Are you feeling overwhelmed when it comes to creating content briefs? Do you struggle to find a balance between providing enough information and not getting bogged down in the details? If so, you’re not alone.
Writing a content brief can be a daunting task, especially when you’re working on a tight deadline or managing multiple projects.
Reading this post will provide you with tips from the pros on how to conceive a content brief without feeling overwhelmed. We’ll break down the components of a content brief and provide you with a step-by-step guide on how to create one.
It’s understandable that the thought of writing briefs may seem intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Here is help to streamline your process, save time, and ultimately produce high-quality content that resonates with your target audience.
So, let’s begin the journey toward creating a content brief that not only meets your needs but exceeds your expectations.
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A content brief is a document that shows how to write and what to include in a piece of content. It outlines the objectives, and parameters needed, the purpose of the content, the target audience, the key messages, and the outline that needs to be conveyed.
A content brief is the backbone of any content creation process, helping to keep everyone on the same page and ensuring that the crafted content is aligned with the marketing goals and objectives.
An SEO content brief is similar to a content brief but with an added focus on search engine optimization (SEO). An SEO content brief not only indicates the objectives, and outline of the project but also includes specific instructions and guidelines for optimizing the content for search engines. It might include:
Keyword research
On-page optimization
Interlinking strategies
Meta tags
The main difference between a content brief and an SEO content brief is made of the optimization parameters.
Why Are Content Briefs Important?
Creating a content brief is crucial for an effective content creation process. Without a clear plan in place, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds and lose sight of the overall goals and objectives of the project.
A content brief offers the necessary guidance and helps to keep everyone on the same page.
In the context of marketing, a good example of the importance of a content brief can be seen in the creation of a blog post.
Let’s say that a company wants to create a blog post about a new product they are launching. Before they start creating the piece of content, they should develop a content brief that outlines the following:
The target audience for the content (potential customers).
Key messages that need to be conveyed (benefits and features of the product).
Main keyword and semantic terms that should be included in the content (e.g. the name of the product, related search terms, etc.)
The desired outcome of the content (increased awareness and interest in the product, potential sales)
With this content brief in place, the company can then start creating content that is targeted toward their desired audience and optimized for search engines.
By following the guidelines outlined in the content brief, they increase the likelihood that their content will be discovered by search engines and, ultimately, by potential customers.
Advantages of Using Content Briefs
One of the main advantages of using content briefs is that they can prevent the need for rewrites and repetitive revisions. By having a clear plan in place before starting the content creation process, teams can avoid costly mistakes and minimize the need for time-consuming revisions.
This saves time and money and allows teams to focus on more important tasks.
Research conducted by Ziflow found that more than half of the marketing teams review an asset three to five times before it is considered final.
Another advantage of using content briefs is ensuring no critical information and data are missing. When creating content, it’s easy to overlook important details that can make or break the success of the project.
Content briefs help ensure that all necessary information is included and that the content meets the buyer persona’s needs.
In addition, content briefs provide a guideline and a single source of truth for the collaborating team. They serve as a reference document that everyone on the team can refer to when needed.
Consequently, minimizing confusion and misunderstandings, and helping to ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal.
Lastly, content briefs provide clear direction. They serve as a blueprint for the project, outlining the goals, audience, tone, and format. And ensure that the content meets the needs of the intended audience and is consistent with the overall marketing strategy.
It also provides a clear way to measure success and obtain approval from stakeholders.
What Are the Components of a Content Brief?
In order to create a comprehensive content brief, there are several key elements that need to be considered. The key components of a content brief are
Topic and working title
Target buyer persona
Primary keyword
Search Intent for that keyword
Secondary keywords and LSis
Content format, and length
Stage of the buyer journey
Content goals and objectives
Content structure and outline
Content tone and style, and instructions for visuals
Resources
Internal links
Call to action (CTA)
Deadlines and milestones
Content brief template
Content brief example
What Are the Steps for Creating a Content Brief?
To create a detailed content brief follow the next steps:
Identify the Target Audience – Overview of the Buyer Persona
The target audience is the group of people that you are creating the content for or your buyer persona. It is defined based on demographics, psychographics, or other factors.
Understanding your target audience is essential to creating effective content that resonates with them.
Example: If the target audience is working moms, the buyer persona may include information such as their age range, occupation, income level, and the challenges they face balancing work and family life. In your brief, you will include a reference as “Mom Mary” and a link to the buyer persona profile.
Execute a Keyword Research – Identify the Primary Keyword and LSIs
The primary keyword is the main keyword that you are targeting with your content. This keyword should be relevant to your target audience’s needs and should be included in the content in a natural and organic way.
LSIs (Latent Semantic Indexing) are related keywords and phrases that are also relevant to the topic of your content. Including LSIs can help to improve the relevance of your content and increase its visibility in search results.
Example: If the content is about time-saving tips for working moms, relevant keywords may include “working mom struggles,” “time management,” and “productivity hacks”. And LSIs for “working mom struggles” could be “working mom dilemma”, “ depressed overwhelmed working mom”, “challenges of working moms”.
Brainstorm Content Topic and SEO Title
The topic of your content should be based on your target audience’s needs and interests and related to your product/service.
Deciding on a relevant, optimized, and eye-catching title is not that easy. Bear in mind that the working title should be attention-grabbing and provide a clear idea of what the content is about.
It is important to keep in mind that the title is often the first thing that people will see, and based on it, they decide if they click on your article or not.
Example: If the target audience is working moms, topics may include time-saving tips, career development, or self-care. Working titles may include “10 Time-Saving Hacks for Busy Working Moms” or “How to Advance Your Career While Juggling Motherhood.”
Determine the Content Format and Length
The format and length of your content can have a significant impact on how it is received by your target audience.
Depending on the topic approached the format may be a listicle, a how-to, a guide, an ebook, etc.
Content length in words is also important. Usually, you want this content to be useful for your audience and rank in search engines. The word count should be in the range of already ranking articles and should cover the topic in depth.
Example: If the goal of the content is to drive conversions, a product comparison guide may be the most effective format of content. The angle of the content may be based on a trending topic or a pain point that the target audience is experiencing.
Establish the Stage of the Buyer Journey for the Piece of Content
The stage of the buyer journey that your target audience is in will influence the type of content that they are looking for.
For example, someone in the awareness stage may be looking for educational content, while someone in the decision stage may be looking for product comparisons. By understanding the stage of the buyer journey, you can create content that is tailored to their needs and more likely to convert.
Define Content Goals and Objectives
The goals and objectives of your content should align with your overall marketing goals.
For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, your content may focus on spreading the word about your product or services or sharing customer success stories.
By aligning your content goals and objectives with your overall marketing goals, you can create a more cohesive and effective content strategy.
Example: If the goal of the content is to generate leads, the objective may be to collect email addresses through a lead magnet.
Indicate the Content Tone and Style
The tone and style of your content should reflect your brand voice and values. This can vary depending on your target audience and the type of content that you are creating.
For example, a piece of content aimed at millennials may have a more casual tone and use humor, while a piece of content aimed at business executives may have a more formal tone and use data-driven insights.
Example: If the target audience is working moms, the tone may be empathetic and understanding
Determine the Search Intent Behind the Main Keyword
Search intent refers to the reason behind a search query. Understanding the search intent behind your target audience’s queries is crucial in creating content that matches their needs.
By understanding the search intent, you can create content that is more relevant to their needs and more likely to be found in search results.
Create the Content Structure and Outline
The structure and outline of your content should be based on the type of content and the goals that you have set. It may include headings, subheadings, bullet points, or other formatting elements.
The provided outline should be logical and easy to follow and should help to guide the reader through the content.
Example: Suppose the goal of the content is to inform the audience about the importance of a healthy lifestyle. In that case, the structure and outline of the content should include subtopics such as nutrition, exercise, stress management, and sleep.
List the Resources
Resources are an essential component of a content brief. It is crucial to specify the resources needed to create the content. Resources include anything that the content writer needs to successfully complete the project.
This can range from research materials, case studies, statistics, images, videos, or any other type of media. Or competitor articles. By specifying the resources, the content creator can plan and allocate sufficient time to organize them and extract the right information.
When creating product pages or other landing pages, or infographics, it’s useful to indicate a design mockup or at least similar examples.
Additionally, this helps to avoid unnecessary delays and reduces the risk of missing essential data.
Example: Suppose the content is about the benefits of a plant-based diet. The resources that need to be reviewed may include scientific studies, books, and online articles from authoritative sources on the topic.
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Determine the Call to Action (CTA) That Will Be included in the Content
A call to action (CTA) is another important component of a content brief. The CTA informs the reader of what action they should take after engaging with the content.
For example, a CTA could be encouraging the reader to subscribe to a newsletter, purchase a product or service, or schedule a consultation.
By including a CTA in the content brief, content creators ensure that their content has a clear and specific purpose that aligns with the brand’s overall marketing strategy. Moreover, a well-crafted CTA can help improve conversions.
Example: Suppose the call to action for the content is to sign up for a free trial of a meal planning service. The content should include a link to the trial sign-up page and clear instructions on how to sign up.
Establish the Deadlines
Deadlines are the final essential component of a content brief. A deadline refers to the date and time when the content must be completed and delivered. Including deadlines in a content brief is vital as it helps to keep the project on track and within the specified timeline.
By specifying a deadline, content creators have a clear understanding of when the project should be completed, allowing them to manage their time effectively. Additionally, deadlines ensure that all stakeholders involved in the project are aware of the delivery date, minimizing the risk of delays and missed opportunities.
It is essential to consider each component of a content brief to create effective content. Neglecting any of the essential components can result in content that fails to meet its objectives.
For example, if a CTA is not specified in the brief, the content may lack direction, and the audience may not know what action to take after consuming the content.
Similarly, if resources are not adequately indicated, the content may be incomplete or lacking vital information. Finally, failing to set a deadline for content delivery can lead to delays, missed opportunities, and unhappy clients.
Now, you have heard for sure that content briefs can be generated by AI-driven tools. There are plenty out there. In my experience, none of them delivers great results, but help speed up the process and reduce the time needed for creating a solid content brief.
Key Differences Between a Manual Content Brief and an AI-Generated Content Brief
Manual briefs rely on human input and creativity to develop customized briefs, while AI-generated briefs use algorithms and data analysis to develop a brief based on predetermined criteria.
The manual approach offers greater flexibility and adaptability to changing project needs, while AI-generated briefs may be more rigid and difficult to modify.
Manual briefs allow for more nuanced messaging and tone, while AI-generated briefs rely more heavily on keyword optimization and data analysis.
Even though they are not as highly qualitative as manual briefs, AI-generated briefs can be developed more efficiently and are useful when producing content at scale. Executing them manually requires more time and resources to develop due to the need for human input.
Manual briefs are better suited for complex projects that require human expertise and creativity, while AI-generated briefs may be more suitable for standardized or routine content creation tasks.
Finally
Creating a content brief doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By breaking it down into manageable steps, and focusing on your target audience and marketing goals, you can create a clear and concise brief that will help you achieve your marketing objectives. So go ahead, give it a try, and don’t forget to celebrate your successes along the way!
71% of US businesses use Instagram, 90% of top brands included Instagram in their marketing strategy, and 25 million accounts belong to businesses.
Instagram has 89 million monthly active users only in the US and 80% of users outside the US, which means a global penetration and ad revenue. It is the social network most preferred by teenagers, 72% of them use this platform every single day.
And what’s even more interesting for businesses 72% of users actually bought a product they noticed on Instagram.
Instagrammers spend on average 53 minutes a day on the Android Instagram app, according to Instagram. Over 4,2 billion posts receive “likes” daily, and 75% of users act after visiting a post (for example visiting a site).
In terms of engagement, Instagram surpasses all other social platforms with the best interaction rate situated at 2,2% per follower.
Engagement on Instagram is superior to that of Facebook posts, according to a BuzzSumo study.
Businesses are rapidly catching the trend and paying attention to Instagram, 2 million advertisers are present on Instagram. And 80% of Instagrammers follow at least one business account.
Rough conclusion:
Instagram is a leading social network that you cannot afford to skip. Nowadays it is one of the best if not the best social platform for brands to engage with their audience. It is a not to be missed opportunity for businesses to present themselves in front of a more engaged and targeted audience while using slimmer budgets.
Instagram is primarily a visual platform, photo-centric and lately video-centric. Instagrammers have the possibility to post images, videos, and Instagram stories, and record live videos. And before deciding to use Instagram as a marketing platform for your business, you need to take into consideration several Instagram best practices.
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Instagram Best Practices: Your Profile on Instagram Has to Be Optimized
If we think at the fact that while searching for brands users are preferring Instagram face to Google, results that your Instagram profile and feed become paramount.
You have some fractions of seconds to make the best impression possible, consequently, do your best to convince visitors you deserve to be “followed”.
First of all, it’s a no-brainer to repeat the fact that you should convert your account to an Instagram business account. This way you will get access to Instagram insights, promotion for posts, and ways to connect easier with your audience like the “Contact” button.
A great Instagram profile should have:
An optimized bio
Your bio is your chance to clearly explain what your business does, how you help your clients, and why you stand out on a certain topic. This is the element that will decide if a viewer will become a follower.
Your name should be your business name if possible consistent on all the platforms you are present on.
Insert keywords to target your audience and facilitate the users’ understanding concerning your activity and your offer. Help them establish if you are relevant to them and if they want to engage with your content.
With Instagram allowing only one link, the one in your bio, you have to maximize its usage. In general, businesses use this link to send traffic to their website or to a specific landing page. Ensure you have a landing page optimized for mobile since Instagram is in majority a mobile platform and its users use it mainly on mobile.
Creating a branded hashtag for your business, it’s a great way to increase engagement. Mainly while promoting campaigns like contests or user-generated content.
Another element that impacts heavily on the engagement you can drive to your profile is using a call-to-action. Insert a relevant call-to-action and tell your followers either to subscribe to your list, to shop on your feed, or to visit your website or your landing page.
Foundr bio
An optimized profile
An attractive, aesthetic, and good-looking feed plays a major role in enticing more followers and increasing engagement. So, if you want to find visitors, attract them to your profile, and convert them into leads and customers, you need to invest some effort to build a nice feed.
The overall aesthetics of your profile is important, the attractiveness and the first impression of your feed will decide how fast you grow your following on Instagram. Thus, pay attention to it.
Be consistent with your editing style to ensure a natural flow of the whole profile. Use just a few filters, not all of them, if you prefer a certain style like bright colors, or fade tones stick to your choice for the whole profile.
If you plan to use user-generated content, again be consistent and curate it to fit with the line and design of your profile. Here is an example of aesthetic feed:
Optimized posts
Having a visually appealing feed is crucial, but you must also optimize your posts. On Instagram, you can post photos (the most common form of post), carousel posts, reels, and videos, which are a powerful driver of engagement. If you want to optimize your posts on Instagram, this deserves a look to enhance your video editing experience.
Instagram Is Evolving
Instagram strives to become a platform that supports businesses in their endeavors to attract and interact with clients, thus their top priority is Instagram for business because this way they can monetize better their platform.
Logic!
Last year, were launched plenty of new features to help businesses: new advertising types, new partnership tools, and capacities to increase traffic and sales.
Since the platform is continuously changing you need to stay informed on the new changes and tools that are released and how you can profit from them for your business.
To see positive returns on investment from Instagram you have to know the platform, your audience, and how you can use it best to achieve your goals.
The New Instagram Algorithm – New Instagram Best Practices
Recently you may have noticed a decrease in engagement registered by your Instagram feed. It’s because of changes in the Instagram algorithm.
This algorithm is the one that decides what you see in your feed and in which order. For businesses, this is very important as they are interested to make their content seen by as many users as possible. The algorithm uses a set of criteria to decide how many users will view a certain post, and these criteria include the number of “likes”, the number of “comments”, etc. The more the better and more users will see your post.
As a consequence to be successful on Instagram, you need to optimize the Instagram algorithm.
Engagement on Instagram is very important. The number of likes, views, comments, and shares impacts greatly the number of users that will see that post. Hence, you need to optimize your posts to have the highest engagement rate possible. Besides engagement as a quantitative measure, sometimes is also important the interval of time needed to receive that engagement, and how fast a post receives engagement.
Another important detail is scheduling Instagram posts when your audience is most active. This way you increase your chances of receiving higher engagement faster.
Dwelling time gains momentum, and the length of time spent on certain posts counts in the Instagram algorithm. Together with great photos, you should have exciting captions that retain longer the attention of a visitor.
Favorite accounts, those that your audience visits, likes, and comments on regularly will be privileged, and more content belonging to favorite accounts will appear on her feed. Your audience will see more content from the category she engages with, likes, and comments.
New content is always preferred by Instagram’s algorithm, so recently published content will appear more frequently in feeds.
Instagram Best Practices: Using Instagram Stories, Carousel, Reels, and Instagram Live
Instagram Stories
If 2017 was the year of Instagram stories, 2018 will be the year of their further proliferation.
Instagram stories are the expression of the video content trends translated in Instagram terms. Because video is on the verge of great expansion, it’s natural that features like Instagram Stories will gain in popularity. Capabilities like clickable links or geo-stickers are meant to support this evolution.
The most important aspects of Instagram Stories that businesses can profit from are:
– Stories Links – today it’s possible for all accounts having more than 10,000 followers to insert links in their Instagram Stories. This is most helpful for driving traffic from Instagram to your site
– Stories Highlights – their major plus is that they exist on your account forever until you decide to delete them, in comparison with common Stories that are live for about 24h. Instagram Stories Highlights will populate the center of your profile, below your bio, and above your feed. They are a major strength for businesses as they allow them to expose the content that their users should view first. Instagram Stories Highlights can help creatively market your business and become a great traffic driver and followers magnet.
Some ways that Instagram Stories can be used for business are:
· For the promotion of your products/services
· For gathering feedback from your community
· To strengthen engagement among your followers
Instagram Stories
Instagram Carousel is a new feature and creative way to attract attention. Can be used with high efficiency for:
· launching new products
· series of photos of different events, conferences, workshops
· showing progress, before and after sessions for product usage, programs, etc.
Instagram LIVE
If Instagram Stories are a success, Instagram Life is the raising star. A Later survey confirmed that about 55% of businesses surveyed were planning to use the “live” feature this year.
Even if going “live” is not exactly very comfortable for businesses in general, this feature is a great tool to drive engagement and reach new followers.
Instagram Life can be used in various ways:
– To launch new products/services or to promote them
– Host webinars, workshops, and tutorials to encourage participants to sign up for your mailing list
– Organize promotional sales or various discount campaigns exclusive to Instagram
Instagram Influencer Marketing will be a $3,8 billion industry in 2021 and has been demonstrated to be a highly effective and less expensive way to drive business growth.
Why are influencers successful in driving results? Because they dispose of a well-targeted following who trusts them.
On Instagram using influencers is an effective way to increase awareness and boost sales. Influencers act as trusted middlemen, introducing and recommending your business to their followers.
If you are on a tight budget, consider using micro-influencers. These are accounts with smaller followings, generally between 1000 and 100,000 followers, but they are more accessible and also enjoy high levels of trust from their followers. In some cases, micro-influencers have better engagement rates than larger influencers, and you might be more successful using more posts on a micro-influencer than on a prominent influencer within the same budget.
Identifying the right influencers or micro-influencers to help you reach your Instagram goals can be difficult. But if you define clear goals and consider the best criteria for selecting the influencers to work with, things are much simpler.
When choosing an influencer consider the criteria such as:
Engagement on Influencer’s account. This is a key metric, as the higher the engagement rate, the more attention followers pay to the influencer’s content and act on his advice. Target engagement rates of 2-3% and higher rates of 4-6% are even better and those posts that surpass 10% are judged as “viral”.
Influencer’s target audience. You need to choose influencers that have a similar audience to your target audience. If you are a kitchen appliance brand you will want to partner with influencers like chefs, cooks, and mom bloggers in the cooking area. So, you can get your products in front of a larger following that could be interested in them.
Followers number. This has relative importance if we take into consideration that engagement rates tend to decrease as the number of followers expands. The sine qua non condition is to have the same target audience.
Costs. You will have a budget for this type of expense that you have to fit it. So, this is an important detail. A common practice on Instagram is to offer your products/services in exchange for sponsored posts.
Also, in the Instagram world in your relationships with influencers, you can use the “share for share” (S4S). This is one of the best ways to reach new audiences and increase your following. Getting shouted out by influencers will have a tremendous impact on your account. In order to obtain a share-for-share deal you have to exchange valuable content with the target influencer.
Finally, everything reduces to providing valuable content.
Another way to leverage your network of influencers to promote your business is through a simultaneous social media blast called thunderclap. In essence, this means establishing a certain time when you and your target influencers will promote in the same time your business/products/services. This is a very good method to reach the most extended audience possible.
Instagram Best Practices: Advertising on Instagram
Instagram ads are another tool for expanding your reach, increasing your following, and boosting engagement on your posts.
As organic reach on Instagram is on a downward slope, it may be necessary to invest in ad campaigns to reach your goals. The easiest way to use paid ads on Instagram is to use boosted posts. It’s as simple as clicking on the “promote” button. And Instagram will take charge of “pulling” a relevant audience for your post.
More businesses are considering using paid ads on Instagram. However, you need some expertise to see good results from your Instagram ads campaigns.
This is one of the most important ways that drive income for businesses. Instagram is used as a modality to capture leads that will further convert to clients. You attract new leads through your posts combined with powerful calls-to-action which invite your visitors or followers to click on your bio link.
It is wise to insert a call to action every 20 or 30 posts so as not to become too pushy and drive away your followers.
Affiliate Marketing
Another way to monetize your Instagram account for business is to promote other businesses’ products and services via affiliate marketing and earn a commission. Explore the best affiliate programs and join the ones that align with your niche and audience.
Focus only on a couple of products and promote only products that you tried and really liked. Finally, it’s all about providing value to your audience. If your audience loves the products you promote, your revenues through affiliate marketing will skyrocket.
Sponsorships
If you have a decent following, you can monetize it via sponsorships. Sponsorships are another manner to earn income on Instagram.
Instagrammers can work with other brands that sponsor their content. Sponsorships can amount to hundreds or thousands of dollars for one single post or even more.
Be consistent with your posting schedule, your content type, and your general feel if you want to attract sponsorships. And also act proactively and approach the brands you would like to work with, it might materialize in a nice income stream.
Advertising
Another valuable way to drive revenue is through advertising. Meaning is paid by complementary businesses to feature their brand in front of your audience. This happens via caption and, of course, a call to action.
All you read above are relevant tactics and best practices for Instagram that can help you use this social channel to increase brand awareness, and drive traffic, leads, and customers for your products and services. Just keep in mind to always provide value and simplify your audience’s endeavors.
An effective website will serve as your digital outlet and online business card. Consequently, you need to know what the best content management systems are.
This is basically the venue that will leverage all your other content marketing channels.
The platform that you use must therefore be flexible enough to keep evolving with the changing times in order for your content to offer solutions at the right time and to the right people.
When it comes to the best CMS there’s no one-size-fits-all, you only need to identify the one that offers all the features that you need to build a successful website.
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What Should You Look For in the Best Content Management Systems of 2023?
All blogging platforms available come with different learning curves.
If you are just starting, as a beginner with zero technical background, you’ll want a straightforward content management system. As you grow with your blog you may want to add more features or customizations to maximize its effectiveness.
Blogging platforms can be classified into two categories:
i. Content Management Systems (CMS)
This is software hosted on a server and requires a connection to a domain name that you have to buy. CMSs offer endless possibilities although they come at a cost. They allow you all the freedom to customize as you please, especially if you know your way around deep technical stuff.
ii. Blog Publishing Services
This is a platform where you sign up to create your blog; meaning you do not need a server. Plus, you use the sub-domain of the hosting platform. Obviously, it is easier to use particularly if you’re not coding savvy and when you want to spend almost zero to set it up.
With that said, the best blogging platforms in 2023 will include a perfect mix of both categories mentioned above together with the following basic features:
a. Text editing functions – A good platform must offer a wide variety of inbuilt editing options. For instance, it should offer an auto-save function, a preview function, or even a basic grammar editor.
b. Customization – A great platform must offer you themes and templates you can play around with to give your blog the look you desire. Some platforms offer a variety of templates for free while others offer them at a premium rate. Others will allow you to create from zero if you don’t like any of the offered themes. So, what you pick will depend on your needs and your technical know-how.
c. Comments function – an engaging comments section is what helps grow your blog. This feature must therefore be enabled and be as interactive as possible.
d. Scalability – As your blog grows; you want a platform that will handle all the content without slowing it down, so you can keep growing without limiting your potential.
e. SEO tools and features – You obviously want traffic to your blog. Optimizing your content for search is therefore of absolute importance. So, you need a platform with inbuilt optimization tools to help you optimize your content. Some platforms offer you SEO suggestions as you type, this is what you need. Alternatively, if your ideal platform does not offer this tool, you can install third-party tools or plug-ins. If all this is not available, use the SEO best practices skills you have to create your content.
f. User-friendly – When starting, you really need a simple-to-learn and use platform, whether you’re a developer or a rookie. Thus, pick a platform that’s less complicated but gets the work done and gets going.
Other things to consider when picking the best blogging platform include the purpose of your business, your goals, as well as your needs. Your niche is another key element that you want to consider. For instance, if you prefer visual content, then you want to consider platforms that support multi-media content. If you prefer social, then you want to consider a platform that supports social media and so on.
Without further ado, here are some of the best content management systems for 2023 in detail:
The 2023 statistics show that WordPress powers 39.6% of the internet. Launched way back in 2005, this is by far the most flexible content management system that has evolved into a multi-purpose CMS with loads of features and themes. It offers both free and premium services. Basic blog hosting is free while additional features such as extra storage or a custom domain name come at a fee.
The flexibility mentioned above comes to play when you have to configure your blog according to your taste. This includes picking a theme from the hundreds offered, the fonts, the plug-ins, and so on. For a newbie or someone that’s not a developer, this may take quite some time to get done. However, it pays off when you get used to it.
WordPress prides itself on a thriving community that offers quick solutions to any challenges you may experience and offers expert support when that’s what you need. They also take care of all your security issues and accept credit card payments through an available plug-in. It’s therefore a great platform with unlimited potential for growth.
The price starts at $4 monthly for personal plans but there is a free version for non-commercial blogging. The free-for-life plan includes a subdomain, community support, jetpack essential services, and dozens of free themes.
Launched in 2006, Wix was initially meant for building websites, but it has a blogging segment. It’s one of the most popular content management systems because of one simple reason: it’s incredibly easy to use. The easy drag-and-drop tools enable you to add items to your blog or website.
So, for beginners or non-techies, this is one of the best CMS. If you’re a developer, you have the option of starting from scratch and building your customized blog or website.
It has over 500 templates that are categorized into hobbies such as crafts, e-commerce section, and personal section. Another unique feature of Wix is that the blog you create on this platform is supported on mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones. Thus, your readers can easily access your content on the go.
They propose a wide selection of templates and designs, you’re able to add your own captions and links to images, and you’re able to insert videos from either Vimeo or YouTube and it’s also possible to personalize your image galleries.
When it comes to editing, as said above, Wix is great on mobile, so, you can actually update your blog from your mobile device. Isn’t that just great?
You can monetize Wix by adding custom ads via HTML elements, however, on the free plan, branded Wix elements will be shown too. In terms of support, they have a strong customer support system that helps you out whenever you have an issue, via phone or email.
Both premium and free plans allow you to launch a blog from your Wix site. However, if you want to use your own domain name, you’ll be required to sign up for a combo plan for $13 per month. And this will spare you from all the Wix ads.
Pros
· They offer dozens of templates that you can customize.
· They offer built-in stock of free videos and photos.
· They allow you to build your site from scratch or use templates, it’s your choice.
· It’s very easy to set up using the drag-and-drop tools.
Cons
· The free plan is quite limited and shows Wix ads on your site.
· Third-party apps are limited.
· It’s difficult to change a template once you choose.
· The e-commerce tools are only limited to the premium plans and even then; they’re still a little limited.
· In comparison with other content management systems, the features they offer are rather limited.
Wix pricing of the premium plan starts at $8.50 per month, but you can add a custom domain for $4.50 per month.
It’s best for professional bloggers and also for business-centered blogs.
This platform is a community of great writers, journalists, and bloggers among other experts and it continues to grow in popularity, especially because of the few features that make it an easy-to-use platform. For instance, its sign-up process is just like that one of a social media platform. You just create an account and get started there and then.
The first thing that you might notice with this platform is that you can’t have your own domain. Instead, you’ll have a URL like https://medium.com@youraccountname.
Launched in 2012 by Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, Medium is mainly focused on your content rather than your brand. Meaning you can create content about your brand and customize your layout by adding your logo, your headers, or brand colors. In terms of personalizing your account and content that’s about all.
As a publisher, this platform is absolutely free of charge and it will help you reach like-minded people who take your content seriously without being distracted by ads because Medium has no ads.
With that said, readers do pay a subscription fee to be able to get customized top-rated content. They’re charged $50 per year, so when you get many readers applauding your work, you get paid and this money is from the readers themselves.
Medium has a partner program and once you sign up for it, your publications are reviewed by Medium’s editors if your content is stellar, they recommend it to subscribed members and that’s how you get a chance to earn money.
When it comes to editing your content, it offers a pretty clean drag-and-drop easy-to-use tool. Your work and any changes you may make are automatically saved and as you proceed typing, you get to see how your completed post will appear to your readers.
It truly is the minimalist of all blogging platforms when it comes to design, it’s a size that fits every average blogger. They want you to focus on the written words with zero distraction.
Who should best use Medium? Anyone who loves words and has a flair for them. This is the best free blogging platform out there.
Pros
· You have over 60 million word lovers waiting to read your content
· Offers a brilliant typography with a completely professional look
· Business friendly
· Monetization option with the Partner Program
Cons
· Almost no customization, all blogs have the same look
· You can’t link to a Google account to get Analytics.
This old spot is one of the best blogging platforms out there. It’s a free blogging platform simple enough that anyone can use it with ease. If you already have an existing Google account, then you already have a Blogger account that comes with a domain name, if you want your custom domain name, you have this option available.
It offers a wide range of templates that can be personalized. And since it belongs to Google, it integrates very easily with other Google tools such as Google Analytics, Google AdSense which will enable you to monetize your blog by displaying relevant ads on your pages.
Plus, it allows you to edit HTML, and add images and widgets to your blog, something that’s not very popular with other blogging platforms.
With this said, it can be a little limiting as far as basic tools are concerned: it doesn’t allow you to add new features and you’re restricted with few design options. It’s pretty retro. Another limiting factor about Blogger is that it caps the number of characters you can use (does Twitter come to mind? Guess who founded both?)
If for any reason you get stuck and need help, you won’t get much help here. They have no support system. And since Google is known to kill their products, it means your blog will be vulnerable to whatever decisions they wake up to.
Pros
· It’s absolutely free and user friendly
· Does the hosting and maintenance
· Offers templates you can pick from
· Easily integrates with other Google tools and products
· It has a good anti-spam tool
Cons
· Doesn’t offer many blogging tools or designs
· Integration with third-party apps is nil
5. CMS Hub
This is one of the best content management systems in 2023 particularly because of its full integration with HubSpot’s marketing tools, a built-in CRM, and other service tools. It allows you to customize your blog as you wish. If you don’t want to use the built-in themes, you can create your own.
Here you get to use the blog editor coupled with the built-in SEO tools to create optimized content with numerous interactive elements available and gives you the option of previewing your post before publishing. Another unique feature of this platform is that you can create content in different languages in order to reach a global audience. How cool is that?
As this is a commerce-centric platform, it allows you to connect your blog to your social media accounts, and therefore it is very easy to promote your blog through automatic sharing. You can analyze your blog’s performance via built-in analytics and this can go a long way in boosting your performance and results.
HubSpot’s CMS allows you to add comments, edit or simply collaborate in the composer mode with other writers on the same content and see what changes have been made and by whom.
Pros
· Offers multi-lingual options
· Offers built-in SEO tools
· You can integrate all your marketing and sales activities with the CRM tools
· You can keep track of all your interactions with the potential audiences through all touch points like social media, emails, etc.
Cons
· It’s still relatively new so some functions may not offer depth, but they’re constantly improving.
This is a website and blog builder created by HostGator. It’s another pretender to the best content management systems top and is pretty easy to use. It has an intuitive drag-and-drop tool and templates that you can use to build your blog, business site, or online store.
Gator provides a one-stop shop for your blogging needs including hosting and is quite flexible in terms of customization of your blog. Their templates are split into sections such as beauty and fashion, business, music and entertainment, consultancy, etc. and this makes it very easy for you when picking the adequate template.
As features, they offer all the basic features required in a CMS plus some extra bonuses. For instance, you can get security certificates, web analytics, a domain name, and social media integration. Concerning the text, you can resize it, and switch colors or fonts easily. You can add images, videos or social media posts easily.
Gator offers great support that’s available 24/7 whether via phone, chat, or email.
Pros
· It’s seamless to set up and use
· It has social media integration
· It’s affordable in comparison to what it offers
· It checks your security, backup as well as performance
· You can easily add the e-commerce functionality
Cons
· They have no free version but they have a money-back guarantee
· They have limited features and extensions
· The premium plan is the only one that offers e-commerce features.
Gator offers 2 different pricing plans, the cheapest starts at $3.84 per month and here you get free hosting and domain among other features that will get you started. The premium starts at $5.99 and offers everything in the cheapest plan plus priority customer support. And the eCommerce plan includes everything for $9.22.
Gator is best for beginners and those that prefer an all-in-one blog hosting solution.
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If you’re a creative, artist or designer then this platform is for you! It offers a wide variety of posh award-winning templates and features that you can use without having to know to code. Plus, it integrates with Unsplash, Getty Images, and Google AMP. It’s strong on image-rich content as you can tell and these templates are fully customizable and mobile-optimized. After you’ve created your blog pages, you can take advantage of the SEO tools to ensure your content is optimized.
Squarespace integrates with social media. Therefore, after publishing your content you can easily share and promote it. They also have built-in analytics tools to enable traffic tracking, what your readers or visitors are searching for and how your content is performing in general. Other features include the ability to receive comments, the RSS feed provision and if your blog is intended for commerce, it has a category for that too. It supports audio files and newsletter sign-up forms.
With all this greatness, this platform is not the easiest to learn especially for beginners. It also may require you to upgrade to the business plan in order to get more editing options.
The SEO is not very straight forward but they have a detailed SEO guide to help you find your way around. You can’t install any additional modules or plugins and has no auto-save feature. Finally, the use of available plugins and themes may require some coding skills and therefore not the easiest for everybody.
Pros
· You get hosting and domain solutions
· Built-in security solutions
· Fantastic professional designs to pick from
· Ecommerce option
· Round the clock customer support
Cons
· A steep learning curve
· Can only use the platform features
· Limited third-party integration
· Limited number of contributors and pages on the personal plan
The pricing ranges between two plans, the personal plan that starts at $16 per month and the business plan that starts at $26 per month. You get unlimited storage and bandwidth on both, but with the business plan, there are extra features for marketing and the ability to create custom designs and an online store.
Squarespace is a great content management system for creative bloggers and professionals. It’s also ideal for business and portfolio blogs.
This platform is a complete content management system and is very popular with enterprise blogs and websites because of its superior performance. You can organize your blog and webpages within this platform and enjoy all the built-in editing features and content creation functions available. However, it doesn’t host, and this means you get hosted elsewhere.
Another aspect of Drupal is that it’s a little more technical and therefore may not be the best platform for beginners, but as a developer, it’s a great place to shine. So, if you are going to use it but have no technical skills then you may be required to invest in a professional developer in order to get started.
Drupal is even more powerful than WordPress and it’s ridiculously secure. This is one of the reasons it’s one of the best blogging platforms. It’s an extremely flexible open-source content management system and ideal for a large and complex blog. It offers some exceptional features and modules compared to other platforms.
It offers a very wide selection of page templates, content types, views, and blocks to help you create and manage your different types of content and this is particularly a much-needed solution for advanced bloggers running an enterprise that needs self-hosted solutions.
Pros
· It’s an excellent platform for building advanced and feature-rich blogs
· You can easily and seamlessly scale up your blog to a website due to its robust architecture
· You get access to a myriad of free features and modules as well as enterprise-level performance and security
· You get a variety of free templates and plugins to customize your blog
· Flexibility on the content type you can create plus an access control built-in system to manage your permissions
· Has a multilingual site support
Cons
· Not easy to use if you don’t have the technical expertise
As for Drupal’ pricing, it’s among the best free content management systems because it’s an open-source kind of platform.
It’s perfect for technical experts or developers, designers, and anyone else willing to learn some new skills.
Joomla! is a content management system that has been around for over a decade and is one of the most popular CMSs on the internet. It has built-in content management features that allow you to do multiple things from one dashboard. For instance, you can manage numerous users, and create custom content types in multiple languages all under the same umbrella.
It has powerful built-in functionality that makes it very easy for you to maintain your blog especially when you update it. Joomla, however, has a steep learning curve and needs a little more time to set it up. Even though it offers a limited number of extensions and themes, they are extra effective. For example, it offers a better drag-and-drop editor and enables star ratings on your content and it automatically publishes posts to your social media sites using these extensions.
Joomla! has a very active community and therefore getting support is an easy matter, whether through tutorials or forums. But it may be hard to find expert support to handle your customization issues.
Pros
· Compared to WordPress, it offers more built-in features
· It has a seamless update process that is super-efficient in giving you an easy maintenance time
· It’s not too difficult to set up
· They have ensured your problems get solutions through their thoroughly detailed support page
Cons
· Has limited extensions and themes.
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This is another best platform for blogging simply because of how straightforward it is to use. It comes with a wide range of easy-to-use tools and features including the popular drag-and-drop option convenient for beginners. It’s a popular platform for blogging, templates, hosting as well as web building and this is one of the reasons most business-oriented users prefer it instead of managing them separately.
Some great functionalities that Weebly offers include the ability to create complex layouts by adding image galleries or forms, additional sub-levels to your navigation buttons, and templates that are optimized for mobile (this saves you the trouble of additional editing for mobile publishing).
So, for the set-up, you can start with the free plan where you can first learn the ropes before getting on the paid plans. If you’re a developer hoping to tweak some things here and there, Weebly doesn’t make this easy at all because they seem focused on people who want to create a quick blog to use and update without doing the extra.
But if you’re creating a hobby or personal blog, you can get on the $6 per month Personal plan that has similar features to the free plan but with the chance to connect your custom domain for a more professional look. The next pricing plan is the Professional plan which goes for $12 per month. It proposes unlimited storage, password-protected pages, and a free domain. It’s a great plan when you want to offer exclusivity to your readers.
But whichever plan you go with, you’ll still be able to build your website and add a blog without coding as everything technical is easily and quickly taken care of by Weebly.
Experts have suggested that if you want to build your blog you should avoid the free and professional plans as they’re least tailored to fit a blogger’s needs.
With this said Weebly’s most highlighted features include detailed analytics on how your blog is performing, a great comments section, an archive, and social bookmarking to help your content go viral. It also enables scheduled publishing and basic SEO solutions.
Pros
· A straightforward drag-and-drop tool
· Mobile apps
· SEO features
· Integrates with Google Analytics
Cons
· Few features are integrated
· Third-party features are limited
· Exporting sites is complex
· Free plan carries Weebly subdomain and branding
Weebly is perfect for beginners as you’ve seen; you don’t need much technical expertise. It’s also great for websites that need blogging abilities and portfolio blogs.
If all you want is a simple yet versatile platform to launch your blog on, then look no further than Ghost. It’s ideal when you’re not into e-commerce. This minimalist blogging platform was founded by a former WordPress developer back in 2013.
Ghost offers neat and smooth editing and publishing without all the muddle of add-ons. It’s an open-source platform made out of JavaScript and may need some coding skills to set it up. Because it’s an open-source platform, you’re free to customize it and give your ideal kind of look and even add a custom code to your blog for ads.
While writing your content it enables you to preview it live and edit it as you go. It has a very simplified user interface that limits you on the number of pre-designed plugins and themes you can use. The self-hosted plan is free but has a steep learning curve and therefore not ideal for everyone. It will require you to download the software to your server and then get your own domain.
The basic plan offered at $29 a month includes a blog, a CDN, SSL encryption, and about 50k page views monthly. The Standard plan costs $79 per month and includes up to half a million page views monthly, extra resources, and priority support. The highest is the Business plan which costs $199 per month. For this, it will allow a million page views per month, almost zero downtime, and a subdirectory.
The limiting factors of Ghost include the difficulty in installation and the fact that you require web hosting to run a blog.
Pros
· It’s blog-centric
· Has a neat and de-congested intuitive UI
· Extremely fast since is written in JavaScript
· The hosted version requires zero setup
· Live preview of your posts
· SEO and social media powered
· Mobile page functionality
Cons
· Customizing the apps is no walk in the park
· The UI is too simplified therefore you’re limited in options
· Limited themes to play around with
· Requires expert knowledge if you’re to install it yourself.
Ghost is one of the best CMSs for serious publishers and bloggers requiring complex technical solutions or a budding online presence.
With an excellent easy-to-use UI for both expert and beginner bloggers, it’s no wonder Typepad has made it to this list of the best platforms for blogging. It comes with great flexibility including the possibility of publishing from email, mobile, or your web browser. It has a Theme Builder that enables you to create custom designs as well as an option for creating your own templates or theme modification with a customized CSS even though the Theme Builder is not too intuitive.
These designs are divided into layouts and themes, so you must first pick a template that will be configured to various layouts, and the number of these layouts is going to depend on the chosen template. The available templates are meager and repetitive. The widgets are also limited but can be acquired through a third party.
It’s integrated with Google Analytics with its own affiliate plan. Typepad is fully hosted and provides a rich variety of themes and plugins to pick from to personalize your blog.
One of Typepad’s highlights concerns the management tools. Its dashboard for instance has a sidebar with links to its key features including the robust statistics tracker that gives you a breakdown of your blog referrals and views to help better target your audience. It includes tools for comments moderation allowing comments block with certain words or phrases, etc. Another great thing is the built-in SEO tools that are pretty easy to use.
Its downside is that they do all the blog hosting and therefore you can’t be hosted elsewhere. As an expert, you may also not be able to make any edits as it’s centered on bloggers that may not have these skills.
Typepad offers several plans depending on user requirements.
It starts with the Plus Plan which costs $8.95 per month, allowing for unlimited storage, design templates, personal support, and domain mapping. The next plan is the Unlimited Plan goes for $14.95 per month – it offers you everything in the Plus Plan, a bonus customizable design, and the possibility to have unlimited blogs. The next tier has the Premium Plan at the cost of $29.95 per month and includes what’s offered on the other two plans plus around-the-clock support. The last plan is the Enterprise Plan which goes for $49.95 per month. You also get a free 14-day trial with all the plans.
Pros
· Has social media integration
· Supports live video and audio podcasts
· A versatile dashboard
· Integrates with Google
· Has monetization features
Cons
· Only 14-day trial, no free plan.
· Limited the number of blogs you can publish
· Limited widgets.
Typepad is best for professional bloggers, influencers, and large enterprises.
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This is one of the best free blogging platforms because it’s a hybrid micro-blogging platform that carries all the social networking qualities including follow, re-blog, reply, etc. Here you get to publish brief posts that may contain audio, images or videos, links, slideshows, or texts that are not as long as the regular old-fashioned blog posts but longer than Twitter’s 140 characters.
On this platform, users can republish your posts on their Tumble blog or even share them on Twitter. Publishing your content on Tumblr is quick and easy and absolutely free even though there are some paid templates offered. You don’t require bandwidth or storage limits when publishing, and you get a custom domain. The themes provided can be tweaked and customized and you have access to HTML codes that you can use to make any changes that you want.
This flexibility to customize is what makes Tumblr such a great place for those who like to express their creativity and stand out. For businesses, this is excellent because you will have your own domain, and in case you already have another registered domain, Tumblr can still host your site.
Some great publishing features offered are the ability to publish from your email, through texts or audio from your phone, post scheduling, bookmarks, and the ability to keep some posts or the entire blog private.
You can have guests publishing on your Tumble blog and have the possibility to view and approve before publishing. This collaboration makes working with partners or friends in the same industry quite easy and is best if you’re keen on engaging and fostering an online community.
Tumblr uses various functions to enable SEO and therefore doesn’t need much extra work on your part. It also doesn’t clutter your page with ads or logos because the user interface is clean and straightforward. Tumblr enables the use of third-party apps to add the extra functionality that you’re looking for.
This platform integrates seamlessly with social media such as Twitter and Facebook and allows publishing through these platforms as well. You can also keep track of your analytics related to any subscriptions you may get through your blog’s RSS feed, using Feedburner.
There are also a few things that can get you frustrated when using Tumblr: for instance, there’s a limit to the number of posts you can queue up, only 50 per day. You also can’t upload videos over 100MB and your audio tracks have to be in MP4 format. To add to this, if you violate any of their community guidelines they automatically suspend your account.
But overall, Tumblr remains one of the best free blogging platforms and continues to be a favorite of many because it’s an ideal platform for publishing multi-media content and allows great engagement with your followers.
Pros
· It’s free with a subdomain and allows you to connect to your custom domain name
· Extremely easy to set up and use
· Offers excellent social media integration
· A great place for quick blogs with rich media formats
Cons
· Limits on some features and has no room for expansion
This is a free site and is best suited for microbloggers.
Overall Takeaway
This list indicates what the best content management systems in 2023 can offer you, and depending on your blogging needs, they all offer amazing features that leave you spoilt for choice. For instance, if you’re looking for a flexible platform then you have WordPress if you’re creative and want a platform that helps you leverage on that then you have Squarespace.
If you have skills and a flair for words then Medium is your place of choice. If speed is your desire then get on board with the JavaScript-based Ghost. And if you don’t want to spend your money then there are many best free blogging platforms such as Tumblr. Whatever you want, one of these content management systems will offer you the solutions you need.
FAQs
How to choose the best CMS?
To choose the best CMS for you, you need first to establish some selection criteria. Such criteria may be cost, customizability, familiarity with the platform, flexibility, etc.
What is the most used content management system?
The most used content management system is WordPress, by about 40% of website owners.
What are the 3 different types of CMS?
The 3 types of CMS are open-source content management systems, custom content management systems, and commercial content management systems.
Which is the easiest CMS to use?
The easiest CMS to use is the one that you are most familiar with. Ones could say that WordPress is the easiest to use, as it’s the most popular and is the basis for a plethora of themes.
Which content management system is best?
The best content management system is the one that suits best your needs at a certain moment. There is no one-fits-all answer. It was a time when I considered Squarespace to be great, but things changed and now WordPress with a Divi Builder is my best option.
With over 756 million users in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn has outgrown itself as a website for job seekers and evolved into a social media platform that helps business professionals connect, grow their businesses, and even sell! It’s one of the most powerful platforms for business-to-business (B2B) marketers to advertise on and for small businesses to expand their reach. Thus, choosing the most appropriate LinkedIn marketing strategy for small businesses is relevant for the excellent spending of their limited resources.
LinkedIn marketing has become a growing source for businesses and brands to publish and share high-quality authoritative content.
With this expansive reach, you can make your content visible to users anywhere. But managing to fully leverage the resources of LinkedIn marketing for B2B requires a strategy. You need to approach LinkedIn business as a piece of multi-channel strategy with objectives and allocate appropriate resources while putting an emphasis on quality to be able to secure a significant advantage on this platform.
So, to be able to leverage all these benefits, here are the strategies that you must use:
LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses That Work
1. Create an Outstanding Business Profile
You must create a great first impression that’s going to drive traffic and reinforce your credibility. If you don’t have an account already, create one. If you have one, complete it fully. If you only have a personal account, then get to the next level and create a company profile. Here are a few main guidelines.
Profiles with great photos generate more views and matches and eventually better results. Use neutral backgrounds and soft lighting. Don’t use selfies or pictures where you’re in a group of people. While choosing outfits, consider background colors and pick the ones that match both your personality and your target roles. Keep it professional yet appealing enough for viewers to want to meet you.
b. Sound Approachable but Not Desperate
You may desperately be looking for a client or employment, but showing that you’re actively seeking these opportunities may not be a good thing. Human psychology always seeks to find what is in demand, so present yourself as someone or a brand that people want. It sounds like a cheat but it’s really about winning, and showing your value, not your needs.
Thus, use a first-person description of yourself and sound like someone clients or hiring managers would like to meet.
c. Use Keywords Skillfully and Make the Profile Readable
Your profile description must include the necessary keywords that match your target roles, use them artfully, and don’t overstuff them. Make your paragraphs short and easily digestible considering the fact that your viewers will use different screens or devices.
d. Highlight Your Accomplishments
You want the target audience to know the highlights of your business. Include anything that constitutes such information without seeming like you’re bragging. Just put it out in a way to show that you deliver great results.
e. Proofread and Proofread
Have you ever seen a renowned company with a typo in the title description and you cringed on their behalf? Yes, it’s easy even for the mighty to fail even by a punctuation error. But it’s more than just punctuation, the descriptions must be relevant to your activity.
Finally, avoid multiple entries and delete any irrelevant information from your company’s profile, such as social media accounts that are no longer in use.
Source: linkedin.com
Here is a step by step guide on how to create your LinkedIn business profile and page.
2. LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses: Define Your Audience and Goals
The second LinkedIn marketing strategy is identifying your goals and your audience. Peter Drucker said if you can’t measure it then you can’t improve it. What exactly do you want to achieve on LinkedIn and how do these goals tie in with your career, personal brand, or business?
So, the impetus is upon you to have a clear understanding of this in order to know the tactics, type of content, and manner in which you will pursue your LinkedIn marketing goals. Write down your objectives, specify how you can achieve them then track your progress.
With goals in place, the next thing is to identify who you want to appeal to be able to make relevant connections. Know their challenges and how you can help solve them. This is the only way you can create content that will resonate with them.
3. LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses: Create Helpful and Original Content
As you may know, LinkedIn is the social media for pros and experts, so you need to bring your A-game to play. One major purpose of being on LinkedIn is to establish your credibility and build your authority to boost your brand.
Creating valuable and relevant content is one sure way of accomplishing this while having in mind the goal and target audience identified above. So, in other words, your subject matter should resonate with your brand as well as your target network. It must address their pain points and other common challenges with a viable solution for them.
With this said, it’s always recommended that you also share relevant quality content created by other people, not just your own unique work time. Research has in fact found that you should try and strike a 40% balance in sharing other similar content on your LinkedIn page.
To make sure your LinkedIn content marketing stays in perspective, here are a few questions you can think about before creating your content:
Does it add value?
Does it help me portray myself as a thought leader?
Is it clear?
Does it solve their pain points?
Finally, it’s very important to be consistent with your content uploads. Create a schedule that you can stick to, without being very “spammy” or “salesy”.
4. Leverage on LinkedIn Groups
You could boost your LinkedIn business page by joining or creating your own group. This is a great way to build a buzz around your brand. LinkedIn has made it quite simple to do this, under the “interests” button on your homepage, click on groups then create a group, and finally proceed to fill it out.
With this done, you can get the word out to your target audience especially the thought leaders and influencers if possible. They work as great catalysts for your growth and over time you can build a sizeable community that will give leverage to your business.
Groups are a great place to have relevant conversations and this is a good way to keep your page active and engaged. Alternatively, you could discover new groups in your niche and request to follow them.
Groups help build new connections and create a nice environment to discuss relevant issues, share new ideas, or just learn new stuff. Here are a few more benefits of creating groups:
You become a thought leader especially if you back it up with stellar content.
It boosts connectivity especially when you bring like-minded people together
You develop personal networks so you can send weekly messages/updates.
5. Use LinkedIn’s Native Advertising to Sponsor Your Best Content
LinkedIn has a number of advertising options for marketers and one of the most popular options is LinkedIn Sponsored Content. This one allows you to distribute your content to professionals outside your visitors and followers.
For example, if you have content that has gained high engagement rates you can amplify the reach even further using this native advertising option. It’s interactive so this means likes, comments, and shares are there to help boost ad virality and engagement.
Another option is Direct Sponsored Content which is still a sponsored ad but does not appear on your company’s page because it’s created directly under the campaign manager. It’s specifically designed this way to be able to A/B test, personalize and improve your ads for optimal performance without cluttering your page.
It’s important to note that content here doesn’t only mean text format, rather it includes images, links, and videos too, so this content may appear on multiple locations including the newsfeed, the notifications page as well as the InMail, and the connections page. LinkedIn, in fact, favors native videos over links to external videos, this means you should upload your video file directly to the platform as opposed to just sharing a link to a video hosted elsewhere like let’s say YouTube.
Thus, you see you are spoilt with choices on how you may want to sponsor your best content. For best results, here are a few best practices for LinkedIn Advertising:
Know your target
Promote your best-performing content
Optimize your sponsored content
Have an effective bidding strategy
Link your ads to a post-click landing page
A/B test your campaigns
6. Promote Beyond LinkedIn
Yes, this is about LinkedIn marketing, but you still need to integrate your strategy beyond LinkedIn to gain substantial growth over time. LinkedIn allows several cross-promotion strategies to allow for this growth.
You can link your company’s page in your marketing communications, blogs, and email signatures as well. Another very simple way to cross-promote is to allow your readers to share your content at any point while they’re browsing through your website.
By adding a LinkedIn follow button on your landing page or through use of social media sharing buttons, you can gain greater outreach to a wider audience beyond your page.
7. Top LinkedIn Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses: Optimize for Search Engine Ranking
The world today is hyper-connected and the business world is highly competitive, so it’s crucial for any brand or business to reach its message to its target audience, and this is why SEO is very important. When done right and in combination with other marketing strategies, SEO can help your content get good rankings.
First page Google SERPs receive up to 95% of all web traffic, the lucky thing is that your LinkedIn page is already designed to be SEO friendly and all that’s left for you is to tailor your content to suit your audience to enhance your business’s chances of building referrals, generate leads and build traffic.
Use of relevant keywords, linking your company page to your website or blog, and sharing content, all lead to better SEO optimization.
8. Keep Up with LinkedIn Analytics and Changes
It’s easier to get through to people when you know what resonates with them. It’s even easier and better when you can segment them according to different needs and LinkedIn has made this easy through use of their LinkedIn Company Page analytics along with analytics for publishing on LinkedIn.
Both of these will help you with optimizing and monitoring your page. You can also leverage the LinkedIn Campaign Manager to track your campaign performance as well as conversions.
You can also take advantage of the LinkedIn Marketing Blog to keep up to date with any new changes and developments as they offer a curated selection specifically made to help you tweak your LinkedIn marketing.
Pro Tips on How to Boost Your LinkedIn Traffic
With millions of blogs producing more content than ever, the “if you build they’ll come” strategy no longer works and therefore you have to work a little bit smarter for your content and brand as a whole to cut through all the noise and arrive in front of your target audience.
These next pro tips will guide you on cutting through all the noise.
Content is king, create insatiable content that will keep them coming back for more.
Be active and consistent with your posts but don’t be spammy
Engage your audience and don’t fail to respond to their questions
Use rich media, i.e. video and images.
Create and share high-quality infographics in your niche
Engage influencers in your niche
Reach out to people who view your profile, they’re already interested, right?
Advertise and advertise.
LinkedIn Marketing Best Practices for Small Businesses
Create a strong and convincing LinkedIn landing page that’s streamlined with relevant information and that easily pushes forward the call to action.
Remember LinkedIn is the social media for pros and decision makers so be more about informing, offering solutions, educating, and more subtle about sales.
Always offer your audience only relevant content and address them directly, don’t be ambiguous with your offering.
Always present yourself as a brand to show professionalism and to create awareness. Include your company name in your offering too.
Including some rich media in your content, videos, and images will definitely get more clicks.
Conclusion
LinkedIn is so much more than just a digital resume, it’s the best free tool where execs and pros hang out. It’s a great platform where you can build useful connections with fellow professionals in your niche.
Thus, instead of letting your company’s profile collect dust, make use of the above LinkedIn marketing strategies to build intentional business connections. With the statistics shown above to prove its effectiveness, you only need to follow the strategies and all the tips and best practices and you’ll be on your way to a new business level.
Producing engaging, valuable, qualitative, and diverse content for your online business is an ever-challenging task. However, it is not enough if you aim to produce buzz among online users around the world. You must have in-depth knowledge of what engages your audience the most and what drives it away, which are the key performance areas of marketing activities in general and content strategy in particular. In other words, the relevant marketing and content strategy KPIs.
The key performance indicators will show you if your posts, articles, or videos are effective for your content marketing goals.
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Your Content Strategy Doesn’t Deliver the Expected Results?
Any marketing book that respects itself reveals that companies follow metrics to make sure their business goals are reached and to track their progress. They adjust their marketing activity according to the data registered over a month, a quarter, or a year.
Experts and specialists put metrics in categories such as:
According to the partition based on the sales funnel, there are:
· Top of the funnel (TOFU)
· Middle of the funnel (MOFU)
· Bottom of the funnel indicators (BOFU)
It is of utmost importance to take into consideration the signals conveyed by the metrics.
Why Is It So Important to Focus on Content Strategy KPIs?
It is a no-brainer mistake not to measure your efforts. You will end up investing money in a piece of information that your customers and readers are not interested in.
At first, it may seem difficult to quantify the impact of words and images. But, as you gain experience, you will find this analysis less daunting.
What Can You Include on Your Marketing and Content Strategy KPIs List? What Are the KPIs for Content Strategy?
There are many methods to establish the success of your online marketing strategy. Some of them are widely used while others are applied only by connoisseurs.
The metrics out there give you a picture of the number of people who consume and share your work. You also have the possibility to find out how it influences your sales and business. Even the team’s effectiveness is easy to assess.
To perform a correct analysis, establish what you want to track and then find your suitable key performance indicators for content management.
Most Useful Metrics for Measuring Content Marketing Performance. Source: Feldmancreative
Here are examples of the most used marketing metrics worth considering:
1. Content Strategy KPI: Unique Visitors to Your Website
This indicator provides information on how many users have accessed your site within a certain time frame. Most marketers go for the thirty-day window. It does not mean you must do the same.
You can check the daily or weekly visits. What matters is to identify the elements which have driven these individuals to your page.
2. Content Strategy KPI: Bounce Rates and Time Spent on the Website
It is one thing to generate traffic and another issue to retain your viewers’ attention. A high bounce rate indicates that you failed to fulfill the visitors’ expectations. It means that the clicking promise is not correlated with the texts and the images.
When people spend only a few seconds studying your work, it is an obvious sign you need to improve the approach.
Hundreds of visitors per day mean nothing unless they take a look at your offer or skim through your five thousand-word articles.
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3. Content Strategy KPIs: Exit Pages
These are the ones that visitors explore before dropping off from a website. Digital marketing beginners tend to confuse this metric with the bounce rate.
Its values are more important for online shops as customers have to navigate through several pages before making the final acquisition.
A significant exit rate on a page that was not designed for this purpose denotes problems such as:
· too much data presented in an impersonal voice
· jumbled information
· no call to action
Google Analytics provides you a useful insight into your top exit pages.
4. Content Strategy KPIs: Page Views
Website owners are so focused on getting new visitors that they forget about page views. A high value of these indicators shows useful and meaningful content and a valid content creation process.
Users like it so much that they even return to the website to re-read the information or to check up on the updates, these are returning visitors. The percentage of those who come back to your site represents the return rate.
You need to consider it to understand your target audience’s needs and desires.
5. Scroll Depth
With its help, you detect the exact point on the page where the audience drops off. Quick abandonment signals difficult-to-read or uninteresting texts.
Specialists measure this performance indicator with a plugin named Scroll Depth Google Analytics. You must install it because it is not an Analytics built-in feature.
6. Content Marketing KPIs: The Number of Downloads
When people make an additional effort to get your content, it means you have stirred their interest.
Modern individuals are always in a hurry. Plus, they have countless opportunities to choose from. Determining them to fill out a form or answer additional questions is proof of your marketing skills.
7. Visitors’ Location
It is helpful for your budget to identify the regions where your creations are most popular.
Let’s imagine your target audience comprises women who live in the USA. However, Google Analytics shows you that women in Western Europe engage more often with your business. You have two alternatives:
· tailor your content to suit the US readers
or
· concentrate a part of your efforts on the Europe-based visitors
Every aspect matters if you want to thrive in the nowadays competitive environment.
8. Devices Used by the Audience
Statistics point out that more and more individuals are using mobile gadgets to access the internet. Therefore, all your content has to run smoothly on all.
Users abandon websites when they encounter navigation problems. Plus, nobody likes struggling with tiny pictures while trying to buy something online.
9. Marketing KPIs: The Website’s Traffic Sources
The traffic you get may come from:
· organic search
· paid search
· direct traffic – people use the name of your website to reach it
· social media platforms
· referrals – links on other websites
· email marketing activities
· others
If you analyze them, you will understand which are the most and the least performing sources for you. You may opt for improving your search engine optimization strategy or starting a new ads campaign.
Do not forget that Google Analytics allows you to set up traffic codes. They are helpful to quantify the traffic that arrives from different channels.
Always check the number of links that lead to your website. Most individuals will refer to your site when they consider you an authority in the niche or industry.
This will bring you search engine optimization benefits. Plus, you will gain additional visibility.
10. Marketing KPIs: Shares on Social Media Platforms
Social Media Platforms have proved how powerful they are when it comes to getting a reaction from their users. Thus, it is not advisable to ignore the type of content people enjoy sharing with others.
Keep in mind that each platform has its own characteristics. Thus, long texts might not be effective on one designed for visuals and vice versa.
There is a huge variety of tools you can employ to assess your social media posts impact. Lots of them are free and intuitive. Marketers appreciate:
· Hootsuite, which comes in handy when you own accounts on different platforms.
· Buzzsumo, perfect for keeping an eye on your Facebook pages.
· Twazzup in case you are a beginner and want to monitor your Twitter activity.
· HowSociable which allows you to quantify your competitors’ visibility.
Despite the numerous tools, you cannot identify the exact number of users who saw your posts. Unfortunately, lots of them are not observed by account holders.
To get a clearer picture, include links in posts. The total sum of clicks may serve as an indicator of your social media consumption.
11. Appreciations from the Social Media Environment
Although likes are less influential than shares, they possess a certain amount of power. Appreciations boost organic increase and show that your texts, pictures, and videos are captivating and original.
12. Visitors’ Comments
This is one of the most significant marketing KPIs for 2018. People who write in the comments section are engaged. Your content has triggered a reaction, a desire to take part in a conversation, or to ask more questions.
Of course, not everybody will leave positive feedback. The negative ones are constructive because they enable you to adjust errors and design a better promotion plan.
Do not ignore, delete or hide opinions that are different from yours. Be professional and find a diplomatic answer. Acknowledge mistakes and do your best to fix them.
You should not underestimate their convincing power. Studies revealed that 50+ positive opinions per product can increase the conversion rate by almost 5%.
The most effective tools to track reviews include TrustPilot and BirdEye.
14. The Number of Followers
You will know that you have valuable content when individuals start following your activity on a regular basis.
15. Email Metrics
Email marketing is not obsolete as many are tempted to consider it. In fact, it establishes a more personal relationship with your customers or readers. Not to mention that “the money is on the list”. People registered on your mailing list have the highest chance to become your customers.
In addition, you send your offer to targeted persons who agreed to receive more data about your business.
Setting up and launching a campaign is not enough. To scale its success, you should follow metrics like:
· the opening ratio – it reveals the attractiveness of the email subject
· click-through rate values – it shows how many individuals browsed the email and considered it pertinent to their needs
· the number of forwarding actions – people distribute captivating content which resonates with their interests
No matter how small or large your company is, you ought to be alert about media mentions. Praise may bring new business opportunities while negative feedback helps you correct strategy slips.
Brand awareness is paramount for brands and individuals alike. Gaining the customers’ trust is a tough process. On the other hand, a minor inadvertence may shatter your credibility.
17. Heat Maps to Depict Users’ Preferences
Their function is to indicate the areas of a page that are the most attractive for the viewers. This is very useful when you decide to change the aspect of your website or online shop.
18. Click Patterns
They show you what is relevant to your target audience. Thus, you can adjust your work based on these content marketing data points.
Google Analytics offers you the necessary tools to perform this research.
19. Marketing KPIs: Conversion Rate
This performance indicator sums up the number of visitors who have taken and finished an action on your website.
It is not complicated to calculate it. You need the following easy-to-apply formula.
CV = (conversions/total website visitors) * 100%
Example:
Rebecca sells her handmade bags via an online shop. Let us assume that it was reached by 2000 visitors last month. Out of these, 100 purchased one of her products. Thus, her conversion rate is equal to 5%.
When the conversation rate is low, you’d better start to enhance it.
Social platforms have their own tools which you can use to monitor conversions. Google Analytics delivers data for websites.
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20. Soft Conversions
These occur when people give you their contact details but do not purchase your products. They may turn them from potential to real customers as long as your content is enticing.
21. Marketing KPIs: The Number of Leads, CPL, and ACV
One of your marketing goals might be to attract more leads. In this case, you ought to know how many potential customers value your activity.
It is not rocket science to measure the number of leads. A count of the individuals who offered their contact details in exchange for an eBook is enough.
To make sure you invest your resources wisely, use your marketing KPI dashboard to establish the correlation between your cost per lead and return on investment.
Another element that reveals the success of your online content marketing campaign is the ACV or the annual contract value. It points out the number of finished actions because of your crafted content.
22. ROI and ROAS
Return on Investment is useful to identify the key performance areas of marketing. Thus, you get a better understanding of where to place your money.
ROAS is the abbreviation for Return on Ad Spend. It gives you a hint of how much you must spend on advertising to get a profit.
23. CPC or Cost per Click
This indicator enters the scene when you spread the word about your offer through online paid advertising. Careful monitoring is necessary to detect the ads which generate the highest ROI and to continuously improve the output of your ads campaigns.
Google Adwords Average Cost per Click per Industry. Source: WordStream
24. CPA or Cost per Acquisition
Bringing in new customers requires additional funds. These are mirrored by CPA. Lots of businesses use this KPI to establish the plan for their advertising campaigns.
To calculate it, you must divide the total marketing costs by the total number of acquired customers.
25. The Average Order Value
You cannot determine people to buy from you unless you are ready to flow in some cash.
AOV shows you the funds you consume whenever a person purchases something from you.
Businesses prefer to boost the average order value rather than the conversion rate. They adopt this approach because drawing in other clients is quite a laborious task. On the other hand, convincing loyal customers to buy is less difficult.
26. Lifetime Value
According to the marketing dictionary, lifetime value represents the profit you get from one customer.
Companies use it to forecast their future revenue. It is helpful to estimate how much profit you need to make to cover the advertising costs.
27. Customer Retention
It reflects a company’s ability to hold its profitable clients for months or years. Loyal buyers are more likely to accept new services or a range of goods. Consequently, you should dedicate some of your efforts to tailoring loyalty programs.
The churn rate indicates how satisfied customers are. In this case, a high value hints at troubles.
Check here some tips from a renowned expert in customer retention:
28. Search Engines Ranking
Several years ago, everybody was going through lots of pain to get a top-ranking position. Nowadays, marketers focus less on this aim. There are other aspects to consider such as ad space or personalized search.
29. Organic Website Traffic
This is one of the key content marketing metrics for any online business. Organic traffic is earned not paid for and therefore is more precious. Pages, which attract users naturally, are a real asset to your business.
You may always rely on Google Analytics to do the tracking job well.
30. Organic Click Through Rate
CTR points out the frequency with which people who see your content click on it. It has low values when there are lots of impressions but only a few clicks. A high CTR correlated with poor impressions alerts you that it is about time to get involved in optimization activities.
Once you understand the visitors’ behavior on your website and what attracts them to it, you are ready to build up a precise content marketing strategy. Armed with a marketing KPIs list you will know where to focus your efforts to get maximum exposure and increase conversions.
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