A few weeks ago, I spoke right here in Austin, Texas live at a social media bootcamp hosted
by Jessica Campos. My session was all about how to build online authority with five content
types. In today's YouTube video, I want to recap
with you how to build your online authority and give you a sneak peek at how this event
went. Let's get into it. Okay. So the five types of content I spoke
about live at Jessica's bootcamp were these. First, blogging. Secondly, your website content
- your homepage, your about page. Thirdly, your email content. Fourth, social media.
And finally, list building content - your ebooks, your lead magnets, your case studies.
So how do these content types build online authority and grow your business? How can
you use them to make revenue and new customers come in your door online? Well, that's what
I talked about live at the event. Jessica Campos was the event host. She put
together this entire bootcamp and did an amazing job. She had 50 seats to fill and she brought
more than 50 people to this event, and it happened at the Capital Factory which is honestly
a dream venue I've always wanted to speak at. It is a hot spot in downtown Austin for
tech nerds, entrepreneurs, startups, even marketing executives work in that area. So
it was an honor to accept Jessica's invitation and go speak at her bootcamp.
The event went really well. Jessica spoke first about holistic social media marketing,
we had a lunch break, and then I was up for the afternoon session. So Jessica left the
topic entirely up to me, and speaking on these five content types is something I've actually
wanted to do for a while. Because when it comes down to it, content marketing, online
authority, being at the top in your industry, being relevant to your customers, all that
comes down to the type of content you create and how you create it when you're mapping
growth back to the content you produce, and I bet not a single marketer out there among
you wants to see your content fall flat, right? So it's important to get strategic with our
content. So the first type of content I talked about
was blogging and as you all know by now, blogging is one of my primary content marketing methods.
I have a case study coming out in a couple weeks about how we've been able to achieve
90,000 monthly visitors completely through our blog. And those 90,000 visitors come in
through more than 21,000 organic SEO rankings we've been able to achieve through our blog.
So blogging is way more than just a personal diary online. Brands and marketers should
be using this avenue to put relevant content consistently in front of the right audience.
So how do you blog in a way that brings actual results? Well at the event I talked about
goal mapping, and this is something I've talked about in another blog as well which I'll link
to in the description, so go check that out. Basically, you should have two goals in your
blogging strategy. So number one, SEO, rankings, traffic, all this inbound traffic happens
whenever you really position your blog well in Google. So, do your keyword research, create
comprehensive content. Studies show that the top shared, top ranked Google is anywhere
from 1,900 words and more per post. The other goal you should have should be something
to balance out that long-form stuff. So the other goal should be more brand awareness,
sharing events that have happened in your company or that you went to or hosted, and
then news - stories about launches you're doing, product updates. You can even do customer
or team stories. So once you have these goals, how do you write
a blog that really engages a reader? So it all comes down to creating scannable content
that's easy to read, good formatting, a great headline and then amazing content. So John
Morrow is one of the top read, top shared, highest-earning bloggers probably in the world.
Check out one of his blogs called, "How to Become a Freelance Writer and Get Paid $200-$1000
per Post." So look at how this blog starts out. It starts off with a story.
"Imagine you re sitting in a lounge chair on the beach, staring out over the glittering
sea, the ocean breeze ruffling your hair, listening to the slow, steady rhythm of the
waves. It s peaceful. Perfect for thinking.
And so you do, scribbling down your thoughts with one hand and drinking a martini with
the other. You re a freelance writer. You get paid to
write..." Isn't amazing? And that's something relatable
to the target market, freelance writers, which dream of that scenario whenever they're starting
out in that path. So that's a great way to open a blog. Tell
a story that's relatable to your end audience and paint a dream scenario. Then John Morrow
goes into industry statistics... this is a $412 billion opportunity for writers, and
then he says that's not a typo and he gives you exactly where he got that from.
The rest of the blog is 3,000 words of value, structured with subheaders, main points, sub
points, and then of course a ton of facts. So this, honestly, is how to structure a great
blog. So when it comes to blogging, the quality
of the copy itself - the stories you tell, the facts you bring up, the research, is all
very important to getting that blog way up there in Google and way up there with your
readers. And if you need guidance with this kind of thing, I do have an SEO writing course
where I teach step by step how to write and structure a great blog.
So I also talked about headlines in my session. Headlines really matter. You want to create
something that's great, that's going to get clicks, that's going to get people interested,
but you want to completely avoid clickbait. So, how do you do this? The answer is in accuracy
of the topic to the content in the blog. So don't ever create a headline that's just not
accurate because then your bounce rate will skyrocket. You don't want people clicking
on that blog, not reading what they wanted to read and just leaving your site.
Here's a few really good headline starters that have been proven to get more clicks,
more reads and more shares. BuzzSumo did a study of over 50,000 articles and these starters
worked really well: The future of... How to use... Need to... How to create... and so
on. It's also really important to have stages
for your blog creation. So ideation - your ideas, that should be one whole stage. I devote
a day just for coming up with new ideas and I call it brainstorming day. So make sure
that you devote time just for having those great ideas. And sometimes that can happen
not when you're at the office or at your desk. It could happen when you're on a walk, when
you're out getting coffee with a friend, driving down one of your favorite roads, on a hike,
etc. Okay. So the second type of content are your
web pages. This is so important to see more success happen from your overall content presence,
so make sure you get your web pages right. Create a web page around one topic. If you
have multiple topics, create multiple pages. Word count should be anywhere from 400 to
1200. Don't go too long, but don't be thin and too short too. Your formatting needs to
be really good, so H2s, H3s... kind of like you would do with a blog. Use that style for
a good web page. Here's a really good example from Dropbox.
You can see a clear header topic here. The URL also reflects the topic, https://www.dropbox.com/security.
This page is almost 800 words but it's not boring and it's not long-winded. It's valuable,
it's useful, it's comprehensive. Okay. Our third type of content was email.
Consistent email marketing is one of the number one ways in the world to grow a community
around your content. The more regular and consistent you are with great content sent
to your list, the more people will want to come back for you, read, digest your stuff
and even buy your services. So send email campaigns for new content that
you publish. If you have a new blog coming out, you need to send that to your list, give
them that piece of content. Events: whether you're hosting these, they're
in person, they're live, send out an email about that event, product or service launches
or updates and less often your sales emails, your pitches.
So if you get the pitching thing wrong and you send a sales offer too frequently to your
list, you're going to get a ton of unsubscribers and pissed off people. So avoid going there.
And the rule of thumb that I shared in Jessica's session was 3 to 1. So for every sales pitch,
you need to send a minimum of 3 valuable pieces of content first.
Here's a few examples of really good email headlines. Ramit @ GrowthLab says, "Heads
up - I'm hosting a live event tomorrow night." Very clear, specific and it's warm and inviting.
For new content, you can reframe your blog topic into a headline. For example, Jeff Bullas
used a question, "Is this the reason your sales have slumped?" The answer, of course
you have to open this email and click on and read his blog.
For sales emails, try to be really specific to the offer and then talk about a deadline.
So be time sensitive in the headline. Okay. So moving on to social media type of
content number four. I refer back to my host, Jessica Campos, for a lot of her social media
holistic practices that she shared in session one. She was phenomenal. She shared some great
stuff. So I focused on the copy. In your social media copy, be brief. I have seen long-form
content work well, sometimes on Instagram, so you can play around with Instagram captions
and Linkedin content, but on Twitter and in general with videos, images, keep your copy
short and to the point. Emojis work well in copy. And don't forget, video is almost just
as important as the copy in social media content, so think about creating videos.
I also shared the importance of authenticity on social media. I think more and more in
today's world, people are looking for that authentic brand, that authentic marketer sharing
their real thoughts about the industry that they're in. That's going to pull in your audience
towards you if you can speak their pain points back to them with a solution or a really good
thought that resonates in their heart. So Chris Kubby is a great example of what
I mean by this. He's always sharing original stuff that just resonates with his audience
in a big way, myself as well, I'm a marketer. He is phenomenal. So go check him out on Instagram
and Twitter as an example of authenticity in your social media content.
And I shared three keys to great social media copy - basically time, space and knowledge.
You need time to craft really good content for social media. You also need space. You
can't just pump all this stuff out. You know, in a day or two, you have to give your mind
space or even delegate to a writer that can help you, and you need to have that knowledge
of your target market, what are their pain points, so you can speak to them in a way
that resonates. Finally, our last type of content was list
builders - the underestimated content format that really builds momentum. So there are
really three types when it comes to the list builder - you have your case studies and whitepapers,
you have your free ebooks also called lead magnets, and lastly you have your shorter
more digestible resources, templates, cheat sheets, content upgrades.
So I shared this example of a really good case study that worked, brought in a lot of
our ideal clients. It was a case study on a specific client where we actually uncovered
keywords that SEO software didn't have. We wrote content for those keywords, they ranked
in the top of Google and they did really well. So this client was super happy, and it was
okay, giving us the data we needed to frame a really good case study. He loved our work.
So this is a great example of a case study that works - a real-life client story where
someone is really happy with the work you did.
Ebooks can also work tremendously well to grow your authority online, build your list.
Remember with ebooks, the topic needs to be hyper relevant to your audience to get them
interested in downloading and giving you their email address which is honestly harder to
earn than ever in a world where content is in abundance. Don't publish anything crappy.
If content is going to work, it needs to have quality. Don't insult your readers.
So the last type of list builder material is content upgrades, cheat sheets, templates.
One of my favorite ways to grow or list these days is through a content upgrade. And this
is actually a newer term that Brian Dean of Backlinko coined just a few years ago. And
what it is is you're basically taking a blog post that did really well or that you think
is going to do really well, and it must be comprehensive in order to be able to do this,
so take that topic and then create an ebook out of the topic that gives your reader more
information. So the goal is, once they read your blog and they love what they read, they
resonate with that, they learn a few things, they're going to want to download your ebook
which has more to say on the topic. It's a content upgrade.
So here's an example of how we did this for a blog post called, "How to Write SEO Content
That Ranks in Google: The Essential Guide to Great SEO Content Writing." So our content
upgrade was a free ebook showing step by step how to frame SEO content and optimize it with
your keywords. So you're going to give this away through email. You do have a lot of things
to create with something like this - a blog post, a PDF that you have to write and design,
a page on your website so people can download the PDF, and then an email campaign to hook
up that page and PDF, and we use ConvertKit. By setting up just three to four of these,
so that's three to four blogs with content upgrades that are relevant to the topic inside
of them, we're growing organically by 10 to 12 subscribers every day.
So with that point, I ended in my session at Jessica's social media bootcamp and it
definitely was a hit. I heard from people afterwards how much it helped them, especially
the statistics that I shared at the beginning on the ROA of advertising which is crazy low.
It went from 11.8 down to 0.6, and I got that from Amanda Bond who is awesome at Facebook
advertising, and created a report last December on the state of Facebook ads.
My Friday speaking experience was amazing. I am so grateful to Jessica for giving me
this opportunity to speak to an audience that she worked really hard to build. She has been
speaking for ever, hosting events like these all the time, so it was great to be at her
side and watch an expert work her magic. I hope you enjoyed today's recap and you got
a couple of things out of this for how to build your authority online.
As always, if you have any questions let me know in the comment, and I hope you'll subscribe,
and I can see you back here for my next YouTube videos.