Building a successful blog business takes more than publishing excellent content consistently; you need solid content marketing ideas that work to be successful.

There is more to managing a blog that builds your business than publishing “great content.”

You need effective content marketing ideas that boost growth and generate leads. Without it, your publishing efforts might not yield the required result.

What are these top blogs doing differently that separate them from the rest?

They’re either doing one of these two things or both better than you:

Publishing useful content regularly, or doing content marketing ideas better than you.

In this post, I will share nine types of content marketing ideas to drive more relevant website traffic. If you want more website traffic, apply these content marketing ideas today.

9 Top Content Marketing Ideas

If you focus your marketing efforts on these nine tactics, you will experience significant business growth sooner.

Top industry outlets use these marketing tactics to drive millions of monthly traffic.

1. Create Multiple Snippets for Social Sharing

Each published post should provide at least ten different snippets to promote that content on social media sites for days, weeks, and months.

Dig deep into your content mix to see how you can develop different variations of snippets. Find ways to use these snippets for social media promotions.

Here is a pointer for different types of snippets you can derive from a single post:

  • Tweak the title around — Headline formula.
  • Memorable Quotes from the contents.
  • Insightful statement from the content.
  • Valuable stats from the content.
  • Buzz Word was used in the content.
  • The image that tells a story.
  • Expert mentions from the content.
  • And so much more, depending on your content types.

Here is a content marketing example Brian Dean of Backlinko used for one of his blog posts.

If you click on any of the tweets below on Twitter, you’ll end up on the same page despite having different tweet variations.

Twitter tweets

Then you can schedule these snippets using content marketing tools like a buffer to go out at different times of the day, weeks, and even months to come.

2. Reach out to Those You Mention in The Post

This is a time-consuming and tedious job (though it depends on the outreach numbers). But from experience, the result can be extraordinary compared to other blog marketing tactics.

Ensure you reach out to these people whenever you mention a blogger, an influencer marketer, or a link to other relevant resources in your post.

Let them know you link to or write about them in your publication.

Shout out to those mentioned in the post is an effective content marketing strategy to get on other people’s radars and increase your audience reach.

Here is a content marketing example of a promotional email template I like to use when contacting those mentioned in the post. It is subject to change depending on the situation and the blogger’s status.

The below email template is a draft using the NinjaOutReach prospecting tool.

Sample outreach post - ninja outreach

Always insert a naked URL (for example, http://justwebsitetraffic.com/ ) when contacting an influencer you’ve mentioned in your post, especially via email.

It helps increase the response rate as most people are sceptical of what’s on the other side. With a naked URL, they know where you’re taking them.

3. Use LinkedIn Direct Message

LinkedIn can be an excellent source to power influencers’ marketing and direct attention toward your “quality content” with the help of its direct messaging system.

With LinkedIn, you can find influencers/bloggers in your niche and email them directly. Below is a practical example of a post I recently promoted using the LinkedIn direct messaging system.

As you can see from the image below, I used a naked URL for the post. I also tried as much as I could to keep it short and straightforward. I sent this exact email message to over 300 recipients.

When this paragraph was written, the promoted content had 248 social shares and 50 comments (Update: Twitter share count has been removed).

That is not bad, considering most people don’t check their social media email notifications (LinkedIn included).

However, this tactic shouldn’t be abused or used too often that you start annoying people or spam their email boxes…always do this when you have quality content.

If you’re promoting mediocre content to influencers and other bloggers in your niche, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot.

Your recipients must connect with you before sending them a direct email on LinkedIn.

While I read LinkedIn has a messaging system that allows you to send anyone on the network an email message. Whether you’re connected or not — I haven’t tried it and don’t feel it is a good idea for the platform.

Don’t use bulk email sending options too. It is never a good marketing practice except when using complete email marketing services solutions.

The downside to the bulk email sending option is that you won’t personalize each outgoing email.

After analyzing 260 million emails delivered across 540 campaigns, a study by Retention Science shows that including the recipient’s name in the subject line increases the open rate by 2.6%.

So instead of trying to cut down on time, do the right thing by writing directly to that influencer. Personalize the email and increase your response rate.

4. Request For an Influencer Quote

Including influencer quotes in your content can increase authority and go a long way in increasing its viral effects.

Before publishing your excellent content, research experts in your industry. Reach out to each of them with the topic of your content and ask if they’ll be willing to provide experts’ views on the subject.

Influencer quotes

Image Source — HubSpot Marketing.

You can reach out to top figures in your industry at scale with a single click of the mouse using the NinjaOutReach prospecting tool.

Here is how to do just that — Research Influencers in a particular niche.

Enter your industry keyword, name, or location.

The NinjaOutreach App will return a list of top figures, influencers, bloggers, locations, or companies. Depending on the box checked.

Ninjaoutreach dashboard

You can discard which influencers you don’t want from the list. Save those you want to establish a better relationship with to a list. Create a new list that you can later use for marketing and relationship-building purposes.

Don’t expect to hear back from everyone you email for quotes. Not all of them will get back to you, but two or three will reply to your email request.

That might be what you need.

Add each influencer quote in the body of your content with a link back to their websites and, especially, their Twitter account.

Then email each influencer to let them know your post is live. Ask if they could spare one minute to share it with their audience.

You can follow an influencer on Twitter from the Ninja outreach app interface. See their Twitter follower count, location, and website address.

5. Find People Who Already Share Similar Content

This one is big, and I mean very BIG.

Many content marketers consider researching people who have already shown interest in a particular topic tedious and time-consuming.

So they back off from such content marketing tactics.

But in my experience, it is one of the most effective ways to get your content in front of an audience for free. An audience that guarantees relevant targeted readers to any piece of content.

One major obstacle an average content marketer encounters are having access to premium tools that make finding a targeted audience a breeze. Most of the tools cost money — and in most cases, they bill monthly subscriptions.

But there is a workaround to make things less expensive, which I will share in this post.

After publishing your excellent content, head to buzzsumo and type in your content keyword; the app buzzSumo will return a list of top content with the highest social shares.

Buzzsumo content social share count

Now, take the URL of the most shared content to the Twitter search box. Twitter will return a list of Twitter users who have shared that post.

Since these Twitter users have shown interest in your content topic by sharing a similar post with their followers.

You can leverage this opportunity to show them your content and ask if they will share it with their followers.

One rule of thumb is to use this tactic only when you’re confident your content is on the same level or even better than what they already share with their audience.

If you produce similar content or something of better quality, this tactic might win over some loyal blog readers.

Twitter tweets with hash tag

One drawback of this tactic to boost traffic is that you’re not likely to get a massive list of people who have shared the content.

Compare this to what you can get using other premium tools designed for such tasks as the Buzzsumo premium account, NinjaOutReach, Awario, etc.

But still an alternative for content marketers bootstrapping their marketing tactics.

6. Repurpose Blog Post to SlideShare Presentation

You might have read about the benefits of the content upgrade in the SlideShare presentation. But you don’t have enough time at hand devoted to it.

When you do it right with better slides that tell a beautiful story — SlideShare can be an incredible source of free targeted traffic.

Here is a Slide deck presentation I was playing with some time ago.

Top 20 earning blogs 2016 from Shamsudeen Adeshokan

As you can see, my Slide deck presentation is nowhere near anything good, but despite this, it generated an extra 72 free super-targeted readers for one of my other blogs in a month.

Despite the shallow quality of most of my Slides over there (I must admit that). You can see that most visitors coming from SlideShare find my content engaging and relevant.

Looking at the Google Analytics below, SlideShare visitors spent an average of 12 minutes 51 seconds on the blog. A bounce rate of 31.94% is a reasonable engagement rate.

Google Analytics dashboard

Suppose you haven’t gotten started with turning your blog posts into SlideShare presentations. Maybe because you feel your Slides will not move a needle, don’t worry; you’ll get better as you go along with it.

The shortcut to publishing a top-notch Slide presentation is to hire professionals. But if you’re trapped in cash, instead of not doing anything at all…start where you are.

You don’t have to go with Slides presentation at all times. Converting your post into a PDF format can do well on SlideShare.

Most of my blog posts are being converted to PDF and uploaded to SlideShare.

For further reading on how to get hands-on using SlideShare for effective traffic generation sources. Check out this post on Ana Hoffman’s traffic generation cafe blog.

There are other sites where you can submit your PDF file for traffic and a link back to your site.

7. Syndicate Your Content

One of the most effective content marketing ideas to get plenty of eyeballs on your content is taking advantage of content syndication sites. And the good news is that plenty of them are available on the net now.

Some will allow you to syndicate the entire post in its entity, while some of these content syndication sites prefer just a snippet of your newly published content.

However, one major problem with using content syndication sites to increase website traffic is fierce competition for the front page.

But if you published something super helpful. And you always participate in the community discussions; many members recognize and know your stuff to be high quality.

Your content might regularly make it to the front page.

I have had great success with Inbound.org, GrowthHarkers, and Kingged.com.

These three content syndication/blogger community sites have played vital roles in the traffic growth to my home on the internet — CyberNaira.

There are other contents syndication sites you can try, such as:

  • Klinkk.
  • BlogEngage.
  • Triberr.
  • Aha-Now.
  • Medium.
  • LinkedIn

8. Use Paid Advertising Channels

If all tactics to increase your website traffic seems very difficult to execute. Or not bringing the kind of results you’d hope for. One traffic channel won’t disappoint you. So far, you keep fueling the candle to keep its light on — paid content marketing channels.

With paid content marketing channels, you can send thousands of super-targeted traffic down your web pages in minutes.

Paid traffic increases your chances of getting found by your target audience and makes more sales.

One good news about paid content marketing advertising platforms such as Facebook ads and Quora is that the cost per click is relatively cheaper than Google Ads.

I recommend this to new bloggers just starting to use this medium for content marketing.

It helps reach a more potentially relevant audience while waiting for Google and other search engines to send you traffic.

With Facebook ads, you can get 256 website clicks for under $5.

Here is a screenshot of the ads campaign I was running when writing this post that has generated 256 website clicks, yet I haven’t spent up to $5.

Facebook ads summary

You can do better than that.

There are other low-cost, effective advertising channels you can use to market your content to the right audience:

  • OutBrain
  • Twitter Ads
  • Taboola
  • RevContent
  • Bing Ads.

9. Build Links back to Your Post

Link building and content marketing can’t be separated from effective website traffic strategies.

Most of the things you’ll do, called content marketing, that drives back traffic to your blog will generate at least a link to your content.

But these links’ SEO value separates a link builder from content marketers.

Links are not created equal.

While some content marketing ideas will generate viral buzz in website traffic. Social shares but not enough SEO value to move the page up an inch on the search engine ladder.

Some marketing tactics will generate quality SEO link juice that will shoot the page to Google’s top 10 in record time.

Savvy content marketers know the great value and benefits of organic traffic. So they make sure every content on their blog has the potential to drive search traffic.

You know what?

Links are still the currency for high search ranking placement. Don’t let anyone deceive you — Google loves links. The world-wide-web can’t exist without interconnected links.

If there is just one marketing tactic you should explore daily, that will be link-building.

The more links to your web pages, the more love you get from search engines.

What makes the difference in the result you get from your link-building campaign is the quality of the links you manage to build or earn.

Conclusion…

Success won’t come overnight.

It would be best to improve your content marketing ideas to yield results and give a better return on investment.

These nine types of content marketing ideas mentioned in this post are well-guided content marketing secrets most experts won’t tell you.

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15 Comments

  1. author comments Renard Moreau says:

    [ Smiles ] I believe that building backlinks to our blog posts and paying for advertising on Facebook and Twitter are effective ways of marketing.

    Thank you for sharing your expertise.

    1. Hi Renard,

      Thanks for coming.

      Yes, backlinks is equally necessary for search visibility, and there is no replacement yet for advertising. Thanks for your valuable comments.

  2. Awesome post and good ides. thanks for sharing this post.

  3. I’m amazed, I have to admit. Seldom do I encounter a blog that’s both educative and interesting,

    Thank you.

  4. Hi Shamsudeen,

    This is an absolute gem of a post.

    So much good strategical and tactical advice for marketing your content that I just have to bookmark it.

    Lots of relevant and powerful resources, too.

    It’s important to create great content, but that’s just the beginning.

    Marketing it is what builds your business, and you’ve given a real checklist to follow.

    PS: I love including people in my content and reaching out to them afterwards, as you described in the article (#5 and #2).

    -Donna

    1. Thanks, Donna,

      Good to see you around here…citing relevant authors, influencers, and authority figures in the industry is one of the best content marketing tactics I learned.

      Glad to read you also find the tactic useful. Thank you for the shares too, happy weekend.

  5. author comments Francis Quarshie says:

    Hope you aren’t saying I’m one of the dummies you’ve written this post for, Sham.

    Actionable post you have here.

    What I’m thinking of right now is to start re-purposing some of my content to SlideShare presentations.

    What do you do when people don’t mind you after including and reaching out to them?

    Thanks for sharing, bro.

    Francis

    1. Hi Francis,

      You’re a professional blogger. Certainly, you know what you’re doing to get to where you want to.

      It takes on average, three to four reach before people respond back to your message. So when you reach out to them the first and hear nothing back. Reach out again and see if they will.

      But if several attempts and still nothing back, then move on.

      Thanks for your time.

  6. A simple reach out does wonders Shamsudeen. I do this regularly. Shout out someone in a post and tag on social media. Puts on the spotlight on your fellow blogger and forms friendships that drive traffic to your blog too.

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