Content Marketing is a gift from your business to a prospective customer.

It’s the best kind of marketing, the one where the customer gets what the information when they want it. 

Every sort of business uses it to spread brand awareness, reach new customers, and drive users to their website.

Although content marketing is ‘the best’, it isn’t super easy, not to mention its also incredibly competitive. For this reason, it’s important for you to realise the ways in which you can maximise your reach and expand your network of customers.

We know you write great content but sadly, this simply isn’t enough. However, the good news is that were here to help you along that journey, starting with optimising your content to give the best chance of reaching your goals.

Here’s 6 of the best content marketing hacks to use in 2023. Whilst you might think that these don’t apply to your business because you don’t have a blog, social media or video – it’s never too late to start!

CONTENTS

1. Short-Form Video
2. Pinterest
3. Recycle
4. Schedule
5. Diversify
6. Trends

1. Short-Form Video

Short-form video content is where it’s at right now on social media. TikTok is blowing up, with YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels following suit.

You may think to yourself, why is every video I see on social media so short? The answer is that people have less patience and shorter attention spans. The social media platforms are just giving the people what they want.

Why are they so popular? Well, they’re one of the most engaging ways to create and share content. Short-from videos deliver messages with which words could never compete. Short-form videos are the easiest way to go viral on social media.  

You can create these types of videos easily – don’t worry about them looking “perfect’. When people can see that it’s not taken with a professional camera, it adds a layer of authenticity which can add more personality to your message.

The more of these videos you create, the better they’ll be.

Here are some ideas for short-form video content on social media:

Product X vs Product Y – Once someone is searching product comparisons, its highly likely that they’re at the end of their buying journey, the perfect time to introduce yourself and make a sale.
Take part in viral challenges – unless its the ice bucket challenge, it’s far too cold right now!
Create how-to videos – these actually help the user find information they’re actively seeking.
Show your products in action – it adds a personal touch and allows you to show best practice of use.
Before & after videos – If it’s applicable to your business, this could be a really powerful marketing tool for your business.

2. Pinterest

If you’re not using Pinterest, you could be missing out on a source of valuable traffic to your website. Maybe its not for every business but if you’re product or service relies on some sort of design aesthetic, this is the place for you.

Pinterest can help drive more leads to your website. With approximately 430 million monthly active users, it’s an effective way to distribute your content.

When creating a Pinterest strategy for content marketing, understand that Pinterest is not like other social media channels. It’s more of a visual search engine, which means you should focus on evergreen content which means it never goes out of style.

When your pin starts to rank at the top of the right searches, it could potentially offer you a consistent source of high quality leads for your business. But it takes a little finesse to get there.

So, how do you use Pinterest to increase website traffic? Register a Pinterest Business account. Then you’ll be able to access analytics as well as Pinterest’s own keyword tool (visible when you create an ad).

Make pins that stand out and get you noticed. The optimal size for a pin is 1000 x 1500px. Search for your topic on Pinterest first to see what other high-ranking pins look like, and make sure yours will stand out amongst these. Use keywords in your Pinterest descriptions. Just like you would with website SEO, Pinterest also relies on keywords. 

 Watch your analytics and see how your pins are performing. It’s a good idea to try different Pinterest strategies (like uploading a video pin vs a static image) and watching which gets you the most engagement
The most important thing about using Pinterest as a content marketing hack is that you add value to the user. Use Pinterest to provide something that your audience is genuinely interested in, and get them to click through to your blog to gain even more value.

If done correctly, Pinterest can be an amazing tool for driving long-term traffic to your blog.

3. Recycle

By repurposing blog content into video content, you’ve just doubled your output without having to come up with anything new. This way, it’s much easier because you wont have to put in the effort into producing videos, because you’ve already got all the content.

Once you’ve got some repurposed content up there, now its time to think about original videos to your website to make them more engaging so it resonates with your audience.

4. Schedule

Social media remains one of the best ways to promote your content.
If you want to get more engagement and reach on social media, you’ll need to post when your audience is most active. This may seem pretty obvious, but it’s something that so many businesses neglect.

Although it depends on your type of business, as a general rule, try to avoid Mondays and Fridays as they are statistically less likely to succeed. By posting during times when more of your audience are online, you’ll be able to generate a lot more engagement. 

Now you’ll end up driving a lot more traffic to your content.

It doesn’t matter how amazing your social media content is, you won’t get much traction from it if you post it while your audience is offline.

For this reason, it’s better to schedule your posts in advance. The Foxdog Marketing team recommends using a social media scheduler to post on multiple platform without ever having to login to each of them.

5. Diversify

Your website might be the main focus of your content marketing strategy, but this doesn’t mean it has to be the only place you publish your content.

By publishing across different platforms, you’ll be able to tap into the audiences in each customer segment. 

Once you’ve published a great piece of content on your own blog, you can publish the same articles, infographics artwork etc on different platforms. When you do this, just be sure to link them back to the original post.

A good approach is to tweak the angle slightly on each platform. Ask yourself how the potential customers on these platforms behave and how they respond to similar content. For example, if reposting to LinkedIn, you may want to choose something slightly more formal. If you’re reposting a video to TikTok on the other hand, its always a good idea to break it down in to shorter clips. In this way, you can target users with different intent, gradually broadening the range of your audience.

6. Trends

The problem with SEO is that it’s ridiculously competitive. Every relevant business wants to be on that first page. As the old adage goes, “the best place to hide a dead body is the second page of google”.

You could write a really strong article on a topic with loads of search volume, but there’s a good chance it will fade into obscurity.

While there are endless SEO guides and strategies to help you overcome this, one of the most effective content marketing hacks is to be the first to write about content before anyone else does. This brings the competition right down and puts you in a better position to reach that number one spot. However, this is easier said than done. You need to be on the lookout for neologisms, new words which won’t have any search history.

We highly recommend that you follow similar industry pages and subscribe to publications where competitors advertise to keep abreast of industry news. It’s always best to try and be part of the conversation when it comes to your business.

Once you see something new, don’t waste any time – create content centred on it straight away. If news breaks about something you’ve already written a piece of content on, just add in a new section which relates to the event.

If you pick up on a trend while it’s still early, it can help you start a following very quickly by taking advantage of the momentum.

Make sure you stay active on social media and news sites in order to keep up to date with your niche. Jumping on trends early and ride that wave!

Conclusion

Remember, just because you’ve created great content, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will get the recognition it deserves. It’s important to work out strategies to get that content properly distributed and seen by more people – whether this is through SEO, landing pages or social media.

None of the content marketing methods described throughout require big marketing budgets or special skills. By making a few simple changes to the way you distribute your content, it can make all the difference when generating traffic for your business. 

Wondering what to do next – talk to Foxdog Marketing.