Tips and Tools For Effective Content Marketing With WordPress

As more and more people are developing banner blindness and a general distrust for typical ads, even the major advertisers see themselves shift to new...

As more and more people are developing banner blindness and a general distrust for typical ads, even the major advertisers see themselves shift to new marketing opportunities. As a WordPress website owner, you probably don't have the budget to run commercials on CNN anyway. Now, you may be surprised, but you and IBM are using the same marketing techniques.

We're talking about content marketing, of course. This form of marketing shifts from asking consumers for attention to providing them with valuable content to form a relationship.

The form of content may differ. Social media posts, blog posts, podcasts, ebooks, and infographics like these that spread far and wide are all considered content marketing.

How do you apply these techniques in WordPress content marketing campaign and your WordPress website? This article answers just that.

Content Marketing Tips

Some content marketing strategies have already been covered on ThemeXpert blog. Here are some additional tips you can use to fuel your content marketing campaign.

Know where you're going

Every marketing journey starts with knowing the destination. If you thought that publishing really good articles on your WordPress blog would be enough, unfortunately, it's not. You need to plan ahead. First, let's tackle the goals of your campaign.

Depending on what you want to achieve, you'd have to choose extremely different strategies.

Do you want to build brand awareness? It's hard, but not impossible for an SME. You'll have to create viral content that gets spread all across the web.

Do you want to increase conversions? You'll have to create super-targeted content and rank it high on niche keywords. This will ensure the people who come over to read it are ready to make a purchase.

Do you want to increase customer engagement? You'll have to come up with a controversial topic that gets people talking or even change the medium for your content to Instagram or Facebook.

Do you need content marketing for quality backlinks? You'll have to look for websites that allow guest posts and have a relevant audience.

When you decide what your goal is going to be, set specific criteria for success, the key performance indicators, or KPIs.

For instance, if your goal is increasing traffic and conversions, your KPIs may be to get 5,000 unique visitors from websites where you post guest blogs and increase the conversion rate to 5%.

Don't be too optimistic with the KPIs, though. You need to take into account the resources you have and set them accordingly.

Focus on customer intent

The type of content you're going to produce doesn't depend only on your goals. It also depends on your readers' goals. If you're posting a guest article for an audience who doesn't have an intention to buy and are only browsing, including your industry's jargon and self-promoting heavily will only drive people away from you.

Adjust your content based on the stage of the sales funnel where your audience currently is.

If your goal is to increase customer awareness about your products or grow traffic to your website, go with the content from the top stage. It doesn't talk specifically about your products and just serves to grow a community and attract people from other websites.

For bringing in small but highly convertible traffic, go with the types of content from the last two stages of the funnel. Focus on ranking this content on transactional keywords or placing it on websites that have your target audience.

Stick to the formula

While content marketing requires a lot of creativity, there are some techniques that are proven to work. A piece of viral content would probably have to stray away from these rules and be unique to work. However, if all you need is backlinks or ranking on a certain keyword, you can try these content formats.

Lists
Case studies
Guides

For some reason, we're especially drawn to lists, so creating your content in a form one may actually help you rank. If you use the skyscraper technique, do your keyword research, and create a comprehensive piece of content, ranking on a low-competition keyword won't be a problem.

If you need content to drive conversions, use lead magnets. Create a downloadable asset like an ebook or a CSV checklist and ask for contact information in exchange for it.

Advanced search for blogging opportunities

Here's a very quick tip that will help you a lot when it comes to looking for guest blogging opportunities. It all comes down to this search formula: your industry blog "write for us."

The quotation marks make Google search for the exact phrase, so this gives you hundreds of websites that accept guest posts.

You can also try using "+" instead of quotation marks like this.

This tells the search engine to include all the words that have a plus in front of them, but they may not be in that direct order or form. As you see, this search shows both "woodworking" and "carpentry."

Upgrade the old content

Google wants your content to be fresh. Your readers will appreciate you spicing up a two-years-old article with new data and fixing old mistakes. What's in it for you? Possibly, an increase in traffic up to 400%.

If you have old posts that used to rank well but start losing their ground, update them. You already have an advantage because your page is old, and Google algorithms love that. Increase this advantage by improving the content and clickability of your article's title, and you'll get it back.

If you have a couple of pages on a similar topic that don't perform well at all, consider merging them.

Spread the word

Content is just a part of content marketing. Don't forget that you need to do the marketing part as well. Here are the best ways to do that.

Create a viral piece. Create a material that is either outstandingly hilarious or very useful. An original study, an infographic that helps understand an already existing study, a spot-on list. This kind of content is very engaging, so webmasters will be eager to make a repost.

Top-down outreach. The easiest way to get hundreds of backlinks is to publish your viral piece on a major website. If it appears on websites like Buzzfeed or Forbes, dozens of smaller blogs will repost the materials from there, and you'll get a backlink.

Regular outreach. Not all people can get on Forbes in the first try. If you create a worthy piece of content, you can spread it across the web by simply emailing editors of smaller blogs about it and offering to make a repost.

Comment marketing. Millions of people ask questions on the internet. If your content can answer some of these questions, you can get some exposure and a backlink. Just make sure not be as blunt as this representative on Quora.

WordPress Content Marketing Tools

The reason WordPress is so popular is its customization options. There are hundreds of add-ons that help you build the website and plug-ins that help you manage it. Here are the best plug-ins that will help you run a content marketing campaign.

The best thing you can do to build a community is to let people talk and share their opinions. The best tool for that is the Facebook plug-in tool. Nearly everybody has a Facebook account, and they'll be able to leave a comment on your WordPress website.

Edit Flow

You need this plug-in if you want to keep your content production flow steady and efficient. It allows you to plan and schedule posts, assign them to team members and measure their effectiveness.

Grammarly

Grammarly isn't a plug-in, but it will work on your WordPress website if you get a free widget for Chrome or Mozilla. It will underline all spelling and grammar mistakes, and since these are a ranking factor for Google, you'll please both readers and Google crawlers.

If you run your text through the app, it will even fix stylistic mistakes.

If Grammarly shows mistakes after the article is published, you can make the page private (tips in this article) until you fix all the mistakes.

RankMath

RankMath is a great tool for making your website more SEO-friendly and ranking higher in Google search results. The best thing about it is that both beginners and experts can use it.

It does a good job of onboarding people who are new to search engine optimization and has enough tools to meet the needs of a big website that has to rank for highly competitive keywords.

RankMath also has a modular framework that allows you rearrange the admin panel to your liking and hide the elements you're not using for now. If you're having problems using it, RankMath has a stellar support that will answer all your questions.

Analytify

You need analytics to supercharge your content marketing efforts. Analytify is one of the best WordPress plugins to help you find meaningful insights on how your content performs.

It provides Google Analytics for your WordPress website and can track any metric for you. Check the social media stats to learn what content from your website is getting reposted the most, and leave UTM markers on the content you post on other platforms to know where you are getting traffic from.

The best thing about this service is that it does a great job with onboarding new users. If Google Analytics was too obtuse for you, now you can understand all the stats and what they mean for your business.

Ahrefs

If you're serious about your SEO efforts, you need an Ahfrefs account. Most of tracking and analytics concerning your content marketing can be done in Analytify, but Ahrefs gives you something much better.

It allows you to track keywords you can rank for, track backlinks to your website, and track competitors' backlinks. The last feature is extremely important as you'll be able to hijack their SEO strategy and improve on it to get better ranking results.

Ubersuggest

If you only need the keyword tracking features, you can use Neil Patel's free tool, Ubersuggest. Sign up, and you can check keywords for free, and get keyword and content ideas. This is essential to make your content rank.

The tool also shows you estimates of how difficult it would be to rank on a certain keyword, a probable price of a PPC campaign, and how much traffic a keyword has.

Nelio AB Testing

This plug-in will come in handy if you're creating content for the audience that is on the bottom of the content marketing channels. Create different pages and page elements and test their effectiveness at increasing conversion via split tests.

Buffer

If you incorporate social media into your content marketing campaign, you will want to get a Buffer account. This app helps manage posting across multiple social media accounts, lets you reply to comments from the dashboard instead of juggling all accounts, and provides auto-reply options.

It can also show you analytics of your posts, suggesting a better time to post and other improvements to make more people see and like your content.

Social Snap

Your content marketing efforts mean nothing if you don't encourage the readers to share content on social media. Social Snap is one of the best plug-ins to do that.

It has a customizable block of social sharing buttons that can stick to the sidebar or be displayed on the bottom of your article. They're customizable so they'll fit most website designs. The tab that states the number of shares appeals to social proof and makes sure that when people start reposting your content, it turns into a snowball.

Better Click To Tweet

Twitter is where the news is born, so you should encourage reposting your content. To make it effortless for your audience, use BCTT. It allows you to provide your readers with a fast and seamless way to tweet something from your article. All you have to do is to embed the selected test, and the plug-in does the rest for you.

Wrapping Up

Content marketing isn't something that brings you success overnight. It takes a lot of work and dedication. Use the tips and tools from this article, and even if you don't get invited to a late-night show because of your great content, you'll succeed.

You'll be able to establish authority in your niche, grow a dedicated fanbase, and increase sales.

Author Bio

Connie is a chief content writer, guest contributor at Pro Essay Writer company, and enthusiastic blogger who helps B2B companies reach their audiences more effectively. With an emphasis on organic traffic and conversion, she takes big ideas and turns them into highly practical content that keeps readers hooked.

Tips and Tools For Effective Content Marketing With WordPress