Content Boomerang. What is a boomerang? According to Wikipedia it is: a bent or angular throwing club typically flat on one side and rounded on the other so that it soars or curves in flight; especially: one designed to return near the thrower. 2: an act or utterance that backfires on its originator.
Social media marketing is definitely NOT for everyone, as Mark Schaefer explains in this post.
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How to Boomerang Your Content for Traffic Growth
Still. Word-of-mouth marketing is all the marketing you’ll ever need because people talking is the most perfect organic business builder. But it isn’t just about throwing your content out there if you can’t get something back.
Today, social media marketing (SMM) represents the new organic route to develop word-of-mouth marketing for your business. Okay, maybe it’s more word-of-feed.
Still, positive results for business prevail, and isn’t that what matters? SMM pumps up word-of-mouth with a bigger mouthpiece than you may imagine but, if you add a little boomerang spin to your social efforts, the surprises that return may overwhelm you.
In fact, SMM changes the entire landscape for conducting business and so, requires modifying current business models for a digital world.
But the point of using social platforms hinges on your ability to drive traffic back to your business. Most often, this means you’re increasing visibility and establishing expertise with the goal of bringing visitors to your digital home.
The next trick is twofold for content boomerang
First, developing value-heavy content assets, and offering visitors a welcoming resource-driven website is key.
But even more so, this business hub – usually anchored by an engaging blog – needs to resonate with people. Getting them there is one thing; drawing them in is quite another!
Enticing Visitors to Your Digital Home
It’s not enough to get site visitors for a single visit. Your objective is to create an interactive community around your business. Therefore, your blog has an enormous job.
Sure, conversations happen on social media platforms, enhancing your word-of-mouth reach while also building a strong brand image and reputation over time.
Lisa’s Inspire to Thrive blog focuses on Twitter foremost and social media. She does a great job sharing the latest trends and changes impacting your online business. The speed and variety of social media updates mean material for Lisa’s blog for a long time to come.
More importantly, though, there’s a community here, making the blog more than a one-stop-shop. That’s what you want for your site, right?
So, how do you create enough super fab stuff to keep your brand content new, exciting, and visible, EVERYWHERE?
And how do you keep up a level of quality in each piece you produce?
It Helps if You CARE
Consistency and clarity in communications happen when you CARE by keeping your content:
- Current
- Accurate
- Rare
- Exciting
CARE addresses the quality and consistency of your content. However, gaining visibility, driving traffic, and turning up everywhere requires you go a few steps further.
Ready to Go BIG?
Go big and bring quality guests home. Yep! Truth is if you aren’t out there:
- being seen,
- getting noticed, and finally,
- bringing new friends back to your website,
then you may as well offer your services from a dry desert or lost island. You know, in a magical (hidden) place no one knows about or ever visits?
So… Are you ready to take off and grow your blog reach?
Here’s The Story of Content Boomerang
There I was vehemently tackling WordPress to create a shining business blog—and minding my own business—when suddenly, I was smacked with a Boomerang!
A Content Boomerang, that is, whipped at my head with zest and verve by the ultra-smart, Ana Hoffman, of TrafficGenerationCafe.com.
And so our social media and marketing friendship morphed into an unlikely duo of boom-boom-boomeranging adventurers.
Joining Ana’s Beta Content Boomerang Training and “Groupies” was one of the best decisions for my web-based writing business so far for learning to promote my brand, and work, in a relevant way.
Working with Ana’s results-driven method (and help from fellow Boomerangers), my content toolbox is overflowing with tools, tips, and tricks to give my content wings. Even the name Content Boomerang indicates the significance of using content outreach to bring something back to you.
Ana’s online course for “being everywhere” keeps going and going with learning. And that’s a good thing since I don’t want to get off the Boomerang ride—surely not yet!
The core technique Ana works from is essentially content repurposing. Content repurposing on steroids, though.
So, if you’re ready to pump up visibility to find more eyeballs (people attached, of course) for your business, then hang on with both hands. There’s more to it than you think.
Take it Away, Ana Hoffman
TrafficGenerationCafe is Ana’s home base where she’s perfected the art of—you guessed it—traffic generation.
Specifically, she blogs about driving free targeted traffic to your website.
I need website traffic and, if that’s you, too, I’ve got some insider secrets to share.
First, here’s Ana’s take on Content Boomerang’s “core technique” using repurposing:
Let’s repurpose the phrase ‘ into
REPURPOSED CONTENT = RECONTENT.
Re-content is NOT about reusing an old piece of content again and again. It’s content is reimagined and reinvented.
Recontent has to be every bit as good, creative, and compelling as the content it’s based on. As a prospect discovers your re-content across various platforms and channels, she forms an impression of you and your brand.
That overall impression is what, in the end, will determine whether you get the sale. ~Ana Hoffman, Content Boomerang
Now you understand you’re entering the wide world of #recontent in an effort to BE EVERYWHERE. It’s a fun and exciting experience, but, be ready to get busy, too.
And I mean busy in a good way because Ana likes to get things moving for you with immediate and easy shortcuts, so you get seen more. Faster.
Like a boomerang, it’s all about sending your content off your site to where your target audience is right now.
Then, if you’re doing it right, your content finds friends. Friends who may pop over to your home island—actual visitors to your website. Whoa!
Want to Learn More About Content Boomerang Operations?
Join Ana’s Facebook Group to get in on the #recontent excitement by clicking the image below:
Start Collecting Coconut Heads
Hijacking a hugely engaged and well-targeted audience is the first step.
As this post of Ana’s explains, there’re many options for reaching new audiences. (Or, you can always wait for a shipwreck, hoping for a lost soul to stumble upon your site.)
My favorite gateway to new audiences and one of Ana’s top methods to easy access is to borrow LinkedIn’s robust user base via sister platform, SlideShare.
And that’s the best part. You can start right now using content you already have. I created a step-by-step video to walk you through Ana’s easy, few minutes process for taking a blog post to re-promote it quickly to a new audience using SlideShare.
HINT: This is just the tip of the iceberg!
Remember to make sure the content you select to amplify using #recontent techniques meets the CARE criteria for high-quality standards.
Consider, perhaps, a content audit to identify key content you want to focus on or showcase for your business. Google Analytics helps identify what’s working or not content-wise but also gives you other useful indicators.
For example, one thing I’m always interested in is the average time a visitor spends on my site. Weirdly, I notice some big traffic sites when they give a behind dashboard look, revealing fascinatingly quick visit times regardless of the extremely large visitor numbers.
To me, engaging quality content on your website means people will spend time there. Maybe they’ll actually read a post or two. Hopefully, a few folks even download your leads offer.
Successful content is consumed, right? I may not have high traffic numbers (even though they continue to rise after years of hard work), but people tend to linger a bit.
Does Content With No Engagement Count?
Hooray, winner, winner, chicken dinner! See, when people check out my site stuff, it makes me happy, and, when they interact with comments and on social media, and I get emails from readers, etc., I get a sense of what content resonates with people.
HINT: Work with what you find out from your audience as you go.
For content repurposing, you can go with already banging content to add more bang, or you can go for content that has yet to find a spark, let alone the fireworks, it deserves.
Either way, you’re sending a water taxi enticing visitors to take a little adventure back to your isolated business island. Lai, anyone?
Infusing Visual Impact Takes Your Content Higher
Visual infusion is one of the best ways to put the POW in powering up content and conveying memorable messages. Plus, with smart planning and execution, the visuals you produce offer multi-purpose capabilities to further boost your visibility for a variety of platforms.
As an example, Medium allows you to share content and the pdf creation method explained earlier makes simple reuse of a single content piece to hijack more than one platform. You can also write summaries of content on Medium or LinkedIn, even FaceBook, with links back to your original post.
Individual slides you create on SlideShare can be used for social media posts, turned into a video, audio piece, or audio-video content.
Check out this smart and stylish example of SlideShare to video by fellow boomeranger Linda Lopeke from SmartStart—and she swears she does it in no time at all, easy peasy: Check out this video.
Re-content Every Which Way to Boomerang Your Content
Or, you can take another fresh approach, like Andy Crestodina suggests, by Orbit Media promoting your blog content via a short video to then share on multiple social platforms.
NEWSFLASH: Ann Handley calls out this piece from Andy in her latest newsletter Anarchy edition calling the technique, PR for your writing. lol
I’m on Orbit Media’s email list, so I received the post in my inbox but, first, I saw Andy’s video example promoting this same post on LinkedIn. Hmm, I think I want to try this:)
To add to the awesomeness of this post, a friend of mine (thanks Larry Elkin!) who knows I’m a big #recontent student and Andy follower, tagged me on LinkedIn to be sure I was aware of this content.
Hey, it looks like Andy has some boomerang and #recontent spinning in Orbit’s media for sure! His business island is a hopping tropical destination where everyone who’s anyone wants to visit, right?
So, can you and I get out there and entice visitors to our own desert business, turning our lonely, dusty, dry website island into an oasis of beautiful cacti with freshwater sources for the content thirsty?
Can we get traffic like Ana, industry kudos like Andy, and a first-rate engaged community like Lisa does here, or my friend Henneke does on her oh-so-enchanted Enchanting Marketing site?
Your Thoughts on Content Boomerang
Let me know what you think so far and, in the next post, I’ll share more tips and secrets about #recontent for your blog or business.
But, you better be ready to grow your reputation and visibility to build more business and gain website traffic.
We’re going to take a tour of the #recontent tools I’m playing with lately so you can put better #recontent techniques into your digital marketing repertoire right away.
Then you can really put Content Boomerang to positive use for your business. See you then?