You know content marketing is essential for you business, so why don’t you do it? If you are like me, you probably don’t have enough time in day to focus all of your energy on content marketing.
So what should you do?
Sadly, you don’t really have a choice but to leverage it. It’s such a powerful marketing channel; it will actually change your business. For example, at KISSmetrics, our content marketing strategy has resulted in our blog achieving 82% of our overall traffic and 70% of our leads.
And to top if off, content marketing is our cheapest channel marketing. That’s not too bad considering that those leads generate well into the millions of dollars in revenue for us each year.
So what should you do if you don’t have that much time to spend on content marketing? You should focus on these 3 tactics that provide the biggest bang for our buck:
Step #1: Create great content on a consistent basis
You can’t leverage content marketing, without the content. 
So if you are going to write content, make sure you write it on a consistent basis. Whether it is 1 post a day, 1 post a week, or even 1 post a month, the number isn’t really as important as the consistency. Whatever pace you decide to create content at, make sure you stick to it. You can also pump out more content later on if you have more time, but it can hurt your traffic if you decrease your consistency.
Just look what happen to Quick Sprout when I decided to not post on a consistent basis:
I had a decent traffic month in May of 2009 and my traffic was consistently growing as I always published 4 to 5 blog posts a month.
Now look at my June numbers…
Do you know why my traffic went down? I got lazy and I published 0 posts in that month. That laziness resulted in a 21% decrease in monthly traffic. And to make matters worse, it took me 3 months of consistent blogging to recover that traffic.
Now that you know you have to be consistent with your publishing schedule, you also have to focus on writing high quality content. Here’s a guide you can follow if you want to write great blog post.
Step #2: Collect emails
Do you know what the most engaging traffic source is for Quick Sprout? It’s not search, or even social media… it’s actually email traffic. Over the years I’ve been collecting email addresses through popups and sidebar opt-in boxes.
As you can see, emails account for 13.91% of my overall traffic (it’s listed under campaigns). But what’s really interesting if those people account for 41% of the overall blog comments and they are 3.9 times more likely to share the content via the social web versus people who came to the site from another traffic source.
And the beautiful thing is that it’s not just Quick Sprout who is experiencing this. We are also seeing similar numbers with my other two blogs: KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg. And people outside of the tech industry like KimberlySnyder.net are also seeing similar numbers.
So how do you go about collecting more email addresses?
Through WordPress plugins like Popup Domination and Modal Dialog you can create a popup that plugs into your current email solution provider. In addition to that you can also collect emails by placing offers within your sidebar and below your blog posts, similar to how I do so on Quick Sprout.
If you don’t have much time focus your energy on the popup as it tends to drive 3 times the opt-ins compared to a sidebar or below the post offer.
If you aren’t sure how to set up a popup, read this article.
Here’s some interesting data that might help you create an effective popup:
- Courses convert better than ebooks – most bloggers typically give away ebooks, but from extensive A/B testing we’ve found that 7-day courses or 30-day courses convert better by 6%. The main difference between a course and an ebook is that a course is structured more like classroom learning in which you give people bit sized information that they can easily understand over a period of time.
- Don’t forget to add a dollar value – although the information you are giving away is free, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth anything. In my sidebar opt-in, when I added the text “$300 value” my opt-in rate increased by 22%.
- Be aggressive – there are different settings with you popup. From delaying when it shows up to only showing it to people who’ve viewed multiple pages, to not showing it on mobile devices, you can get very specific on who sees it and who doesn’t. I’ve found that showing the popup to everyone upon their first visit causes 23.5% more opt-ins versus delaying the popup by 10 seconds.
- Color matters – my developer tested out 33 colors (blue, green, red, black, white, pink, grey, purple, yellow, orange, brown, as well as 2 shades of each color) for the call to action button on my popup as well as the popup on 3 other blogs. We found that red, green, orange and yellow tend to be the highest converting call to action colors. And the colors black, brown and purple where the lowest converting call to action colors. Make sure you test these colors out on your blog to see which ones work for you.
- Don’t ask for too much information – on web based popups I typically ask people to enter in their name and email. When I performed an A/B test, in which the B test only asked for their email only, my conversion rate increased by 17%. But what was interesting is that when I did the same A/B test just for mobile traffic, my mobile opt-in rate increased by 39.3%.
- Placement is everything – with plugins like Popup Domination, they have multiple design options. Sometimes the email opt-in forms are on the right side of the message, while other times they maybe right underneath the offer message. When I tested out this out on Quick Sprout, I found the having the opt-in below the offer message caused an 11% increase in conversion.
Once you have the emails, make sure you notify them every time you publish a blog post. This how I drive 13.91% of your traffic, like it does with Quick Sprout each month.
Step #3: Convert readers into fans
Do you know who does a great job of converting readers into fans? WetPaint. Based on an algorithm they created, if they feel that you are an engaged reader, the will display a small box over the content asking you to like them on Facebook or Twitter to read the rest of the content.
If you don’t want to, you can just click “no thanks” and continue reading their blog. But that one approached has enable them to get thousands of Facebook fans. Just look at their WetPaint Facebook channel, they have over 380,000 fans.
Can you guess what kind of results this is producing for bloggers? I did a quick test on Quick Sprout over the weekend and I was able to convert 2.9% of my visitors into fans. Now that percentage may go down over time because I have a good amount of repeat visitors, but I could counter act that percentage decreasing by A/B testing the copy. Plus, my version wasn’t as good as WetPaint’s… and I had a few bugs on Internet Explorer and Firefox so I had to remove it. 
I know those numbers don’t seem huge, but if you are getting 100,000 unique visitors a month, you will be growing your fan page at a pace of 2900 fans a month. After 12 months you should have roughly 34800 fans, and you can direct them to your blog or any other website whenever you want.
My test run was so successful that I will be rolling out a bug free version of that on Quick Sprout over the next month or so.Â
Encourage your readers to not only share your content across the social web, but to also follow you. Whether you do what WetPaint does or by directly asking your readers to follow you on Facebook within your blog sidebar… there are many ways you can grow your social channel. Just pick one or two social channels and encourage your readers to engage with you on it.
In the long run this will help your content spread more through the social web, which not only will increase your traffic, but search engine rankings as well.
Conclusion
Content marketing is something that you have no choice but to leverage. There are a lot of different ways to tackle it, but if you don’t have much time, I recommend that you focus on the above 3 tactics.
I’ve found those tactics to be the most effective and to provide the biggest bang for your buck.
What other content marketing tactics do you feel are worth leveraging?
This amazing course will teach you, step by step, how to double if not triple your traffic over the next 30 days.
Finally a guide to content marketing that has less than 30 items. Most writers nowadays seem to think more is better. Thanks for taking the time to share just the nuggets!
No problem, glad you like it!
Great Neil Once Again You Are Proving that Your Kissmatricks is a great product.
Thanks, glad you think so.
Great one Neil. Quality Content marketing on a consistent basis plays a very vital role in getting the right people to visit the site, it leads to people taking the necessary actions and hence it turns the readers into fans and customers which is very important for a brand.
Yep, you have got it!
A thing worth remembering too:
Responding to the people who actually took their time to read (and even share) your content – as you do, when you reply to, if not all, most comments on this blog. That makes the reader feel appreciated and will increase the chance of that visitor coming back and sharing another piece of content in the future.
Definitely, I have found responding to my readers to be beneficial in many ways.
really great article Neil! – I am interested in that plugin that wetpaint is using – any recommendations until your version is out?
Nope… I haven’t seen anything that isn’t custom.
Great timing with this (and great post too btw)! I’m getting ready to release a plugin soon that will make it simple to add this to any WordPress blog or site. Anyone who’s interested can get details at http://fanfinderplugin.com/.
Neil I understand if you want to delete this comment if it’s too much self-promotion, just thought it would be useful!
Very informative post ! It’s really helpful for everyone.Thanks.
Thanks, happy to hear it.
Another fantastic guide, Niel. I did a little test and found out that 1500+ words post works really well and was able to increase my WordPress blog traffic by 25%.
So, this year I’ve decided to focus more on quality content than just producing 500-words post.
Thanks for sharing this great article.
That is awesome, keep it up!
Really content is important..Every newbie must read this article..thank you
Yep, it is all about providing quality content.
I think this is the bare minimum which when applied correctly and as told in this post will lead to the leveraging maximum of content marketing….
It definitely should help.
Thank you for this information Neil. I found this to be helpful.
I have been wanted to use e-books as way to gain email subscribers. I might consider doing the “7-day course” idea.
Very informative post!
I’ve found that blogging is like going to the gym. You’re gung-ho for 2-weeks then you stop going.
Your next article should be a very detailed description of how maintain a quality blog. (Even though I’m sure you have previously written about this.)
Answer questions like:
Do you need a full time employee to blog or should it be broken up among people in the office?
Here is a good tip for people who find it hard to blog – “10 Tips to Blog Frequently – The Ghajini Method”.
It is based on a bollywood movie.
I personally am against hiring someone to blog for you. If you are an expert in your field, you should be the one who blogs.
You can always hire some one to blog for you, he can always do bit of research before writing a blog but unless he is a true expert in that field his articles won’t be original, they will always seem like a rehash of other things.
Imagine an article about playing tennis written by a chef vs one written by Roger Federer!
Thanks Neil for the great post. I’ve always been a great fan of your writing.
I always hesitated to use pop-ups in our blog because I thought it is a ways to distract a percentage of our visitors from our blog.
I also had queries about social pop-ups like will users be running away fro the site if the site is a newbie or not a high-authority site like TechCrunch or Mashable.
But thanks for your detailed insights. It really helped me alot.
Nice post Niel, we’re planning right now our content marketing strategy for the launch of AdEspresso and the main debate was exactly about how much aggressive we should be in acquiring user’s emails on the blog.
I like the big, prominent box you have on kissmetrics sidebar while I dislike a bit the dialog for a corporate blog, I would not want to seems too aggressive like many make blog online sites (john chow etc.).
Any advice ?
Thanks
Massimo
Hi Neil,
Another great article from you. I couldn’t blog for several weeks last year and I’m still struggling to get what I’ve lost, so I totally agree with you that consistency is the key. Plus, I am going to try your idea of using a course, but that will need a little work.
Thanks,
Diana
Great read! Thanks for listing all the results of your tests so that we can go straight ahead to testing those on our blog.
Thanks,
Ian
Thank you for these valuable tips. I will try the Wetpaint like to continue reading strategy.
Wah Wah Patel ji. You have hit the nail with the classic post on marketing. I love the colour combinations, who would have thought that colours matters when you enter emails. I think I might be implementing this. Thank you.
You are absolutely right about “finding the time” for writing new content. We all know how important fresh content is for both user traffic and search engine spidering, but it is tough to find the time to sit down and do it, when items like accounts receivable, building new quotes, keeping up with leads in the queue, etc… all seem to have more immediate importance.
Content is so important. I’m going to have to find a way to set aside specific time just for content production. Shut my door… no questions from developers, no design reviews with creative, no pestering the accounting girl about where our money is. Just an hour behind a closed door to do some writing. Who knows, might help my stress level a bit too, haha.
Dude. Your awesomeness does not go unnoticed. I’m curious how you parse out email traffic under campaigns instead of direct.
Thanks for the kick in the butt on fresh content.
Aaron
Great tips again Neil – Thanks. Just wondering why you’d use the likes of Pop Up Domination when Aweber provide pop-up options (?)
Aweber’s popup sucks and it doesn’t give you enough options/flexibility for non-developers.
Hey Neil,
Thanks for all the great tips. The main challenge that I have always come across with blogging was finding not just the time to post to my blog but actually sourcing relevant stats and info. What do you think is a good ratio of education/content creation per post?
Thanks
Hi Neil,
Excellent stuff, I did a talk at the Cape Town Wordcamp last year and part of my topic was exactly on owning the eyeballs.
Thanks, I got a bit of flack when I said popups is a great way to get subscribers. You just confirmed what I was saying.
Cheers
Bennie
Man I’m glad there are people like you that will test things like this! My brain does not function in this manner whatsoever!
WOW, Neil, you did it again! I have gained mroe from your blogs, articles and emails regarding effective marketing, conversions, content marketing, etc than any other sources to date. I feel like I am getting so much value for free. Thanks and keep it coming…
Ty
Neil –
You consistently have great content. I always learn something. I had a question about the “facebook fan page like” you mentioned re: Wet Paint.
Do I understand that you will have one soon? Will it be like a plugin?
Thanks Sharon
Sharon, it sounds like there are no available plugins for this yet but I have one coming soon at http://fanfinderplugin.com/. Hope that can help you!
Excellent post again Neil. In my world, many of my clients are not in the traditional marketing world and to them, content marketing feels like an enormous task. You drill it into very succinct points that people can really understand. Very nicely done.
Neil: Love your blog. I’ve been coming here for awhile. I really appreciate all the insight that you share on seo. Thanks!
Neil,
Very interesting tests and results – I thought the e-course out-converting the PDF was particularly interesting.
I’m actually in the process of putting together a new 10 part e-course, and hoping to see a positive increase as well!
Keep the awesome content coming.
Brian
Amazing again. I did not know that your most visits come from emails. After all those years of collecting emails, it is really paying off for you. I also like the info where you mention the post schedules and the call to action colors. Thanks a ton. Have a great day!
Thank you so much Neil.
you keep on killing it Neil. Loving the stats and data to back it all up too. I need to do more of this so thanks!
Hey Neil
Another fantastic article. I really love that wetpaint popup idea, but I fear that having too many pop ups could annoy people? For instance we have one on our blog that triggers at the bottom of the page to sign up to our news letter – if we put in another one or if we included more options like to follow us and to sign up wouldn’t that be too many call to actions and it would ruin our results?
Paul
Neil, that’s a great post for something that hunts me for over 1 year.
You see I have a very good website in an affiliate marketing niche but the niche is somehow limited and I’ve kinda exhausted all the text possibilities from every angle I can write. The last resot is videos reviewing the products but that’s expensive and i’m not really interested in that because I just got hit by almost all of the recent google updates – although the content is good, unique with social signals pointed to the website.
I’d really appreciate a response .
Great info on post content. Just started following you and have learned so much already.
Thanks!
Another good read. Cheers Neil.
Heard a couple of friends talk about Popup Domination in the past. Definitely worth a test once my visitor count increases.
Another great article
Yep, nothing beats fresh and unique written content!
Fantastic guide, Neil! It will lead me in my next “experiences”.
Harutyun.
Hey Neil,
That was a nice piece of article. Can you please make a post on WHY website pages are not displaying in google search engine? Is it because of stiff competition of keywords in the market or there are several other factors behind it?
bawa residency is located in the corporate city of Gurgaon Haryana, Guest house near by paras hospital,huda metro station, iffco chowk, fortis hospital in gurgaon
Content marketing tactics which I feel are useful is to remind yourself of two things: You can either write content that is dry, safe, and has no personality, or u can write something daring and transparent- something that will shake the floor beneath your reader’s feet.
From last couple of posts i saw you are referring wordpress plugins WHY? Plugins make your site heavier than custom code.
Surprise! color matters? I agree with you that red, green and yellow are high converting. I have seen top ranking and popular websites with mild blue color. What about blue?
Funny thing: reading this article I´ve just realized that I´ve never received the Free Course “Double your traffic in 30 days”. I wrote to Neil about this issue about week after my registration, and he replied something like “be patient, you´ll received it soon”. But now its been about one year and I´m still waiting…
I mean no offense – I did received 3 ebooks (marketingebook, seoebook and moneyebook) after my registration (which I think it´s that “300 USD bonus”), but somehow never received the free course – which was actually the reason I subscribe initially.
Anyway – I don´t regret being subscribed – every Neil´s blog post is quality. Dave.
These are some really great in-depth tips and it’s good to see they are of quality not quantity. Just like content marketing should be.
E-mail marketing has became a real interesting thing to do, They are the regular readers of your website who shares your contents and make it go viral even i am subscribed to the updates of Quicksprout.com
Thanks Neil for this superb article… I really have some issues with this content marketing of a thing and seeing a short guide like this really helped me… I’ll start thinking of a course to offer as a bait for new subscribers on my blog… By the Way, I want to sell off my blog. Interested?
Neil awesome post as always your site has made me see content marketing in new light. Your use of graphic and images to drive home your point, tells me this is one key to driving traffic to your blog
Hello Neil, this is a fantastic article about content marketing. As I am reviewing these steps, I look forward to putting them into play. One of the main things i took away and have experienced, is the consistency of content. That is a major factor in your engagement and of course ratings. Thanks Neil!
Can you share the plugin for the wetpaint pop up with us?
Hey faisal, I have a similar plugin coming soon – you can see more info at http://fanfinderplugin.com/ if you’re interested.
Hey Neil – Just noticed your neilpatel.com site has malware. Your probably already know, but thought i’d let you know.
Mike
Found some interesting options that get close to the pop-up functionality that you talk about (only for WP). Although, would love a good solid one like the one you referenced!
http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2012/11/wordpress-popup-plugin.html
Thanks for the article! I will pass it along to my clients and students.
I have had a number of clients where we have great meetings and discuss how we are going to market their content to drive traffic to their website. Then they don’t produce content – or don’t want to pay to have great content created. (Funny how our writers actually want to be paid.) Then they don’t get traffic. Then they complain to us that they aren’t getting the traffic.
Great info! Thanks for the research on the call to action button. We usually do blue, but clearly there are better options.
I’m scared to try a popup, I feel like my readers have such limited amounts of time and adding one small obstacle (clicking close or having to put in their info) would discourage them from coming back. On the other hand I do need a way to remind my readers to come back, Facebook isn’t a great option anymore, they are limiting the amount of people that see your posts, if you want more you have to pay.
Yes, it seems to me that great content is the key. That has been drilled in my mind for the past few years. What I still haven’t gotten the hang of is building my lists. I know it is important, but I am not all that great at it. Something to think about for the new year!
This is the best website for learning how to keep up with your website. Bookmarked!!
Great post! Any more info on the box that goes over the text that WetPaint uses?
Steve, if you’re looking for that I have a similar plugin coming soon (not the one they use, they probably had it custom-built). Details are at http://fanfinderplugin.com/.
WARNING: WHAT NEIL PATEL DOES NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW
Ok now that I have your attention, I want to say that I signed up for Niels Free double your traffic course. I just got the first email “The #1 reason I get so much traffic”
And I have to say that its probably the best bit of SEO advice I have ever seen or heard.
I cant wait for the next installment and I recommend anyone who has not signed up to do so, its the real deal.
I don’t know Neil, I am just a guy who saw his blog a few days ago. If you don’t believe me sign up and if you are disappointed then unsubscribe and you can come and abuse me here lol.
I know that wont happen.
Thanks for the great info Neil.
Paul
Ditto on “Thanks for an article about marketing that doesn’t have 30 items on it.” I just did one of these things, and that was about all the excitement I can take this week!
Just discovered this site today, great insights. I love the a/b testing you’ve done. Thanks so much for sharing.
Thank You Neil, Very Nice article
Great post. Thank you.
Presence at selected social media is also important + you need to be a constant persistent learner to cope with the trends.
Great post. Thank you.
Presence at selected social media is also important + you need to be a constant persistent learner to cope with the trends.
thanks this information, very helpful.
Yes, Totally agree with that. Content is King and google loves fresh and unique content.
Great read! Thanks for listing all the results of your tests so that we can go straight ahead to testing those on our blog.
Well detailed. Great points. Write unique and good content.But i am confused with 3 rd point ‘convert readers to fans’.
Well this is a great read and i like the content it is fantastic information regarding google and content which is King.
Hi Neil,
First of all – thank you very much for sharing your knowledge with all of us.
In your post you are talking about creating content on a consistent basis. The issue I have with my blog is that we publish regular posts + “news-posts” in between them. Is this still considered to be a consistent pattern?
Thanks,
Daniel.
Hey
Excellent post. It is true that content Marketing is the best way to get more users but content making on consistent base is the key to get success
Thanks
Hi Neil,
Great post! However, I would like to comment on your first point of ¨creating great content on a consistent basis¨. The latest fad in the industry is that of content curation. Curation is when you organize, add value and share content from the myriads of content that is already existing on the web. This means that in order to be successful in content marketing, it is not necessary to create fresh content each time but instead smartly voice your opinion and share relevant content that is already there.
There are several tools that are out there that are providing this service of being able to aggregate content, organize it appropriately and then share it with others. I am a CEO of one such tool and will be happy to provide additional information on this topic!
Thanks and keep posting!
Regards,
Aakriti Gupta
CEO – Groupiest
thanks neil. Boost up my motivation in right direction.
Excellent post again Neil.
Very helpful tips, Neil. I’ll surely try on these.
Honestly, getting good content has always been a daunting task for many, with its time consuming nature, and disinteresting information. I have found that gettting content for some of our clients has been one of those “ARRRGH….” moments; more so when the information or content needed has a “un-interesting” topic or point… (speaking from my point of view.. of course).
Nevertheless, you power through it in an effort to get the best results for your client’s needs. Having that relevant content pays off in the end, as it allows you to achieve more results with less nonsense/drama and spamming.
Honestly, if more developers and content writers focused on relevant content, their results would improve dramatically… Google and others are really watching this now, so the days of blah blah… b.s. content are just about over.
Time to clean the web. lol
Later Neil… and keep it coming brother.
You are correct Benjamin, it is tedious but well worth it in the long run.
And I almost forgot…. Its common sense, but I found that learning the most I can about a topic, or simply writing about things that I love and enjoy helps me to get the best relevant content out there… not including some syndication methods that are pretty golden!
I tell the new guys all the time… this is a business, and it needs to be treated as such.. It has the potential to make you alot of money, but like anything else, it takes dedication and a decent amount of interest to make it happen.
Just my nickel.
I agree completely, it takes full commitment or else you will never reach your goals.
Posting new insight on an old topic can be daunting. It seems that content accounts for some of it, while popularity accounts for the other part. If one site has a following and regurgitates material, it turns out okay.
Good point, thanks for your added input.
We all know how important fresh content is for both user traffic and search engine , but it is tough to find the time to sit down and do it.
Yes, it is difficult and that is why it is not for everyone. I have found anything worth doing is not easily done.
Very enlightening post Neil. Though I am always on the lookout for online marketing tips it is for a startup and not for the regular blog marketing one information or the other. However I find your posts having a good measure of relevant tips for my situation. Keep it up
Paul, Glad I could help. Thanks for reading!
I really loved the post Neil.
I have a new site and I’ll incorporate these things in it as I get some visitors to it.
Looking forward to read your Blog as it contains some great information.
Thanks for reading, and good luck!
This is what i was looking for to increase traffic to my site through content. Thanks for such a wonderful post.
Glad you found it helpful
In this copetitive internet marketing, it’s hard to reach billions of audiences. Therefore, we have to take better action to gate access over prospective audience. However, it will not possible without promoting the ideas. Content marketing can be a good medium to pursuade and attract to get vote from different site.
Content marketing not only build a public profile, it also drive unique traffic as well as high PR backlink from authorative sites. So that content marketing is most important job for any publishers.
Content marketing is becoming more and more important as a means of attracting new customers. You are spot on with your assessment!
Really appreciate you sharing this post.Really looking forward to read more. Want more.
Thanks! More to come..
I loved this blog post… As a future content marketer myself i thought it was very helpful. I get your emails for Kissmetrics and find it prompts me to visit when i otherwise would forget. Great idea.
A quick question:
As well as email people when you add a new blog post, do you also send a regular newsletter? If so, how does that content differ and is there a crossover?
I assume such a smart guy like yourself has a strategy for this!
Thanks Doug
Nope, I send the same thing… nothing really separate. I should do so, but I just don’t have enough time to create one.
Very well-researched post. I like that you gave plenty of statistics based on your own experience to back up your claims. I had no idea that pop ups could drive 3 times more opt-ins! I’m going to put this to the test on my site right away. Thanks.
Benson, great. Let me know how it goes …
Great article!
Everyone likes to throw around content is king but that is quite an indepth article without the fluff!