Content marketing is a strategic way to build your brand and promote your products. Publishing content that is useful to potential customers is more work than running ads. But it can pay off in the long run. Here are ten secrets to making your content marketing campaign more successful.

1. Create a Great Headline

If you are like me, you tend to do things backwards. That is, you create a great piece of content first. Then you quickly slap on the first headline you think of and call it finished.

This is exactly backwards! We all know that people judge a book by its cover. If the cover isn't good the book isn't going to sell well, regardless of the quality of the words inside.

Likewise, if a piece of content doesn't have a strong headline people won't read it. Nor will they share it. Which means you will get no benefit from all that hard work.

I still feel that the body of a piece is the most important. But now I know that I have to prioritize the headline if I want people to see the body. You should do the same.

2. Little Details Matter

Just because we are Internet marketers doesn't mean we don't have things to learn from the greats of print advertising. One place where this is true is in design. For example, Kissmetrics states that David Ogilvy found the following:

Headlines placed below an image are read 10% more than headlines above the same image

Image captions are read 300% more than the body of the text

Imagine the impact that using these two facts can have on impact of your content. And these are just two of many details that Ogilvy and others discovered many years ago.

People are 300% more likely to read this than the paragraphs that follow!Consider doing some research into this area to boost your content marketing efforts. While different media and audiences can generate different results, there is a lot of useful information to be mined here.

3. Tell Stories

Humans are story tellers by nature. Anthropologists believe that story-telling helped our ancestors survive. Stories about the plant that made someone sick, or the scary beast in the cave on the hill could keep people alive. And apparently we have retained that affinity for stories.

According to Jennifer Aaker at Stanford Graduate School of Business, a story is up to 22 times more memorable than simple facts. That says something important about how we do content marketing. If we want people to remember our messages, we need to include elements of story-telling in them.

Techniques for turning marketing into story telling could be an entire article in themselves. Suffice it to say that there are a limited number of themes that recur in every story. From ancient myths to the latest science fiction, there are only a few themes. Learning about them from a book like, "The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories," could pay big dividends for your content marketing.

4. Use Quotes from Authority Figures or Experts

I'm sure you are a great content creator, and an expert in your field. But your content will have a lot more impact if you can quote an expert or authority figure to back you up.

People always place more emphasis on content that comes from a known authority or expert. It is why people who want to be consultants or public speakers first write books on their subject. The fact that you have published a book on a subject makes you an expert. And people are willing to pay big money to listen to experts.

This is true even when the person is an expert in a completely different field. It is why celebrity endorsements are so valuable. Why should we care what some actor or athlete thinks about politics? It doesn't make sense, but we care anyway.

You can take advantage of the same tendencies. Where practical, include quotes from experts or authority figures in your content marketing.

5. Make Content Relevant to Your Market

If you don't publish content that is relevant to your target market, you won't connect with your audience. For example, if your market is dog products, publishing a lot of content about taxes is quickly going to drive away your audience. This is the kind of mistake a new content marketer might make. Even so, it is something to watch out for.

Content that's relevant to your market is necessary, but it isn't sufficient to ensure a connection.

6. Make Content Relevant to Your Specific Audience

If your content isn't relevant to your audience's specific needs, it is still a misfire. Let's say your target market is international travel. And you are marketing an adventure tour to Patagonia. Content about cheap flights to Paris, while in the right market, is not going to be of interest to your audience. It's the right general market and the wrong specific audience.

Make sure that the content you publish is relevant to your specific audience.

7. Own Your Content

There are so many social media channels available. And they make it so easy to publish on them. It's tempting to publish your content in the channels and not bother hosting it yourself. This could be a big mistake.

The content you publish on Facebook and other social media doesn't belong to you. It belongs to them. If you don't believe me, read the Terms of Service fine print sometime.

Publishing your content on these services means you lose control of it. They can use it as they wish, or take it down at their discretion. That isn't to say they are going to take your stuff down tomorrow. But do you want to have the fate of your company dependent on some social media site's good will? What if they go out of business?

And here's another point. When you publish your content on their site, you are sending them traffic that could be coming to your site. The answer is to publish your content on your site, then share it to the social media sites. This way, you keep control over your content.

By sharing to the social media sites, you also bring people to your site for the full content. This boosts your site with the search engines. It also increases the chances that visitors will explore your site. This can only help your marketing efforts.

8. Consider Writing Longer Pieces

I remember when articles of 200 to 300 words could attract the attention of search engines. But that was a few years ago. These days, longer articles are the ones that show up best in the search engines. Longer articles are also the ones that people pay the most attention to.

This is true in spite of the general perception that people simply skim content on the Internet. It makes sense if you think about it. If you are just trying to see who won the ballgame, or which celebrities broke up, skimming is fine. But if you are trying to learn about a subject, or planning to spend money, you pay more attention.

The question then becomes, how long should your content be? How many words do you need to write?

To a large extent, the answer is, "it depends." A piece needs to be long enough to achieve its goal, but not longer. An announcement about an upcoming sale will be shorter than a "how-to" piece on buying a car. At the same time, neither should contain fluff to boost their word count.

But let's talk about averages. Studies show the most effective length for articles is between 1,500 and 2,500 words. Articles of this size tend to get better search engine results and be more effective.

9. Simple Writing is Powerful Writing

It is easy to get carried away in our writing. Flowery prose, industry jargon, and general wordiness interfere with your message. Clear, simple writing is powerful. It gets through to readers. That gets you results.

Keeping your writing simple is hard. You can easily slip into bad habits. One way to deal with this is to use a tool that analyzes your writing. For example, I am using the Hemingway Editor to write this piece. It analyzes your writing and points out problems like:

Readability expressed as a grade level

Hard to read sentences

Very hard to read sentences

Phrases with simpler alternatives

Adverbs which should be removed

Use of the passive voice

Using a tool like this for the first time can be painful. Seeing all the words and sentences that it flags hurts. But cleaning up the problems really does result in better writing. That pays off in the end.

10. Emphasize Customer Reviews

As we discussed in #4, quotes from experts or authority figures help persuade readers. And who is more of an expert on your product or service than an existing customer? Who can speak about your stuff with more authority than someone who already uses it? Using real customer reviews in your marketing can boost your results.

The problem with using customer reviews is that it can be a lot of work. The customers do all the actual writing of course. But to get the most benefit out of these reviews, you need to:

Encourage people to write them

Host them somewhere

Review them to protect against spam and hostile competitors

Promote them in social media

While this is a lot of work, most of it is work you can automate. I recommend you consider using Yotpo to do this automation.

Yotpo: The Customer Review Power Tool

Yotpo is a user generated content (customer reviews) solution. It motivates users to write about your products. Then it maximizes the benefits you get from this content.

Yotpo uses a variety of techniques to encourage users to write about your product or service. It automatically follows up with customers by email, encouraging them to write. It can offer discount coupons, both for writing reviews and sharing them. And it supports Q&A in reviews so you can boost engagement.

To maximize the benefits you get from reviews, Yotpo can:

Display reviews on your site next to the reviewed product

Display reviews of Related Products

Share reviews to your social media channels

Boost your SEO by posting reviews on your site, giving it the fresh content search engines love

Yotpo offers a lot of potential for boosting this key part of your content marketing. To find out more about Yotpo, request a demo today.