Fortunately, it’s not only possible to market in boring industries; it can often be highly effective. Many of your competitors will have given up and decided it just wasn’t possible, which can make ranking incredibly easy.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is simply the process of creating an excellent piece of content and then putting it in front of the right people. They will visit your website, share the content, and generate backlinks to your website.

This means traffic, social shares, and links that will help you to rank and generate even more traffic. As you can imagine, content marketing can have a significant impact on the bottom line of your business.

Lean on Other Niches

One of the best ways for businesses in boring industries to use content marketing is to lean on industries that aren’t boring. Perhaps you own a cleaning business; you can talk about why cleaning is necessary for allergies in children or how long it would take to clean the White House.

Maybe you build steel girders; you could look at how many are in the biggest buildings in the world or compare your real life experience to building simulation video games.

The idea is to find common ground between your own business and a more attractive and marketable industry, this way you can stay relevant but also create mainstream content.

Create Guides for the Average Person

Many boring industries are boring because they aren’t aimed at consumers, perhaps you work with other businesses or just a small percentage of the population.

Either way, there are thousands of people out there who are trying to DIY in your niche. If you’re a gardener, then you could create guides to teach people how to cut their lawn or look over roses.

This content offers enormous value to the people reading it, and there is a much greater incentive for them to share it with others who might be interested in gardening too.

You might be thinking that this encourages people to DIY rather than paying your business and perhaps a small percentage of people will think this way. However, most people have already decided whether they want to do it or pay someone else. But this content can help you to build links which will improve your rankings and drive more customers.

Infographics and Video

If you’ve been exclusively creating written content, then you might want to consider branching out into videos and infographics. Writing about steel girders isn’t particularly exciting, but lots of people would watch a video about how they are made.

If your business is visually appealing in any way, then videos and photographs can be extremely attractive to people, and it is content that’s easy for them to share.

On the other hand, you could create an infographic that includes loads of data and statistics about your industry.

Add Personality

Don’t be afraid to insert your personality into your content. Too many companies think that they have to be as boring as their largest international competitors. Many customers choose to shop local because they prefer the personal approach.

Write in the same way that you would talk and crack a joke every once in a while. This will make even the most boring topic a little more lighthearted and hopefully more shareable.

If you’re looking to stretch yourself a bit, you could create videos of you talking about the subject and combine that with the article. This also allows you to publish it on YouTube where you can generate extra visibility.

Tell a Story

Even if you work in the most boring industry imaginable, you are sure to have a story. You’re a human after all, and funny or interesting things happen to all of us.

You could create a live video of yourself telling the funny story and sharing it with the world. This works incredibly well with builders and other laborers who for some reason seem to have more funny stories than the rest of the world combined.

Of course, it’s important not to say anything that could harm your reputation, but a lighthearted story will strike a personal note and can help to humanize your business.

Think Backwards and Forwards

Where do your materials come from and where do they go after? If you’re a builder, show the home after it is done and think about where they came from. If you clean carpets you could lean onto the chemical creation industry or the housing industry.

You don’t have just to create content about precisely what you do, think about tangential industries.

Conclusion

As you might expect, the key to content marketing in ‘boring’ industries is to be creative and lean onto tangentially relevant industries that are more ‘interesting.’

Thousands of other boring companies have created content that has generated them thousands of hits and just as many links. If they can do it, so can you.

The post 6 Tips for Content Marketing in ‘Boring’ Industries appeared first on Relevance.

Off-page SEO consists of many factors, but one is the number of referring domains. Building a lot of good quality links is going to have a significant impact on your rankings.

Obviously, some link building tactics are better than others. SMBs usually don’t have a huge amount of time to spend on link building. They are looking for high-value links without spending hundreds of hours preparing.

Infographics for Linkbuilding

Infographics are an important tactic for SMBs because they are cheap to create and can be shared quickly across social media and with influencers.

One of the best tactics is to use infographics as guest content. Reach out to a couple of hundred websites or bloggers and show them the infographic. Then, you can ask them if they’d like you to write a custom intro so that they can share the graphic on their website (with a link back to yours, of course).

This tactic is perfect for SMBs because once the infographic is created, it can be used on different websites with a little extra effort from you.

All you’ll need to do it continue reaching out to new sites and write the short introductions for each post.

If you’re looking for topics and themes for an infographic, try Googling ‘your industry + infographic’. For example, ‘gardening + infographic’ or ‘construction + infographic’.

This search will return a selection of infographics that other companies have created. You might even find one that you don’t think is well designed but has a good topic.

In this case, you can create a better version. Then, you can contact anybody who has linked to the old infographic and let those who linked to it know that you created a better version.

Guest posting for Linkbuilding

Matt Cutts renounced guest posting in the past, and SEOs ran for the hills. However, people misinterpreted what he meant.

Cutts wasn’t shaming guest posting in its entirety.

He was critical of SEOs who guest posted anywhere and everywhere. On websites that weren’t even vaguely related to their sites and purely for links.

There’s nothing wrong with being featured on another website as long as it’s related to your industry and real readers of that site will be interested in it.

Guest posting is one of the most powerful link building methods because it gives you an opportunity to network with other industry leaders.

It can also put your website in front of readers who would have never otherwise heard of your business.

This guest post can create other opportunities for you to get publicity on different sites.

Some of those readers might even go straight to your website and become customers. Guest posting will never be a bad tactic; it’s the basis of thousands of the top internet sites.

It only became synonymous with spam because people automated the process and posted on websites where the content wasn’t relevant.

Guest posting is relatively time-consuming. You’ll often be expected to write a 1500 – 2000 word article. That’s why it’s so important that SMBs are selective with where they guest post.

Only taking the strongest opportunities is the best way to remain efficient. Contact some of the biggest companies in your industry and ask if you can contribute to their blog.

If you’re known in the industry, it’s likely that they’d appreciate you sharing your experience with their readers.

Ego bait

The last tactic that many SMBs ignore is ego bait. Ego bait is a general term for content that is used to appeal to the ego of other business owners.

This ego bait might include resources pages that include links to other companies or ‘top XYZ’ posts that celebrate the top websites in a particular field.

These ego bait posts can be surprisingly effective. People like to let others know when they’ve won an award on a list of top companies.

You can create your ego bait and then email those on the list to congratulate them. Even without asking some of those listed will go ahead and share it on the company blogs or social media.

This sharing will send targeted traffic and links back to your post.

Admittedly, it’s not as beneficial as a link to one of your product pages. However, every link to your website is helpful.

Conclusion

Some of the best link building tactics are out of the reach of SMBs unless they hire an agency. That’s because content marketing can take time. Many SMBs can’t spare the time or resources to content marketing, and that’s why they hire an agency.

Linkbuilding tactics like infographics and guest posting can be achieved with less time commitment than other methods and with less upfront cost.

However, using a content marketing agency like ourselves is the best way to ensure consistent results from an experienced team.

The post 3 Linkbuilding Tactics That Many SMBs Ignore appeared first on Relevance.