The week in between Christmas and New Year’s is a bit of a lost cause when is comes to publishing content on your website. This week is the lowest traffic week across the map, and even if your targets are searching around online this week, it’s unlikely they're looking to solve their business needs right now.
Hold on to that great content for early January, and instead, take a look at how you've been executing this year. Are you doing all you can to fulfill your marketing goals? What's getting in the way? How can you execute your inbound marketing program better? Today, let's look at five project management questions you should be thinking about this week to make 2017 better than ever.
Whether you’re publishing five blogs out of the week or four times a month, are you giving up quality of the blog just to meet the deadline of your blog schedule? Subscribers will be quick to tell if you haven’t put much time or effort into your writing.
A quick and easy way to gauge how well readers are taking in your content is to look at your social share buttons near your blogs. Do readers feel compelled to like and share your content? Slow down your publishing and focus on compelling blogs if you know you could be doing better with the quality of content you're putting out.
Ebooks, case studies, comparison charts, assessments, etc., are excellent ways to provide thoughtful and informative information to potential customers. It’s no joke that these advanced content pieces take some serious time for teams to plan, create and execute. What does your advanced content timeline look like? Are you giving your teams enough time to do adequate research, brainstorm ideas and create/write content? Do your clients have enough time to provide revisions and feedback?
Managing social media accounts isn’t a task for the weak. It’s a lot of work to maintain separate accounts, provide informative information, engaging with fans and followers, and keep up with weekly page metrics. But, what if you’re doing all of this, and still aren’t seeing the results you want?
Consider making small adjustments here and there. You should use a social media calendar—not only does it help you stay organized, but it also gives you the chance to keep track of what posts worked and what didn’t. Unless your social media campaign is perfect, nothing needs to stay concrete, so don’t be afraid to change up posting times throughout the day or frequencies during the week. Do followers enjoy third party sources? Images instead of just plain text? Take a look at some more social media tactics from our social media manager here.
Many businesses tend to sit on their website updates for ages. Rather than publishing iteratively on a regular basis, their website modifications occur in fits and starts. Is that you? Are you updating once in a blue moon rather than growing your site over time with new content areas and descriptive pages?
The truth is, with the right content management platform, websites don't need to happen in large launches that take months to prepare; your design and development process can be more iterative and growth-driven in nature. Try targeting small changes every single month, and setting those changes on a regularized content calendar. For bigger projects, break the steps up and make changes as you go along.
Last but certainly not least, make sure to take the time to look at monthly and quarterly metrics reports. It not only holds you and your team accountable, but makes you transparent in the eyes of your clients. Understanding what these metrics mean will point you in the direction of what is working and what isn’t within your campaign. In this case, no news is BAD news. Is website traffic down? Take a look at the type of content you’ve been publishing. What did traffic numbers look like last year? Was there a promo or content offer available at that time? There are so many questions when it comes to what’s working and what isn’t in your inbound marketing plan, and studying your metrics reports can provide some valuable answers.
If you're working the next two weeks, then it's the perfect time to put your deliverables on hold and review how well you're executing. Take to heart the questions outlined above, and look toward that New Year's resolution of better inbound marketing in 2017.
Topics: Inbound Marketing, Content Marketing
