Step 1) Your Virtual Angel can for the business using your chosen business topics and categories.
Then take a look at the keywords people are searching for in that niche and create blog post ideas incorporating those keywords - use the 'long tail keywords'. This means the business has the opportunity to come up in Google when people search for that phrase.
If you want to understand more about general keywords versus longtail keywords then please google it. It is vital that you don't make up your own keywords and get caught up in the trap of using words that are too general and competitive in search.
Example:
Long tail key word is 'Dynamic Tennis Player' (Tennis or Tennis player is too general)
Blog post / Video idea: How to Become a Dynamic Tennis Player that Wins Every Time !
OR for a more local business: How to Become a Dynamic Tennis Player that Wins in the Competitive Sydney Tennis Scene.
Step 2) Research the competitor blogs and sites for the business - especially the high traffic, bigger sites in the niche. Then it's time to find the blog posts / content pieces that those sites produced that did really well in terms of traffic, social shares and engagement.
To do this simply:
Put in your competitor’s blog URL into this Quick Sprout Analyzer, and you’ll get a list of results that looks something like this:
NOTE: You can also use Buzzsumo for this.
This example is from the Copyblogger site - a site that gets massive traffic and is in the content marketing niche. Anyone in the content marketing niche would view this as a competitor site to watch.
Obviously if this in not the niche of the business you are working with you wouldn't use this example. This is being used for illustrative purposes only here.
If you look at the image above, you’ll see a list of all the blog posts on Copyblogger. The Quick Sprout tool organises the list based on social shares, putting the most popular posts at the top.
One of Copyblogger’s most popular posts happens to be http://www.copyblogger.com/ingredients.
Next we need to look into that post to see what the full title was so we can try to develop our own similar but slightly different titles that might also get such traffic.
To find out the title of the post, type that URL into your browser. You will see the full title of the post was “11 Essential Ingredients Every Blog Post Needs [Infographic].”
When you find competitors that have similar audiences to the businesses you are working with, you can suggest writing blog posts on the same topic with a different slant and it will likely do quite well also.
NOTE: You cannot just copy people – you don’t want the business to inherit the bad name of being a blog that regurgitates the same old information and is a copycat !
Instead, you want to take this title and suggest to the person who has been identified as the content creator (either the writer or business person) to put a different spin on it.
Using the example of Copyblogger here again - if your niche was a content marketing blog and you were trying to re spin the article that did well for Copyblogger - here’s how you could potentially spin “11 Essential Ingredients Every Blog Post Needs [Infographic]”:
- 11 Essential Ingredients Every Landing Page Needs [Infographic]
- 11 Essential Ingredients Every Landing Page Needs
- 11 Essential Ingredients Every E-Commerce Site Needs
- 11 Essential Ingredients Every SEO Campaign Needs
If you look at the four variations created above, you’ll see that the first one is similar to the original title. The phrase “blog post” has just been changed to “landing page" - which is another topic area within the area of content marketing.
Note: Creating Infographics requires a content creator and a graphic designer - both of which are available in the 'Hub' but at extra fees so please be aware if you are suggesting an infographic idea to a business.
Virtual Angels can create simple Infographics using a clever little tool called Pictochart
As for the third and fourth variations, the phrase “blog post” has been replaced with phrases “e-commerce site” and “SEO campaign.” - both of which are other topic areas within the whole content marketing arena.
You will need to consult the business owner on what you have found and get them to suggest other topic areas within their broader industry / business.
The job of the Virtual Angel is to come up with these examples, suggest how to use them to the business and then work to promote and capitalise on the content after it is created.
The business owners job is to figure out how best to use it to create content and who is going to create that content for them.
Ok ... it's time for the next step ....