I love the feeling I get when I happen upon a Facebook Page, a Pinterest Board a Blog or a Site that has great content on a subject I am interested in.
Somebody took the trouble to find or create that content and share it. They thought about it, organized it, wrote about it and found images or videos to support it.
What is it that separates truly great content from good content?
What lessons can be learned that can help us in our own content marketing efforts?
My Food Blog Inspiration
I am a foodie. I like to cook. In my spare time I enjoy visiting food blogs to feast my eyes on a bit of food porn or get a new recipe.
I recently discovered an excellent food blog by Sasha Martin called Global Table Adventure, in which she shares her passion for cooking food from all over the world. It has all the ingredients for truly great content.
If you want to serve up a great dish of content to your audience take a lesson from Global Table Adventure.
Here is your list of ingredients:
1. Engaging Headline – Global Table Adventure gets you hooked right away.
2. Attractive Visuals – Each recipe (piece of content) has a feature photo.
Blog posts should definitely use a feature image but it is just as important to use images in social media posts.
Tweets with images get 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets according to a Buffer study.
Facebook posts with photos on brand pages got 87% of total interactions according to a study by Socialbakers.com.
3. Teach Valuable Lessons – Share mistakes you made or tips.
In her post about Swedish Princess Cake Sasha shared the top 5 mistakes she made while baking the cake.
This makes it easier for people trying to replicate her recipe.
4. Use Curated Content created by others
Sasha shared a video made by a Swedish baker which demonstrates how to assemble the complex Swedish Princess Cake
[vsw id=”jcySM0cMYv8″ source=”youtube” width=”325″ height=”244″ autoplay=”no”]
Third party content is essential to your content marketing strategy. It helps round out your in-house content and offers the opportunity to feature content created by others.
Maybe it is a third party video or blog post about your product or service. Or it could be a piece of content on a subject that is interesting to your audience.
People value well curated content. Don’t miss the opportunities it offers to build a loyal following.
5. Tell Stories
Sasha tells us about her childhood in a recipe post for Colombian Steak and Eggs.
Sasha and her brother would dress up as the Lone Ranger and Tonto and go play for hours.
Once in a while when they arrived home for dinner, her brother would be delighted to have his Mom’s special steak.
Stories like this share personality and evoke emotion. They make the content more interesting and attractive. They help your audience get to know you and to form a bond with you.
6. Make your Content Easy to Share
- Use social sharing buttons on your blog.
- Add a print button to your blog so each post can be easily printed.
- Add an email button so your posts can be emailed.
- Enable Twitter Cards on your blog or website. Twitter cards allow you to share photos, videos and media in your tweets.
- Use Click to Tweet . You can add a tweetable message to a blog post, email or piece of content. When a user clicks on the message it is automatically added to their Twitter status box. This can bring additional traffic to your content, website or blog.
7. Have a Content Distribution Strategy
Global Table Adventure posts content on various social media sites and blog syndication sites. New content is also made available to subscribers by email and RSS.
You should share your content or links to your content on multiple sites such as:
- Medium
- Google Plus
- YouTube
- Syndicated sites and Blogging Communities that cater to your market niche such as: Business2Community, AllTop, BizSugar, BlogLovin
8. Group Content into Categories
Global Food Adventures uses categories like food types, courses and lifestyle.
If you are creating content you can do a series of pieces about a certain subject. This will help you to establish yourself as an authority on that topic.
If you have a blog that is well organized readers will have an easier time finding content. They will probably stay longer on the blog and check out multiple posts.
9. Curate Content on Related Themes
Global Table Adventures has a nice collection of Pinterest Boards.
The boards are on subjects related to food and entertaing such as Table Settings, Style, Parties, Special Occasions, Food Photography, Fashion, Crafts and Writing.
You can easily execute this tactic on other social media like Facebook, Instagram, Google +, and Twitter.
Think about subject areas that are related to your topic and would be of interest to your target audience.
Or think about the needs, wants and aspirations of your audience.
Curate and share content on those topics.
10. Be Inventive with your Content and Have Fun
One of the best content marketing resources I discovered was Jared Bauman’s Content Marketing for Photographers course on Creative Live.
Although I am not a Photographer, I found his suggestions for content marketing to be inventive and applicable to many different markets.
Jared runs a Wedding Photography business in San Diego. He has found ways to include content in his marketing that is “outside the box”.
For instance, his blog at Bauman Photographers has posts about fun company events:
Like this candid shot and post about a Bauman company lunch at a local restaurant.
or this funny post about a Bauman company Bridal Bouquet Toss Contest
These posts have lots of candid shots that ordinary folks can identify with. It humanizes the photographers and makes the idea of a photo session seem fun instead of terrifying.
Cook Up a Content Storm
These are just a few ingredients you can use in your content recipe. Mix and match, have fun and be creative!
With a bit of imagination, your next content dish can be a real show stopper.
Photo Credit for Feature Photo: Andreas Klodt
Photos and Graphics from Food Blog: Global Table Adventure
Photos from Photography Blog: Bauman Photographers