Assuming you are already creating valuable content, making a few basic optimizations can help it earn significantly more traffic and engagement.
Yet it’s not uncommon for teams to get busy and forget to make these optimizations.
To avoid this problem, we created content marketing checklists for the four major content formats: blog posts, podcasts, social media, and video.
You can give these content checklists to your team members to run through before hitting “publish” so that essential optimizations are never overlooked.
Prerequisites For Effectively Using Content Marketing Checklists
Before jumping into the content marketing checklists for each platform, it’s important to note that they are designed to help you optimize the content for the intended platform.
Therefore, these checklists will only work if you are already producing great content that people love.
We have separate resources on generating interesting content ideas and creating a content marketing strategy to consistently produce high quality content, but there are three simple questions you can use as a filter to identify if your content is high-quality:
- Is this content relevant to our audience? If the content is irrelevant to your audience’s interest, they won’t engage with it, and it won’t perform well.
- Do we provide insights from our personal experience solving this problem? Google’s recent helpful content update emphasizes the importance of personal experience and expertise because people want to learn from other people that actually have a proven solution.
- Does this piece of content provide a unique perspective or solution to the problem? If you already provided your experience solving a particular problem, there’s a good chance that you also checked this box. However, it’s still worthwhile to consider this question as you may be able to add more detailed insights from your personal experience (such as failures and anecdotal stories) or simply refine your perspective to provide a more unique and/or helpful brand voice for users.
Assuming you already have a consistent content calendar and are producing the type of content that users love, here are content marketing checklists you can use to maximize engagement for each piece of content you create.
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Content Marketing Checklist For Blog Posts
If you’re publishing blog content, following a few SEO (search engine optimization) best practices can help you significantly increase organic traffic and visibility.
Identify A Keyword That Fits The Pain Point
It’s always best to first identify pain points your audience faces and then create content that addresses those pain points rather than starting with keyword research and then creating content that matches the best high volume/low difficulty keywords.
However, it is a good idea to find the most common phrase used to search that pain point to maximize organic traffic to your blog post.
A simple trick to finding a keyword that matches the pain point of the blog post is to enable the Ahrefs Google Chrome extension and then Google the pain point. Then, click on the top ranking posts for the generic pain point you typed in and see what long-tail keyword variations those blog posts rank for.
Then, choose the variation that best matches the pain point of your blog post and has the best low difficulty/high search volume combination.
Optimize Your Headline, Meta Description, And URL
Your headline and meta description are the only preview that your visitors have of your article, so spend some time optimizing them.
First, title tags should be shorter than 60 characters, and meta descriptions should be shorter than about 160 characters.
Within those constraints, here are a few additional optimization tips:
- Include the main keyword in the title to help search engines and users understand what it’s about.
- Entice clicks by providing a preview of the value of the post. For example, if you include examples, a template, or a checklist, include that in the title when possible.
Finally, your URL should be legible to a user and contain the basic keyword. For example, the keyword this blog post targets is “content marketing checklist,” so this is the URL:
Optimize Images
Images can slow down your website, which can cause your bounce rate to skyrocket, sending a negative engagement signal to search engines.
To prevent this, use an image compression plugin like Smush and ask your developers to incorporate lazy loading so that only the images on the part of the page the user is currently viewing load.
In addition, Google Images is a search engine, so optimize your images by including Alt text to generate more traffic.
The alt text should simply describe what the image is so that both users and search engines can understand what the image is about.
Google also provides the following guidelines for Google Image optimization:
- Use HTML image elements to embed images. Use an image sitemap and responsive images.
- Optimize the image landing pages by checking your page title and description. Be sure to add structured data and use descriptive filenames, titles, and alt text.
- Opt out of Google Images inline linking.
- Optimize for SafeSearch.
Optimize The User Experience
One of the easiest ways to improve user engagement is to make it easy for users to read your content.
Here are a few specific things you can do to improve the readability of your blog post:
- Keep paragraphs shorter than four or five sentences.
- Break up the text with bullet points, lists, and highlight/bold critical sentences.
- Use a legible font and color that makes it easy to read from at least three feet away.
- Use screenshots, images, and infographics to convey concepts where it makes sense to do so.
For example, this blog post is easy to quickly skim and extract the main concepts. As a result, people are more likely to continue scrolling, resulting in excellent user engagement signals:
In contrast, this blog post is intimidating and difficult to read, which will likely lead to poor user engagement signals:
Add Internal Links
Internal links are helpful not only for search engines to find and crawl your content, but also for users who want to know more about a particular concept.
For example, we mentioned content ideas and content strategy at the beginning of this article, but rather than explaining how to come up with great content ideas and discussing what a content marketing strategy entails within this single blog post, we simply internally link to our other blog post on those specific topics.
Ideally, you want a content marketing strategy that links to and from other related topics.
For example, we have a guide on freelance writing that covers the general topics involved in freelance writing, and then we link out to blog posts on more specific topics within freelance writing. We also link back from the specific topics on freelance writing to the general guide on freelance writing:
Incorporate Relevant Keywords
Search engines are becoming highly sophisticated at understanding what a piece of content is about, but you can still help them out by including semantic keywords (other keywords commonly associated with the main keyword).
To do this, you can use a tool like Surfer or Clearscope, which tells you exactly what additional keywords to include in your blog post.
Include A Relevant Call To Action (CTA)
Finally, your traffic won’t be helpful if you can’t retain that visitor and turn them into a customer.
Therefore, you need them to take the next step in the buyer journey. This may be signing up for your email marketing list or scheduling a demo.
A general rule of thumb is to make a small ask, like signing up for your email list, if it’s a top of the funnel blog post educating a beginner audience. If the blog post targets a solution aware audience (readers actively looking to purchase a product), you can ask them to either sign up for a demo or trial of your product.
Content Marketing Checklist For Podcasts
Once you’ve created an engaging podcast episode, here are a few additional optimizations you can make to help it achieve more visibility.
Leverage Promotion Techniques
Total subscribers and subscriber growth rate are among the most important ranking factors for podcast platform algorithms like Spotify and Apple podcasts.
So the more people you can get to subscribe to your podcast, the better it will rank.
Therefore, promote your podcast to your email list and ask readers to subscribe.
You can also run ads to your most popular episodes or post a preview of the episode on social media:
Many podcasters also collaborate with other influencers and then ask them to cross promote it.
This is arguably the most effective content promotion technique as it helps you get in front of a brand new audience.
Optimize The Title For Clicks
The number of plays an episode receives is a critical ranking factor that search algorithms consider, so creating an appealing title can help you earn new listeners and re-engage your existing subscribers.
You can even ask ChatGPT to help you create an appealing title to earn clicks. Just download the podcast script, feed it to ChatGPT and then use a prompt like this:
“Below is a transcript of a podcast episode that is part of a show about digital marketing. Analyze the transcript and then create 10 intriguing titles that describe what the episode covers show and entices people to click on it and listen. The target audience is (your target audience) who want to (their dream).”
Here are just a few examples of some appealing podcast titles:
If your podcast discusses a topic you’re trying to rank for (e.g., “travel tips for Japan”) include that keyword in the title, but enticing existing readers to click is arguably the most important as episodes that get more plays will help boost your overall show’s authority.
You can also use one of our headline formulas if you’re really stuck.
Include Show Notes And A Detailed Description
Show notes can help encourage users to listen to your episode, and it also improves SEO as the description helps algorithms better understand what your episode is about.
If you’re targeting a specific keyword, include it in the description a few times.
You can also include timestamps to give users a preview of what you’ll discuss, which can also help improve engagement:
Ask For Ratings And Reviews During The Episode
Ratings and reviews are also critical ranking factors, so inside each episode, ask users to leave a rating and review. You can explain how it helps you rise in the algorithm, and if you want to take it to the next level, make a joke out of it.
For example, the hosts of the business podcast My First Million have an insider joke about the “Gentleman’s Agreement.” Essentially, they say their content isn’t free – you must pay for it by subscribing. You can have a similar joke encouraging people to rate and review it.
Another incentive is to read out people’s reviews on the podcast. This is something that Noah Kagan does on his podcast, and it has helped him steadily grow over time.
Encourage Engagement On The Platform During The Episode
Platforms view engagement with the podcast episode, like using the platform’s native sharing features, as a positive user engagement signal.
So during the episode, ask your users to share the episode with their friends and explain how it helps you rise in the algorithm.
You can use the same techniques we discussed above, like creating an inside joke, to encourage shares.
Alternatively, you can tell users who they should share the episode with – like a boss or colleague – and what they should say when they share it. Giving people explicit directions can significantly increase engagement.
Invest In Quality Cover Art
While cover art isn’t a direct ranking factor, people are less likely to click on your episode if you don’t have any cover art or the cover art is unappealing.
The good news is that you can hire someone on a platform like Upwork or Fiverr to create cover art for you for less than $100 dollars.
Content Marketing Checklist For Social Media Content
While each social media platform has a slightly different algorithm, they all have the same end goal – encourage people to stay on their platform for as long as possible.
So here is a checklist you can use to maximize engagement on any social media platform.
Craft A Compelling Hook
When users pause over your content or interact with it, social media platforms view that as a positive signal and therefore give it more reach.
That means you must capture the scrollers’ attention in the first milliseconds.
You can do this by beginning your content with a teaser or a bold/contrarian take that is unique from the popular opinion. You can also write your post or copy the transcript of your video and then pop it into ChatGPT and ask it to craft a hook for you.
Include Relevant Hashtags
Add about 3-5 hashtags related to the post’s topic to get more visibility to your posts.
You can use a hashtag finder like TagsFinder to help you identify popular hashtags to add to your post.
Test And Optimize Your Publishing Times
You’ll find that your posts tend to perform better at certain times of the day than others, so use a social scheduling tool, like Hootsuite, that allows you to optimize your posting schedule.
You can also manually test posting at different times of day and track which posts earn the highest engagement.
Tag And Involve Relevant Influencers
The more people who share and engage with your content, the better, so involve influencers in the content creation process whenever possible. Even if you don’t do a full collaboration, you can mention ideas you saw other influencers discuss and then credit the influencer in the post.
Often, the influencer will reshare content that mentions their philosophies or ideas, which can help your content earn more reach.
Engage With Your Audience
Perhaps the easiest way to double your engagement is to simply respond to comments on your post. Instead of just answering questions from your followers, provide a thoughtful response and then ask them a question too. This keeps the conversation going, which is a positive signal to social media algorithms and helps you build a stronger relationship with your followers.
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For the first time, The Copyblogger methodology is now available to a select few clients. We know it works. We’ve been doing it since 2006.
Content Marketing Checklist For Video Content
Here are some critical checkpoints to ensure your video content is well optimized for clicks, engagement, and extending watch time.
Optimize Your Thumbnails For Clicks
Clicks are an essential aspect of the YouTube algorithm, and improving your thumbnails is one the most impactful actions you can take to improve your click through rate.
You can either hire someone on Upwork or Fiverr to create enticing thumbnails for you, or use a tool like Canva to create one yourself.
Some basic tips to create appealing thumbnails include:
- Use bright and contrasting colors
- Use the same basic format/style for all of your video thumbnails so that people recognize your brand
- Include your personal face in the thumbnail
- Convey emotion and intrigue
You can also A/B test different thumbnails even after the video goes live.
Optimize Your Title For Clicks
Along with your thumbnail, your title should also be optimized to encourage clicks. Intriguing and shocking titles (even clickbait-style headlines) tend to perform well, and an easy way to generate ideas is to simply look at the headlines of your competitors’ top performing videos.
If your video covers a particular topic, include the main keyword in the title to help the YouTube algorithm understand what it’s about so that it shows up in the search results.
You can use a tool like Ahrefs and set it to “YouTube” to identify trending YouTube keywords.
Include In-Video CTAs
Throughout the video, verbally ask viewers to like the video and subscribe. You can make a joke out of it and also offer subscriber-only content.
The key to a compelling CTA is to show the viewer what value they’ll receive by taking action.
For example, if you offer live Q&As, be sure to mention that when you ask them to subscribe. You can also include a CTA to subscribe in the meta description and even have a visual cue in the video pointing to where the subscribe button is located.
Hook Viewers In The First Five Seconds
If you can hook the user in the first few seconds, you have a much better chance of retaining them for the rest of the video, and video retention is key to ranking higher in the YouTube algorithm.
A few ideas to hook your viewers include:
- Immediately start your video without any intro so that the meat of the content pulls them in instantly.
- Providing a teaser snippet of the juiciest part of your video.
- Tell them in the intro a sneak preview of various topics you’ll cover in the video.
There are plenty of other ways to grab the viewer’s attention, but the best way to lose the viewer’s attention is to create a long-winded intro that doesn’t create any anticipation.
Respond To Comments
The YouTube algorithm also looks at engagement metrics, so respond to as many comments as possible. This also lets you get to know your viewers on a deeper level, and you’ll be able to create better relationships with them over time.
Interlink Relevant Videos
Once someone is watching your video, keep them engaged with your channel to earn more views for your other videos and eventually turn them into a subscriber. An easy way to accomplish this is to interlink other relevant videos.
You can do this throughout the video, but most importantly, add links to other relevant videos at the end.
Include A Description And Provide Timestamps With Hooks
The description helps your viewers and algorithms better understand what your video is about and including intriguing timestamps can encourage people to watch the video.
Here’s an example of a description with excellent timestamps:
Include Teasers For Retention
YouTube’s algorithm also looks at the total time viewers spend watching your video, so to encourage people to continue watching, give them a preview of what they’ll learn if they stick around to the end of the video.
Next Steps To Improve Your Content Marketing
These content marketing checklists will help you better optimize each piece of content, but a successful content marketing strategy requires much more than simply checking off a few boxes on a checklist.
If you want more help improving your content marketing skills, you can join the Copyblogger Academy. Inside, you’ll have access to one on one coaching with the content marketers behind the Copyblogger brand, a network of peers improving their content marketing skills, and full video courses on copywriting, content marketing, and other topics that will sharpen your skills as a marketer.
Alternatively, if you want a done for you content marketing solution, consider talking to the pros behind the Digital Commerce Partners.
They can build a content strategy tailored to your business’s needs and execute it for you so that you can focus on running your business. Reach out to them now to learn more about how you can collaborate with them.
Reader Comments (89)
These are the ways to make your content stand out. Nothing says more about a blog that has unique content and is worthy to read. Heck, people can read somewhere else more with more authority if they want to.
Be unique and provide value to people’s problems. That is key. All of these points are very valid in today’s world, more than ever. Nice Article!
As Samuel has already said, excellent article. This is a good checklist for any content marketer who is interested in running a successful campaign. However, I do feel though that marketing is as important as the content itself. I see repeated content from any reputable bloggers everyday which is overshadowing the excellent content written by many smaller bloggers. But, I guess this is just the way the Blogosphere works!
Absolutely brilliant list Sonia.
Key takeaway for me: “Don’t try to rush to Step 10 of the checklist when Step 3 is still giving you trouble. Just like building the foundation of a beautiful house, if you do the steps in order, you’ll have something solid that will serve you for many, many years to come.”
Thank you.
I couldn’t agree more. I think one of the points should be ‘Be Patient’.
I am 100% behind your first point. You want to control you own content as best as you can. There are so many opportunities online for other people to talk about (for good and bad) your brand that you need to take control wherever you can get it.
I like this post and the #1 resonates with me. You’ve to own the land you’re building a content marketing apartment on. I didn’t realize the urgency of registering my domain name when I started but I’m glad I did now. Thank you Sonia for waking me up to the world of content marketing.
Hi Sonia!
I love reading this checklist and learnt new things and certainly having a checklist before writing any article is easy to analyse at the same time what will happen with what you have crafted.
Thanks for sharing great list 🙂
This list comes at the perfect time. This is something I have been struggling with for the past several months. I have been thinking ways to make my website more effective in promoting my business. I didn’t want to go through the process of a redesign, but I can make some small changes and redesign my content.
Thanks Sonia! You always there to help when I need it.
Thanks Clara!
This came out of a Q&A call with our new group of Teaching Sells members, there seemed to be a real need for an outline of the foundation. Maybe now more than ever, because the online world has become so complex.
Great post – I find that #9, looking to sell via your content is often the one that gets overlooked.
Of course, content marketing isn’t about direct selling – but it doesn’t mean that you should forget about looking to sell to your audience completely when the relevant opportunity comes up!
Yes, many people are superb at all the points except that one. Got to have that one in there. 🙂
Putting your content in the right environment is a lesson I am finally getting tons of benefit from. When I started blogging two years ago, I didn’t give my contents the superb environmentbit deserved. I suffered long before I did something about it this year and guess what? Just changing the look of my site to the powerful genesis framework theme took my content marketing efforts to a whole new level. Traffic increased, bounce rate dropped from 78% to 5%, page views increased from 2000+ monthly to 13000+, subscribers increased with about 25% monthly.
Most times reading these posts, one might be tempted to think all these tips don’t work. Put like the saying goes, nothing convinces better than RESULTS!
Thank you Sonia for a nice chacklist and great work to you guys at Copyblogger Media. Thumps Up!
Wow, very cool Tito, thanks. 🙂
Thanks for sharing this great article. Full of insights and thoughts. And I personally love #10. Nowadays a lot of bloggers/businesses are using the power of social media.
I love this list, althought I am still working my way through the lower levels. I think patience is key – don’t be in a hurry! Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your blog audience. Nothing bothers me more than the ‘Put up a blog today, make money tomorrow’ hype that runs around on the internet.
Sonia, I agree with your comment in response to Clara too – the online world is incredibly complex. Maybe that’s why bulleted lists and how-to posts do so well! 🙂
I really think it is. Everyone is so distracted and there’s so much swirling around — clarifying your point into a nice list is really doing your audience a service! 🙂
Awesome post Sonia. I especially liked #1, #7, and #8–too many bloggers are hosting with WordPress.com, not marketing their content through different channels, and not capturing their visitor’s email address to keep in touch with them.
You almost touched on it a couple times (with the email section plus the idea of not waiting too long to make an offer) but have you written a post on that all-too-important-yet-often-overlooked page: the “thank you” page (the page people see right after joining your email list)?
That’s probably the best place, among other things, to place a great offer. Because at that point your visitor is about as hot a prospect as they’re probably ever going to be, and even if they never read an email from you again they will see the thank you page. And if they don’t buy right then–hey, they’re still on your email list so you can send them those autoresponders and get more chances to impress them with your content and make offers to them.
Anyways, that’s just something that a lot of bloggers haven’t taken full advantage of that could be expanded on to make a great post.
Thanks for all the awesome info today Sonia!
We don’t do that, so I haven’t written about it, but you make a very good point and I think I’m going to try it. 🙂 I’ve got just the product in mind, actually …
Awesome!
If you’d like a checklist of things to remember and some examples of what works for others, just let me know!
Step 8! That’s where I was. However, I forgot some of the first seven and landed up hardly.
I was going to get on another Guest Post Sprinkling round on blogs without any goal or anything but thanks to you, I’ll be spending some time on building my blog properly first.
Great post. And thanks! 🙂
Definitely have a strong foundation first! That way you squeeze the absolute most out of those guest blogging opportunities.
Thanks for kind words!
This is an Awesome Checklist Sonia! I like point #1 and #3, these two are very important. I have also discovered that a blog design also tells on how well your blog perform.
Am glad I read this post.
‘The best time to plant an oak tree is 20 years ago – or today’ – that’s one of your comments that stays with me when I try and rush or feel frustrated. Thanks Sonia – awesome post!
I need to work on drafting my cornerstone content landing pages!
Awesome list Sonya. I can see your husband’s carpet and it’s a terrific visual for my blog homepage.
This is also a great example of evergreen content. I could probably read this article every couple months to see if I’m making progress.
Sonia: This should be mandatory reading for any entrepreneur who does marketing today.
I also just installed Genesis Generate theme, which I like a lot – it’s very clean and elegant.
Nicely laid-out list. Even I can see my through this! Except for the step about finding someone to partner with – Mediocre writers are a handful a dozen but the really make-an-impact ones, notsomuch. I need to find me one. Cheap. (Oh, I kill me. )
Sonia speaks the truth! Just like always. I totally agree that you should not advertise your goods on social media until you have a blog.
Thanks for taking the time to write this post. I enjoy reading this. It also has helped me brush up on a few things I had forgotten. Getting back into the “game” after two years sure had put me at the start of the line; however, this piece has cleared many things on my mind; it left me motivated to get back on the “horse.” Thank you!
Thanks for a useful post Sonia. At point 7 – I signed up to your mailing list (see it works !) – prodigious link building in there too.
Not much else that I can add that already hasn’t been said except that this is why I’ve invested in Genesis themes and Premise. You guys rock!
Hi Sonia,
Great article and very valuable points especially to people who are just starting out. But I would make some edits…
1. Don’t build on rented land. Definitely the only right start, and WordPress is usually the best option. No arguments here 🙂
2. Get a nice house. When I stumble to a new site, the design is the first thing I notice. Maybe 30% of all sites send me away immediately, and about 40% will get me to read a few headlines before leaving. Why should design come before great content? You can capture leads with a single landing page if your visitors aren’t running away from you… Another reason why people will leave without looking at your content is slow loading; pay a little extra to get a host that doesn’t have 3000 other sites on the same server with your site :/ So, pay for a premium theme or spend a few months building your own (which is what I did), and get a decent host, just don’t scare people away with a website that looks to be from the 90s and takes longer to load than making a cup of coffee…
3. Produce great content that captivates your ideal audience. That means: great headline, interesting and entertaining content, content about your core ideas (cornerstone content), worth sharing, and just overall something you’ll want to showcase for months and years to come. I wouldn’t break this into separate steps; content that isn’t worth reading won’t work as cornerstone content.
4. Capture email. Don’t worry about your ranking on Alexa, Technorati, or even Google. Do your absolute best to get visitors to give their email to you. Sure, you can use other sales funnels and you might want to measure success with sales. But really, my advice is to optimize email capturing as soon as possible… And an email list that you don’t use, is a worthless email list; get subscribers to engage you back (and eventually to buy from you).
5. Cast a wider net. Guest posting, interviews, personal networking… Whatever method you use, building your audience should be a priority as soon as you have something to direct that audience to.
Sure, you can break this list into smaller steps. I just think some of them come in chunks 🙂
Let me know what you think 🙂
Cheers,
Peter Sandeen
Great article Sonia. If I where to add an additional point it would be as follows – however it’s really just expanding upon point 3.
Small businesses need to allocate one individual to blog for them. Once they have set ‘guidelines’ for blogging in place they should have absolute faith in this individual and allow them to get on with it, with minimum supervision. As soon as blog entries needs approval the creative process is ruined. Blogging by committee will never work. It goes without saying that the person chosen must be the right person for the job. You would be surprised how many times I have walked into a business and found the office junior is running the blog.
Another point would be not to write the articles with search engines in mind. You end up with a glossary of terms you want to be found for and not something that is even nearly readable. If you blog about your industry enough and blog about recent news worthy items, which people will be searching for anyway, you will be found.
Awesome steps to visitors become readers especially step 5 ‘Don’t give your great content an ugly apartment’.
Thanks
Wow, a seriously good read, and I think Tito Phillips Jnr’s comment there has really helped hitting home the need for a premium Theme. I couldn’t agree more, I have been trying to help a guy using a site on WordPress.com and it is just not worth it, Have your own place is the first important thing I advise people to do.
Cheers
Andi
We’ve found the same — it’s a “basic” point, but if you don’t deal with it up front, it just creates work and problems later that you’ll have to resolve.
Great post on content marketing. I was drawn to:
Point #5 – Don’t give your great content an ugly apartment
Since I purchased a theme from StudioPress, I’ve been receiving more blog followers and writing opportunities. One client told me he liked the ‘clean’ lines and creativeness of my website. Also, my new theme fits my personality better.
and
Point #8 – Create content on a larger stage
I started guest blogging again, but this time I’m reading blog comments and speaking to blog owners before I approach them with a guest post idea. I want to make sure I’m a good fit for a blog owner’s target audience. I also believe it’s a good idea to develop a business relationships with people. Get to know them and find out how you can be of service.
Thanks for this thorough list!
Thanks Amandah!
My first blog was in a *really* ugly apartment, *and* on the typepad domain, so I have traveled these troubled paths myself. 😉
You’re welcome!
Great stuff here.
Identifying and engaging authoritative influencers, understanding the who, what, when, where and why your content is valuable is so important. Understanding these things 3, 6, 12 months ago and in real time will go a long way to maximize the impact of the content you distribute tomorrow.
Very good article. Some good ideas for producing good content. thanks for the advice
Great checklist Sonia. Most importantly you’ve taken that ‘buzz word’ content is king and put it into a blog checklist. Thanks Sonia.
This list is a great way to motivate people and help them understand that their sites is a perfect marketing tool. However I have yet to find a good list or article to helps them see how much time and effort it takes. Most new sites I’ve dealt with tend to lose their push when they don’t get a lot of visitors after a few weeks. Anyone else tend to notice that? Got any tips?
I totally agree with # 1. You don’t want to waste the product of your tears, sweat and blood on a “rented land.” It surely is very painful to lose all your good works simply because it was taken down for no apparent reason at all.
Hi Sonia. Just a tip: it’s not Ikea, it’s IKEA. That company’s name is actually an acronym for the owner’s initials and the location of his first workshop in Sweden. Just as you wouldn’t spell it “Ibm” or “Cia”, you also don’t spell it Ikea. I love your posts. Thanks for your work. See you in the Third Tribe.
Dan
Thanks Dan, fixed.
Hey, Sonia, this is a killer list! Point #2, and pulling existing content into cornerstone landing pages – sheesh! Have I been blind? I’ve been looking at these and reading these and loving these for AGES, yet did it occur to me to organize my content that way? No. But I have seen the light, thank you, and it’s next on my list. I already know a few groupings I can make that will make so much more sense out of my blog. Thank you!
Sonia, many thanks for this great list. Number #5 is something which has become clear to me of late. I updated my site layout from a standard WP theme to a custom premium theme. One of the major things that I have noticed is that there has been a massive reduction in bounce rate from 40% to less than 10% and a huge increase in average time on site. This gives me more of an opportunity to give value to my readers.
I am still in the camp of content is king and if you have poor content no manner of marketing techniques will bring you success, but if you have great content then using solid marketing strategy will grow your audience and result in a greater number of conversions, thanks for sharing your insights.
Absolutely top tips – great post. Haven’t seen such a clear informative explanation prior to reading this. I’ll be favouring 1-10. All of them! look forward to your next post. Thanks again.
With the step to write well – and you know if there is engagement… could there be a time when there is no engagement because the audience isn’t big enough? what percentage of visitors should be engaging in some way? Thank you!
Hi Sonia!
Thanks for this check list. Since reading it, I start to discover that I wasted the last 6 years of trying to build an online business totally. I have been on the right track at first with a content managing system/ community that teaches you ultimately the same as you write about here. Only, your approach tells people in a few words clearly what to do and when to advance to the next step. Very often I am prone to “saddle up the horse from the wrong end”, meaning you would need first traffic, done by on and off page seo in order to rank high enough to get those essential click through-s. Obviously, I have been mislead or confused for a good few years now. So thanks for the clarification 🙂
I think, on top of those tips, the most important thing is to write articles that are worth reading and worth sharing. And this has been the biggest obstacle that i am still facing until now. Your words “You don’t decide. Readers decide.” really slaps me in the face. All along, i think i always focus on writing articles that are worth reading for me, not my readers. But thanks to your awesome tip, now i realize that i’ve done so many mistakes in the past.
Thanks Sonia for your great post.
I have started investing my time in content marketing from the past 2 years and the benefits have been significant to say the least. Although I am still learning new techniques, I have managed to build a huge repository of quality content that I can use and re-use. In fact, I now find myself focusing entirely on content creation and distribution to promote my business and have almost completely put SEO on the backseat.
Hi Sonia, appreciate this useful checklist.
Similar to the advice given on building your email list early, I am of the opinion that it is also important to build your distribution channels early, especially social media. Of course, we do not need to keep promoting our earlier articles incessantly through social media, but I think you can start early by curating articles, and engaging in conversations with your targeted audiences. Similar to an email list, it takes time to build an engaged community on social media as well.
A caveat though: I don’t recommend anyone to prioritise social media on top of any other steps you mentioned in the checklist.
Please correct me if I’m mistaken about it, thank you!
I agree with that — particularly with not prioritizing social media over building your own thing.
It’s very helpful to start building those distribution channels early, but if one hasn’t, then the best time to start is now. 🙂
Hi Sonia,
This blog was a great read! I have been trying to define Content Marketing for a while now, but you have done that and then some with this blog. Your checklist is one that I believe I will be following religiously for the next few months, until I have it memorized. You bring up some fantastic points, especially with how you stated you will need to post your ideas/content on YOUR own site, not on someone else’s. I have created my own website and will share my blogs after I post them there, but I cannot tell you how true your statement is. It does wonders posting from my site then sharing to my other social media afterwards. It also helps drive traffic to my site. Thanks again for the great tips and information that is already helping me succeed.
Thanks for the reminder about these key concepts. I’m sure we already all know them, but it’s good to see them written down in front of us every now and again!
Sonia, thanks for the awesome checklist. This is exactly what I was looking for. You mention in item #1, not to build on rented land. Does that mean you don’t find value in writing guest posts, even if it is done to reach a larger audience? Or is your comment suggesting not to use a platform on which you don’t “own” the content?
Writing guest posts can be very, very valuable — just make sure there’s a good way for your new audience members to come find your site and learn more about you.
You’re always going to do some work on sites you don’t control — the key is not to build your entire business there.
Thanks Sonia,
This was particularly helpful right now. Having just redesigned my site I’m working on creating cornerstone content. But I was wondering if I ought to focus on that or guest posting right now and this article put it all into perspective.
I’ve heard you say in the past the cornerstone content is part of the foundation but it’s so easy to get distracted while you’re still building the foundation of a really resourceful site.
Thank you!
Hi Sonia,
This is a great list, thanks very much for sharing it.
I’m particularly grateful for your comments in point one. I see many influencers promoting the benefits of spending time developing a significant amount of content for platforms like LinkedIn and Medium. While these can be great from an audience building perspective, especially when these posts do well, the negatives outweigh the positives in my opinion.
I can’t help but feel that the real long-term winners would be LinkedIn and Medium in this scenario. Yes, I could receive one high-authority backlink per piece of content posted, but this will likely be a fraction of the many backlinks that these platforms will receive from material that proves popular (or that I could receive had I posted the content on my website), leading to ranking benefits for them, not me.
Also, there’s no telling what changes could occur with their platforms that could ultimately suppress visibility of the content in future, meaning I’d potentially only enjoy very short-term benefits from such a significant time investment.
It’s just too risky a strategy, and I think you’re 100% correct advising readers to post the majority of their content on a platform they own and control.
Thanks again,
Jonathan
I definitely need to get onto writing landing pages for my cornerstone content! Thank you for the timely reminder 🙂
This is a great post Sonia! I think the cornerstone content aspect is really underrated still. I love the process of discovering the perfect cornerstone content and seeing how so much other content flows from there. I’d say a danger for some is a lack of good internal linking to make the site more ‘sticky’.
Once the cornerstone content is ironed out and published and other pieces are in the works it’s such a habit to get into to link back to those and have that internal structure easy to follow.
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