By Jay Baer
Expert Author
Article Date: 2011-08-04
Your Content Should Be Centralized and Decentralized
The default state for most content marketing initiatives is to focus on content that we OWN, that resides on web properties we control. Web pages, white papers, and PDFs that live on our own dot com address. This is a legacy mentality that is left over from the days when "website traffic" was the coin of the realm.
When you're focused on getting eyeballs to your owned content, there are only a few primary ways to accomplish this:
search
links in social shown to your opt-in fans
email
direct URL entry
In each of these circumstances, the people visiting your site are largely aware of you already. The chances of you winning a click in search go up dramatically if the searcher knows your brand. All those people you interact with in social media? They already know your brand. Your email subscribers? Same thing. And especially direct URL entry….nobody is just randomly guessing your website address.
So to prevent the artificial truncation of your audience, you need both centralized content (that you own), and decentralized content (that you don't own).
Be A Digital Dandelion
The key is to get more bait in the water, because every place and every way that you tell your story online is another opportunity for people who don't already know you to find you. And, it's another opportunity for your most important customer (Google) to find you, too.
In addition to driving traffic to your own website via search and email, etc. you could take that content (or a variation of it) and:
And that's just scratching the surface. Each and every time you decentralize your content, you make it findable by people who don't know you yet, and that's how you drive your business forward - not by preaching to the choir.
How are you decentralizing your content marketing?
And how do you like the Webinine concept?
Check out Convince&Convert for more articles by Jay Baer
About the Author:
Jay Baer is a tequila-loving, hype-free social media strategy consultant and coach. An online marketing pro since 1994, he's worked with more than 700 companies, and 25 of the Fortune 1000. He's one of the world's most popular social media bloggers, creator of the 8-step Social Media Strategic Planning Process, and the Twitter 20 series of live Twitter interviews. He spreads his "think tools last, not first" message around the country like a digital dandelion, speaking to conferences, small groups, or passers-by. Check out his blog at Convince&Convert.
By Jay Baer