Content marketing works. I mean, the proof
is there. I’ve been sharing these statistics for 8 years now. HubSpot has done this famous
study on blogging. They looked at over 13,500 bloggers and they found out that the blogs
marketers published, the more inbound traffic they got to their website. And they found
that an accumulation of more content brings more leads. For example, those who published
more than 400 blogs got twice as much traffic as those that have less than 400 blogs. And
if you’ve read my blogs, you know this one too. The current ROA (Return on Advertising)
is as low as 0.6. That went way down from 11.8 times ROA back in 2016. Compare it to
the ROA on organic content, which is anywhere from 14 to 16 percent conversion from your
onsite traffic. But here’s the thing. The average time spent to see content marketing
results are anywhere from 12 to 18 months. That’s what Joe Pulizzi said.
Now, after 8 years of building content, we see results like Top 3 of Google results in
as little as 30 days, but that’s not realistic for most new content marketers. Here’s the
thing about content marketing that you have to know; it works but only if you set it up
to work. Hey guys, I’m Julia McCoy, I’m a growth-focused
content marketer. I identify as a content hacker, which is the name of my new brand
launching this June. I’m also the CEO of Express Writers and Author and Blogger. Thank you so much for joining me on today’s
video. So, those statistics on content marketing that I shared at the beginning of this video,
that more content equals more leads; consistency is key and the proof is there that content
does work way better than traditional advertising. Well, I’ve been sharing those for years now
and what I see are a lot of marketers still stuck in a rut.
Today’s video is for those that are in that rut. I’m going to call you out because I care
about you. I think that many of you are just a few feet away from what could be content
marketing greatness. But here’s the thing, if you’re not getting the fundamentals right,
which we’ll go over in a minute, and you’re not being consistent about producing great
content, all the while complaining about a lack of leads, traffic, visitors and ultimately
sales. Well, I can tell you if you just sat down and fixed some of these glaring problems,
those leads, those visitors, those sales would come. \
The real problem in concert marketing is that most content marketers think of content as
a quick fix, instead of building a house, which to really be successful that’s what
it’s like. And why are thinking of it like that? They’re over here complaining about
all the things they don’t have – those traffic leads and sales – which they could have if
these fundamentals and principles were right. We’ve got to stop being absent on our company
blog. We’ve got to fix our site fundamentals that are wrong. We need to have a professional
take a look at all that icky content we’ve just let hang on our websites. It\’92s time
for us to stop complaining about the things we wish we had and start doing something about
it. Content marketing action takers are the content marketing winners. \
I’m a College dropout and I figured out content marketing after years of trial and error.
My story is proof that anyone can see content success. I’ve been blogging, I haven\’92t
missed a week for 8 years now. We’re at 90,000 visitors a month on our site and 14 to 16
percent of those leads are converting. We’re not the only success story of content; Moz,
Unbounce, CoSchedule, these are a few big players in the marketing and software industries
that have built their presence through great content.
OK. So, if you’re here watching this and you’re just not seeing success from your content,
let’s talk about how to fix that. I’m going to give you 3 ways that you can start implementing
today and you will see results start to happen right away. And long-term, you\’92re going
to be building that foundation for a great house where leads can find you, interact with
you and then eventually, buy your stuff. \ Number one: if your site isn’t fast, well
built, stable, user friendly, or built at all, this is your first step. \
OK guys, so Google has said that conversions drop by 12 percent per second of load time.
The more time it takes to load your site, the less your human lead, buyer, audience
member, is going to stick around. And a recent study done in 2017 has showed that one full
second – ready for this – can decrease conversion rates by 70 percent. So, if you have a website
and you’re not in that bracket of don’t even have a website yet, we’ll talk about you guys
soon. You can use this tool – I’m going to put it on the screen www.tools.pingdom.com
this is a free site speed checker. So, use this. See how fast your site is and if it’s
not fast, then you need a site developer to help you fix your site speed. \
OK. So, for those of you need who need your website fixed, rebuilt, and then for those
people who don’t even have a website yet, go get a WordPress developer. And you can
use a site like Upwork to quickly find top rated freelance developers that work per hour,
so it’s going to be easy to budget. You can set a budget, have them work by the hour,
pay them by the hour and for work done. WordPress developers can clean your site, fix your site,
rebuild it if it’s broken. If it’s not on WordPress, put it on WordPress, which by the
way, is one of the most SEO-friendly platforms out there. And make your site clean, beautiful,
user-friendly, fast. This should be your goal with your website and nothing less. And this
will lead to fit everything you do in content because without a good site, you can’t serve
good content. And you don’t even need to spend more than $30 to $50 an hour to find a really
good WordPress developer to help you out. And if you’re needing a brand-new site done,
that could cost you anywhere starting at $500 – $1000, depending on how many pages you want
to start out with. So, go get a great website, rebuild one if yours is crap, build one now
if you don’t have one. You’ll thank me later. \
Number two: research and put together an SEO report.\
I do this weekly. I research keywords for almost every new blog we create. Think of
finding the right keywords like this: you have a great house built, but you don’t have
your driveway yet and you don’t have your house number, how are people going to find
you? As do your keywords; optimizing your site with the right keywords to pull in the
people that are looking for you and your services on the web is like adding that number to your
house on the mailbox or paving that driveway, so people can drive up to your house and access
it. Without this house number, without this driveway, people are not going to find your
house. The same is true of not doing keyword research. Now, if you’re already known, you\’92re
an influencer, you’re a celebrity, you don’t have to do keyword research. But if you’re
none of the above, you should be doing it. \
After 8 years of doing consistent SEO research, I still find all these untapped opportunities
of low hanging fruit, where there is very little competition for a keyword and I can
create some great content around it, and rank in in the top 3 or 5 of Google. No matter
your niche, your industry, there are keyword opportunities out there. And get a Pro to
help you research these keywords if you don’t know what you’re doing. These tools are expensive.
For example, SEMrush is $100 a month but it’s one of the best tools you could use. Keyword
Finder is another great tool; it’s a little bit less cost, it starts around $20 or $30
a month. But once you have these tools, you need to know what you’re looking for, that’s
an art in and of itself. A link to a resource in this video description, where I talk about
how to find good keywords. \ And remember, a heavy trend in SEO is the
quality of the content on your site. So, once you have those keywords, the work isn’t done.
You need to create high quality content around those keywords. Otherwise, Google is just
not going to rank your site. If your content is riddled with typos, if the facts are missing,
if links to back up statistics aren\’92t there, this list goes on, that continent isn’t quality
and Google isn’t going to rank it. So, just like you wouldn’t try to build your house
yourself or remodel your kitchen yourself, unless you were a professional contractor,
don’t write your content yourself. If you don’t know how to build high quality onsite
content, get a writer and the long-term dividends will truly pay off. I promise you. \
OK, number 3, the last point: plan and set a consistent amount of content to happen on
your site on the regular. \ The best and easiest way to do this is through
a blog on your website. So, I’ve been able to uphold this goal of one high quality blog
per week, going strong for 8 years now. Some weeks, we publish two, three, four but our
goal is one per week at the minimum. So, we’ve been doing that for 8 years. I know marketers
that have been doing that for 20 years and that’s how they’ve built a huge presence and
a huge following. So, consistency in great content is really most of the secret sauce
to great content marketing once you have your fundamentals right. Also, images are really
important. You don’t just want to post content; you want to add great visuals. Take a look
at The Write Blog. So, everything we publish here has a uniquely designed header set. This
is something that I ask my designer to create for us, she creates it in Adobe Illustrator.
It’s super high quality and all the colors and styles match our brand – we have a clear
brand style. Using images, creating beautiful custom images for each blogpost, is a great
way to help your blog get more eyeballs. And don\’92t forget your social media, you need
to be sharing the content out that you create, so your friends, your followers, people that
might eventually become clients can find it and read it and interact with it. \
Email Marketing is going to be important of blogging too. You want to build a list, send
your new blogs to your list every week. \ OK, so that’s it, 3 ways to start getting
your fundamentals right so you can see content marketing success a lot sooner. And like I
said, this is a lot like building a house. This is not that cheap or fast or overnight
trick to get more sales and leads. It’s a consistent over time effort to bring long-term
results. And if you think about it, isn’t everything good in life kind of like that?
For example, marriage, you know; I have to work it out every day. I have to choose to
love my partner every day. Parenting is a lot like this too; you have to love your kid,
nurture your kid every day. So, why would we think of Marketing as anything different?
Why would we think that a quick trick is going to get long-term huge results? It’s just not
going to happen. \ I wanted to say this for the end because I
don’t want you to feel like you’re being pitched. Value is my main focus but if you need your
keywords researched, great content written, even a free content strategy consultation,
we do all that at Express Writers. We’re here to help businesses like yours grow through
content. You can get in touch with us today. You can actually see our services and our
pricing at www.expresswriters.com/content-shop Thanks so much for watching today’s video.
Want more content marketing real talk? Hit that subscribe button and then don’t forget
to hit the bell so you get notified every time I publish a new video.
And I’d love to hear what you thought of today’s video in the comments. So, let me know and
I’ll see you guys around.
