25 Growth Hacks That Will Amplify Your Content Marketing
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25 #GrowthHacks That Will Amplify Your Content Marketing
Click To TweetWhy Do I Need Growth Hacks For My Content Marketing?
One of the things that we have been talking about quite a bit on this blog is a concept that we've come up with called content hacking. It's about learning to get more from your content than just another blog post with the occasional tweet. It's about using your content to drive maximum traffic and lots of attention. It's about getting results, in other words. After all, why else would you be creating content? With that in mind, here are 25 killer ways that you can hack your content marketing, in no particular order.1. Write Awesome Headlines
Headlines matter. A lot. You already know this, yet you still write mushy headlines that don't always drive results. Why do you do this? If you needed further proof at just how important a headline is, consider Inbound.org, a site that is about "voting" up content based on the headline. Maybe that isn't how it is supposed to work ideally, but a simple scroll through the homepage and it's easy to see that headlines are a factor.![content marketing hacks](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/Inbound_Marketing_Community_-_Hacker_News_for_Marketers_and_HipChat_-_Justin_Walsh_and_Evernote-770x425.png?w=3840&q=75)
![write better headlines with this free headline analyzer](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/headline-analyzer-for-better-headlines-300x300.png?w=3840&q=75)
- Use headline types that get the most traction for social shares, traffic, and search engine ranking.
- Make sure you have the right word balance to write readable headlines that command attention.
- See the best word and character length for search engines like Google and email subject lines, while also seeing how your readers will scan your headlines.
2. Make Content More Sharable
How easy is it for your readers to share your content? It's not that readers are lazy, but they aren't going to work too hard to share a post; you need to make it easy for them. I'm sure you have a few share buttons, but are you placing sharing options within your post itself? Simple WordPress plugins like Click To Tweet and Markerly allow you to make the content in your post shareable with a simple click. These are important triggers that you can use to get your readers sharing content for you.Create beautiful Click To Tweet boxes in your blog posts. #ClickToTweet
Click To Tweet![free wordpress click to tweet plugin](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/Click_To_Tweet-770x460.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
3. Test Share Button Positions
Where are the share buttons on your page? Are they above or below the fold? Believe it or not, but it can make a difference. AddThis (one of the leading social sharing tools) suggests that social share buttons placed "above the fold" performed the best for most sites.Keep your button near the top of the page: Avoid making your readers scroll to find your sharing button. It is okay to have the button at the top and bottom of the page, but users will find it easier at the top.
![test your share buttons placement well.](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/25_Scientifically_Proven_Ways_To_Write_Better_Headlines_For_Your_Blog-3-770x202.png?w=3840&q=75)
4. SEO Keywords For Targeting
It feels like SEO is becoming a bit less important in the new order of content marketing, but I am not convinced that it shouldn't matter at all. One of the big benefits of choosing keywords is that it keeps you in touch with your audience. You will know what they are searching for, and what is on their mind. I recommend learning how to use Google Adwords to find keywords that work for your audience. Generate a list, and write a post to go with each group of keywords. There are several plugins out there that will keep you honest.- WordPress SEO Plugin: Yoast's plugin is certainly the most popular SEO plugin out there, and it's pretty powerful for being free. It will analyze the content in your post to make sure that it is staying true to your keywords. It is a must-have for every blogger.
- Scribe: While it requires a monthly fee, Scribe makes it even easier to analyze your content and make sure that you are staying true to your keywords. I have found it to be the best plugin available for content analysis, and well worth the price of admission.
![Edit_Post_‹_CoSchedule_—_WordPress-4](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/Edit_Post_%E2%80%B9_CoSchedule_%E2%80%94_WordPress-4-770x428.png?w=3840&q=75)
5. Let Your Content Lead To A Call To Action
Every time someone reads your content, you should be leading them to an inevitable call to action. On the CoSchedule blog, we provide a sticky header that offers our readers all of the helpful guides we've ever written in exchange for a simple email address. This simple header leads to hundreds of new "leads" each month. It's simple, helpful, and worth including on every post.![blog post call to action](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/How_to_Steal_Your_Competitor%E2%80%99s_Twitter_Followers-3-770x537.png?w=3840&q=75)
6. Add A Pop-Up. Yes, A Pop-Up.
Ok, now let's take it one step further. Maybe you need to make your call to action a little more actionable like this pop-up ad from GrooveHQ.![growth hacking content marketing](https://media.coschedule.com/blog/guest-posts/files/2013/12/A_SaaS_Startup%E2%80%99s_Journey_to__100_000_a_Month-3-770x542.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
7. Gamify Your Blog
Gamification is subject unto itself, but it takes advantage of a key component of growth hacking–the desire to make what we do and what we think, as readers, public. There is a unique human desire for connectivity and personal sharing that makes sites like Facebook and Twitter work. Why not use this for your own site?![Poststat.us, a site that uses Love It Pro to gamify its reading process.](https://media.coschedule.com/blog/guest-posts/files/2013/12/Post_Status___WordPress_News___Link_Curation-2.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
8. Use Your Network For More Than Self-Promotion
So often, we think about our blog and social networks as outbound channels–channels for sharing our content with others, but not necessarily connecting with them. Chris Lema is a blogger who knows better. Lema blogs regularly about the products he loves and people that he respects. He is a well-know force in the WordPress community simply because of his willingness to reach out and give generously. Jump on Chris's email list, and you will know what I mean.![give generously chris lema](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/Generosity_s_First_Lesson-770x362.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
9. Guest Blogging
Yeah yeah yeah, Matt Cutts said that guest blogging is dead. He didn't mean it. At least not really. Guest blogging as a link-building tool is dead, but as a way to build trust and awareness for your personal brand, it is very much alive. Guest blogging is still a powerful method for promotion and professional networking if you're doing it right.![Referral links from guest posts provide consistent traffic and recognition.](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/Referral_Traffic_-_Google_Analytics-4.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
10. Think Beyond The Borders
As a blogger, it can be pretty easy to think only in terms of our own blog, but if we were honest with ourselves, we'd see that there is a whole big world out there. Modern content marketers need to think beyond the borders of their blog and take their content elsewhere. Here are a few ideas:- Videos on YouTube
- Podcasts and audio content
- Udemy course, or Skillshare
- Slideshow
- Quora, or other answer sites
- Forum contributions
11. Write Longer Copy
Blogger Neil Patel recently published a great post regarding search rankings and post length on his blog. In his research, he discovered an "average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words." I did my own research and found very similar results. So, what does that mean for you? Well, clearly you need to write more!![word count and search ranking](https://media.coschedule.com/blog/guest-posts/files/2013/12/wordcountcontent.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
12. Write More Headlines, At Least 25
It may sounds like old news, but your headline is one of the most important aspects of your post. If you mess it up, you lose your chance at ever achieving a real content hack. Upworthy.com knows a thing or two about headlines. In their slide deck The Sweet Science Of Virality, they emphasize the importance of the headline again and again. More importantly, they emphasize the value in writing a minimum of 25 headlines for each post.![Upworthy headline rules. Follow them.](https://media.coschedule.com/blog/guest-posts/files/2013/12/The_Sweet_Science_Of_Virality.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
13. Shoot For Virality
Speaking of Upworthy.com, there is a lot more that we can learn from them. Their entire model is built on the simple idea that they can manufacture virality with the right formula. You may think that it can't be done, but they've come as close to it as anyone, and they've even given us a few of their keys for success. It seems that the key is to be a true connoisseur of human nature. You need to understand how people think.![The_Sweet_Science_Of_Virality](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/The_Sweet_Science_Of_Virality.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
14. Link To Your Posts From Your Posts
We all know that links are a good thing when it comes to the search rankings and the web, and we all want others to link to our content. But what about linking to our own content for a change? Google rewards this behavior as well, and it is an important step in the blogging process.![How to cross link blog posts](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/Edit_Post_%E2%80%B9_CoSchedule_%E2%80%94_WordPress1.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
15. Infographics
One of the lessons that many content marketers have been learning lately is that the more time you spend on your content, the more likely you will have a pay-off.The more time you spend on your #content, the more likely you will have a pay-off. #blogging
Click To Tweet![content-hacker-cover](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/content-hacker-cover.png?w=3840&q=75)
16. Offer A Free Course
Creating content that you can reuse in multiple different ways is a huge content hack. A great example of this is a blog series that you turn into an ebook or an email autoresponder course. Serious content hackers learn to stretch their content as far as it will go.![Udemy.com is a great place to offer your free or paid online course.](https://media.coschedule.com/blog/guest-posts/files/2013/12/Teach_Online_-_Join_the_1000s_of_Instructors_Teaching_on_Udemy_-770x533.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
17. Tell A Great Story
In 2013, Groove did a really brave thing. They shut down their content marketing blog, a blog that was already bringing them 10,000 unique visitors each month. It was both a bold move and, as it turns out, a great idea.![groove content marketing](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/Journey_to__100k_a_Month_-_Groove_Blog-2.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
18. A/B Test Your 'About Us' Page
Your 'About Us' page is one of the most visited areas of your website. Unfortunately, it’s often one of the most ignored, especially when it comes to a good call to action. Use some of the advice from this article to create a second version of your About Page and test out your changes with Optimizely, a service that helps you with A/B testing.![about us page call to action - content marketing hack](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/copyblogger.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
19. Get Good At Email Marketing
It's 2015, but email is not extinct. Freelance writer Barry Feldman wrote an email marketing mega-post on the entire subject that covers it from top to bottom, but the easy summation of it is this: Email marketing is a tactic that you must get right. Over and over again, it's been proven that email marketing will consistently result in more conversions and more paying customers than social media. It is just that good.![content marketing update](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/content-marketing-update2.png?w=3840&q=75)
20. Share Visuals
Buffer looked into their tweets a while back and found they got 150% more clickthroughs when they shared images with their tweets instead of just text alone. But what if you could get even more engagement with your social messages than Buffer? https://twitter.com/CoSchedule/status/659015713789759488 When we started researching the best ways to get the most clickthroughs from social media, we started sharing a few GIFs in our tweets. Those tweets got 22.3% more engagement than our tweets with graphics alone—and 166.6% more clickthroughs. Motion in social media feeds can stop scrollers dead in their tracks. If you're using plain text social messages, think of hacking your networks with images, GIFs, and videos.21. Grow Your Google+ Audience
Search is now social, and one of the best ways to get noticed on search is to get noticed on Google+, Google's own social network. Many brands have a presence on Google+, but place little priority on the network because they've focused on Facebook or Twitter. Now is the time to change that. The more people that have you in your Google+ circles, the more likely you are to show up in social search, the default setting for Google searches. Weight is put on those in your circles when it comes to the search results on this setting. You want to show up in other's searches? Get in their circles.![google social search](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/google-social-search-6.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
22. Promote Your Content On Social Media More Than Once
In case you haven't heard, it's ok to promote your content on social media more than once. Networks like Twitter actually require it for true success. One of the easiest ways to grow the number of readers for each post you write is to simply share it more often. If each share results in a few new clicks, the math should take care of itself pretty quickly.![Ideas for promoting you blog on social media](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/promote-your-blog-social-media-2xchart.jpg?w=3840&q=75)
23. Autoresponder The Universe
Email-based autoresponder courses are an epic content marketing growth hack that you should be using to grow your blog. They're not the same as your regular email newsletter. Instead, they are simple courses that drip content to your readers as soon as they sign up for your email marketing mailing list. They are a great way to drive deeper engagement with your readers, and keep them connected to your brand.24. Make Your Blog Faster
Faster? Yes, faster. Back in 2010, Google engineer Matt Cutts announced that Google is now factoring site speed into search rankings. So, it only makes sense that you would make your blog as fast as possible.![site speed and seo performance](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/site-speed11-770x297.png?w=3840&q=75)
25. Promote Your Content Mercilessly
One of the biggest mistakes that content marketers make is that they focus more on the content than its promotion. While it is true that great content can "rise to the top," the biggest winners are still the ones that promote themselves the best.The best content marketers aren't the best at making content – they are the best at selling it.
Click To TweetWhat Content Marketing Growth Hacks Will You Rock?
Content hacking is, at its core, all about making your content easy to find, consume, and share. Anything that helps break down barriers to these three foundational concepts is a content hack worth trying.25 Growth Hacks Your #ContentMarketing Desperately Needs
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