than just a buzz word. It's the real deal.

My name's James Perrin, and I'm the Content Marketing Manager here at

Koozai, and today I'm going to be talking to you about broadening your

content marketing approach.

Now, if you feel that your current content marketing campaigns are kind of

lacking a bit of punch, that they're stagnating, or if you feel that they need

sprucing up and your general SEO campaigns need sprucing up, you need to be

thinking a lot broader in terms of your content marketing strategy. Keep

watching, because today we're going to be talking about hints, tips, and

some tools to really help you achieve this.

First and foremost, what I would suggest is if you are performing any of

the old techniques, such as blog spinning, article marketing, blog

networks, stop. They don't work. What you need to be thinking about is

having the user at the heart of any content that you create. If you think

about it, SEO is now inextricably linked with social media. Social shares

count for a lot in terms of SEO value. So the content that you create needs

to be sharable. People should be liking it, and from there you can build

links and traffic naturally to that content. So focus on quality, not

quantity.

It's all well and good saying this. But how would you go about broadening

your content marketing approach? Well, there are two ways in which this is

achievable. First and foremost, you need to have a strategy, and then from

there you need to have lots and lots of activities in which you can create

this content marketing.

First and foremost; strategy. The first thing you need to do is research.

Perform a content marketing audit, look at what content has worked before

and what hasn't worked. I'd also look at what pages are achieving the best

hits. It could be a particular product or service that people are

interested in, and in that way that can inform you and you can start to

create content off the back of that data and that information.

I'd also perform a competitor analysis. Use tools such as Majestic SEO or

Linkdex, and in this way you can look at what links your competitors have got

and the best performing content from those links.

Secondly, you need to have lots and lots of ideas. So contact your clients,

speak to in-house teams, PR agencies, and get as many ideas around the

table as possible. It could be anything to do with industry news or company

news. It could be new products, competitions, anything like that which you

feel that you can create content off the back of.

If you're still struggling for ideas, I suggest using tools, such as

Ubersuggest, Spezify, SEOGadget's Content Ideas Generator. These are all

great ways in which you can just enter a keyword and it gives you lots and

lots of other keywords around which you can create content.

Thirdly, you need to think about social. So think about the types of

content that is being created that works well on social media and,

specifically, who is sharing that kind of content. So tools such as Social

Bro, Followerwonk and Google Ripples, these work really, really well so that

you can see the best type of content to create that's going to get shared.

This enables you to create highly targeted and highly sociable content.

Then fourthly, you need to plan. You need to create a 3-month, 6-month, or

even 12-month content marketing campaign & content marketing plan and factor

in key dates & seasons. I feel that a content marketing plan is a great way

to hold people accountable and makes them aware of due dates and duties.

So you've got your strategy in place. Now you need to think about the

activities. First and foremost, I would get a website blog. If you haven't

got one, get one. Especially with things like authorship and author rank

moving forward in 2013, these are going to be so important in terms of SEO.

That's only achievable with a website blog. If you think about it, for a

fully-integrated digital marketing campaign, where you're going to be

relying on social media content and SEO, the website blog really acts as

the glue that holds all of this together. So if you haven't got

one, get one.

Now if you build it, they won't always come. That's very, very true. So why

not take your content to where it's most likely to get seen. Guest blogging

done properly is invaluable to SEO. I'm not talking about these kinds of PR0,

PR1 sites. I'm talking about sites that are getting a lot of

visitors that people are visiting that are relevant to your niche. So

websites, blogs, resources, anything like that, approach them. There's a

huge SEO value in that.

Much in the same way, PR opportunities work as well. So use tools, such

as Gorkana PR or Help a Reporter Out. Use #journorequest on

Twitter. And as I say, much in the same way that guest blogging works,

you'll get huge SEO value out of a link, but also you'll become an

authority voice, an authority voice in your niche, and that's hugely,

hugely valuable in terms of online marketing.

Fourthly, infographics. Now for fun, sharable content you can't beat a good

infographic. You just need to make sure that your content is unique, that

it's engaging, and that you promote it well on good sites. That way it will

work really, really well.

White paper. Now when it comes to creating content, what better way to add

value to your users by telling them exactly how something works. So if

you've got a particular product or service that you think needs clarifying

or explaining and you want to give help to your customers, create a free

white paper or user guide. That's absolutely perfect, and it will be

downloaded and it'll be shared across the web. Again, it's just more

promotion for your brand and your website.

Surveys. Data is hugely important in 2013. Well, it's always been hugely

important, but for 2013 a lot of focus is going to be on data. So look to

create surveys or questionnaires. Host them on your website. I'd suggest

using tools, such as Survey Monkey, Survey Gizmo, or OnePoll. They're very,

very good at collecting data, and then you can create really unique content

off the back of it.

Videos. It goes without saying that videos have transformed the way that

we've consumed content online. But a lot of people kind of think, well, to

do that you need a big budget and whatnot. You don't. To do some good

videos and to market it properly you can do it on a shoestring budget.

Really from that you can kind of get traffic, links, some good branding. So

it works. You just need to have a good idea.

Then finally, images. If your company is going to events, or there are some

industry events, or there are some products and such like that you want to

share, just take some good quality images. They still get shared. Use sites

like Pinterest, Flickr. As long as they're real and interesting pictures, real people

will share them.

So that's just a list of some of the activities which you can do. If you'd

like to share any more, please do comment on the comment section below.

Feel free to start a discussion about what works and what doesn't work. And

that just leaves me to say thank you very much for watching. For more

information, please visit any of our profiles coming up now.