Content marketing tips to build a bigger audience
Editors speak for the brands they work for, which means they have a much better pre-existing relationship with customers than anyone else at your company. They speak directly to readers through witty blog posts, metaphoric photos, and real-time replies to comments on your blog.
Basically, your editors are brand ambassadors and your readers recognize their faces to go along with good, creative content. If you want to capitalize on these relationships, here are a few suggestions for giving your editors a bigger spotlight.
1. Add “rich snippet” metadata to display photos in search results
Wonder how editors get their photos to show up in search results next to their articles? It’s all a part of the Google+ rollout and all you need to do is have your editors create a Google+ page, set themselves up as authors to your blog and then strap some “rich snippet” metadata onto all of their articles (usually in a truncated author bio section below the article). Luckily, there’s also a really easy way to do it in WordPress.
2. Create better author pages
Not only is an author landing page SEO-friendly and may give you some bonus traffic, it also gives authors a place to tell a story about themselves both professionally and not. It’s also where they can link to their social media profiles, which should all be professionally-friendly according to your social media policies.
About.com is run by topic ambassadors, so naturally they do a great job at creating robust author pages:
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3. Ask them to organize an event
See if asking your brand ambassadors to organize an event has any more influence on gathering more event attendees. Maybe they’re the speaker on a webinar, or they’re hosting a tweet-chat. Let them get creative with what they want to do, and they’ll be more passionate about developing the event.
4. Give them the helm of a Twitter account
Who knows your content better than your managing editor? While marketers make good Twitter representatives, those most familiar with your content and can write great headlines may be even better.
Kathleen Cubley is the managing editor of Interweave’s Knitting Daily and she does a great job representing the brand!
Mashable’s Pete Cashmore may be running an automated feed, but his face is the billboard for Mashable’s Twitter feed.
5. Launch editor interviews
Not only as brand ambassadors, but also as subject-matter experts, your editors are a wealth of knowledge with their own perspectives and stories to share. In order for all of the above strategies to be successful, your editors must be validated. And what better way to do this, than to interview them for your magazine, or even on their own blogs?
All of these strategies require complete trust in your editors, so certainly use your best judgement when choosing brand ambassadors for your publication.
If you’re an editor acting as the brand ambassador for your publication, do you have any tips or tricks to share with the newbies?
