Can you now drive more traffic to your traffic and increase profit on a zero budget?
You may ask if it’s possible. Our answer is ‘Yes.’ And this can be accomplished with strategic content marketing.
The prime focus will be on content; however, the difference lies in its presentation. The content strategy will involve finding the right audience and using the right channel. And the entire process will be carried out at a low expense.
This, in turn, will help you rank at the top positions in the search engine result pages. The links earned will act as recommendations, and this increases visibility and more traffic.
Let’s put your curiosity to an end.
In this, we will be using content seeding on social media. You can look for influencers or bloggers, or thought leaders in your profile and use their reach to maximize your web traffic with a more stern and trustworthy message.
The links gained will not only help you establish authority but also make your brand popular.
Content seeding, as we call it, is the new PR in an age of digitization.
But what is seeding? We need to take a deep dive to completely understand seeding and its terms.
Content seeding offers a new PR concept with comprehensive guidelines, well-established methods, and measurable results. However, there is a clear difference between the two. In comparison, the former aims at building long-term relations, the latter’s core interest lies in brand awareness the most.
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What is Content Seeding?
Content seeding is a digital marketing strategy that involves reaching out to the targeted audience with strategic content creation across platforms.
This content can be planted in a myriad of ways. For instance, you can partner with an influencer who has a large audience in your niche. He engages with the targeted end-user to promote your service or product and generates leads. Content seeding accomplished in this manner is called influencer seeding.
However, influencers and social media are not the only channels. Many other platforms can be employed, such as the homepage of a website, an email newsletter, or a blog. Skilled content creators can plant (seed) content into individuals’ minds with a plan that brings definite results.
Here is an example.
Bon appetit, a cooking magazine, owns a top-rated YouTube channel as well. The popularity is a result of outstanding recipes produced by their talented and skilled chefs. One of the chefs, Claire Saffitz, who hosted the series, Gourmet Makes, has turned into an influencer herself. She collaborated with another magazine, Coveteur, on her Instagram.
Source: Hubspot
Just like McEwen and Claire, there are many more who have benefited from a well-planned content seeding strategy.
But is it for everyone, and everyone should use it? Let’s find out.
Who Should You Use Content Seeding? (And Why?)
With the rise in social media influencers, social seeding has drifted and is rightfully called influencer seeding.
Here are some case studies for your understanding.
Case Study #1. Youfoodz
Youfoodz is an Australian fresh meal company. They roped in 81 Instagram influencers to promote their new winter menu specialising in health, fitness and food. A total of 167 pieces of content was designed for the campaign. Besides, 162 Instagram stories were created for as well.
Source: Influencer Marketing Hub
Brittany Daisy shared the above image. She is an Instagram influencer, a PhD Media student from Sidney with more than 10,000 followers.
Campaign Result: The campaign had a reach of about 1.5 million people on Instagram and Facebook. This strategic content seeding marketing generated more than 5,00,000 impressions and nearly 70,000 direct engagements.
Case Study #2. GOODFOODS
GOODFOODS built a brand awareness campaign for their dips and natural guacamole in partnership with influencers. The brand worked with 60 influencers, specialising in parenting, food, home verticals and lifestyle. These influencers had to create recipes by featuring products from GOODFOODS. The whole program was intended to offer the audience with healthy snacking tips.
Source: Influencer Marketing Hub
The image above is of a recipe created by Michelle, who has a website West Via Midwest.
Campaign Result: 2000 pieces of content including blog posts, photos, videos and recipes were created to run the campaign. It resulted in 34 million impressions, 71,000 engagements and an ROI of 34.1%.
The case studies above suggest that content seeding is a useful and valuable tool, but who all should use it. Let’s take a closer look at it.
The primary audience is growth hackers
The importance of growth hackers can be gauged from the fact that an annual growth hacking conference is now held, proving that it is a futuristic strategy and is here to stay.
Before understanding the role of a growth hacker in driving visitors, it is essential to know who a growth hacker is and what is his or her role.
A growth hacker is someone who devises low-cost strategies to gain and retain customers. Growth hackers work in various fields, such as content marketing, SEO, email marketing, and influencer marketing.
Furthermore, it is interesting to consider that the leading followers of growth hackers are startup businesses. Hence, startups can also take advantage of the growth hackers.
To explain it further, let us take the example of DropBox. The company decided against advertising. Instead, they crafted a new plan. The cloud storage service offered extra storage space to anyone who referred to a new user. The idea clicked, bringing in referrals in significant numbers.
But also for the 2020s, all marketers
Content seeding is not only for hackers’ growth, but it is also an essential tool for marketers. In a B2B business model, marketers can use content seeding to create a customer acquisition funnel, which can ultimately help seal big deals. Whereas in a B2C business model, seeding helps define the target audience by reaching and pursues them to purchase.
What are the Benefits of Content Seeding?
If done correctly, content seeding can let you enjoy several benefits, including enhanced visibility and reputation.
Free relevant traffic
When you promote the right content on the right platform, it can help you receive relevant traffic to your website. It is possible with the current social media strategies that allow segregating audiences to present your content to specific users. It is also seen that social media traffic is more than search traffic, and this results in a lower bounce rate and more page views. Also, if you are collaborating with other websites and online platforms, you ensure the growth of backlinks to your business website, which in turns, results in increased rankings and better positions in SERP.
Brand awareness
Presenting high-quality content to your audience regularly makes users build your brand’s reputation in their minds. They will begin sharing content within their community. Gaining popularity in this fashion henceforth helps you become an authority. This awareness builds a brand image for your business.
Here is an example for better insight:
Mod Girl Marketing Founder Mandy McEwen partnered with the “Thought Leadership campaign” of LinkedIn marketing. This partnership was significant as it aligned with McEwen’s connections–professionals working with thought leaders, professionals looking for more connections, and the LinkedIn audience.
Source: Hubspot
This partnership led McEwen to gain new engagement while building credibility. Furthermore, it helped in building brand awareness.
Trust and reputation
There is no denying that the audience likes to engage with a brand or content, only if it comes from a trustworthy resource. Building trust is hard and even harder to keep. Therefore, the right content to the right people on the right platform is significant in content seeding.
How to Leverage Content Seeding? 4 Steps to Go
Content seeding is for the audience by the marketers. However, there are several methods to accomplish this before treading on that path; you must know the people you are doing it for, and most importantly, WHY?
Research target audience
Researching the target audience forms the foundational part of content seeding. This process helps you prepare a database that includes information about your prospective buyers or users in the future.
Pains
What are the major issues faced by your audience? It is essential to know what difficulties your target audience faces in your niche. The problems would be different for different people. For instance, you plan to introduce new software, knowing issues with the existing software in this same category will tell you what to include and exclude from your software. This way, you can hit the bull’s eye.
Communities
Next up, you should look for places where you can find the target audience. This can be done in two ways: online and offline. Online communities such as Quora, Reddit, Stack OverFlow, etc., are some key places where you can get in touch with your intended audience. On social media, you can leverage Facebook groups, Twitter followers dashboard, and more. As these social networks have billions of active users, they can be the perfect hotspots for seeding content.
Go to these communities
Another method to look and connect with your target audience is through community participation. It is an offline method. Whether you are a beginner or a well-established entrepreneur, you can attend events, trade shows, and conferences related to your industry. At these places, you can build connections and seek your target audience as well.
Do reputation part
Building a persona that sells and stays in the minds of the audience is of paramount importance. Good content seeding builds a reputation that instills trust and belief.
To build a good reputation, you must shift your focus to the following:
Be proactive
The first and foremost step is to stay active. Giving out content regularly ensures your visibility and keeps your identity intact in the user’s minds. You will risk all this if you are not regular with your content.
Ask relevant questions
Another key to building a reputation is by asking relevant questions. So, when putting out your content through any channel, be it social media quizzes or email newsletters, or forum participation. You must ensure the queries are put ahead. They are essential and necessary to add value to the product and services.
Note what is the most important
Based on the questions asked, note down all the essential points. Remember, the answers could be positive, as well as harmful. Using this data, negate the negatives by adding more positives. For example, if they want your content in a certain way, such as short videos, then make it that way.
Start writing
After you finish the groundwork of researching your target audience and building a reputation, it’s time to begin writing content for seeding. Write compelling & engaging content that resonates with your target audience. Make sure that your content plays the role of a product.
Be as informative as possible.
Whether it is an infographic, an article, or a video – every type of content you are producing demands special attention. Envision how the content will be received on each platform. Is it informational, for entertainment, or pure PR?
Think like an end-user. Keep your target group in mind while writing and how they will respond. Make it shareable for them to enhance reach. Special attention should be given.
Next up, go and build a social profile if you don’t have one yet. Then build a user base that will also contain some influencers. And then reach out to them.
Pro tip – SEO
The evolution in SEO has bridged the gap between search and social to a large extent. Your social media visibility and likes add to the total shares of a webpage. These social signals account for a page’s organic search ranking. Thus, practicing SEO on social platforms is equally important.
Search engines want to show the most relevant results, and therefore, look for social signals. And the best method to learn relevant information about a particular thing is by measuring how many humans are talking about it. In addition to backlinks, you need likes and shares made by the users on social media.
Make post
Now we come to the most critical part of content seeding – Making the Post. You have written content. Write it, or Copy-Paste it on the selected social media. And do not forget to include all the important people you need in accomplishing your goal of getting more visitors. This process is called tagging. And you should include the following in your post.
Source: Instagram
Do not forget to add names of all the important people, especially the influencers. Influencers are pertinent. Their names in the post will help you reach their followers, who are your target audience.
Lastly, do not forget to ask the influencers to spread the word about your product or service just the way the model in the above picture has done for Daniel Wellington.
Bonus step: remarketing
Lastly, as an entrepreneur or business owner, you must retarget or remarket your product and services to the target audience. The procedure is aimed at reaching the prospects who have already visited your website. The main goal is to turn them into loyal customers. Remarketing can increase your visitors by 50% and conversions by 51%.
However, the campaign will be fruitful only when you target the right audience. To benefit from this, target the same people who reached out to you through social media. This ensures the right reach and within the allotted budget.
Your previous strategy of using influencers has already given you access to their audience with content seeding. The thousand of visitors you had for free can now be leveraged. You can use this pool for remarketing and generating leads for revenue.
Bottom-line for Content Seeding
Content seeding, when done correctly on social media, can help you harness massive ROI. If you are already in influencer marketing, content seeding using influencers should be added to it. And if you are not, then also you should embark on it as soon as possible.
Finally, you must partner with the right people, aka influencers, to drive more traffic and scale your revenue.