“Be willing to do what other people are not.” (How to Gain An ‘Edge’ in Growing Your Traffic)
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- How to gain a long-term competitive edge with your content marketing
- The “anti-conversion” funnel of work (and how to make it work for you)
- 3 easy-to-implement marketing “levers”
Hey, guys. How are you? Matt Ackerson here, the founder of Growbo.com.
It’s a beautiful day here in Huntington, Long Island, New York.
Gain a Competitive Edge in Content Marketing (for the Long-Term)
Today, I want to talk to you about how to form a competitive advantage in your content creation and content marketing for the long term.
My inspiration for this came from a recent guest blog post by Laura of Content Refined. I encourage you to go read it in depth.
It’s a great step-by-step guide for how you should actually organize your content creation process. (And I think it’s especially relevant for beginners who are just getting started and want to know what they should you be doing consistently in order to start stacking traffic.)
What I want to talk to you about, inspired by this article, is how to actually gain a competitive advantage in your content marketing for the long term.
The Anti-Conversion Funnel of Work
So there's something that I call the anti-conversion funnel of work. What do I mean by that?
Simply: that which is more difficult, less people are going to do.
When you're willing to do what other people aren't, it will help you succeed in business. And the more willing you are to do it not just once, but multiple times over the long term, the larger your advantage will be.
That’s the anti-conversion funnel of work.
So, as the difficulty of a certain task increases, it gets to a point where very few people are actually able to sustain that type of work or have that sort of process.
For example, with content marketing, a lot of people will publish maybe on a monthly basis, but less people will publish on a weekly basis, and even less people will publish on a daily basis.
And how can you make it even more difficult? Well, very few people will publish on a daily basis and be writing 1500 words or more—a reasonable level of depth to illustrate a point, to teach their audience something useful.
But I'm thinking about this anti-conversion funnel of work as it applies to your content marketing system.
There are three levers that I want to recommend that you pay special attention to that are really going to serve you well for the long run. You can focus on one of them or you can focus on all of them.
1. The first lever is quality—and not just quality in the moment. You want to try to convey enduring quality. Enduring quality is from content that is evergreen, content that has relevance, not just today, but even,years into the future.
And quality in the sense that it is actionable. People can understand it, they can internalize it, they can remember it, and it's easy for them to take action on it and get a result.
2. The second lever is length. And by length, I mean perhaps depth of the article. Not just the actual word count, but depth in terms of how far do you dive into a certain topic.
Do you explain it in sufficient detail? Are you linking out to supporting sources to back-up any claims you’ve made so that the information is seen as credible?
Length also appeals to Google, because you will rank higher if you have content that is of a certain word count. (This article from CoSchedule compared several different studies on ideal word count for SEO, and results range anywhere from 1,600 words to 2,500+.)
3. The final lever is promotion. So many people can write content, and promotion is a very popular topic. It's becoming more popular among marketers today, but very few people are able to do both really well.
There are very, very few people who can write content that is lengthy and high quality and then also promote it effectively. I don’t mean just doing the basics, like sending an email to your audience or pushing it on social media channels, but going above and beyond to build links to it, get influencers to like it and share it, to get it out to beyond just the people in their immediate circle of influence.
Final Thoughts
To review: the secret to gaining a competitive advantage in your content marketing for the long-term is the anti-conversion funnel of work. This same general principle can actually serve you beyond just thinking about your content marketing process.
And remember to use the three levers to help you gain advantage and focus, one at a time. Create content of enduring quality, of sufficient length and depth, and promote that content effectively.
For the long-term, this is going to give you a massive competitive advantage over your peers in the industry, especially if you do it consistently.
That’s it for today!
Leave a comment, let me know what you think, and how you will be applying what I taught you in this video to your current content marketing.
If you want me to do more videos related to content marketing, I’d love to hear from you as well. If you wanna learn more about tactics and tips related to growing traffic at the top of your funnel, let me know, or funnels in general, and I'll be happy to consider it for a future Matt Hack.
Until next time, my name is Matt Hack in a Matt Hat (although today I'm wearing a green lantern hat) delivering you your daily dose of Matt Hacks.
Keep hustling. Stay focused.
I'll talk to you soon.
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