Have you been thinking of content marketing for your business? Perhaps you’ve heard that it can help to generate leads. 

You may already know that content marketing, along with SEO, are responsible for the majority of your website’s organic traffic — traffic brought in from Google searches.

At its simplest, content marketing is about providing answers to your audience’s online questions. 

Your reader goes to Google to find a solution to their problem, types in their query, and they find your blog post promising an answer. 

Once on your website, if their answer was sufficiently answered and they’re satisfied, maybe they’ll fill out the contact form, or at least subscribe to your newsletter.

However, content marketing isn’t just blog writing — it can be creating any form of shareable digital content online. 

This year, don’t just write more blog posts. But also incorporate these 30+ content marketing tips as part of your lead generation strategy to reach your audience, wherever they are.

Create a website that’s optimized to generate leads 

Your website is the foundation for your content marketing strategy — all of the content you produce will be published on your website, or direct traffic to it.

Once there, your website needs to be optimized to convert your new traffic into qualified leads.

Design a high-quality website that’s friendly to people and search engines

You need to create a website that satisfies both human readers and the crawling search engine bots that sift through your content and index it into Google’s search results.

This means following Google’s Webmaster guidelines for creating a Google-friendly website and improving search engine optimization (SEO), which include the following:

• Provide high-quality content on your pages
• Optimize your homepage to have a clear mission statement
• Add separate landing pages on your homepage for quick and easy navigation
• Avoid “crawler only” pages, (pages that readers don’t see) which are intended to fool Googlebot crawlers
• Avoid “cloaking” or adding invisible text onto website to fool web crawlers
• Don’t create multiple copies of the same webpage with different URLs
• Have a fast website loading time between 1-2 seconds
• Add security certifications for HTTPS
• Produce valuable content that gains backlinks back to your website
• Make your website mobile-friendly
• Add images but make sure the file sizes aren’t too big
• Fix broken links
• Add accessibility settings, such as alt-tags for readers with visual impairments
• Avoid AI and automatically generate content
• Avoid keyword stuffing
• Monitor your site to remove any hacked content

Build optimized landing pages for easy navigation and improved SEO

A landing page is another kind of web page that’s designed for lead generation.

Landing pages can be branded as a special offer page, a pop-up ad with a form, or as another web page that’s targeting a specific keyword for organic traffic.

If your company offers specific services or products, then each service or product will need its own landing page, optimized by using the keyword in the URL of that page and writing content based around the keyword.

When people search for a service or product you offer, they’ll discover its landing page in a Google search.

Install Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other SEO and traffic tools

Before you start your content marketing campaign, understand your current metrics as a baseline to measure your success against.

Install Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other SEO tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Surfer SEO to measure:

• Monthly traffic
• Organic ranking keywords
• Average time spent on website
• Bounce rate
• Conversion rates for landing pages
• Referral source
• Top performing pages
• Least performing pages
• Backlinks
• Referring domains
• Paid keywords

Once you know where you currently stand, you can set monthly or quarterly goals, such as increase traffic, improve keyword rankings, improve Google ranking score, etc. 

Set up social media pages and online profiles for more visibility

Virtually every social media profile is free to set up, and can be used to tap into each platform’s audience of hundreds of millions of people.

You can create special content exclusively for your social media accounts, or use your Facebook or Twitter profile to share new content once it’s been published to further its reach. 

Create a Facebook Page business account

Over 200 million companies have a Facebook page. They’re free to set up and manage and can bring in serious amount of organic traffic. 

You can also use Facebook Ads as part of a PPC campaign to create various ads such as:

• Sponsored posts
• Image ads
• Video ads
• Lead ads

Keep in mind Facebook Ads can also be used to create Instagram and WhatsApp ads to reach different audiences.

Create a Professional Twitter account

One quarter of American adults use Twitter, making it useful for targeting a younger demographic, while still being a viable option to reach older adults as well.

Creating a Twitter account is free for businesses, and consider setting up a Professional Twitter account so you have access to Twitter Ads campaigns.

Create a LinkedIn account

If you’re using content marketing to target b2b business deals, then you need to create a LinkedIn profile for your company. It’s also free to set up.

LinkedIn’s Feed has become a popular place for professionals to upload and share valuable content, such as blog posts, videos, surveys, and more. 

Set up Google Business profile

Admittedly, setting up your Google Business Profile is more for SEO than content marketing, however, it’s just good business practice.

When people search for your business on Google, it helps to have a “knowledge graph” appear on the right side of Google’s screen.

You should populate your knowledge graph with:

• Address and location
• Phone number
• Hours
• Email address
• Click to call
• Questions and Answers
• Links to social media pages

Conduct market research for competitive content analysis

Before you can create high-quality valuable content, you need to understand who your audience is, where they spend their time online, and the specific queries or keywords they’re searching for online.

A good starting point is looking at your competitors to see what they’ve been doing and crafting a new gameplan based on their data.

Research your competitors’ keywords

Use content marketing tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Ubersuggest to spy on your competitors’ websites data, such as top ranking keywords, organic monthly traffic, and domain rating.

In particular, see what your competitors top ranking keywords are — it’ll give you an idea of what keywords to target and compete against, as well as finding gaps in their keywords to give you a competitive advantage. This is referred to as “keyword gap analysis.”

Research your competitors’ top ranking pages

Usually, your competitors’ top ranking pages are a combination of their homepage and their top performing blog posts. 

A good first step would be to copy your competitors’ top performing blogs by rewriting them, expanding them, and updating them with more images and videos. 

When I say “copy” I mean use their blog post as inspiration to write a better, longer article that will rank higher, not plagiarize.

Create buyer personas for your target audience

It might help to create a fictional character to know exactly who you’re creating content for. 

For instance, one particular buyer might be at the top of the funnel, in the research phase searching for “how-to” articles, while another buyer is further along the customer journey, looking for “comparisons,” “plans” or “frameworks.”

Create multiple buyer personas, around three to five, so you’re not just targeting one person, but multiple people within your target audience.

To determine your buyer personas, look through your sales demographics to determine who your target customer is. Ask yourself:

• Who are they?
• Where do they get their information?
• What is their income?
• What are there pain points?
• What is there demographic?
• What is their career or business?
• What are their most frequently asked questions (FAQs)?
• What do they push back against?

Once you have this information, it’s easier to know what content to produce, what trigger words to use, and what channels to distribute the content to.

Create various forms of lead generation content for marketing online

When it comes to content marketing, most people think solely of blogs or blog writing. And they’re not wrong, but there are many different content marketing formats available today to reach your audience, wherever they are.

Blogs

Blog posts are the primary driver of traffic to websites, besides SEO-optimized homepages.

Your industry and audience will strongly affect which types of blogs you produce, which is why competitive research analysis is used to find topics, keywords, and article ideas.

However, some easy blog ideas can include:

• How-to articles
• Specific scenarios related to your industry or field
• Listicles, or list-based articles

Suggestions on how to write blog posts:

• Write at least 1,000 word articles, with 2,000+ words being better
• Use appropriate header types (H1 for title, H2 for subheadings)
• Include your targeted keyword in the title, headings, and subheadings
• Add links in your new blog to older blogs you’ve written
• Add trigger words to make the article more interesting
• Write a meta-description using your targeted keyword
• Proofread your article multiple times. (Spelling errors can trigger spam warnings)

Case studies

Case studies are type of content with high-intent — they’re usually read by somebody who’s trying to make a hiring or buying decision, making case studies more substantial than how-to blog posts.

Your case study provides social proof of a real-life application of your company’s skills and expertise in your field, how you were able to achieve you or your client’s goals, and how you can help the reader’s goals too.

YouTube videos

Did you know YouTube is the world’s second most used search engine? Yes, YouTube is a search engine, not just a video-hosting website.

This means a well-produced YouTube video can be easily discovered in a Google search, especially if you provided time-codes or timestamps so specific sections of your video show up as “snippets” in a Google search.

Make sure your YouTube video has:

• Your targeted keyword in the title
• A lengthy, keyword-rich description for better SEO
• Timestamps to designate different chapters in your video, for better searchability
• Links to your website
• CTAs at the beginning and end of the video to “Comment, like, and subscribe”

Lead magnets

Unlike blog posts, which are free to read, a “lead magnet” is usually long-form content marketed as a “content upgrade” or “exclusive content” that your reader has to submit their email address in order to download.

Many of the content marketing pieces below on this list can and should be used as lead magnets.

Sometimes adding a CTA at the bottom of a blog to fill out a form or “contact us” doesn’t collect enough leads. But if you provided a download link to a piece of highly-valuable and free content, your reader will be more willing to give up their contact info.

eBooks

If a blog post is 1,000 words, then an eBook is substantially larger, somewhere around 2,500 to 5,000+ words.

Because eBooks are longer, they need to be stylized almost like a book, so they’re worth downloading, printing out, and reading later for additional research purposes.

eBooks will have custom illustrations, professional styling, different fonts and colors, and will be more branded and attractive than a standard blog post.

Infographics

A custom illustration or infographic is worth several thousand words, and can be more shareable than a typical blog post.

Infographics should be inserted into blog posts, emails, and shared online to increase brand awareness and lead traffic back to your website.

Surveys

Surveys can be posted to your social media, embedded into emails, or added at the bottom of a blog post.

Surveys are a good tool for initiating engagement from your readers, getting them more comfortable with answering questions and filling out forms.

You can use data collected from your surveys to write better content and improve your reader’s user experience.

Webinars and live streams

Hosting a free webinar related to your field can generate qualified leads and give you great intel on what your target audience is thinking about.

Additionally, you can use information collected from your webinar to convert in into a blog post, video, or infographic.

Not only do you collect leads, but you collect important feedback from your target audience, just like surveys.

Guides and pillar piece pages

How-to guides, ultimate guides, and pillar pieces are some of the highest-ranking and performing content marketing pieces out there. 

Writing a long-form pillar piece or guide blog (2000+ words) on your website can introduce many important keywords to get your website noticed by Google. 

Pillar pages are also great for introducing new topics and adding internal links to keep readers on your website longer.

Email newsletter subscriptions

Consider creating a “5 Things Friday” or weekly newsletter sent out to your readers, combing useful, funny, and interesting tips you’ve discovered that week. You can create about timely issues or national headlines to pique your reader’s interest and get a higher open rate.

Cheatsheets, checklists, and templates

Distill your most important information into a highly-shareable cheatsheet, checklist, or template with your company’s branding to spread your reach when people download your helpful tools.

Original research, data, and statistics

Consider running your own research related to your field and then publishing a statistics blog post. This can gain you valuable backlinks when other companies use your stats to cite their claims made on their blog posts.

Quora answers and other Q&A forum sites

Create a Quora profile and begin answering questions related to your field to be considered an online expert. 

The top answers receive thousands of views, which can be leveraged by adding a link to your company’s website to redirect visitors who just read your online answers.

Use calls-to-action (CTAs) to move along the customer’s journey

No matter what content you’re creating, you need to provide an actionable step for your reader to take the next steps:

• Continue reading
• Contact us
• Download our free eBook, guide, template, etc.
• Email us
• Call us
• Subscribe to our newsletter
• Ask us a question
• Comment, like, and subscribe

Content distribution strategy — distributing, publishing and promoting content marketing pieces

Once you’ve created your content, you need to publish it to the appropriate channels, mainly your company’s website, and then sharing it via social media and email marketing campaigns.

Publish blogs to WordPress

Most likely you’re using WordPress to build, run, and maintain your website. As each new blog, case study, landing page, and new content piece has been created, it will need to be uploaded, optimized for SEO, and then finally published.

Make sure to insert appropriate photos and videos to improve your blog’s performance.

Share content across multiple social media profiles

Use your company’s Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles to share new blog posts and content to receive instant engagement and encourage sharing. 

Getting indexed by Google can take days or weeks, but sharing blogs on social media is immediate.

Promote or boost posts with PPC ads

If a particular Facebook post is performing well, such as a survey, blog post, or a general post, and you want it to reach more people, then “promote” or “boost” the post, as opposed to create a separate PPC ad.

You can pay as much or as little as you’d like, and Facebook will give you insights into how many impressions, shares, likes, etc. were generated. This is often easier than creating separate Facebook PPC ads.

Create a drip email marketing campaign

In addition to weekly newsletters, you can also embed new blog posts into drip email marketing campaigns to provide your readers with more valuable content, particularly if they haven’t visited your website in a long time.

Kaleidico — content marketing for lead generation

Kaleidico uses our proven content marketing framework to understand your audience’s mindset and create high-quality content that will capture their attention.

Want your content marketing campaign to reach more people to generate leads for your business? Then we want to work with you.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash