33 Creative Ways You Can Profit From Content Marketing
Content marketing doesn’t mean having a blog that makes money, and it isn’t about producing content for sites like ezinearticles and Squidoo. Or having an email auto-responder. The whole idea behind content marketing is that you can use your creativity and know-how to make something cool, then take that cool thing and use it to market a product. It’s often associated with Seth Godin’s notion of permission marketing, but content marketing can be a part of any promotion or selling you might do.
To jog your creativity, I’ve come up with 49 content marketing tactics you can start using right away. Some of these are ideas about making any form of content more interesting, some are attention-getting strategies, some will be useful for lead generation, some for prospect conversion.
1. You’d be surprised at some of the well-known internet marketing gurus who are experimenting with direct mail, especially as pay-per-click gets more and more expensive. The same techniques that make your online content marketing work will do beautifully offline.
2. Write a special report or white paper that addresses a thorny problem in an interesting way.
3. Create a free course delivered by email auto-responder.
4. Write an educational series of blog posts designed to attract traffic for a competitive keyword phrase. (Like this one on the fundamentals of content writing, for example.)
5. Offer a free teleclass to build interest in your business. You can do all the talking yourself, or work with a partner in an interview format. Remember to record the class—the recording will also be valuable content that you can use in future marketing.
6. Offer a paid teleclass that takes your content further and provides additional value. Again, the call can be recorded and sold as a product for as long as the content remains relevant.
7. Build a membership web site that is a profitable business in and of itself.
8. Put together one or more Squidoo lenses to attract and focus Google traffic.
9. Create a wiki on a free site like WetPaint to allow your audience to collaborate and contribute to your vision.
10. Build a Facebook page (separate from your personal profile) that gives you another platform for interaction with your customers.
11. Compile your best 100 blog posts into a physical book. It worked for Godin, and it can work for you.
12. When you contribute to an online forum in your topic, remember that your answers are content. Make sure this content reflects well on you.
13. Take your most popular blog post, add some really good images and translate it into PowerPoint or Keynote, then record it with Camtasia for a YouTube video.
14. Most of us know that Twitter is an exceptional tool for building relationships with prospects and customers. To use Twitter most effectively, make your tweets entertaining, funny, and/or personal. The right balance on Twitter is generally 95% relationship-building, 5% selling.
15. Use any content vehicle to talk about how you’ve overcome a difficult problem related to your topic. Don’t try to be an infallible guru. Instead, be a smart, real person who has solved problems that your readers will find relevant.
16. Write a yellow pages ad that looks like a blog post. Make it interesting, informative, funny, and compelling. For bonus points, in addition to the usual contact information, provide information in your yellow pages ad about how to sign up for your email autoresponder or get your free white paper.
17. Take your 10-15 best podcasts, get them transcribed and edited, and sell them as an ebook.
18. Bring 5 or 6 of the strongest people in your topic together and create a virtual conference, with each presenter giving an audio or video workshop. This is a relatively simple way to create a very marketable product. Again, the recordings can be sold as long as the content remains relevant.
19. Hold a Tweetathon for your favorite charity. Consider creating a piece of valuable content (a special report, etc.) as a reward for donations over some specified amount.
20. Create a treasure hunt with some blogging friends. Each person hides a clue somewhere in the content on their blog, and readers are invited to find all the clues and put them together for a prize. (The prize, of course, is another piece of valuable content.)
24. Use your own content to sing the praises of others in your topic. Partnerships, both formal and informal, can exponentially multiply your success in the content world.
25. Create a buyer’s guide. Use it to frame purchasing questions on your terms. Let buyers know what to look for and what to watch out for. Tell them what questions they should be asking. Don’t make this too self-serving. If you make it real (and let other vendors win some of the business, especially for customers who aren’t truly suited to you), it will get used.
26. If you’ve got a piece of content that is too weird, rude, vanilla, sentimental. rated-R, rated-G, etc. for your own site, run it as a guest post on someone else’s. Be true to yourself, but show your different facets too.
27. You don’t have to call it a blog just because you created it in WordPress. Maybe it’s an Online Coffee Shop, a Web-Based Self-Coaching Site, a Virtual Concierge, a Tutorial, an E-School, a Directory or a Dictionary. Use a label that resonates with your readers.
28. Review everything. Books, blogs, newsletters, tools, physical products, information products.
29. Take a topic that’s subject to information overload (maybe it’s “the coolest apps for your iPhone”) and make it manageable. Create a “10 Best” post that’s simple, user-friendly and gets the reader out of information fog.
30. Compare your product or service to the weirdest celebrity story that people are currently talking about. Look hard enough and you’ll find 7 things your business has in common with Paris Hilton’s addiction to World of Warcraft.
31. Record a session with a client (with their permission, of course) and offer it as a “test drive” to people who are thinking about working with you.
32. Make an absurd comparison. The farther you have to reach, the better it will work. “101 Ways LOLCats Can Improve Your Arc Welding” is just about guaranteed to capture some attention. Among arc welders, anyway.
33. Make a monthly recording, either audio or using a Flip camera for video. Keep it casual, like a standing date with a friend to grab coffee together. Each month, discuss a single pressing issue facing your audience, and give three or four techniques that will let your audience thrive in whatever the current environment might be.
This isn’t meant to be the last word on the subject—it’s really just the beginning. If you don’t see your favorite technique on this list, let me know about it in the comments!
