There Are Better Ways To Use Your Content Budget Than Content Creation

When determining your content marketing budget, the general rule of thumb for organizations is to spend 5% of total revenue to maintain your current awareness.

If you want to grow your market share, you should be spending around 10% of your total revenue. You’ll most likely have it spread out in the following areas:

PPC
FB and other social ads
Social media
Content marketing
Automation platforms and technology

Today we’re going to look specifically at your content marketing budget.

I’m going to tell you why that budget should have room for more than just content creation. Content itself is only a small piece of the content marketing pie, and that alone won’t contribute to growth.

The cost of content marketing isn’t negligible.

Overwhelmed by how to launch your own content strategy? We help funded, growth-stage startups supercharge their content with done-for-you content strategy & execution. Get in touch to see if we can help you.

What phase of growth is your blog in?

When you first launch your blogging strategy, all you can do is create content. If you have no content, there’s nothing to link to, there’s nothing to promote, there’s no domain authority.

So if your blog is in “pre-seed”, then the first things you need to do are:

Prepare your blog technically for SEO (architecture, URL structures, page speed etc.)
Map out your content strategy
Create content

At this point, most startups will double down on creating a ton of content. When you create a map of all the topic clusters and angles you need to attact to saturate the SERPs and build that authority, the number of blog posts you need to create is often overwhelming.

With this plan, you’ll have a list of topic covered for months.

Bear in mind, during this first phase, you still need to promote your content outside of SEO. In fact, it’s even more important in this stage since SEO takes a while to build. I’ll talk more about content promotion below.

However, then the next phase comes where you have a bunch of content created already. You’re ranking for your key topics and people are lining up to get links onto or get mentioned on your website. You have a steady inbound stream growing. What’s next?

While in the first phase, content creation was still a large part of the budget (still not all of it, though!), now you can focus less on production, and more on optimizing.

Why more content isn’t always the right way to spend budget

Is the volume and frequency of the content you post important? Yes. But you shouldn’t measure the success of your content marketing strategy on how much content you’re able to pump out.

We used to quote our clients on deliverables, but we don’t do that anymore. A number of deliverables does not reflect how this drives business objectives.

As you begin developing a backlog, other tactics play a much more significant role. Making the most of your content budget means:

Optimizing on-page to make sure all your content drives conversions and all of it is SEO optimized
Maintaining website architecture as content library grows and performing ongoing audits
Keeping historical content up-to-date and maintaining interlinking
Aggressive and strategic link building and relationship building with other bloggers
Content promotion across various channels
Testing & experimenting

We created a guide to interviewing customers for content that resonates with them

CREATE CONTENT FOR GROWTH

Content creation vs. content promotion

Derek Halpern of Social Triggers exposed his digital marketing secret, the 20/80 rule, back in 2013. The rules state that you should spend 20% of your time on content creation and 80% on promotion.

He swears by creating a lower volume of extremely high-quality blog content and, in his words, “PROMOTE THE HECK OUT OF IT.” SEO takes a while to work, and even then, if the goal is to turn your website into your greatest (and cheapest) predictable inbound channel, then it doesn’t make sense to leave it up to the Google Gods or the hope that someone will find it.

Promotion marketing tactics

Content promotion used to baffle me so much.

This was the #1 most difficult part of content marketing for me. How do you get your content in front of the right people, at the right time? It’s important to note that the right people might be 1 or 2 people away from someone else who sees your content.

You’ve probably heard the adage that we’re all 6 people away from Tom Cruise, or I think the saying goes something like that. Well, think of content promotion in a similar manner (while still focusing on how your target customers receive content).

Here are some possible content promotion methods:

Promotion using online communities

Community engagement is a huge part of content marketing. According to the Global Web Index, 76% of global web users engage in online communities. Sharing valuable content from your website in relevant online communities is one of the best ways to increase your traffic. You can find online communities on:

Facebook groups
LinkedIn groups
Slack groups
Reddit
Quora
Industry-specific forums

But wait!

Don’t just go in there and start sharing all your blog posts.

Most of these communities are:

a) Highly valued to their members who don’t appreciate spam, especially not from strangers. Even if you “think it helps them”.

b) Have very strict rules about sharing content, some which might get you banned if you aren’t careful.

At Flying Cat, we have a community manager who maintains an active presence in relevant online communities. He engages with other users, answers the questions, and keeps conversations going. And when the time is right, he shares the content pieces when relevant and useful to the users.

It’s vital not to spam people here and to be ultra respectful of the communities in place. Otherwise, this strategy is obsolete for you, and you can move on to the next.

How content promotion through online communities can help you reach your marketing goals

Using online communities for content promotion can impact your inbound marketing programs in three primary ways:

Increase brand awareness

Getting active in online communities will increase your target audience’s awareness of your brand. Not only will they know that you exist, but they will view you as an authority in the industry (as long as you you provide value through active engagement and high-quality content).

You’ll put your brand directly in front of a community of people who are already actively interested in what you have to offer.

Boost engagement rates

If you’ve spent time creating a presence in online communities, then people will already be interested in what you have to say. If your audience feels connected to your brand, they are more likely to engage with your content. Get in the groups, ask them questions about their pain points, and provide valuable insights when community members post queries.

Most of all: make friends! This is a networking opportunity.

Drive relevant traffic to your site

If you do your research and choose the right communities, the traffic that you drive from online communities is highly relevant. They are already interested in what you have to offer and, therefore, more likely to make a purchase.

Promotion using paid ads

Ultra-targeted ads on social media are another great way to get your content in front of your audience. Whether you run ads on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, choose your platforms wisely, based on your audience and where they hang out.

We usually promote blog posts systematically through paid ads either on Facebook or Twitter, but we also experiment on other platforms:

Quuu Promote: This connects to my clients’ RSS feeds and they automatically add it to the content curation feeds of other real accounts who curate content on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. It’s only about €70/month and is great for increasing social reach.
Zest: Zest is a content platform for marketers, where you can suggest/contribute content for free but you can also promote it for a fee. This platform only works if you have content that’s interesting to marketers.

In any case, Facebook paid distribution is an important part of our strategy, especially while waiting for SEO to do its magic.

Promotion through link building and networking with other bloggers/influencers

Link building means getting other websites to link to your blog content. It’s how they determine PageRank.

It’s how they say “hey, a lot of experts on this one topic are linking to this website, that must mean whoever runs this website is also an expert on this topic.”

It’s how you rank faster for more competitive keywords. It also happens to be the most tedious and annoying part of SEO (in my opinion). But it’s quite vital. This is where a significant part of your budget should go to. That would include:

Researching blogs that would work for yours (relevance, domain authority, frequency of posting, traffic volume)
Outreach to other bloggers
Pitching your pieces
Writing & creating content
Checking that they’ve linked correctly
Follow-up and management of relationships

Beyond algorithms, consumers trust what other consumers have to say about you than what you have to say about yourself. Having bloggers and influencers include links to your content will build trust in your brand before the consumer even arrives on your page. 90% of consumers trust recommendations from influencers, with only 33% trusting ads directly from brands.

Start by genuinely engaging with their content, such as leaving comments on their posts or sharing their content on your social media. Since they are in your niche, the content will align with your brand anyways. They will appreciate the engagement and are more likely to agree to a collaboration.

Or you could outsource this to us 😉

Historical optimization

Arguably more important than creating new content is historical optimization, or re-optimization of your old posts. Like the example with Derek Halpern’s post from 2013, people will continue to find and consume your old content for years to come. Plus, if you already have a solid library of great content, then work with what you have, modernize it, and release it again!

Re-optimization involves updating old pieces of content so that it’s fresh, and all the information is valid. It also means taking data from Google Search Console, seeing how people are finding that piece of content, and reoptimizing it to make it move up in the SERPs.

It might be a post from a month ago, or could be a post from 6 years ago, but both have the potential to generate more conversions and traffic.

Many people assume that their most recent posts will be the ones to bring in new leads and more traffic. The complete opposite is true. HubSpot publishes around 200 pieces of new content every month, but 76% of their monthly views come from old content.

The impact of re-optimizing old pages

When working with Get Paid For Your Pad, re-optimizing old pages was one of our primary techniques for increasing traffic. There was so much content on the website already, that before we creating anything new, we had to capture the “low-hanging fruit” and re-optimize everything that was there.

The website was full of outdated CTAs, and the traffic the website wasn’t qualified. We went back through old content and pages to conversion-optimize pages that were getting traffic but not converting.

We upgraded the content to be hyper-tailored and super specific to the reader and re-wrote sub-headings and headlines. Then we republished posts to give them the SEO boost of being fresh. Plus, you can do updated keyword research and update each piece of content accordingly.

As a result, Get Paid For Your Pad’s web traffic grew to 6,417 new organic visitors in only three months.

Why does re-optimizing old posts lead to better SEO?

A survey from DataBox revealed that 61-80% of organic traffic comes from old blog posts. Why is that?

Google rewards freshness

If you go online looking for information, you’ll likely see more relevance in a post from last week than a post from 5 years ago. Google looks at content the same way. Even though the content’s information might still be relevant, it will still give value to up-to-date posts.

Take advantage of the search authority the post already has

When you re-optimize and repost old content, it still holds on to any search authority that is has built since you originally posted it, rather than starting from scratch.

New visits mean more engagement

Reposting old content gives you the chance to re-promote it to your subscribers and social media audience. Doing so will generate an influx of traffic to your content, encouraging people to share it and link to it. Both of these forms of engagement will help to boost your SEO.

Pro-tip: Even if you create blog posts based on the year (e.g. Best Content Marketing Agencies of 2021), never include the year in your URL. That way you can keep updating the post yearly and keep all the SEO juice!

Repurposing content into video content, infographics, webinars, podcasts, whitepapers, etc.

Your audience consumes content in so many different forms and mediums. There might be people very interested in your brand who aren’t fans of reading blog posts. They would rather watch a video on YouTube, listen to a podcast, or scroll through social media posts. By not repurposing your content, you miss an opportunity to connect with a huge portion of consumers.

Depending on how long you’ve been creating content, you might have a massive database of content that your new followers haven’t seen. Repurposing your blogs’ content into new mediums will enable you to reach new audiences that you weren’t able to before.

On top of that, it means you don’t need to pump out so much new content or come up with endless content ideas. Repurposing your old content allows you to:

Reach a completely different audience
Strengthen your brand message (repetition is key!)
Bring old content back to life
Boost efficiency and productivity in your marketing team
Improve your content’s reach

Key Takeaways

If your content marketing strategy up until now has been content, content, content, then it’s time to switch it up. You’re spending way too much of your content marketing budget and your time producing low-quality content that isn’t converting. Invest instead in optimizing the content you do have, promoting it, and re-publishing old content that you know is valuable.