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In This Episode
We’re delighted to be joined by Steven Van Vessum, VP of Community at ContentKing, a powerful SEO tool that lets you live audit your site and track its performance in the background. We brought him to discuss ContentKing’s content marketing strategy and how they use 10x content (i.e., content that’s fantastic and addresses people’s pain points) for lead generation.
ContentKing uses a combination of blog and knowledge base content to drive organic traffic to the site for very competitive keywords. More importantly, ContentKing uses this content strategy to capture and convert leads — and they’re brilliant at it.
Of course, this is the same strategy we’ve been preaching about in our videos, podcasts and blogs. But sometimes, it pays to get an outsider’s perspective and pick their thoughts on how they used their own content marketing to generate high-quality leads.
Check out some of the most insightful sound bites from the episode below.
ContentKing’s Bread and Butter: The ContentKing Academy
As a platform for SEOs and digital marketers, Steven says the logical approach was to focus their content on SEO and content marketing. The site’s primary lead generation tools are evergreen, knowledge base articles — comprehensive guides that remain relevant for years.
“When we got started in 2015, one of the core lead gen drivers was the ContentKing Academy,” explains Steven. “It’s basically where we give away all of our free knowledge — all of the evergreen content lives there
On Topic Ideation
When it comes to topic ideation — or the process of finding topics that generate traffic and address potential customers’ pain points — Steven explains that ContentKing has two drivers when making decisions:
“One is ‘What are the topics our audiences struggle with?’ and two is like, ‘Where does our product offer a solution?’” he says. “Where there’s an overlap, where ContentKing could be a solution to an issue — that’s where the sweet spot is for us.”
Of course, ideation is just one half of topic selection. You also need to validate your topics to see if there’s any real interest in them.
“That kind of depends on whether you have some real-world data in Google Search Console, for instance,” says Steven.
“If you have the data, you already know what people are searching for. Say you wrote an article about Topic A and you came up with Topic B, which is somewhat related. You already have an idea of the kind of searches people use and the number of impressions — that’s information you should definitely leverage when doing keyword research,” he explains.
But if you don’t have any data to begin, Steven recommends running an experiment.
“I would suggest creating a smaller piece to get some of that real-world data to show up in Google Search Console and use that for further planning,” he says.
“Instead of committing to this massive 10,000-word article, you could start with a smaller article and keep an eye on the data that’s coming in — and you use that data to define next steps,” he adds.
Check Out the Episode to Learn More
Be sure to watch or listen to the full episode to learn more insights on lead generation and capture leads through high-quality content.
Take Advantage of This Exclusive Offer
We also have an exclusive ContentKing offer for our YouTube followers and podcast listeners! Go to www.ContentKingApp.com/ExposureNinja/ and get a FREE 28-day extended trial of ContentKing.
Timestamps
00:00 — Introduction
02:09 — About Steven and ContentKing
04:43 — How ContentKing Uses Content to Drive Leads
07:13 — ContentKing’s Other Digital Marketing Channels
10:49 — Topic Ideation
15:09 — Validating Topics With Keyword Research
18:33 — Ideal Content Length to Rank
25:19 — Tips for Writing
28:27 — Generating Leads with Content
35:25 — Nurturing and Converting Leads
39:41 — Content Marketing Action Plan
Related Links
- Visit ContentKing
- Follow Steven Van Vessum on
- Twitter — @Stevenvvessum
- LinkedIn — Steven Van Vessum
