And that’s a big mistake.

Having too much content that doesn’t offer value will not help your brand.

It’s why you should consider the 3 R’s of content marketing — Reduce, Resurrect, and Repurpose.

The idea here is to check what valuable pieces you already have in your content arsenal and leverage them for thought leadership and better ROI. It also involves identifying content pieces you already own to cost-effectively maximize their benefits for more revenue.

And while you may want to always offer unique perspectives to various facets of your industry, many other brands are trying to do the same. In fact, 82% of marketers actively use content marketing, making it hard to stand out.

For this reason, it’s important to leverage the 3 R’s of content marketing to save the time needed to create and make the most out of your content without your budget shooting off the roof.

But what’s the best way to go about maximizing the 3 R’s of content marketing? Find out below as we discuss what the 3 R’s of content marketing entail, why you should use them, and how to leverage them for better ROI.

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What are the new 3 R’s of content marketing…and why should you use them?

According to a recent content marketing study, marketers find it challenging to find ideas for new content. They also find it difficult to create content that generates leads or traffic.

But that’s not all.

The content marketing process from ideation to publishing can take time and drain your team.

For these reasons, you want to ensure that each piece of content produced helps you drive traffic, awareness, and conversions.

Cue the 3 R’s of content marketing — Reduce, Resurrect, and Repurpose.

These 3 R’s of content marketing help you save on the time it takes to develop an idea, research, write, edit, and publish content.

Best of all?

They help you reach new audiences.

But how can you integrate the 3 R’s of content marketing into your strategy?

How to Use the 3 R’s of Content Marketing to Boost ROI

To identify content that you can include in your 3 R’s of content marketing strategy, you should audit existing content.

Review each published content piece and find those that fall under the evergreen or popular category. These are the ones you can optimize.

The reason? This is the content that received the most interaction from your audience and one that’s timeless. It should also be relevant and must offer value.

Then, apply the 3 R’s of content marketing in the following ways:

Reduce

The first part of your 3 R’s of content marketing strategy will involve removing content that does not help your brand. Yep, you read that right.

Having fresh, relevant, and quality content is a requirement if you want to offer visitors great experiences and rank high in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Leverage tools such as Google Console and Google Analytics to analyze your traffic data and backlinks. For deeper insights, a dedicated marketing analytics platform can tie performance data back to revenue. Do you have underperforming content that’s purposeless, drives no traffic, or is no longer relevant?

This is content that’s outdated, thin, unpopular, or that lacks timely value. It’s also content your audience does not find meaningful or valuable.

Guess what? A lot of the content you may have created may be harming your brand due to this reason.

According to 48% of consumers, the content brands produce is not meaningful. The study also reported that nearly half of content created by brands doesn’t deliver.

So, does your content deliver? If it doesn’t, you need to remove it.

Having it on your site affects your ability to rank since Google insists on fresh and quality content that’s relevant and adheres to EAT (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.)

And that’s not all.

This kind of content makes it hard to crawl your site. Google has a limited crawl budget and you may end up wasting that on these pages.

That’s why pruning content makes it easier for Google bots to index more of your pages.

And now to the next part of the 3 R’s of content marketing — resurrecting your content.

Resurrect

You’ve done your content audit and gotten rid of content that’s bogging you down and preventing you from ranking.

It’s now time to resurrect or update content that has the potential to rank.

But how do you go about this step of the 3 R’s of content marketing? There are various strategies you can take, including:

• Changing Headlines: Find new keywords you can incorporate into your title or include numbers that draw the audience’s attention.
• Update Statistics: Have you used statistics from research conducted more than two years ago? Change and update them to reflect recent findings.
• Include Testimonials: Did a key opinion leader or influencer recently interact with your posts? Include their reviews or commentary to help elevate the credibility of your content and tag them while resharing it on social media.
• Interlink Content: Create internal links to your most recent and relevant blog posts or service pages.
• Remove Outdated Information: Ensure each post gives practical strategies that the reader can apply.
• Update or Add Media Content: If your content has too much text, include relevant visuals that break it up. If you already have visuals, ensure they are up to date.
• Optimize Keywords: Ensure your titles, meta descriptions, and headings include your target keywords. Additionally, distribute the keywords across your post without overstuffing.
• Add Content: Analyze other posts ranking for the same keyword and see if you can add more information to your content to make it valuable.
• Improve Readability: Make it easy for readers to skim through your content by reducing the number of words in sentences, using bullet points, shortening paragraphs, highlighting important text, etc.

After you’ve done this, it’s now time to apply the third R in the 3 R’s of content marketing — repurposing.

Repurpose

In this stage of the 3 R’s of content marketing, you transform existing content into other formats.

For example, you can use podcast creation tools to transform your blog posts into a podcast episode that explains the topic further.

But are there crucial points to consider when leveraging this final R of the 3 R’s of content marketing?

Yes. Some of these include:

• The Channel: What channel will you post the repurposed content on, and what kind of formats do they recommend? For example, if you repurpose your content into video, what channels can you use and what’s their recommended length?
• Your Audience: Are they on the channels you want to post on, and do they enjoy consuming content in the format you wish to repurpose it?
• Your Repurposing Goal: Do you want to reach new audiences, save time, or increase your content arsenal?
• Type of Content: You can’t just repurpose each piece of content you own. Instead, consider the freshness of the topic, its popularity, and the number of updates you will need. Also, check if it’s feasible to repurpose the content.

Not sure how to go about this?

Well, a degree in marketing communication can help. With it, you get the skills needed to effectively collect and analyze audience data from your audit using advanced tools. Additionally, it becomes easier to identify content that helps your brand generate more revenue and increase reach.

Then, once you’ve got all these figured out, repurpose your content into different formats. The right content repurposing tools can automate much of this work and free your team to focus on strategy.

Some of the transformations you can apply are:

Repurpose Blog Posts Into Social Media Posts

Get in front of a much bigger audience by extracting bite-sized information from your blog post and sharing it on social media.

For example, extract a quote, create a visually appealing image for it, and share on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. A good social media scheduling tool makes distributing these across every channel effortless.

However, remember to add a creative caption and direct readers to your blog post with a link.

Other formats you can leverage for social media posts include:

• Blog post to a long-form video you can share on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
• Short, bite-sized videos taken from long-form videos to share on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
• Blog posts to carousels for Instagram
• Blog posts to infographics to share on Facebook and LinkedIn
• Newsletter created from blog posts that talk about one broad topic

Republish Content to Other Sites

Leverage syndication sites to republish your content and reach a wider audience.

Alternatively, once you’ve modified your blog post, you can ask sites that accept guest posts to publish it. However, ensure it offers a unique perspective and is not plagiarized from your blog.

Another option is to turn current and newsworthy posts into press releases and upload them to sites that accept them.

Repurpose Content From Ambassadors

If you run an ambassador program, ask for permission from the creators and reshare their content in various formats on different channels.

These can include influencers, audiences, affiliates, or employees who’ve created content on behalf of your brand or reviewed your products.

Combine and Break Up Blog Posts

Break up long blog posts into smaller parts and create a series.

Alternatively, combine blog posts under the same broad topic into an ebook, downloadable guide, or roundup list.

Make the 3 R’s of Content Marketing Work for You

With the 3 R’s of content marketing, you can give your content a new face while expanding your reach. It also gives your content team time to research and create new content pieces without the fear of falling behind deadlines.

Implement the 3 R’s of content marketing and let us know how they work for you. Additionally, if you’ve got questions on implementation, don’t hesitate to ask.

The post 3 R’s of Content Marketing: How to Get the Most from Them appeared first on Relevance.

With IGTV, you can create long-form video content that is useful for your audience. But, you need a solid IGTV strategy before you start posting IGTV videos.

You can’t jump headfirst and then learn from your social media marketing mistakes. After all, social media users are not that forgiving and have shorter attention spans than they used to.

Wondering how you can create a winning IGTV strategy? Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Ask Your Audience Its Preferences for Content

One of the first things you need for your IGTV strategy is content ideas. Which topics will you post about? What type of content will you create?

You can use IGTV for a variety of purposes, from conducting interviews to creating random fun and engaging videos. If you are struggling to decide what type of content to create for IGTV, why not simply ask your audience?

Of course, you need to shortlist a few options first, before you ask your audience. After that, create a poll using Instagram stickers and share it on your Instagram Story to see what your audience would like to watch.

In the initial stages of the process, you can even pose an open-ended question to your audience inviting ideas. That can be a good place to start. After all, you create content for your audience so it makes sense to involve them in the process.

2. Use Vertical Videos for Instagram IGTV

Videos can be shot in portrait or landscape orientation. While many video editors are committed to landscape, I recommend using vertical videos for IGTV as those are easier to watch on mobile devices.

Many people lock their screen rotation option and would not make the extra effort to rotate their screens to watch your videos. Instead, they simply move on to the next video.

To make things easier for your IGTV audience, and yourself, it’s better to go with vertical videos. If you can shoot vertical videos directly, it will save you a lot of time and effort. If not, then you can convert your horizontal videos into vertical videos using tools to edit videos.

3. Always Add Subtitles

Did you know that most people watch social media videos with the sound turned off? It’s true.

This is why you should always add subtitles to IGTV videos. Subtitles and pop-up text should be a non-negotiable part of your IGTV strategy if they aren’t already.

Adding text to your videos makes them easy to understand even when viewers don’t have the sound on. Moreover, it also makes your videos accessible to people who are deaf and need subtitles to understand the video content.

4. Choose an Attractive Cover Photo

When someone goes through your IGTV feed on Instagram, the first thing they see is your cover photos. In a way, cover photos are what you use to make a first impression, grab your audience’s attention, and encourage them to watch your videos.

Cover photos usually have one image, ideally a still from your video, and the title of your video in text form.

But, which image should you choose as your IGTV cover photo? The answer is simple: the one that best represents your video and is clear. Do not use any blurry images as your cover photo. And, if you have multiple good options, choose the one that best represents your IGTV video.

Need an example? Check out the cover photos for the two videos in this IGTV feed. The images and titles clearly show what a user can expect to be in the IGTV video.

5. Promote Your Instagram IGTV Videos

Even if you create a perfect video, you can’t expect people to find it on their own. You need to make an effort to make sure that your IGTV videos reach your target audience. So, what can you do to promote your IGTV videos?

First, you need to post a teaser on your main Instagram feed to let your followers know that you have created an IGTV video.

Luckily, you don’t really need to make any effort for this as Instagram automatically provides this option every time you create an IGTV video. Before you post your IGTV video, you simply need to select the option to post it on your feed as well. Simple as that!

You can also share your IGTV video in your Instagram Story to draw people’s attention to it and encourage them to watch it. Ask your friends to share it in their Stories feed, too, to reach more people and get more views.

Most IGTV videos get maximum views within the first 24 hours, so you want to make sure that people see them as soon as you post them. For that, you can create buzz about your upcoming video by talking about it on Instagram Live or in your Stories.

Another great way to reach more people through your IGTV videos is to use hashtags, but more on that in the next section.

6. Add Relevant Hashtags

Hashtags are one of the most effective social media tactics and should be an important part of your IGTV strategy. Why?

Because hashtags help you reach more people who might be interested in your brand or content.

Most social media platforms allow users to follow hashtags they are interested in. When you use a hashtag, your video stands a chance at becoming visible to everyone who follows that hashtag.

This extends the reach of your videos beyond your followers to more people who are interested in a particular topic or niche.

You can use one of the numerous tools to find hashtags that are available online and add the most relevant hashtags to your IGTV videos.

7. Start an Instagram IGTV Series

One of the best things you can do to jumpstart your IGTV strategy is to start a regular IGTV video series. It could be something like a weekly guest interview session, a series of videos around a particular theme, or anything else that you can easily post at fixed intervals.

How does starting a series help?

It sets the right expectations for your viewers as they know that every Tuesday (or whichever day you choose) they can expect a new episode on your IGTV. An Instagram IGTV series basically works on the same principle as a TV series. It gives people a chance to wait for your next episode.

An IGTV series will help with getting views within the first 24 hours as people already know when to expect your next episode.

Why Wait Any Longer?

You now know some of the most effective ways to jumpstart your Instagram IGTV strategy. Use these tips to create a winning IGTV strategy and wow your audience.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started on this right now and see the results first hand. Good luck!

The post Instagram IGTV Strategy: 7 Tips for Jumpstarting Your Brand appeared first on Relevance.

Ecommerce is fueled and propelled by the success of giants like Amazon and even relatively new players such as Warby Parker. Along with the relative ease and low cost it takes to set up shop, it’s no surprise that more people are getting into ecommerce. In fact, ecommerce sales are predicted to reach $4.48 billion by 2021. Which means that the market and potential for ecommerce continues to grow.

Before you get too excited thinking about all the cash you’ll make by starting an ecommerce venture, hold your horses. It has been found that 74% of internet startups usually fail. Besides having to think through every single business aspect of an ecommerce project, you also have to find ways to adapt to current trends to make your site discoverable and memorable by online shoppers.

The rapid growth of mobile ecommerce across the world has impacted growth opportunities in a hugely positive manner and has opened up incredible opportunities for ecommerce entrepreneurs. With smartphones becoming a powerful tool for consumers to purchase goods and services, retailers must be relentless in their efforts to find innovative ways of delivering personalized experiences. That will ensure another strong run of success for the industry for an extended period of time, even when the current global situation is not exactly conducive to normal business activities.

With that in mind, here are the top 10 selling essentials for ecommerce startups in 2020.

1. Ecommerce SEO

SEO is a must for every new and upcoming ecommerce business. Search Engine Journal said it best: 93% of all online activity begins with a search. SEO is the most basic (and the first) thing that you should work on when you start an ecommerce business.

There are many advantages to SEO:

• It drives traffic to your site, which in turn, drives customers and sales.
• Done well, it helps connect you with the most relevant customers.
• It’s cheaper in the long run that more traditional/other online marketing efforts. After all, ads generate attention for your business throughout the term of a campaign but doesn’t help you after it has run its course. Of all the links clicked on the web, 70% of them have been found organically versus ad placements.
• It challenges you to improve your website across a number of important user experience factors. Mobile-responsiveness, site usability, and page load time are just a few elements that contribute to a better user experience and improved SEO.

SEO is a long-term investment. Know that once you implement SEO, you won’t necessarily be experiencing its effects immediately but it is the gift that continues to give.

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2. Social Selling

If you haven’t heard about social selling, according to Hootsuite, it is the “art of using social networks to find, connect with, understand, and nurture sales prospects.” Businesses that use their social media sites to connect with their customers are engaged in social selling even if they aren’t aware of it just yet. Engaging and building relationships with prospects is a way to keep your business at the top of their minds until they’re ready to take action.

Social selling is effective. 78% of salespeople that use social selling outsell their peers that don’t. Besides offering the ability to nurture leads and build relationships with your prospects, social media has also become savvy enough to include integrated selling platforms. Platforms that can help you to take advantage of how people are engaged in social buying, like finding vendors and researching them by reading reviews.

By using these integrated platforms on social media sites, you’re not only building and nurturing relationships but you’re also giving customers an alternative channel to purchase your product and an option to act immediately when they are interested.

Here are two social media platforms that integrate nicely with ecommerce:

Facebook Shop

Facebook is the largest social networking site, with 2.13 billion users (as of December 2017), with people spending about 40 minutes on the site each day. If you haven’t yet set up a Business Page on Facebook, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity – even in light of their recent organic zero news feed change.

If your ecommerce shop has a Facebook Business page, you can use it to create ads, but the Facebook Shop tab will be available to you as well. All you have to do is add it to your page, setup your shop details, configure payment methods, then add products. Once completed, you’re ready to sell on Facebook!

Instagram Shoppable Posts

Facebook’s sister site also has an ecommerce selling counterpart called Instagram shoppable posts. They were borne out of the clamor that it was hard to purchase products from within the app. In the past, users who clicked on Instagram’s singular clickable bio link were redirected to an external browser displaying the company’s website, which would disrupt the seamless experience shops were aiming for.

Instagram introduced the shoppable feed, which users can differentiate from other Instagram posts due to the shopping bag icon at the bottom left (when appearing on the feed) or at the top right (when appearing on the profile).

Users can tap the image to see the details, and when they tap on the product details tag, they will be led to a page within Instagram where they can see more information about the product. They can also directly tap on the “Shop Now” button to take them directly to the company website to complete a purchase.

Instagram shoppable posts are just like normal Instagram posts that you can promote to show up on others’ feeds. Note that this is only applicable for Instagram Business accounts.

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3. Video Marketing

Video, which was touted as the “next mega trend” (after mobile) by none other than Mark Zuckerberg, is particularly effective when used in ecommerce. 90% of consumers say videos are helpful when deciding to make purchases online. And 64% say that they are more likely to make a purchase after watching a video.

Video is easily shareable, which is a win for your marketing efforts. For example, if you share a video that customers find and like, they might also share the video themselves, getting more eyes on it with few (if any) costs on your part (thanks to the generation of organic traffic). If you’re targeting a younger demographic, video is where it’s at – younger people watch more video than TV.

Also, video contributes to your SEO efforts: research has shown that Google favors sites with video (ideally hosted by YouTube, a Google product), putting those sites on top of search engine results.

If you want to get started on video but don’t know how, it’s important to realize that you don’t necessarily need to shoot fresh video. There are video software tools like Animoto (which helps you easily create animated videos) that offer a bunch of templates you can use to scale this process – especially if you have a lot of products to show off!

4. Email Automation

An automated email marketing software tool can be extremely useful to ecommerce shops. You will be using this tool to inform and contact customers about new arrivals, promotions, and sales.

Email is 40x more effective in selling compared to social networks because it goes straight to your customer’s inbox – no need to worry about organic reach, or a lack thereof. Because of this, email has a 3800% ROI. Besides encouraging sales, you should also use email as a relationship building tool.

Here are some email types you might want to setup within your automated email tool:

• Automated Social Proof Program. These emails should be sent to customers a few days after they received the product, for the purpose of getting a customer review. Almost all email providers can automate this for you and top options include MailChimp, Klaviyo, and Springbot. Rivet Works is yet another tool that asks for reviews and photos.
  To see an example of this concept in action, Mountain Crest Gardens does an excellent job of displaying customer reviews submitted through their website/email.

• Abandoned Cart Emails. These are emails that you send to remind customers that have abandoned their shopping carts. This email is effective in generating sales, especially since 70% of shopping carts are abandoned. You might opt to include coupons and discounts (especially on shipping) within your abandoned cart emails to encourage a conversion. You can also use tools like SUMO or JustUno to deploy email popups to capture interest or conversions before shoppers leave or to upsell after they buy.

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5. Mobile Optimization

With more than half of people accessing the internet through mobile phones, and Google’s recent announcement that mobile page load speed will be search ranking factor, optimizing your ecommerce shop for mobile is more important now than ever.

Since ecommerce shops involve large media files like photos and videos, you should also opt to use an image optimizer to help make your site load faster. BigCommerce offers the Akamai Image Manager, which automatically optimizes your images when you use their platform.

6. Community Building and Loyalty Programs

Repeat customers spend 67% more than new customers, which is why it is important to setup customer loyalty programs to retain those customers. Community building programs, on the other hand, is how a small business transcends being competitive and becomes relevant.

7. Pre-orders Plugins and Apps

Startups can hardly afford to build and maintain a huge inventory. It is natural for startup ecommerce businesses to invest in stocks that they are sure will sell but in limited quantities. A larger inventory is certainly not advisable especially when you know that you are up against formidable competitors. In such situations, it is not uncommon to face out-of-stock situations on specific products. This can be extremely frustrating.

There is a solution to this problem that’s common among ecommerce startups. There are plugins and apps available that allow you to pre-order and pay for a product even if it is out of stock. This facility can be provided to your customers with a note of caution about the time-frame for shipping the product. This will give you some leverage and also help your customers decide whether they want to place an order or skip it.

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8. Referral Programs

As mentioned above, for any business to be successful, you must get your customers to repeat their purchases and as frequently as possible for added benefits. When you are in a highly competitive business domain such as ecommerce, you simply must find a way to convince your customers to come back and shop for their needs from your online store.

Ecommerce start-ups can make use of an effective referral and reward system. When done right, it can help spread the word about your business fast. Choose reward tools that can be customized to create a better impact. There are many reward tools available for incentivizing customers for tasks such as sharing and promoting your campaigns, discounts, offers, and product pages.

9. Cross-Selling and Upselling

How many products are you offering to your customers through your startup store? If the products list is limited, then there are limited opportunities to cross-sell but if you have a wider range to offer, then you should definitely have a go at cross-selling and up-selling. The ‘You might also like’ line is unlikely to be missed by shoppers, especially if it is peppered with some hi-definition images and catchy descriptions.

It is a great idea to integrate your website with proven product management apps and plugins as it allows you to showcase some extra offerings such as gift-wrapping, add-ons like matching accessories, custom logo and messages, and so on. This creates the chance to upsell the product.

Another effective upselling strategy is to list your most popular, fastest-selling, and budget-friendly products in separate sections. Just ensure that they are neatly categorized as well and you are ready to go.

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10. SEO-Friendly Review Scores

Your startup needs all the exposure possible to reach out to a wider audience and improve sales potential. However, boosting conversions can be a huge challenge. There is a solution to this problem. Many ecommerce enterprises are using SEO-friendly review scores to get their website on the top pages of Google search results.

You can get some good review scores by using an effective management review app. Such apps can provide support for structured data also known as microdata. Your score’s aggregate review score is added and displayed in search results, boosting the chances of your website being discovered by relevant audiences.

Final Thoughts

Ecommerce shops are growing in popularity because they are easy to setup and require low capital and overhead costs. The industry is growing at a galloping pace globally with demand going through the roof. Consumers are discovering the convenience of ordering almost everything they need by using this stress-free method of shopping. This obviously means that there is a growing demand for more online retail stores. Like any other industry, newcomers to the world of ecommerce are most likely to face certain challenges in the areas of management and operations.

But because of their popularity as a modern business venture, it can be harder for businesses to sustain successful operations – especially with so many shops coming into the market. This is why ecommerce stores need to up their game when it comes to getting the word out.

The post Top 10 Selling Essentials for all eCommerce Startups appeared first on Relevance.