Most marketers use both paid and organic in their mix. It’s a smart pairing that works in combination to fast track SEO, content testing and lead generation. But each is done for different reasons and in different ways.
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the best place to start. It’s a great test for your offers, messaging, audience profile, and more. Organic traffic also offers several well-known benefits:
- Brand awareness
- Lead generation
- Website traffic
- Customer acquisition
- Customer retention
- Engagement
- Thought Leadership
- Sales
- Lean magnet or nurturing
Putting your best content on your website just makes sense as organic traffic accounts for most of your website’s traffic. By putting your content on your website in the open (not by email opt-in), you accomplish two things. You can tweak messaging and keywords to attract for prospects that turn into buyers. And two, you make it easy to see what you are offering and that your services are more than what you share in your content. It’s one of the biggest questions I get from clients is around the fear that they are giving too much away. Let me help put your mind at ease – you’re not. Prospects need that information to learn about their problem and learn about your solution. Holding it hostage will actually deter prospects from engaging. Also, by sharing you allude to you actually having more insights once they’re a client.
Organic Search
Organic search is also your best source for leads as you can use specific and longtail keywords to target prospects closer to purchase and with higher interest. For example, someone types in wedding cakes and gets ideas. Someone types in “three-tier ‘naked’ wedding cake in Chicago” it indicates they know exactly what they’re looking for and are comparing prices or booking a tasting.
When you look at your existing content you should be asking yourself a few questions:
- What parts of the website are they visiting?
- What kind of content is attracting them?
- How are we highlighting our brand in this content?
- What part of the funnel does this content connect to?
- Are we creating content that answers our audience’s questions (on that topic)?
- How can our traffic bookmark and/or share our content?
- Internal linking strategy?
- Solid and enticing CTAs?
- Do our keywords help qualify the audience intent?
- Do you have enough content to offer existing customers as support?
- How can you repurpose or redistribute this content?
Organic Social
Organic social media (as opposed to content or paid social) offers several other benefits:
- Hashtag use can help your posts get found
- Content can be aligned with the platform (e.g. images for Pinterest)
- Showcase your personality to attract prospects that resonate with your values
It’s a great place to repurpose content and gain more organic traction. For example, pulling out pieces (paragraphs, quotes, etc.) and adding or exploring them is a great way to stretch a piece of popular content and gain more organic traction from it.
When you look at your social media platforms you should be asking a few questions:
- When a prospect clicks through to our social platforms what will they think?
- Are the comments positive?
- Does our behaviour online inspire trust?
Consistently posting on your social media channels around a specific topic is the goal. And making sure these posts link back to your content is key. Having content that associates you with a topic can support your thought leadership. It positions you as knowledgeable in that area and alludes to a sense of authority. When you name is connected to a topic, it becomes easier to attract those that are looking for help in that area. This also makes it easier to sell as you don’t have to prove your expertise as it’s assumed.
Get the most out of each post by paying attention to any posts that get a better level of attention. Look at content type, hours/day to post, graphics/visuals, etc. Optimize your profiles by using your content keywords.
So, here are the steps to building out your own organic content strategy:
1. Organic content creation
Just remember that it all starts with creating the content. Begin with the audience you want to attract then find the keywords you need to use in order to get found. The biggest piece of the puzzle is finding the right keywords and creating a stellar piece of content with enough information in it (and other SEO factors) to rank well.
2. Content Promotion
After that, it’s about promotion, promotion, promotion! You should be spending (at minimum) the same amount of time promoting the content as it took to create. Think social media channels, email, guest posts, podcast, partner network, chat rooms, and anywhere else your prospects would be. If you’re not sure, just ask a few of them!
3. Upcycle & Update Content
Looking at ways to repurpose, update, and redistribute are also important things to consider. Add different types of media to the page. Make sure the page contains more actual content than HTML (design). Instead of writing 3-10 new pieces around this topic, consider just updating and reformatting the original piece!
4. From Content to Client
The final piece is to make sure that any traffic coming to your content can see a clear call-to-action on what to do next if they like the information. Think bigger than ‘book a call’. Maybe have an opt-in for a deeper dive on the subject or a well-built (on-line) tool that would help solve or shorten the pain around the problem. Make sure you have email automations set-up to deliver the content and make sure whatever you send to their inbox is of high perceived value – including anything you write!
Gaining organic traction through your content is a long game. The level of attention you want from this won’t happen overnight. But it will happen if you’re consistent and pay attention to the above four steps.
