Sponsored posts are a highly valuable strategy to improve your business's visibility, build your brand story and trust. So much so, Forbes Top 10 Marketer, Neil Patel, claims sponsored blogging is the best inbound marketing strategy.
That said, not all sponsored content posts are made equal. Simply putting any piece of content on any website won't guarantee results. Like every decision in digital marketing, it's vital your sponsored content is carefully considered with regards to both substance and platform.
Here are our tips to master your sponsored content strategy.
Understand your audience
Remember, you're creating content for a specific audience with unique needs. Before producing, conduct market research to learn:
Once you have these answers, think about how your business can help - what problems are you mostly solving? What questions do you constantly get asked?
The better you understand your ideal customer, the more closely you can tailor your sponsored content to attract and engage qualified leads. Look to your existing market research to learn who your customers are, then develop that profile with respect to online behaviour and specific pain points.
Putting your sponsored content before a more specific audience helps you reach qualified customers.
Relevance is key
When you know what your target audience is looking for, you can craft content that addresses their needs and builds trust. It's important to keep content relevant to your audience throughout, which means sticking to a few basic rules:
Build a link profile
Don't forget to include backlinks to your own website. Direct referrals aside, backlinks from authoritative, high-quality websites are a significant ranking factor for your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy.
A strong link profile requires more than just referrals to your own website, however. Internal and external links alike are vital to improving your content's SEO ranking. Link to great content on the site you'll be posting on, as well as useful, relevant resources off-site. Of course, you should avoid linking to competition, but there's no harm in linking to authoritative resources relevant to your industry.
You'll also need to be aware of any linking guidelines provided by the host website. Some publishers may put limitations on the number and nature of links - so be sure to understand your limitations when entering a relationship.
Include a strong link profile and avoid byline blindness for the best results from your sponsored content.
Byline blindness
If you haven't taken the right steps, readers can easily gloss over the byline of your content, meaning you'll miss out on the opportunity to build trust and recognition.
Gregory Ciotti of Help Scout outlines three key elements that limit the risk of byline blindness:
Writing for the web
Finally, keep these tips in mind for effective online content writing:
Sponsored content is an integral component to a successful inbound marketing strategy. By combining market research, careful decision making, SEO tactics and brand visibility, you can make your next sponsored content piece leave a real impact.
To organise your own sponsored content right here on realestate.co.nz and reach our large audience of property seekers, contact our media team at advertising@realestate.co.nz, or click here to learn more.