pops up now:

Just like that, I get a list of people and companies that shared that particular article.

I can also tell:

• How many Twitter followers they have
• Their retweet ratio
• Reply ratio
• Average retweets

These metrics are important because I can determine if they could potentially be an influencer that I would like to connect with.

I also know what the likelihood of getting a response from them would be. And I can easily follow them or tweet to them for instant interaction.

Other tools worth considering, besides BuzzSumo, include Traacker and Little Bird.

I also suggest checking out this post from Kissmetrics for other ideas.

I’m not saying you have to use a tool for finding influencers, but it does streamline the process substantially.

How big of an influencer should l target?

A common question marketers new to this concept have is whether they should target a macro-influencer (e.g., Tim Ferris or Seth Godin) with hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of followers or a micro-influencer with say 15,000 followers.

I’m a proponent of starting small and working your way up.

From my experience, micro-influencers tend to be more receptive and much easier to get in touch with than major players who may get bombarded with thousands of emails every day.

But feel free to take the path that makes the most sense to you.

Reaching out to influencers

This is hands down the most difficult part of the process.

You have to somehow figure out a way to:

a) get in touch with an influencer and

b) build rapport with them.

You can accomplish this in several ways, but I’m a fan of simply sending an email or using the contact box on their website.

Most influencers (unless they’re huge celebrities) will have some means of contacting them. Do your research until you find an efficient means of doing so.

If you absolutely can’t find their contact info, move on to the next potential influencer on your list.

How should I approach them?

The specific request you have will dictate the template you use.

For instance, there’s a:

• curation template
• influencer mention template
• guest blog template

and others.

I recommend checking out this article from Entrepreneur. It will provide you with five basic templates so you’ll know what to say when making contact.

Here’s their initial outreach template:

The key to getting a response is to be authentic, personable, and honest.

Just remember that you need to make them an offer they can’t refuse (using my best Vito Corleone voice).

You may want to give them a shout out on your blog, send them a sample of your product, or maybe even compensate them if the situation calls for it—whatever you think would tickle their fancy.

However, I would tread lightly with compensation because it can make you come across as being insincere. But it’s definitely an option to keep in mind.

Now let me say this.

It’s ideal if you interact with an influencer on at least some level before hitting them up out of the blue.

For example, you might regularly comment on their blog for a month prior to asking them for a favor.

I know that I’m more receptive to requests from loyal blog readers than to someone “off the street.”

Have thick skin

There are a couple of other little pearls of wisdom I would like to share with you.

First, you should be prepared for rejection.

It’s not realistic to expect the first influencer you contact to immediately respond and cater to your every whim.

Most of these people are busy and already have their inboxes flooded with similar requests.

No matter how charming or charismatic you may think you come off, you’re probably not going to get many responses.

Don’t take it personally. It’s a numbers game.

That’s why I recommend creating a list of at least 10 potential influencers to get going. However, the more, the merrier.

If you expect to have success, it’s going to take perseverance and patience.

Just keep at it until you finally make a breakthrough.

And here’s another tip.

Use a free email tracker, like this one from HubSpot, so you’ll know who opened your emails and who didn’t.

It’s a simple way to see what type of activity has happened after you hit “send.”

If you don’t get a response from someone who most definitely opened your email, I recommend sending them a follow-up email after a few days or so.

Don’t be a pest about it, but a polite follow-up may get an influencer to take notice of you and get you the response you’re looking for.

Getting them to share your content

Finally, you need to ensure that what you’re delivering is genuinely providing them (and their audience) with value.

For instance, if you’re asking an influencer to share a blog post you’ve written, you’d better make sure that it’s top quality and highly relevant to their audience.

If they’re willing to let you guest-post on their blog, it needs to be A+ content. Nothing less will suffice.

In other words, you need to follow through and prove to them that they’re making a good decision by helping you out.

This is obviously integral to building a solid relationship and could potentially lead to other opportunities down the road. You never know.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing seems simple enough on paper.

Get in touch with someone influential, get them to promote your brand in some fashion, and boost your exposure.

Of course, it’s never this easy, and there are a lot of twists and turns along the way.

I’ll be the first to admit that influencer marketing is a tricky process.

But it’s definitely something you can do successfully, provided you take the right approach and have enough persistence.

And once you actually get it to work, it will boost your confidence, and you’ll feel much more comfortable with the process.

At that point, you can rinse and repeat to grow your brand even more.

Have you ever experimented with influencer marketing? What are your results?

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How to Improve Your Alexa Ranking in 30 Days or Less

Numbers don’t lie.

When it comes to the popularity and overall value of your business, it’s important to have a solid Alexa Ranking.

Why? It’s a common metric that potential business partners, investors, etc. will use to determine the state of your business.

They’ll use it to gauge your business’s health and whether it’s trending up or down.

The lower your Alexa Rank, the better, and vice versa.

This is why so many business owners agonize over their Alexa Rank and work tirelessly to improve it.

In this post, I’d like to discuss two key things.

First, I’d like to talk about the factors that Alexa assesses when determining rankings.

Second, I’d like to offer a tangible strategy you can use to improve your Alexa Ranking in 30 days or less.

Let’s hit it.

What’s an Alexa Rank?

Just to be sure we’re on the same page, allow me to formally define an Alexa Rank.

According to Avangate,

“It’s a ranking system set by alexa.com (a subsidiary of amazon.com) that audits and makes public the frequency of visits on various web sites.

Alexa’s support section clarifies matters even more by explaining how its traffic rankings are determined:

“Alexa’s traffic estimates and ranks are based on the browsing behavior of people in our global data panel which is a sample of all Internet users. Alexa’s Traffic Ranks are based on the traffic data provided by users in Alexa’s global data panel over a rolling 3 month period.”

Here’s what Google’s Alexa Rank looks like at number one:

And here’s what Quick Sprout looks like at the moment:

Not nearly as good as Google but solid nonetheless, considering the fact that the lowest ranked website is somewhere around 30 million.

Which factors does Alexa analyze?

Before we can formulate a game plan, it’s important to understand what Alexa is looking at when assigning a ranking to websites.

Fortunately, Alexa is very upfront about how its data is calculated.

According to the Alexa Blog, “Every day, Alexa estimates the average daily visitors and pageviews to every site over the past 3 months. The site with the highest combination of visitors and pageviews over the past 3 months is ranked #1.”

“The site with the least is ranked somewhere around 30 million. If no one in our measurement panel visited a site over the past 3 months there is no rank at all for that site.”

They also provide a couple of graphs to illustrate this:

Of course, Google receives more traffic than any other site on the Internet.

It gets more daily visitors and pageviews, so it sits at the top of the mountain.

Alexa also points out the fact that the closer you get to the top of the plot, the harder it gets to move up a rank.

While it may be fairly easy for a site ranking 24,500,132 to move up to, say, 20 million, it’s significantly more difficult to climb from 50 to 40.

The main takeaway is that it’s all about two key factors: (1) average daily visitors and (2) pageviews over the last three months.

That being said, here’s what you need to do in order to improve your Alexa Ranking quickly.

Certify your site metrics

If you don’t mind making a small investment, it’s a good idea to use Alexa’s Certified Site Metrics.

This will give you an Alexa Certified Code, which will directly measure your site’s traffic.

It offers several advantages:

• You get a more accurate Alexa Rank
• You have access to more in-depth analytics reports (there’s a private dashboard)
• You can closely monitor your site’s performance
• You also have the option of displaying unique visitors, pageviews, and ranks publicly

Here are the different pricing options:

It’s also important to note that you get a free monthly SEO audit with the “Insight” plan and a full site audit with the “Advanced” plan every two weeks.

This is just something to keep in mind when choosing a plan.

Here’s a screenshot from Alexa support, explaining how to get your site certified:

The bottom line is that certifying your site metrics gives you an advantage over other websites.

You can gain a clearer perspective on the health of your site and are equipped with tools to improve your ranking.

Produce epic content

Sorry if I sound like a broken record with the whole “epic content” thing.

But when you break it all down, it’s an essential component of online marketing on many levels.

I’m not going to bore you with all the gory details, but it’s extremely important to create A+ content that genuinely satisfies your audience.

Check out this guide I wrote on Neil Patel for pretty much everything you need to know on the subject.

This will be a necessity for boosting your Alexa Ranking.

Get quality backlinks

What are two critical factors that Google takes into account when assigning a ranking to your website?

Trust and authority. In fact, “Domain trust/authority represents 23.87% of Google’s ranking algorithm.”

One of the most straightforward ways to increase your site’s trust/authority is to obtain quality inbound links.

You know the drill. They need to be from reputable, relevant websites.

I realize this is obviously easier said than done.

I wish it was as easy as putting out a few decent blog posts and having multiple big name publications chomping at the bit to link to you.

Of course, it’s a fairly arduous process.

But at the end of the day, it all goes back to creating great content.

In fact, I like to adhere to the 90/10 rule of link building, where “90% of your effort should go into creating great content, and 10% into link building.”

And when it comes to the process of link building, there’s one technique that outshines all the rest: guest-posting.

Now, I’m not going to rehash what I’ve already written about this topic here. But you can learn the essentials from this guide on Quick Sprout.

If you can get even a few guest posts published on reputable websites, this should result in an improved Alexa Ranking within a month.

Analyze your competitors’ keywords

Here’s a question for you.

What’s your motivation behind wanting to improve your Alexa Ranking?

I bet it’s to have a better ranking than your primary competitors. Right?

Of course, you’ll want to outperform the competition. But how do you go about it?

One of the best ways to gain an edge with your Alexa Rank, and with SEO in general, is to analyze your competitors’ keywords.

You’ll want to know which keywords are bringing them the most traffic, generating backlinks, and so on.

Once you know which keywords are driving the bulk of traffic to their websites, you can optimize your site for those keywords and build momentum.

It’s like killing two birds with one stone. Not only will your Alexa Rank improve, your overall SEO rankings should improve as well.

But how can you analyze their keywords?

I recommend using Google’s Keyword Planner.

There are a lot of tools out there, but this is perhaps the most universal. Besides, Google is usually the go-to source for Internet data.

Here’s what you do.

Go to your Keyword Planner dashboard.

Click on “Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category.”

Under “Your landing page,” type in the URL of a competitor.

I’ll just use quicksprout.com as an example:

Click on “Get Ideas” at the bottom, and your screen will be populated with a list of competitor keywords.

Here are just a handful that popped up from my search:

The great thing about using the Keyword Planner is that you can instantly determine the volume of monthly searches and the level of competition for each keyword.

Creating better content that outperforms your competitors is a great way to gradually boost your SEO and at the same time improve your Alexa Rank.

But in order to see a significant improvement within 30 days, I would suggest first going after the “low hanging fruit,” meaning keywords with minimal competition and a lot of searches.

Focus on those initially for a surge in your ranking.

Conclusion

In many ways, your Alexa Rank directly affects the health and progress of your business.

It’s something that key stakeholders will often look at when determining whether or not your company is worth doing business with.

Therefore, achieving a favorable ranking (at least in the top 100,000) should be a priority.

If you follow this formula, I can pretty much guarantee that you will see at least a reasonable improvement fairly quickly.

However, if your site ranks really poorly, it may take awhile to get to the point where your business is attractive to stakeholders.

And because your Alexa Rank is such an important metric, I recommend making your efforts at improving it ongoing.

How big of a factor has your Alexa Ranking been in terms of business partnerships and opportunities?

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7 Tools for Generating Infinite Content Ideas for Your Blog

Blogging sucks.

Okay that’s a bit extreme. In fact, there’s a lot that I enjoy about blogging—mainly connecting with you guys.

But what does suck is having to constantly come up with new ideas for blog posts.

It’s a grind that can be quite exhausting, especially if you’re simply coming up with ideas off the top of your head.

Research from The Content Marketing Institute found that “57% of B2B marketers say that producing content consistently is their biggest struggle.”

And the struggle is real.

If you’re like me and writing up to eight posts per week while juggling multiple businesses, it can be seriously draining.

So out of pure necessity, I’ve experimented with a plethora of different tools to aid me in the process of generating new content ideas.

Some have been home runs and some have been strikeouts.

But there are seven in particular I really like and want to share with you.

Using one or more of these tools will allow you to generate an infinite number of content ideas for your blog—without having to do any heavy lifting.

1. HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator

This is one of my favorites for generating a handful of ideas quickly. Five to be exact.

I love it because it’s incredibly easy to use.

Literally within seconds, you’ll have five legitimate blog post titles at your fingertips.

All you have to do is enter up to three nouns in the search boxes:

In this case, let’s try “content marketing.” Here’s what happens:

Voila! I instantly get five viable blog topics.

If you want more, click “Try Again,” and it will take you back to the home screen.

From there, you can perform another search using the same keywords, or you can experiment with different keyword options.

I will say that HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator isn’t ideal if you need to come up with dozens of ideas right out of the gate.

But it’s a great starting point.

2. BuzzSumo

You may have heard me mention BuzzSumo before.

I love this tool and have been using it to guide my content marketing efforts for a few years now.

It’s awesome because it does more than just provide you with content ideas. Much more!

It also does the following:

• tells you the number of shares and social engagements content receives
• identifies key sharers
• displays backlinks
• shows you top trending content

In other words, you can quickly tell how well content is performing and what’s resonating the most with readers.

This information is helpful because it lets you know which angles to take with your blog and makes it easier to strike while the iron is hot when topics are peaking.

Here’s what happens when I search for “content marketing” on BuzzSumo:

Notice that it provides me with an in-depth glimpse of the content that’s crushing it at the moment.

More specifically, I can see the number of:

• Facebook engagements
• LinkedIn shares
• Twitter shares
• Pinterest shares
• Google+ shares
• Links
• Total shares

If you look to the right of this info, you’ll notice two more features: “View backlinks” and “View sharers.”

Both add a whole new dimension to the content prospecting process.

But let me give you a heads up.

The free version is fairly limited and won’t necessarily show you the big picture. You also can’t take advantage of all the features.

That’s why I recommend using the Pro version if you’ve got the budget.

As of early 2017, it costs $79 per month.

I know this may seem steep to some marketers, but it’s a worthwhile investment in my opinion.

3. Alltop

This is basically a news aggregator that lets you know what’s happening online.

Alltop runs the gamut in terms of topics and covers everything from science and religion to photography and fashion. It’s all there.

Here’s what you see when you first land on the Alltop homepage:

It’s basically a hodgepodge of different content.

Skimming through the homepage may help you generate some ideas, depending on your niche.

But what I recommend is searching for a specific topic in the search box.

Here’s just a fraction of what I get when I search for “content marketing:”

Alltop displays five posts from relevant blogs, and you can simply browse through the list for ideas.

Or you can take it one step further and click on a specific blog and scan it individually.

I’ve found this to be helpful, and you can potentially find some epic new resources you haven’t been aware of before.

The bottom line is that you can usually come up with a ton of ideas in a short period of time.

You can also get a feel for overarching trends to gauge what’s popular at the moment.

4. UberSuggest

Using this tool is simple.

Enter a keyword, and UberSuggest will supply you with dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of phrases that include your keyword.

Here’s a screenshot of what popped up when I used “content marketing” as a keyword:

It’s kind of like the Google Keyword Planner but more streamlined.

UberSuggest won’t provide you with info such as search volume, competition, etc., but it’s perfect for coming up with content ideas for your blog quickly.

Another cool feature is “Expand this keyword,” which you’ll see after clicking on a particular keyword.

Here’s what happens when I expand “content marketing strategy.”

Notice that it’s a more comprehensive list of keyword phrases based on “content marketing strategy.”

Pretty cool.

In theory, you can use one simple keyword to generate thousands of content ideas with UberSuggest.

5. Google Trends

I’m sure you’re at least somewhat familiar with Google Trends.

I use it for several marketing purposes, mainly to perform market research and determine interest in a particular topic.

But did you know that Google Trends can be used for generating content ideas as well?

It’s true.

Now let me say that this isn’t nearly as comprehensive as the previous tools I listed, but it definitely serves a purpose. Three to be exact.

Again, let’s use “content marketing” as an example.

First, you can browse through “Related topics” to see what’s popular.

This can help you identify other influential resources you may want to check out, which can potentially give you additional ideas.

Second, you can scan through “Related queries” to see which search queries are most popular on Google at the moment:

Third, you can use Google Trends to determine whether a topic is trending up or down.

Here’s what the interest in content marketing looks like at the moment:

When you put it all together, Google Trends can be quite handy for generating ideas.

6. Portent’s Content Idea Generator

If you’re looking for a super quick way to come up with a click-worthy blog title, look no further than this tool.

While it’s by no means as robust as, say, BuzzSumo, it works great for generating a title that your audience will eat up.

Here’s an example:

For more ideas, click the refresh button.

I like Portent’s Content Idea Generator because it’s an easy way to come up with cool and catchy titles.

It’s particularly good if you’re looking for a dash of humor.

7. Content Row’s Link Bait Title Generator

So here’s the deal with link bait.

It can potentially be detrimental to your marketing campaign.

I mean it may drive some initial traffic to your blog, but you’re likely to have a high bounce rate and a minimal number of return visitors if your content doesn’t actually measure up.

For that reason, I don’t recommend using titles purely intended for link bait without actually having high quality content.

That being said, Content Row’s Link Bait Title Generator is still a pretty awesome little tool to have.

The concept is simple. You enter a subject, and a handful of relevant link bait title ideas will appear.

Here’s what pops up when I enter “content marketing.”

Not too shabby.

This isn’t to say you’ll want to use every single idea this tool suggests, but you can definitely use it to streamline your brainstorming.

Most of the time, you can come up with some pretty catchy titles that will bring in considerable traffic.

Just make sure your content hits its mark.

Conclusion

I think we can all agree that coming up with fresh content ideas is a pain at times.

If you’ve been blogging for over a year, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

But fortunately, you don’t have to sit around brainstorming on your own, trying to come up with new ideas from scratch.

There are numerous tools available (many of which are free) that will assist you with this process and enable you to come up with pretty darn good ideas.

In fact, it’s tools like these that have enabled me to make continual progress and establish the audience that I have.

If you’re a serious blogger, I suggest at least checking out each of these seven tools and doing a little experimenting.

This should make it much easier to populate your blog with killer content without driving yourself crazy in the process.

Can you suggest any other tools for generating content ideas?

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These Six Content Marketing Tactics Will Give You 142% More Traffic in Six Months

You don’t need me to tell you how potent content marketing is.

I could spout off a laundry list of stats, e.g., “conversion rates are nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters” or “content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads.”

You get it.

But the term “content marketing” is a wide umbrella, encompassing a nearly infinite number of strategies and variations.

What you really need to know is which content marketing tactics will get you legitimate results—which ones will boost your traffic and generate sustained leads.

In other words, which strategies are truly worth your time?

In this post, I’d like to discuss six key tactics I feel are most pertinent for content marketers in 2017.

More specifically, these tactics will give you 142% more traffic in six months.

Here we go.

1. Create multiple landing pages

I’m sure you have a landing page on your website.

But there’s absolutely no reason to stop at just one.

In today’s digital marketing world, customer segmentation is vital, and the one-size-fits-all approach just won’t cut it.

Take a look at this data from HubSpot, demonstrating the correlation between the quantity of landing pages and leads generated.

According to HubSpot, “While most companies don’t see an increase in leads when increasing their total number of landing pages from 1-5 to 6-10, companies do see a 55% increase in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from 10 to 15.”

Here’s the impact that multiple landing pages can have for both B2Bs and B2Cs:

The point I’m trying to make here is that the more landing pages you create, the more opportunities you have to rank for different keywords, generate more organic traffic, and ultimately increase conversions.

After all, leads are more likely to convert when they arrive on a landing page that’s fully customized to address their specific needs and concerns.

Now, I’m not saying you necessarily need to create 10 or more landing pages. That may be an overkill in some cases.

But what I am saying is that it’s smart to segment your audience and create an individual landing page for each specific customer type.

Here’s an example:

This approach is almost guaranteed to help you reel in more quality traffic.

2. Make infographics an integral part of your content formula

I feel a little bit like Captain Obvious by pointing out the impact of infographics.

But the bottom line is that this medium is your ticket to massive traffic.

Why?

It’s simple. Infographics get shared like crazy.

In fact, “Infographics are Liked and shared on social media 3x more than other content.”

Here are a few more stats that prove the traffic-generating potential of infographics:

They’re visual. They’re easy to follow. And they make it incredibly simple to digest complex information that would be difficult to consume in a traditional, text-based format.

Not to mention they’re fun.

There’s something inherently playful about infographics that makes people “eat ’em up.”

Just check out the number of shares this infographic from Copyblogger has gotten since the day it was published back in 2012:

Pretty impressive.

I realize there are definitely newer, sexier content marketing tactics out there.

I also realize that interest in infographics has waned slightly over the past few years.

But they’re still one of the top forms of content in terms of traffic-generating potential.

That’s why I recommend making infographics a top priority this year.

Check out this post from neilpatel.com and this post from Quick Sprout to learn the essentials.

3. Create “cornerstone” blog posts

If you’ve been following any of my blogs for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed I like going big.

By this I mean that I:

• create long-form posts (typically over 1,500 words)
• include a lot of visuals
• include statistics
• cover a lot of facts and details that others may not always touch on

In other words, I strive to provide my audience with as much value as possible.

Keep in mind I don’t always drive the ball out of the park with each blog post, but there’s a consistent level of depth I strive to achieve.

And this has been a big part of my success over the years.

This is why I can’t stress enough the importance of creating “cornerstone” blog posts, and not merely your average, run of the mill posts so common on the Internet.

In a post on Kissmetrics, I highlight just a few of the benefits of creating comprehensive, long-form content:

• higher rankings in search engines

• increased time on site
• success in social media
• a position of authority

One technique I’ve found useful for creating cornerstone content is to treat each blog post like a be-all and end-all guide.

Attack it with the intent of creating a definitive post that will answer nearly any question your audience may have.

Cover the entire spectrum.

I really recommend checking out this post I wrote on neilpatel.com to learn more about this process.

It also includes some concrete examples you can use to guide your efforts.

Now, of course, you probably won’t have the time to create five-plus posts like this each week (or even three).

That’s why I suggest at least considering scaling back your content and focusing on creating fewer but higher quality in-depth posts rather than churning out dozens mediocre ones.

4. Get cozy with video

Here are some quick stats from HubSpot regarding the state of live video.

• “Cisco projects that global Internet traffic from videos will make up 80% of all Internet traffic by 2019.”
• “4x as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product than read about it.”
• “43% of consumers wanted to see more video content in 2016.”

No matter which way you slice it, a steady diet of video content is going to crank up your traffic.

This brings me to my next point.

5. Behold live video

I’d like to take it one step further and discuss a key video trend that’s catching on currently.

And that’s live video.

Platforms such as Facebook, Periscope, and YouTube offer live streaming, allowing your audience to watch your video content in real time.

In my opinion, live video is one of the top ways to increase engagement levels and bring a massive influx of traffic.

Here are some numbers to back this up:

• “A significant number (50%) of marketers plan on using live video services, and 50% want to learn more about live video.”
• “People spend 3x longer watching video which is live compared to video which is no longer live.”
• “Facebook generates eight billion video views on average per day.”

I love this medium because it allows me to create an authentic, one-on-one-connection that’s nearly impossible to create otherwise.

It’s also cool because most live video services allow you to answer your viewers’ questions, giving you the opportunity to interact with them in a very personal way.

If you haven’t experimented with live video yet, I recommend giving it a shot.

It can push your traffic numbers off the chart.

Check out this post to learn how to use live video to build your personal brand.

6. Harness the power of content curation

At first thought, content curation might make you feel that you’re being lazy or maybe even unethical, as if you’re a poser who’s taking credit for the hard work of others.

But it’s not like that at all.

In fact, “only 5% of marketers worldwide never share other organization’s content, while nearly 1/3 share blogs, industry publications, or other resources on a daily basis.”

Content curation is an integral part of social media marketing, and almost every legitimate brand participates in it to some extent.

When you do it correctly, this practice can do the following:

• boost your brand equity
• establish you as a thought leader
• bring in a steady stream of high quality traffic

More specifically, “41% of marketers that curate content indicate it has increased the number and/or quality of their sales-ready leads.”

The key is to curate content the right way.

By this I mean upholding rigorous quality standards and always ensuring that the content you select is relevant to your audience.

One person in particular who I feel crushes it at content curation is Brian Dean of Backlinko.

Just check out his definitive guide on link building.

Embedded within the guide are plenty of links to external resources that greatly enhance the content and provide additional insights.

Here’s what I mean:

Of course, this is just one example. There are plenty of other ways to go about it.

Just use your imagination.

Conclusion

In my opinion, all six of these content marketing tactics are incredibly useful for revving up your traffic.

They target your audience in different ways, and when used collectively, they can produce a traffic surge.

I’ve experimented with each one and have seen positive results. Collectively, they helped me increase my traffic by 142% in six months.

Be sure to work these into your 2017 content marketing plan.

Which specific content marketing tactic have you had the most success with?

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