In the world of blogging, content is king. However, it seems like there are many more kingdoms and lands that need conquering these days… especially with more than over a billion active websites and blog continually creating new content to compete against. With each new piece of content your blog pushes out, another few million articles are likely already flooding into your niche market today.
So, what’s a blogger or content creator to do?
Simple — stay focused on your content creation and SEO efforts, but also make sure you are always working on building your mailing list and outreach in the process.
The good news is that there are plenty of exciting new tools, services, and features on the market today to help with this process — especially if you are looking to automate and scale in size. Today I’m going to be sharing a few of these top solutions and how you can start using them to improve the overall performance, engagement, and growth of your website, blog or online business.
First… You Need to Grab those Emails!
As mentioned, one of the most important things you can do when it comes to creating content is making sure you are collecting email addresses from visitors on your site – or at least tracking their traffic patterns for later outreach.
Your content is always going to be a pathway for acquiring new audience members and converting some of them into leads that you can nurture, but if you don’t have the right calls to action, lead capture solution or subscription methods in place, you are missing out.
One of the best tools out there for accomplishing this is OptinMonster. Many site owners and bloggers are likely already familiar with this software and probably already using it on their sites — however, not as many are using it to its full advantage. OptinMonster has changed and progressed a lot over the years, going from a simple popup subscribe form, to now offering A/B split testing, a custom form designer, click to pop subscribe forms and much more.
If you currently have a website or blog that’s getting a lot of traffic, but not actively seeing as many email and newsletter subscribers as you’d like, be sure to check out the many features of OptinMonster and see how you can start implementing each of them into your existing site.
OptinMonster plans currently start out at $9 per month.
Second… Focus on Your Outreach and Marketing Efforts
I don’t know about you, but I get a ton of emails every day asking to build links to other sites and their resources. In most cases, many of these emails are automated or done through a virtual assistant. Yes, they get to be annoying after you receive several of the same emails from the same people, knowing they are going out on a mass scale — but they work.
With more competition than ever in the world of blogging and content creation, it’s important to build as many relationships and valuable backlinks as possible. This means you are going to need to have a solid outreach and marketing plan in place. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by actively building a list of other relevant websites, bloggers, experts and media outlets within your industry.
As you can imagine, this would be quite a long and tedious process if you were to collect all of these emails mailings, send out individual emails and document/reply to each. Fortunately, there are services and software solutions out there for this as well — such as Mailshake, a tool that makes promoting content, building relationships, and generating leads through cold emails a whole lot easier.
You can see a few of their many features below, which includes automatic follow-up on emails, the ability to set up an area for teams to manage campaigns, create editorial and calendar settings for mailings and also complete customization of emails and making sure they are personalized to each contact on your list.
Mailshake rates start at $9 per month.
Third… Measure, Track and Improve
Keeping with the theme of knowing how your content is working best for you, it’s always important to know how users are actively using your site. It’s one thing to have lead generation forms on your site and tracking your daily conversions, but it’s another to actually see and know what your audience is doing while they are on your site.
This is often done through the use of heat maps and live on-site video recordings. It’s an amazing feature and simply one of the best ways to watch a user navigate through your site and seeing where their move is navigating to, clicking on or even moving away from.
One of the most popular tracking tools for setting such features like this up is CrazyEgg. Through their software, you can take a look at your site in a way that you’ve probably never seen before… almost as if you had x-ray glasses on. Check out the three different styles of heat maps and reports offered through CrazyEgg below and then consider how such tracking and technology could help further improve performance and engagement on your own site.
CrazyEgg is currently offering a free 30-day trial, then monthly plans start at $9 per month.
Running an Online Business is a Never Ending Case Study
As you can imagine, running any type of business is going to take a lot of time, hard work and effort. However, when you are conducting business online, it’s a whole different ball game. Not only are you up against a whole world of competition, you also have some of the most advanced tracking tools and demographic data to help you along the way. This is why it’s possible for smaller players and individuals bloggers to compete against some of the biggest brand names and media outlets in the world today.
With all of that being said, never stop split testing and learning more about your site, it’s content and the visitors who access it daily. Be sure to check out each of the resource tools above and see how you can start using them to improve the performance and revenue of your own sites and online business.