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Table of contents Contents Table of contents .................................................. ................................................... ..................................... 1 Chapter One ....................................... ................................................... ................................................... ..... 4 What is Content Marketing ........................ ................................................... .......................................... 4 Mind-blowing things that happen to your business wh en you get content marketing right ................ ... 5 Content marketing can increase your sales .................................................. ........................................ 7 Content marketing generates inbound traffic to your business website .............................................. 8 Content marketing enhances engagement with your aud ience .................................................. ......... 9 Content marketing helps to build brand awareness .................................................. ......................... 10 Content marketing can position your business as "be st in class". .................................................. .... 12 Content marketing helps to beat your competition .................................................. .......................... 12 Where small businesses go wrong with Content Market ing ............................................... ................... 13 Lack of goals and objectives ...................... ................................................... ....................................... 14 Creating generic content .......................... ................................................... ....................................... 15 Focusing on your product rather than on the custome rs ................................................ ................... 15 Lack of a content calendar ........................ ................................................... ....................................... 16 Doing it alone .................................... ................................................... ............................................... 16 Chapter Two ....................................... ................................................... ................................................... ... 18 How to create a Content Marketing Strategy that wil l Skyrocket your Engagement and Conversion .. 18 Know your Business Objectives ..................... ................................................... .................................. 18 Know what your audience ........................... ................................................... .................................... 20 Create a Content Formula .......................... ................................................... ...................................... 22 Measure Your content marketing ROI ................ ................................................... ............................. 35 Chapter Three ..................................... ................................................... ................................................... .. 37 How to recruit and Manage writers for your Business needs ............................................ .................... 37 Use your Staff or Outsource it .................... ................................................... ..................................... 37 Hire Experts Enthusiasts or influencers .......... ................................................... ................................ 37 Chapter Four ...................................... ................................................... ................................................... ... 40 Popular Publishing platforms for your contents .... ................................................... .............................. 40

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Blog post ......................................... ................................................... ................................................. 4 0 Video ............................................. ................................................... ................................................... 41 Podcast ........................................... ................................................... .................................................. 42 Infographic ....................................... ................................................... ................................................ 44 Memes ............................................. ................................................... ................................................ 45 Chapter Five ...................................... ................................................... ................................................... .... 46 Proven Ways to promote your content ............... ................................................... ................................ 46 Organic/Free Method ............................... ................................................... ....................................... 46 Paid advertisement ................................ ................................................... .......................................... 48 Chapter Six ....................................... ................................................... ................................................... ..... 49 How to measure your content marketing ROI using Goo gle analytics ..................................... .......... 49 Google analytics goal details ..................... ................................................... ....................................... 51 Average Time on page .............................. ................................................... ....................................... 55 Reverse goal path ................................. ................................................... ............................................ 56 Referral traffic .................................. ................................................... ................................................ 58 Social referrals .................................. ................................................... ............................................... 59 Page views ........................................ ................................................... ................................................ 60 Demographic reports ............................... ................................................... ........................................ 61 Conclusion ........................................ ................................................... ................................................... ..... 64 About Hephzysocial ................................ ................................................... ................................................. 6 5 HOW HEPHZYSOCIAL CAN HELP YOU GROW YOUR BUSINESS ... ................................................... ......... 65

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Chapter One What is Content Marketing Content marketing is not something new. It has been in existence for decades. It however received a huge increase in buzz among mar keters recently. But a lot of small business owners still do not know or understa nd the concept of content marketing and how it can help them in their marketi ng processes. I will attempt to define Content marketing but before I do that I will give a definition provided by the content marketing institute. "Content marketing is a marketing technique of crea ting and distributing valuable relevant and consistent content to attract and acqu ire a clearly defined audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer a ction." - Content Marketing Institute Content marketing can be defined as the art of crea ting and distributing valuable engaging and interesting content to attract and con vert potential buyers into customers and customers into repeat buyers. In other words you write content on the product/se rvice you are selling to educate people so that they know like and trust yo u enough to want to buy what you are selling. It is a fact that when most people want to buy a pr oduct/service the first thing they do is to look for information that can enlight en them on the product/service. It is not only the potential customers that are loo king for valuable information Google is also there. Google wants to rank such co ntents high in the search results so that people can find it easily.

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Content drives the internet and people are searchin g for information that can solve their problem not sales letters disguised as contents. Content marketing creates an opportunity for potential customers to t rust your brand as you create information that will enlighten them about the bene fit of a particular product or service. Most businesses and individuals using content marke ting for their product and services tend to produce high quality content with out a sales pitch mixed with occasional promotional messages. Below are the seve n reasons why you need to include contenting marketing in your business campa ign. Mind-blowing things that happen to your business wh en you get content marketing right A lot of business owners are involved in content ma rketing. According to a research carried out by eMarketer 73 of business depend on branded content for marketing and promotion and 41 leverage user-g enerated content and reviews. If you are still undecided about what content marke ting can do for your business these seven 7 mind-blowing benefits of content m arketing will convince you. Content marketing increases your leads A research carried out by Hubspot showed that B2b c ompanies that blogs generate 67 more leads per month than those who do not.

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So if you are struggling to generate leads for you r business create high quality content. Whether you are in the b2b or b2c business model content is still the best way to generate quality leads for your busines s. You can use different types of content to generate leads. Below are the five types of content you need to start creating to increase y our leads. They are: 1. Webinar 2. Whitepapers and free guides 3. In-person events 4. Slideshare presentation. 5. Case studies 6. Infographics 7. Ultimate guides These content types can generate enormous leads for your business.

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A good example is Neil Patels Kissmetrics business blog. The business sells analytics heat maps to businesses. Neil uses content marketing to get 6 figure income on a monthly basis from the blog https://www.quicksprout.com/2015/02/04/how-do es-content-marketing- actually-get-you-more-sales/. A large chunk of his marketing dollars goes towards content marketing. He creates blog contents and infographics to drive tra ffic to his website. On average he posts one or two articles per day and publishes infographics once a month. In January he was able to generate 727984 visitors t o the website. Out of these numbers he generated 5057 leads from the blog. T his means that the blog drove 62 of the leads for the month of January. Th e product pricing starts from 200. The business is able to generate 6 figures in new income each month from content marketing. His expenses for content per mon th stands at 5000- 6000 per month. This is a profitable investment. Content marketing can increase your sales According to custom content council up to 55 of c onsumers are attracted to custom content and would likely buy the products or services of the content provider. Most small businesses desire to make lots of sales especially when they are just starting out. But the problem is that the y do not have a large customer base like their competitors. This implies that the y will need to work harder to generate tangible sales.

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Content marketing is one of the best ways to genera te sales when you do it in the right way. River Pools made 2.5 million sales from a single a rticle on their website. The outcome took the company from a struggling business to a multi-million dollar success story. Content marketing generates inbound traffic to your business website Are you are struggling to attract visitors to your business blog Dont worry a lot of small business owners do not know how to use con tent marketing to attract customers. According to Curata 55 of business bloggers are getting 5 or more o f their corporate website’s traffic from their blog. A good example is the PTC company. It is a big soft ware company that sells software to other companies in high tech niches. Th e company needed to create awareness for their new product launch in a crowded space and also wanted the sales. They decided to use content marketing to im prove awareness of the new product - Creo. It is a design software that solves CAD software problems.

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They decided to outsource the content marketing to a content marketing agency because they did not have enough manpower and exper tise to develop and execute a content strategy at that time. The content marketing agency created outstanding co ntents for the product and publishes a post every day. The content marketing effort generated 100000 visitors per month over a period of one year. Content marketing enhances engagement with your aud ience According to contentplus 70 of consumers prefer to get to know a company through original articles. 78 of consumers believ e the organizations behind the content are interested in building good relationshi ps MCmurrytmg . Content marketing is more than writing content pub lishing and distributing it on different channels it is a relationship building t ool. When you use it properly it will help you to build great customer engagement an d keep interest throughout your buying circle. Most companies only see its impact through the numb ers on Google analytic report. When you use it in the right way content marketing can create interaction through comments on your blog and socia l media channels. You get to know how your customers perceive your products a nd services what you can improve or what can be another opportunity of busin ess for you. Engagement will also help you to acquire new custom ers cheaply. Have you ever thought about the cost of acquiring new customer ve rsus how much it will cost to retain your existing customers It is almost 7 time s more. With regular engagement with different content types you can at tract new customers for free.

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A good example of a company that used this strategy is ADP. The company d eveloped a content marketing campaign to connect an d engage with their target audience on an ADP solution using white papers and a diagnostic assessment tool. The campaign generated over 1 million in new sales opportunities with several deals closed within the first 3 months of launch. T hat is the power of content marketing. Content marketing helps to build brand awareness According to content marketing institute and Market ingprofs 84 of organization have a goal to build brand awareness through conten t marketing in 2015.

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Producing and sharing high quality content will hel p you to build trust in your audience. There are different types of content you need to be creating to help you build brand awareness. Like it or not the cont ent you use can either build your brand or tear it down. Below is a list of con tent that can help you to build your brand effectively. 1. Blog content 2. Video content 3. Email content 4. News content

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5. Social media content etc A good case study of a company that did this well i s Health Catalyst a Utah-based B2B company. The company invested heavily in a cont ent marketing team to build its brand and drive revenue. They published 2-4 new pieces of content every week for over a year. Within 18 months of its conte nt marketing campaign Health Catalysts signed massive clients like Kaiser Permanente and Partners Healthcare. Not only that they also become a popu lar brand within their industry. Content marketing can position your business as "be st in class". According to Moz 71 of all the clicks to a website on a Google se arch come from the first result page. The more content you create on your website on your subject matter the more search engine will rank it high until it gets to th e first page. Google will consider your site as an authority on the topic because of t he content you create on it. This will help you to drive enormous traffic to your web site. However to keep it up you need to keep creating targeted content regularl y. When you get to this authority level your business becomes " best in class ". Everyone looking for information in the niche will visit your website and then you can charge premium rates for your products and serv ices. Content marketing helps to beat your competition A lot of business owners are afraid of their compet ition. With content marketing you dont have to be afraid. All you need to do is to focus on creating interesting

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and engaging content for your audience. Over time the audience will prefer to do business with you. One way to go about this is to research the content your competitors are creating. You can you use buzzsumo to do that. Ty pe in your competitors url into Buzzsumo and check how many social shares each of their recent posts generated. Then go ahead to create similar posts w ith higher quality content. That way your content will rank higher. A company that does this well is Backlinko -an SEO company. He used the skyscraper technique mentioned above to outrank h is competition and gained the first page position on the Google search result page. The benefits above are not difficult to achieve. A ll you need is to develop and execute a solid content marketing campaign. It is not easy for businesses that have no creative department or limited time and bud get. This is where hephzysocial comes in. We can handle the difficult part for yo u so that your business can grow increase in brand awarenes s and get more sales while you focus on other aspect of your business. We can help you to create a solid content marketing strategy blog posts pdf downloa ds presentations whitepapers how-to guides e.t.c and also promote it to make sure that your target audience comes in contact with it. Where small businesses go wrong with Content Market ing Have you been engaged in content marketing for your business and you seem not to see any improvement whatsoever Have you spent your time energy and money on content creation without any tangible resu lt Did you sit down to wonder what you are not doing right If these ques tions are in your mind as you read this e-book then you must know that you are not doing content marketing

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according to the rules. Below are reasons why your content marketing will go wrong. Lack of goals and objectives Every successful business must have goals and objec tives. Over time I have watched companies/businesses writing articles witho ut goals and objectives. They just employ the services of cheap writers on f reelance websites to help them write articles without a purpose at the back of the ir minds. These are the kind of websites Google pushes to the back when it comes t o ranking. Lack of goals and objectives for your content marketing strategies wi ll make it hard for you to track your results ROI. Having said that there are di fferent kinds of goals and objectives you can set for your business such as: Driving traffic to channels engagement build community generate leads inform educate build thought leadership generate sales etc. In the last chapter I made mention of the benefits of content marketing which includes sales leads engagement brand building e .t.c. There is no way you can enjoy these benefits without having goals and objec tives. For example if you have a fashion and beauty busin ess and want to use content marketing for your business. You must sit down to know what you want out of it. One of your goals should be to sell more of your pr oducts. Now you can decide to write a content marketing strategy that will enable you to reach your goal. Then you can measure your return on investment based on your goal. This is the reason you must not just write articles anyhow but have o bjectives and goals of what you want to achieve with it before embarking on it.

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Creating generic content I am guilty of this mistake until I learnt how cont ent marketing works. In those days I created generic content and expected to get traffic and make money from my affiliate business. But it doesnt work like th at no wonder I got frustrated and closed up my affiliate business. For you to be successful in your content marketing campaign you must produce contents that are based on your business goals and objectives. You must learn to produce content your audience wants to read. Befor e you can do that you need to define your audience. To determine who they are ask yourself these questions: Who are they What are their needs Why should they care about you What unique value proposition do you have to of fer etc. When you know the profile of people who are likely to buy your product then you can tailor your content to their needs effectiv ely. A very good example of this is the "HVAC company blog " . They sell heating cooling and plumbing equipm ent which somehow relates to the kitchen. So it is re asonable to assume that most of their clients will be women who loves to cook h ence the idea behind the recipe post on their blog. Focusing on your product rather than on the custome rs Almost every small business owner is guilty of this mistake. We tend to focus on how we can make sales from our product and services that we forget the need of our customers. Your customers care more about your knowledge than they do your products. If you are able to write engaging a nd educating information built around your product/service you will gain their at tention. On the other hand if you decide to make all your content sounds like a s ales letter you may not get much out of it.

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Lack of a content calendar Ahaah Many business owners and marketers are guil ty of this one. Most of us do not have a Content Calendar for our businesses. This is very wrong. Creating a content calendar will help you to: 1. Measure monitor and modify your content accurately in order to create the outcomes you desire 2. Align core business cycles with content that will s upport your customer engagement process 3. Make it easier for you to engage freelance writers 4. Avoid placing too much importance on one aspect of your business instead of providing a balance approach across seve ral areas of influence. Therefore for the reasons mentioned above and many more your business needs a content calendar for at least three - six months ahead. This is why you need to hire a "content marketer " that understand and use content calendars. Doing it alone It was the former presidential candidate Al Gore w ho said " If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far go together ". Content marketing is a team work. You cannot do everything on your own you need the services of a "content marketer " who will help you to create distribute and prom ote your content. Most business owners are frustrated because they on ly know how to write content not how to promote it. Writing content is getting half of the work done the main success comes when you take it to where yo ur audience can read engage and interact with it. So can you see where you are missing it from the p oints above Content marketing is a planned campaign not something you can do haphazardly. If you do that your results will be limited. You need to have goals and objectives create

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targeted content based on your business goals and o bjectives focus on your customers rather than on your product or services have content calendar and employ the services of a content marketer to make it easy for you.

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Chapter Two How to create a Content Marketing Strategy that wil l Skyrocket your Engagement and Conversion Content marketing as we all know is the art of cr eating and distributing valuable content to attract and convert potential buyers int o customers. Now for this system to work properly you need to design a conte nt marketing strategy . Having a concrete content marketing strategy will e nable you to get inbound traffic to your website build brand awareness thro ugh engagement generate natural link popularity for SEO open a channel of communication through social shares and comments etc. In this chapter you will learn about how to create a winning content marketing strategy in Six steps. These steps will help you to create a winning content plan and focused execution. You need a strong foundation of content that attracts prospective customers at every stage of the buying circle. Below are the best practices: Know your Business Objectives As a business owner the first step to launching a winning content marketing strategy is to define your objectives. In doing tha t you would want to ask yourself these questions:- i. What is the goal of this business and how can co ntent marketing help to achieve it ii. Do you need more people to engage with your bra nd iii. Do you need to foster or build relationship wi th your audience

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iv. Do you want to increase your sales and leads e tc. These objectives will help you to properly design a nd measure a content strategy that will be successful. This is why you need to e nsure that you get it right before you jump into content marketing. You dont need too many objectives to start your co ntent marketing strategy. You can decide to choose one or two of the most importa nt goals of your business to work with. For example my businesss Hephzysocial goal is to create awareness among small business owners who want to exploit the power of content marketing in their business to help them develop implement and promote content marketing campaign. Below are common business objectives you can choose from: Get more potential customers Content marketing is one of the best ways to acquir e potential customers and then turn them into permanent customers. Most busin esses uses content to drive people to their websites over a long period of time as seen in the case studies in the last chapter. Information and Education A lot of people appreciate quality information and education. Content marketing allows you to educate and inform your audience. In doing this you need to clearly define your audience put yourself in their shoes a nd provide information that will help them to make informed decisions. Brand engagement

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You can use content marketing to put your product/s ervices in front of your audience. If you do it correctly they will appreci ate the value you are adding to their lives and engage with your brand. Lead Generation If you decide to use content marketing to generate leads for your business you have to make sure that your contents is reaching yo ur potential customers at the moment where they need to make decisions. Your cont ent should be designed to help your customers through the decision process as they think and evaluate your products or services. Increase sales Every business owner is in business to make money. You can use content marketing to turn potential customers into real tim e customers. All you need to do is to provide a high quality content that is rel ated to your brand/product or services and that directly meets the need of your p otential customer. Then you can offer them what they need to make an informed d ecision. Site rank Content marketing will help you to increase your we bsite rank in search engines. This means when someone search for your product/se rvice keyword your website will show up at the top of the result page. This will increase visitors to your business website. Know what your audience The best way to get results from your content marke ting efforts is to know your audience and deliver what they want for them. You need to know what your audience cares about what their interests and moti ves are and their pain points.

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This will help you to know the type of content example the content a new visitor will need is dif ferent from the one you will create for a prospective buyer who is getting ready to make a purchase. You need to design content according to their buying stages. audiences journey through the buying stages. There are four stages highlighted in the diagram ab ove. comes to your website they are like products and services. It information about your products. to articles etc. These information will educate your audience about what you have to offer them. The second stage is the pro understood your product or services. They are seeki ng for more information to enable them make informed decision. free reports. When they are sure you have what they ne interacting with your business. They can sign up to your email list or contact you directly. This will help you to know the type of content you need to create for them. example the content a new visitor will need is dif ferent from the one you will create for a prospective buyer who is getting ready to make a purchase. You need to design content according to their buying stages. Below i s an image of your audiences journey through the buying stages. There are four stages highlighted in the diagram ab ove. When your audience first comes to your website they are like suspects . They want to know all about your products and services. It is at this stage you need to provide insightful information about your products. For example you can write how- to These information will educate your audience about what you pro spect stage. They have read your content and understood your product or services. They are seeki ng for more information to enable them make informed decision. This is where you can create e When they are sure you have what they ne ed they will start interacting with your business. They can sign up to your email list or contact you you need to create for them. For example the content a new visitor will need is dif ferent from the one you will create for a prospective buyer who is getting ready to make a purchase. You need s an image of your When your audience first . They want to know all about your is at this stage you need to provide insightful to -guides how These information will educate your audience about what you They have read your content and understood your product or services. They are seeki ng for more information to This is where you can create e -books and ed they will start interacting with your business. They can sign up to your email list or contact you

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The last stage opportunity is when your audience is ready to make a purchase based on your contents so far. These are the stage s you need to take your audience through with your content marketing. This is a great content marketing strategy best practice that will greatly help you t o attract and retain your prospects. Create a Content Formula Content marketing is all about creating content tha t will help your audience solve their most pressing needs or problems. To do this you will need to create a content formula that will help your customer make a n informed decision. Above i made mention of the kind of contents that will be s uitable for your audience at each buying stage. Here you will see the formula to create those awesome posts. Below are three foolproof formula you can use: Formular 1: Create an editorial calendar We all know what a Calendar is. A Content Calendar functions pretty much the same way. A content calendar is a document that al lows you to plan your content creation publishing promotion and measuring your content marketing efforts. The major benefits of a marketing calendar are: It simplifies the content creation process Content calendar makes it easy for you to develop i deas and topics for your blogs social media websites Facebook twitter Google+ etc etc. With it you are able to sit down and determine the kind of topics you wa nt to share per time either for a week a month or months at a stretch. It helps you to plan and organize your content publ ishing around events dates and launches

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A content calendar helps you to plan content for yo ur seasonal or yearly events product launches dates e.t.c. Planning these eve nts ahead will help you to have enough time to put in your best. Many big companie s plan their contents in advance before it actually takes place and this pos itions them on top of their competition. It gives you enough time to create your content You have enough time to write or outsource your con tent creation as the case may be long before the time you need it. You have enough time to conduct research look into case studies and produce epic c ontent that your audience and search engines will love to see. Features of a content calendar Time-frame Your content calendar needs to have a time-frame to make it easy for you to track and measure your return on investment. Although ev eryone uses a different time-frame depending on business needs. However t he appropriate thing should be to develop your theme for the year. Your theme should spring from your business objective for the year. This includes what you hope to achieve in the course of the new year. Now you can develop topic s and ideas around your objectives. You can gather your ideas and topics o ver a years period and then structure it out on a monthly basis. With this yo u can measure your achievement on a monthly basis and then conclude it when the ye ar ends. The content of the calendar In creating contents for your audience you must kn ow their needs. Knowing their needs will enable you to know what type of content to develop for them. You can serve your contents in different formats such as: Blog posts

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Videos PowerPoint Presentations Infographics Podcast E-books Charts and Graphs Magazines articles Webinars and Teleseminars Speeches workshops interview Tutorials and guides White papers and special reports Newsletters However if you are just starting your content mark eting strategy I will advise you to start with your business blog. Then when you be come an expert you can add other types of content to it. Before you settle fo r the type of content to create for your audience make sure it is something you ca n create and that your audience will like to receive the information in th e format you are serving it. Publication Schedule It is time to schedule your publication. In doing this you will need to decide the frequency length and style of your content. The fr equency of publishing should be according to your business needs. Some business owners blog every day some once in a week and others on a monthly basis. You n eed to choose the system that best work for your business. In deciding that you need to factor in the time it will take you to create other types of contents engage with your fans on social media reply to comments on your blogs etc.

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The length of your contents also depends on your ch oice. Content marketing industry leaders advocate long posts 1000 - 3000 as opposed to short ones 300-500 commonly seen around. The reason behind this is that long post allows you to delve into the heart of the topic to give yo ur audience all they need to know about that topic making you an authority in t hat regard. You also need to determine the length of your podcasts video webin ars etc. There are different types of content style such as Chatty friendly business-like brash etc. Personally I prefer to go with the fr iendly style. It allows your audience to connect with you easily giving them a better understanding of your topic. Content calendar tools There are several calendar tools online for busines s owners who finds it difficult to create one. A calendar tool help you to stay org anized and there are different types of it. The major thing here is to make sure t hat it has the features you need such as sharing follow-up collaboration etc. Ens ure that your team can utilize it effectively for content scheduling. Below are tool s you can use for your business: 1. Google docs

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Google docs is owned by Google and it is the same t hing as using Microsoft Excel. However you can get free templates to adapt to you r business here. When you create your calendar on Google docs it enables you to collaborate and edit as a team. Every team member can log in check and know the publication dates keywords promotion days etc. WordPress editorial calendar

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The WordPress editorial calendar plugin provides an overview of your blog and when you need to make your post. It has several fe atures such as drag and drop feature to help you change your post dates publish post titles contents and times see the status of your posts manage posts f rom multiple authors etc. You can use this plugin if your business is still growi ng. It does not have the capability to track content nor feature for social media posts .

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Hubspot editorial calendar Hubspot editorial calendar is suitable for business owners who are new to content marketing. It includes type of content key words and dates. All you need to do is to type in your content ideas and start wo rking on it. It helps you to keep your topics organized track keyword and call to ac tion use and ensure that content is developed witin the specified time and b udget. However as your team grows you may need to look for a more comprehensiv e calendar. Coschedule

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Coschedule provide a better WordPress plugin editor ial calendar that is more comprehensive and you can try it out for free for 1 4 days after which you can upgrade to the paid plan. Kapost Kapost has the best editorial calendar tools. It i s used by top b2b business such as CBS Cisco and Content marketing institute. The sof tware has the capabilities to track your content marketing workflow from beginnin g to the end. It is good for big corporations that creates enormous content and have lots of team members. The Kapost software is not free the price starts f rom 2000 per month. Content calendar is a must if you must track your marketing effects to know your return on investment. It also enables you to plan a head of time so that you can create useful content for your audience and be on t op of your competition.

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Formula 2: Use a List post In a research carried out by OkDork and Buzzumo it was discovered that list posts receive most social shares after infographics. List posts are very popular and can easily go viral. So how do you write a great list posts: a. Use the right number of items. Ok Dor and Buzzumo analyzed 100 million articles and discovered that the most popular form of list post that receives the greates t share are the ones with the number 1023 16 and 24. b. Make your list post easily digestible. c. Include an introduction before you start creating the list just like I did above. d. Add pictures e. Write a conclusion ii. Select a Viral Topic The reason why most people dont succeed in content marketing is simply because of the topic they use in creating content. In those days you can succeed

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with any topic you want. But nowadays competitions are stiff and a lot of people create content on a daily basis. So your content n eeds to stand out. You need create a topic that will make people want to share your content and that will interest your prospects. The best way to do these are: a. Look at what works for your competitors There is no point reinventing the wheel. Check out your competitors websites and look at headings that are creating a buzz on th eir websites. You can use ahref or buzzumo to find it out. You can then model your topic after their own. For example if you are in the dog collar business and you are looking for article ideas that work. Go to www.buzzumo.com and look for artic les that are receiving high number of shares. In the image above you can see different topics th at are receiving a high number of shares. Look at the topic "22 adorable dog collars every dog owner needs" . You can decide to make your own "50 adorable collars dog owners cant do without" b. Use Quora to look at the questions your prospects are asking . This will give you a clue as to what your audience wants to know. For example if you search for dog collar you will see different topic ideas you can use for your contents as shown below.

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c. Copy your competitors URL to google keyword pl anner tool and look at their keywords. You can get an idea of what is working fo r them. For example one of the top dog collar website is http://www.petsmart.c om/. So go over to google keyword planner and type in the website.

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Click on "get ideas" and you will see lots of keywo rd ideas you can use shown below

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iii. Create the post publish and promote it Now that you know what type of content you want to create you can create a top quality list post on your topic. After you publish the post you will need to promote it effectively. If you do it well it will go viral and you will have several eyeballs on it.

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Formula 3: Create Search Engine Optimizated contents SEO is not dead as some people make us believe. Yo u still need to attract search engine traffic to maximize your earnings online. I n order to create a content that will benefit both humans and search engines you ne ed to: i. Use one keyword per page - Choose relevant k eyword for your content and optimize it appropriately ii. Use your keyword four or five times in your c ontent. People who visit your website through search engines will want to read ab out what brought them there in the first place. iii. Use a minimum page length for your post. It i s discovered that longer posts 1000 + get more shared than shorter ones 300-500 . Measure Your content marketing ROI After putting your best effort into content marketi ng you need to measure your results. You need to measure your reach measured b y impressions traffic subscriber/audience size share of voice audience penetration across

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organization. You need to measure your reach by th e channels you are using for content marketing website blog social media chan nels etc. You measure page view unique visitors average tim e on page engagement conversion. etc. You will learn more about it in Ch apter Six. Now if you cannot write or you dont have a conten t marketing agency in your company you can outsource your content marketing c ampaigns. Read more about it in the next chapter.

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Chapter Three How to recruit and Manage writers for your Business needs Deciding who will write your content for you is a v ery important decision in creating your content marketing strategy. Although it may look and sound simple it needs to be a calculated step as highlig hted below: Use your Staff or Outsource it The first thing you need to decide is whether you w ill be using your in-house staff for content production or you will outsource it to professional writers to handle for you. This decision depends on a number of fact ors: One the frequency of your production. i.e. whether you will be churning out contents on a daily weekly or monthly basis. Secondly if the content is intended for your compa nys blog or for brand management and thought leadership pieces that are i ntended to engage consumers on your website drive conversions or for lead generation. Now if you will be producing content on a regular basis say d aily on your companys blog your staff can handle that. However if you will n eed to develop your brand awareness or create thought leadership pieces that is intended to boost your business sales conversions etc you will need to outsource your content creation to content writers out there. They are equipped to produce excellent articles that will be tailored to your own corporate goals and ob jectives. Hire Experts Enthusiasts or influencers If you decide to outsource your content creation to writers. You have the obligation to ensure that they are writers who can meet your needs. To know

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this you will need to find out whether you need ex perts enthusiasts or influencers or some mix of the three. i. Experts These are top professionals who have experience in the industry or subject area which you want to write on. These should be high q uality writers that should have their own domain to show off their expertise. This is what we do in Hephzysocial . We have expert writers in any topic you want to w rite on. 2. Enthusiasts Enthusiasts are high quality writers who have deep interest in the topic you want write on. For instance if you are looking to crea te content on baby products it will be great if you can get moms with real world e xperience who loves to write to handle it for you. 3. Influencers Influencers are people who can affect purchasing de cisions of others because of their authority knowledge relationship or positio n. It is a common word in the world of marketing today. You need such people for certain type of content such as social media engagement campaigns. You can recru it such people from any platform or website that measures how socially conn ected a particular person is in order to measure their influence. Below are best practices for you to manage writers 1. There is a need for you to train your writers on your brand voice and style preferences. This will enable them to know how to w rite for your website/blog. It is recommended you give writers a set of content gu idelines they can refer to when creating content. This will enable you maintai n your brand voice among different writers.

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2. You need to interview and vet your writers bef ore giving them writing projects. You can check out their writing samples a nd bio with relevant experience. You can also ask them to write a trial piece to determine if the writers style and tone is in line with your brand voice and style. 3. Ensure that your writers have the tools and tr aining necessary to write for search engine optimization. Content marketing involves more than creating a few blog posts and it involves a huge commitment of time and resources. It is not ea sy to produce content in- house most of the time especially if you need prof essional services. This is where we come in. You can contact us for professional content marketing and we will help take your company to the next level. We provid e well-researched longer high quality content for you and we also help to up load the contents on your blog. In the next chapter you will learn about the best platform where you can publish your contents.

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Chapter Four Popular Publishing platforms for your contents Having learned about how to create a winning conten t marketing strategy it is time to take those contents and publish them on the right platform that will help create brand awareness lead generations and sales. In this chapter we will be looking at where you can publish the different type of contents you created. Blog post The age of using programming codes and CSS is long gone. It is now easy for everyone to have a website without knowing anything about programming. All it takes now is to purchase a hosting account and inst all a content management system CMS within minutes and your website/blog w ill be up and running. There are different types of content management sys tems such as WordPress Joomla Modx TextPattern RefineryCMS Drupal etc with Wordpress the most popular being.

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WordPress is a very easy platform where you can pub lish your blog posts. It has a lot of themes and plugins that makes it easy to cus tomize according to your taste. You can customize the appearance moderate comments add widgets and integrate any multimedia of your choice. Once you a re through with that you can start posting your content. Video One of the ways you can market/promote your busines s is by creating and promoting video content. A research carried out by comScore revealed that 188.2million people in the US watched 52.4 billion video content in December 2013 and for the entire year 93 percent of markete rs used video to boost their marketing efforts. This data shows that video can help you generate engagement and shareability of your content. This is the reas on why it is necessary for you to start using it in your marketing campaign. There are numerous video sharing websites on the in ternet where you can host your video each with its own distinctive features. Some of them are content restrictive i.e. not all kinds of contents are acc eptable non-commercial category specifics etc. The platform you use will depend on your business needs and so you need to really sit down and choose the b est one for your company.

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Youtube is the most popularly used platform to host videos and many small and big businesses are using it to market their product and services. According to Youtube press page 1 billion unique users visit Youtube every month and more than 6 billions hours of video are watched eve ry month. This figure clearly shows that Youtube is the highest trafficked web ba sed video publishing platform. All you need is to create an account on Youtube and upload your videos on it. Although Youtube is free you can extend your reac h through paid promotions. It is a great platform for any business. Other video platforms you can try out are Vimeo metacafe Vitomy Blip.tv etc. Podcast Both big and small companies are creating podcasts. It has become a new method of content marketing for businesses. There are several benefits of using podcast for you r business. One creating a podcast is one of the best ways to reach a large au dience 1 billion smartphones were shipped in 2013 alone . It is a great way to enhance your companys bra nd as it adds a new dimension to your marketing strate gy.

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Although you can host it on your website but not a ll website hosts are good hosts for podcasts. This is because creating podcasts inv olve large storage space and this can bog down servers hence the need for separ ate podcast hosts. You can use other online services such as ourmedia.org arc hive.org etc. E-book platform There are several places where you can sell your e- books starting from your website. You can create a product page on your web site and sell it right there. You can also decide to sell it on places like Amazo n kindle. The platform holds 67 of the e-book buying market share according to bloomberg . With Amazon Kindle Publishing platform everyone can buy your e -book. It is free to list your e- book on Amazon Kindle. The second platform you can use is Nook by Barnes a nd Noble. The platform has about 25 e-book sales market share. The third plat form is the Apples iBooks. The platform holds a mere 5 of the market share. H owever the number is rising as e-books become more popular and sophisticated an d more app-like. With the iBook Author you can upload your e-book using Epub format which does not work well with Amazon Kindle.

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Overall the choice of the platform you use depends on the purpose of creating the e-book in the first place. If you want to use i t to generate leads/subscribers you will need to host it on your website or offer i t free on Amazon Kindle. But if you want to make some money from it you can choose any of the platforms discussed above. Infographic There are several platforms you can use to publish your infographic content. Find them listed below a. Your website The first place to host your infographic is on your website. Hosting it there will help you to create credibility support your search engine ranking and can even lead to sales for you. You can also use it as a mea ns of generating leads by creating a contact form for people to fill before t hey can download it. b. Quora This is another great place you can host your infog raphic. It will help you to build authority and relationship with people who share si milar ideas and interests. It will even be more helpful if you see a question to answer on quora using your infographic. c. Bookmarketing sites Bookmarking sites provide a wider reach to build yo ur brand and create engagement with your audience. You can use sites li ke reddit digg stumbleupon etc. This way it will be easy for people to index your infographic faster and you also receive a lot of traffic in return. Other plat form for hosting infographics includes Pinterest Instagram Flickr Google+ Lin kedin Twitter Facebook etc

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Memes You can share your meme on different platform star ting from your website or blog. From there share it on your Facebook page l inking back to the page or post on your website or blog. You can also share on twit ter several times a day as tweets tend to disappear fast. If you have a pinte rest account pin it to your board and include a link back to your blog. If it i s a video meme you can share it on Youtube channel. There you have it. You can use any of the platform s mentioned above to publish your content based on the type of content. What ar e you waiting for Start publishing your contents right away The next post will be on content promotion keep it a date with me.

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Chapter Five Proven Ways to promote your content The next thing you need to do after publishing your content is to promote it by positioning it where your target audience will come in contact with it. This is one of the most important stages in your co ntent marketing strategy. Creating content is not enough you need to know ho w to effectively promote it. There are more than 2 million posts being published daily on the internet and yours will be part of it. No matter how good your c ontent is it will be useless if no one sees it. Therefore you must position your con tent where your target audience will see it. Many companies use different channels to reach thei r target audience such as Search engine optimization social media email vi deos etc. There are two major ways you can promote your content and they are - Or ganic /free method and Paid reach. Organic/Free Method Here you will be using free methods to promote you r content. The first method we will look at is using social media websites such as Facebook Twitter Google+ etc. Social Media Twitter Twitter is one of the easiest platform to promote y our content. This is because it only involves 140 characters you can use the rep ly to respond to anyone

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whether they are your followers or not and it has a lot of tools to help you share your content. For a start as soon as your content goes live on your blog or website you need to tweet it multiple times. You n eed to do this because your audience comprises of people all over the world and it is likely that everyone will not be online when your content is tweeted. However you need to change the title of your post each time your tweet it to make it unique and fresh. Google+ Google plus is another great place to post your con tents. As you post the link introduce your post by a comment to set the ball ro lling. Add hashtags to it to make it easy for people to see. Posting on Google gives you an upper hand when it comes to search engine rankings. This is because Google+ is a feature of Google and it is designed to be more easily found by the G oogle search engines. Therefore when you post your content link on Googl e and your target audience interacts with it it has a great potential to show up in search engines. Linkedin If you have a Linkedin account post your content o n your page and also share it with related Linkedin groups. Other social media channels to use are Facebook Pi nterest stumbleupon Digg Youtube etc. Guest blogging Guest blogging is a great way to get an external li nk for your blog/website. Guest posting can also be used to promote your content on relevant authority websites. It will not only give you links it will also help drive targeted traffic to your website.

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Paid advertisement Although using organic free methods to promote yo ur content is good you may need to incorporate paid advertisement to widen you r scope. This is especially good when you are just starting out. Below are paid methods you can use to promote your content. Facebook ad Facebook permits companies to target their post to their audiences. With Facebook advertising you can target your audience to a great extent. This is one area where Facebook is better than Google adwords w hen it comes to advertising. Facebook has so many options to use in targeting your audience. You can target them based on Geographical location Age sex Language relationship status Education level job titles interest beha viours etc. Promoted tweets Twitter allow you to promote your tweets. This is a superb way of positioning yourself in front of the right people and join soci al conversation. You can target users by their interest gender device Geographic al location etc. All these will enable your tweets get directly in front of your ta rget audience. Reddit Ads Reddit generates about 5 billion pageviews from mor e than 86 million unique monthly visitors. It has over 6100 targeted communi ties organized around every topic you can imagine. It is the largest and most e ngaged community on the internet. Based on this stats alone many marketers love to use it for content advertising. However it involves spending time on Reddit. All the methods mentioned above whether it is orga nic or paid reach are viable means of promoting your content to target audience. In the next chapter we will discuss about how to measure your result on content marketing investment.

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Chapter Six How to measure your content marketing ROI using Goo gle analytics If you are like me you probably will not like the word "analytics". I dont like anything with statistics or analytics. It sounds technical and hard to understand. Can I tell you a secret Will you promise to keep it to yourself Ok thanks. I had low marks in Mathematics while at School. The numbers were just too much for me to remember. Lol. Now back to our topic. I thought I could avoid using analytics because of the fear of analysis. I tried doing that for years. I was just creating contents nobod y wants to read. I dont even know my audience. When I got tired I quit. Since then I have been reading topics like SEO an alytics and content marketing. They are strategies you will need to master in orde r to make notable impacts in content marketing. So here I am going to simplify it for you. I wil l break it down into simple steps that will fascinate you. Are you ready lets go

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A lot of marketers measure their content marketing by the amount of traffic they get. That is a tiny part of the analytics which i s not sufficient enough to determine your ROI. Again content marketing success is not dependent o n the amount of contents you create. It might interest you to know that ove r 1400 posts is created every single minute . That is a lot of content. How many of these post s are actually read How many of them are successful. Very littl e A major factor in content marketing success hinges on creating content that your target audience loves. This is the only way you can get them to interact with your post share it get subscribers and turn them into paying customers. How will you know which of your content is performing well The simple answer to this question is by using a web analytics. It is reported that 41 of marketers confirm that they receive positive ROI in their content marketing strategies. Do you want to belong to this group of people Then you need to produce targeted content that will bring a great return on your investment. In this chapter you will learn how to use a free t ool Google analytics to measure your success in content marketing. Although there are better tools that can go deeper than Google analytics such as Kissmetrics. You can still make do with Google analytics for now. It is the best free web analytics on the internet so far. It is very popular more than 28365107 websites are using it. Setting up your google analytics tool is not as dif ficult as you think. If you are not currently using it you can sign up for it using yo ur gmail address. Then connect your website to your google analytics account. It is pretty easy

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Once you have it connected check out the following features and use them effectively. Below are things you can measure to de termine your content marketing ROI. Google analytics goal details Online business owners should have a goal of what t hey want to achieve on the web. There is no way you can measure your content marketing success without setting business goals in place. You can set goals to: 1. Track visitors who viewed a landing page or a post. 2. Visitors who clicked a button filled a form or dow nload a free e-book on your website 3. New subscribers to your blog 4. Subscribers who opened your email and clicked throu gh to your website 5. Webinar registrations 6. Sales made over-time e.t.c You dont have to set lots of goals. Infact Google analytics only permit you to set a maximum of 20 goals. Every goal you set will appe ar in your reports. If you have too many goals it will look clumsy. You can start with a few goals to get familiar with the report you want to generate. Now lets start. We will create a goal to track how many people view s the " thank you page " for your email newsletters page. You will want to know how people get to this page where do they start from and what content lead them to it. This will enable you to have a better understanding of the content marketin g strategy that works and then leverage more on producing such contents to ge t more leads. Below are the steps you need to take to achieve tha t: 1. Log into your Google analytics account

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2. Click on "Admin" Then click on " Goals " in the third column under " All website data Click on " new goal " as shown by the red button in the pic below: On the next page displayed under the goal descript ion 2 type in the name of your goal and specify the type.

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For this example we will choose " destination " because we are setting the goal for the email newsletter subscription. So click on Destination and then " continue ". This is the last page of goal setup. Now here unde r the " destination " section type in the url of the page you want to track. For our example we will track the " thank you page ".

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If you want you can set the value of your goal in monetary term. That way you can see what each visitor that signs up is worth to your business. You can verify the link you supplied to make sure i t is working by clicking on "verify this goal " When you are done click on " create goal button " Click on " savings ". There you are Goal number one created. Now go a nd try to create measurable goals for your business.

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Average Time on page Measuring the time spent by your visitors on your w ebsite will let you know what kind of content they love to read. The page that re ceives the highest number of views is also telling you that - visitors love the content. To check out this data: Click on " report " at the top of your page Click on " Behaviour " then " Site content " and then " All pages " Click on " average time on page " to sort out the highest time spent on the page followed by the lower ones. With this report you will know which of your posts visitors are spending time reading. Your content is not useful to your readers if most of them leave after 3 seconds. One of the parameters Google uses to rank websites is known as the dwell time. When a visitor comes from Google and spends 5 minut es on your website and another one comes from a different website and spen ds 5 seconds Google calculates it as dwell time. If visitors are spendi ng more time on your website

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they assume you have useful content that is benefic ial. If on the other hand they cant wait to leave they know something is wrong w ith your content. A good example of this are two restaurants located in the same environment. The first one is always filled up while the second one is always empty. If you look at it closely you will discover that the quality of serv ice or food on display is different. People love good things and that is why you need to create content that your readers will fall in love with. They will always c ome back for more. If your content is able to fulfill your business g oals then it is termed successful. Then you can create similar posts to increase conv ersion. This will give you a targeted focus that will increase your ROI on your content marketing efforts. Reverse goal path At the beginning of this guide I made mention of s etting goals for Google analytics for tracking. If you have goals in place like we did at the beginning you can check the " reverse goal " feature to find the post or content your visitors read before they subscribed or take the action you speci fied in the goal. The goal path is the steps your visitors take to re ach the goal. It shows three steps that users took before completing the set goal. He re you will know the type of content that motivated them to subscribe to your em ail list or take a particular action. To use this feature click on " Conversion " then " goals " " reverse goal path" . see it below

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Choose the goal you want to track from the drop dow n list here In the picture below the goal was set for contact form subscription. If you look at no.6 you will discover that the visitor was on abo ut us/contact page then moved to the blog and then went to " why lunametrics " before they subscribed. This report will show you that the content is more compelling to visitors and inspires them to act. Therefore there is a need to create more content on the benefits of lunametrics.

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You can put the newly created content in prominent places on your website where visitors can have access to it. Referral traffic Referral traffic report shows you where your websit e visitors are coming from. For instance if a visitor clicks on one of your links on Facebook and they get to your website it is counted as a referral traffic becaus e Facebook referred the visitor to your website. To measure your referral traffic click on " acquisition " " All traffic " then "R eferrals "

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This report will show you how your content is being distributed and promoted online. Most likely you will have where you are sha ring your links e.g. email content curation websites social media networks e .tc. If your content is useful and beneficial to your audience they will share it . As they do that you will see the list of your referral traffic increasing. So the level of referral traffic you see is the level of your effectiveness in promoting your c ontent. Once you know the websites that are giving you the most traffic you can increase your level of participation on those websites. For example in the image above best-seo-software.xyz business2community and getfr eesocialtraffic are the three websites bringing in the traffic to the website al though there is no much content promotion on the website. So what you can use the report to do is to promote more on the websites bringing in the most traffic. Social referrals . You can also check the social media platform that i s giving you the highest number of traffic. Scroll down in the dashboard to " social " click on " overview " and you will see the chart displayed as shown below : From the picture above you can see that Facebook i s bringing in more traffic than the rest of the platforms. Like I said earlier th e website used for this analysis is fairly new and there has not been much promoted on it. For this website there is a need to increase the level of participation on Fa cebook and Linkedin. They are

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the one bringing in the most traffic. This will ena ble you to focus on the social media that is working for your niche. Page views Page views show the number of visitors that visits a particular post on a page. This number depicts your readers interest in the conten t. This will show you how popular and useful your content is. You can then p roduce content on topics that have higher hits to get more views. You can check the page views in different ways: i. By views ii. By source iii. By title. So move up to the " behaviour " feature click on " All pages ". You will see the post with the highest number of views.

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You can create more content on the most viewed post s. Demographic reports You need to know the demographic of your website us ers. This will enable you to create a perfect buyer persona for them. You will know what they like and dislike. To get this data - Go to the " audience" section then click on " Demographics" Click on " overview " and you will see the data

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This report will show you the number of users who a re men or women and their ages the engagement and conversion rate. Recently I used this information to run a Facebook ad. When setting up a Facebook ad there is a place where you will choose the age gender and interest of your audience you can use this data effectively to generate good ROI for your advert. From the overview page you can change the little d rop down from session to:

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New sessions to help you see if you attracting the right demogr aphic audience Avg. session duration - to know which gender and age stays longer on you r website Bounce rate: to show the gender that cant wait to leave your w ebsite Pages/session to see who is engaging more with your content. You can see how interesting it is to use Google ana lytics data to produce better content for your audience. It is time to stop chur ning out contents and start analysing what you already have. When you do that you will save a lot of time money and energy in creating contents that no one w ants to read. Google analytics reports also lets you know your RO I. It will tell you whether your content marketing campaign is working or not. With a tweak here and there you should get it right in no time.

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Conclusion Wow This is really an ultimate guide you can use to start your content marketing campaign. One thing you need to remember is that content mark eting is not a quick way of building your business. It takes time to see the re sults but once it starts showing it can last for a very long time. Therefore you need to be patient keep posting con tinuously in order to get a tangible result from your marketing effort.

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About Hephzysocial READY TO TAKE YOUR BUSINESS TO THE NEXT LEVEL Then you are in the right place. Heres the deal: If you need contents to: Generate leads to follow up by sales and market ing teams Help your sales team close sales more quickly Generate interest in your products Build and repair public opinion about your bran d and products Develop friends and fans who interact with your brand socially Help customers get the most from your products Then you are in the right place. HOW HEPHZYSOCIAL CAN HELP YOU GROW YOUR BUSINESS Im a big believer that every online marketer must master the art of content marketing and promotion. But with the increasing am ounts of information out there how can you find practical techniques that w ill help you to achieve the goals highlighted above Thats where Hephzysocial comes in. Hephzysocial has grown into one of the most popular content marketing agency on the web for one simple reason: Everything I publish is super actionable and design ed to help you get more leads customers and sales.

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About me: Hephzysocial was founded by Hephzy Asaolu a professional content marketer with lots of experien ce. She is passionate about creating top quality content that is clear inform ative entertaining and well- researched. Find our content marketing packages below: Content types Silver package Gold package Diamond Package Authority content creation Content Creation Word count Frequency Word count Frequency Word count Frequency Article List posts how-to- guides 1000- 1500 1x per month 2000- 2500 1x per month 2000- 3000 2x per month Blog article 500-700 4x per month 500-700 4x per month 500- 700 8x per month Infographic X X N/A 2x Per year N/A 4x per year Ebooks/ Ultimate Guides/How-to Guides X X 3000 2x Per year 5000 4x per year Content Promotion Relevant and Interesting Facebook posts X 4x per Month N/A 8x per Month N/A 12x per Month

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Relevant and Interesting Twitter posts X 4x per Month N/A 8x per Month N/A 12x per Month Content Marketing Strategy Competitor Research N/A Yes Yes Content Ideas N/A Yes Yes Guest posts N/A 2 /Month 4/month Feature image 1 1 2 Content Marketing Calendar N/A Yes Yes Google analytics monthly report and Optimization N/A Yes Yes Price Per Month 2000/month 10000/ 6 months 3500/month 20000/6 months 5500/month 30000/6 months Make your choice and send a mail to: hephzysocial gmail.com. Take action now and enjoy a profitable year 2016 ahead.