Why Affiliate Marketers Should Do Content Marketing
Content marketing does not just mean writing a lot of blog posts. Content marketing generally tends to refer to the process of publishing content on your own website. People will be able to find your brand and you will also be able to build your authority. That is why content marketing should be used by any affiliate marketer together with their own blog.
Content marketing is all the rage right now and we’ve all heard about how blogs and businesses are investing more in this aspect of internet marketing than any other.
But what does that look like in practice? What does content marketing really involve?
That’s exactly what I’m going to go over in this blog post.
Quality Content For Better Engagement
One of the quickest ways to get stressed and burned out in life is to try and please everyone all the time.
And one of the quickest ways to see your website or blog sink into obscurity is to do the same.
It is impossible to please everyone and so you shouldn’t try. This is especially important in marekting though because it is perhaps the very fastest way to create a website that is bland and that no one cares about. It’s also a surefire way to prevent yourself from building any kind of trust or authority.
Why You Need To Leave People Out
If you were to create a website that appealed to everyone, that would mean that the posts would have to be useful for people who were new to the topic and those that were experts. IT would mean that you couldn’t make any very controversial statements and it would ultimately prevent you from gaining any sense of ownership from your visitors.
Conversely, if you have a strong point of view, a mission statement, and an ideal customer, then you can create a website that will greatly appeal to the right person.
One of the fastest ways to make your content more interesting is to quickly identify who it isn’t for. This will rule out people who wouldn’t have been the right demographic for you to market to anyway but it will also help you to make your content appear that much more appealing to those that are still present.
Many brands will attempt to qualify their content in a way that is transparently fake. For example; “If you don’t want to earn mega bucks, then leave right now!”. This doesn’t work because the visitors see through it and it just looks desperate.
However, if you say; “This course is only for professionals that already making a lot of money”, then those professionals will be much more interested than if you had said; “this course is for beginners and experts alike”. You want your target demographic to feel that the content you have on offer is aimed directly at them.
Why You Need An Opinion
Likewise, you need to “take a side” when it comes to your content. For instance, if you have a site about health then you can decide to come down on the “highly scientific” side of things and only promote strategies backed heavily by science. Alternatively, you could decide to promote naturalistic products with no chemicals. It doesn’t matter what – that comes down to your personal beliefs – but you do need to pick.
Why? Because this way, people who agree with you will be able to choose your site over sites. They will know that your site shares their principles and their beliefs and they will be able to feel confident that the advice you share and products you recommend are in keeping with their belief system.
If they can’t know that for sure, then how can they trust you enough to buy from you?
Affiliate Marketing Blogs
Let’s imagine a affiliate marekting blog. The blog belongs to a ‘personal brand’ and makes money from both advertising and selling digital products. How does this page go about using content marketing to reach prominence and start selling to a ravenous audience?
The Posts
The first type of content this site could benefit from is blog posting. The more regular here the better and ideally you’d want to see posts every day or at least several times per week. This will provide regular value and it will incentivize visitors to keep coming back.
These posts should be well written of course and the personal brand will allow the owner to make use of a narrative structure. In other words; by structuring blog posts as stories rather than actual reports, you can make them much more interesting and engaging and create more of an emotional hook. If you describe how something worked for you then your audience can imagine how it might work for them.
You need to make sure all your posts have a USP. That means they should offer something that can’t easily be found elsewhere online. They also need to have a consistent ethos and tome. In other words, people need to know what they can expect when they read a blog post on your site so that they know that they tend to agree with your point of view. It’s this that will earn you the trust to sell to them.
Other Content
Content marketing is more than just blog posts.
Social media posts are also important here and again you can ride that “personal brand” by making sure that you are seen to be a trustworthy person. You should be living proof that your methods work, so that means posting relevant content on social media sites.
Likewise, you should consider having a YouTube channel. YouTube is a surprisingly effective tool for engaging with your audience and for really getting them on board with your message. If you can create videos with good production values and sheen, then this will instantly demonstrate your skill and professionalism. And if you can portray your personality in a way that is engaging and likable then you can build a lot more trust to sell your products. People who have seen you speak will feel like they know you and like they understand what you’re about and what you represent. You can use this to your advantage to sell your products but that’s the final tip. You only sell when you have something you genuinely believe in and feel passionate about.
Awesome Video Content
Content marketing does not just mean writing lots of blog posts. It can mean that sure, but what is just as powerful is video content.
In fact, video has a number of advantages over written content. It is less SEO-friendly and it does require a great commitment from the viewer (they need to be able to have their sound on for the start). But at the same time, video allows you to portray your personality, principles, and expertise much more efficiently and quickly. Video is also inherently more engaging and a great way to show your professionalism. If your video has high production values, then this suggests a certain level of authority for you to have been able to create that video in the first place.
With all that in mind, just how do you go about adding great video content to your site?
Here are some important tips:
The Quality – To start with, you need to make sure you have the right equipment. It is possible to film with a phone but this will often have difficulties with autofocus. Better is to choose a DSLR or a mirrorless camera and ideally one with a flip screen so that you can see yourself talking and check you’re in the shot.
Just as important as the camera is the brightness. Make sure that your image is bright and clear and consider investing in studio lighting equipment such as a softbox.
This will make your footage much clearer which is crucial to ensure that your audience doesn’t need to squint and lean in too close to the screen!
Also important is sound quality. If your sound is muffled, then this will seriously hurt the professionalism of your videos. Solve this issue by speaking into a lapel mic or maybe a free-standing microphone such as the Blue Yeti Snowball.
Think as well about the other hallmarks of high-quality production. For instance, you should make sure to speak slowly and clearly and to be well-presented. You should also think about your backdrop. If you’re in front of your chest of drawers with your boxes hanging out then that won’t look good.
Editing
Once you’ve done this, you can then synchronize your video and your audio in a piece of editing software like Adobe Premiere. You should then try introducing a few cuts and edits to keep the flow going and to keep the audience entertained. Try switching to still images and footage from other things when you can in order to prevent the video from being unstimulating.
This is also where you can add a subtle backing track and importantly a logo in the top or bottom corner. You can also add an introduction (look for someone who can make you one on Fiverr) and maybe “bottom thirds” to introduce people and concepts as they appear on the screen.
These small touches can all add up to create something that is very professional looking and that should really get the right reaction!
Content For Your Readers & Google
When it comes to writing content for your website or blog, it often seems as though you have two options. Option one is to create content that is written for the reader first. Here, your first priority is to create something that people will enjoy and that they will be excited to read. This is the best strategy for those genuinely interested in true content marketing. Content marketing where the object is to create long-term fans.
Options two though is to write content for the search engines. In other words, this means that you are writing content in such a way that Google will be more likely to index it and will be more likely present it to users. The risk here is that while you might gain exposure, you could risk losing the enjoyment of your readers and thereby building trust and authority.
But the real question you should be asking is not which of these methods you should adopt, but whether or not you can accomplish both things at once.
The New SEO
There was a time when writing for Google and writing for the reader meant two very different things. At this time, SEOs were focused on trying to hack Google’s algorithms and effectively game the system. Google primarily ranked content based on the repetitious use of keywords and phrases and this meant that a smart SEO could simply insert the same keywords into their content over and over in order to make something that would rank highly on Google.
Of course, this did not result in content that was readable or enjoyable for the visitor.
Fortunately, Google has wizened up to those methods and is now much savvier at spotting blatant attempts at manipulation. If you repeat the same key terms over and over again, your website is likely to get penalized rather than reach the top.
Instead, Google is now smart enough to look for real language and write “around” the topic. In fact, you can see this how when you search Google for terms. Often it will actually replace the search term with synonyms!
This is something you need to consider and include when you are writing then. Try to use related terms and synonyms in a way that comes naturally and in a way that you think Google is likely to understand. If you do this, then your content will be more varied and useful for the reader and it will also be more likely to get ranked by Google.
The Message To Remember
The key take-home to remember through all of this is that Google wants to rank the best quality content. The overall aim of Google is to ensure its users find what they are looking for when they search and thus if you offer something genuinely useful. Your goals will be aligned with those of Google and future updates will be more likely to help you rank. On the other hand, if you are trying to dupe Google, then your site will get hurt with each future improvement!
Wrapping Up
Using content marketing through a blog can really get you more traffic and sales to the offers you are promoting.
If you promote your offers through a blog you should think of the quality of the content you are writing. Without good quality your content will not be indexed by Google., Google does not like bad content. Quality content will also give you more and better engagement, your readers will not leave your blog post.
If you follow the tips in this blog post you will see more traffic to your affiliate offers but also better engagement and in the end more sales and more money in the pocket.
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