We’ve put together a great three-part guide to help you make the most out of your content and social media efforts.

Over the next three posts, we’ll show you how you can increase the engagement and shareability of your content through understanding the basics of keyword research, your competition and user psychology.

During the course of the series, we’ll cover:

• Keyword and competition research
• Powerful headlines and titles
• User-centric style and user behavior 

Preparation

Before you write a single line, it's important to know whether what you’re planning on writing will benefit your target market and if there’s an existing (or growing) demand for your subject matter. 

Find this out by doing your keyword research.  This shows you what users are searching for on the search engines or on social media.

Do Your Keyword Research

A Moz.com study¹ found that 80% of website traffic can come from organic searches. With those kinds of stats, it’s hard not to recommend starting the planning of your content with keyword research.

For keyword research, you can use tools such as:

• Google Keyword Planner²  This is a free tool from Google that let’s you enter a search term and find out how many searches per month the term receives. You can use this for free by signing up to Google Webmaster Tools³

• Market Samurai⁴  This takes the keyword planner to the next level by giving you further data on competition, other keyword ideas and their commercial value.
• Google Trends⁵. This is a great tool that lets you see the popularity of search terms over time, so that you can get an overview of whether you’re covering a subject rising or falling in demand.
• Hootsuite⁶. This is a social media marketing tool that lets you manage all of your social networking accounts in one place. You can monitor hash tag activity and follow searches too, which gives you an idea of how frequently your search term or topic is being used or searched for on social media.
• You can also manually search for your search terms on your social network of choice in order to check the level of content and engagement around your chosen topic.

Keyword research is a great place to start in order to formulate your concepts and ideas into the beginning of something practical and will help form the foundations of your content.

Competition Analysis

The last thing to consider before putting pen to paper (or finger to key) is whether you’re content concept or idea is original. We can check the originality of our content by checking on any potential competition on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

If you aren’t using software like Market Samurai, the best way to get an idea of the level of competition around your topic is to simply search for it yourself using your newfound keywords.

Search for your title ideas on Google, Bing and Yahoo and check the results on the first page for a glimpse at your competition. Has anybody else written anything similar (or the same)? If so, ask yourself a few questions:

• Is your concept better?

• Can you beat it?

If the answer to any of those is no, ask:

• Do you have something to add?

• Have they missed something?

If you can answer yes to any of the above questions, you’ve got yourself a place to start.

The Importance of Keyword and Competition Research

Without keyword research, your website, blog or article will have a hard time finding traffic. If you know what people are searching for, you've got a solid foundation on which to build your content.   

And if you're not aware of your competition, you run the risk or regurgitating or even plagiarizing content. This will not only damage your reputation, but will also add to the deluge of sub-standard content online. 

Part 2: The Power of the Title

Next week, well start getting into writing the actual article and look at the single most important aspect of any piece of content: the title. 

1 http://moz.com/community/q/what-is-the-average-percentage-of-traffic-from-search-engines-that-a-website-receives

2 www.google.com/sktool/

3 https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

4 http://www.marketsamurai.com/c/Kane1

5 www.google.com/trends

6 https://hootsuite.com/

What's the ideal social media strategy?

The ideal social media strategy isn’t one where you are active on every network and hope for results. A carpet bombing approach doesn’t work on social media. It is absolutely critical to find out where your customers are most active on, and reach out to them on that network. You may find that they are very active on multiple networks, in which case you should make sure to share content on all those channels. Otherwise all your efforts will fall upon deaf ears. So how do you go about finding out which channels to be active on?

Define what your target segment is

The first step is to establish what your target segment is. Create a customer profile, and write it down. Are they other businesses or consumers? Are they young, or older? What are their wants and needs? All of these impact where they will be most active.

Establish how customers have connected with you in the past

How have your customers connected with you before? This can be a great indicator as to where they are most active. History tends to repeat itself. If you have noticed that you receive a lot more engagement on Facebook than Twitter or LinkedIn, you need to focus your efforts on that channel! Concentrate on maximizing your strengths, and not trying too hard to shore up your shortcomings on other networks. That is the best way to get more ROI on your social media marketing.

Use tracking and analytics tools to evaluate each network.

Social media marketing is constantly evolving. Networks come and go. Currently, the mainstays for B2B and B2C are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. However, who knows where these networks will be in a few years, or how effective they will remain for your marketing efforts. That’s why you need to use tracking tools to consistently monitor how much engagement you are receiving online. Free tools like bit.ly work great. Facebook and LinkedIn also provide free analytics dashboards which can provide valuable insights. Keep track of your progress over time, and make a note of any changing trends. If you begin to see that you are getting more traction on another network, then put some more time and effort into that channel. You need to stay ahead of the curve!

Social media optimization (SMO) is a fast growing trend online.  More and more of inbound traffic to websites is coming from social media channels. This marketing tool is steadily becoming one of the most important assets traffic-wise. All of this means that your content needs to be socially optimized so that your website doesn’t miss out on potential traffic. That being said, much like SEO, there are some common mistakes you need to avoid to maximize your success.

Forgetting to include social sharing buttons/badges on your website

This one seems like a no brainer, but you would be surprised by how many websites don’t have social share buttons and badges on their websites. This is one of the easiest ways of driving traffic to your website, assuming your content is interesting. Make life easy for your users and they will repay the favor!

Not sharing other people’s content

Another mistake that some people make is refusing to share content other than their own. The whole point of social media is the sharing of ideas between different users. No one likes that one person who only talks about themselves all the time. One of the easiest ways to build engagement with other users is by sharing their content. They’ll inevitably look at who retweeted their post, and check out your profile, and then hopefully your website. Not only that, but sharing other people’s content will also make them more inclined to share yours. SMO is about driving engagement, and actively sharing interesting content is one of the best ways to accomplish that.

Not being active on SEO/SMO friendly platforms like G+

Ignore G+ at your own peril. It may not be the most powerful social media network on the planet, but it offers some great SEO/SMO benefits that other social media networks don’t. Make sure to post your content to G+ and stay ahead of the curve! Your SEO and SMO will take a noticeable jump over time.

Social media optimization (SMO) is a fast growing trend online.  More and more of inbound traffic to websites is coming from social media channels. This marketing tool is steadily becoming one of the most important assets traffic-wise. All of this means that your content needs to be socially optimized so that your website doesn’t miss out on potential traffic. That being said, much like SEO, there are some common mistakes you need to avoid to maximize your success.

Forgetting to include social sharing buttons/badges on your website

This one seems like a no brainer, but you would be surprised by how many websites don’t have social share buttons and badges on their websites. This is one of the easiest ways of driving traffic to your website, assuming your content is interesting. Make life easy for your users and they will repay the favor!

Not sharing other people’s content

Another mistake that some people make is refusing to share content other than their own. The whole point of social media is the sharing of ideas between different users. No one likes that one person who only talks about themselves all the time. One of the easiest ways to build engagement with other users is by sharing their content. They’ll inevitably look at who retweeted their post, and check out your profile, and then hopefully your website. Not only that, but sharing other people’s content will also make them more inclined to share yours. SMO is about driving engagement, and actively sharing interesting content is one of the best ways to accomplish that.

Not being active on SEO/SMO friendly platforms like G+

Ignore G+ at your own peril. It may not be the most powerful social media network on the planet, but it offers some great SEO/SMO benefits that other social media networks don’t. Make sure to post your content to G+ and stay ahead of the curve! Your SEO and SMO will take a noticeable jump over time.

Search Engine Optimization is a critical component of any online marketing strategy. It’s so important for building online exposure and recognition that ignoring it can cost your company thousands of dollars in lost sales. That’s why it’s important to keep a tab on new developments like:

SEO and content marketing gradually becoming synonymous.

Content marketing and SEO are so deeply intertwined that it’s becoming harder to run a successful SEO program without utilizing great content. 2013 was the year content marketing became a buzz word and growing trend. 2014 is the year it becomes a mandatory part of every SEO program.

Social media growing increasingly important for SEO.

People are just uncovering the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how useful social media can be to SEO. Social media is already demonstrating how reliable it can be as a source of traffic and brand awareness. As search engines become more intelligent, they will begin to take a harder look at the impact of social media when ranking websites.

Mobile optimization becomes mandatory.

Over half of Americans own smartphones, and a third of them use tablets at this point. Optimizing your website for mobile users is essentially a must-have now for most businesses. Google’s Hummingbird updates will reward you for implementing a mobile strategy. That also means you will be on the outside looking in if you decide to ignore this growing market segment. A responsive design will go a long way for ensuring that your website stays at the top of rankings and in front of your customers!