Breaking news! Read all about it! We all know what timely content is. Timely content is newsworthy content written about a relevant trending topic. Timely content marketing is typical for news sites, but what if a local business were to write timely content?
Content Marketing In Action
Content marketing is an undeniably effective tool in a variety of types of internet marketing. When writing content or creating an infographic or video there are a variety of uses. A video can be used in an email blast. You can share a recent article on your social media or the content itself can rank extremely high and gain a large number of links.
But What About Timely Content?
While content is obviously beneficial for your business, your online presence, and marketing as a whole, there are subgroups of content marketing that act in their own way. Timely content is an extremely beneficial type of marketing content that you should consider using to boost your website’s links and traffic. While it may not result in ongoing traffic growth, it can lead to search engine ranking breakthroughs and linking a new website or small local website might be starved for.
How To Market Your Business With A Newsworthy & Timely Blog Post
Marketing with newsworthy content that is relevant to a specific timeframe can be challenging. You will need to be paying attention to local news as well as national and international news. With everything you see or read you must consider how does this impacts my business? How does this news impact my customers? How does this news impact my product? If there is a relevant connection between the two, QUICK! Write that timely article!
Example Of A Local Timely Blog Post Marketing A Product
An example of a blog post from an insurance company that was strategically written close to a local event and connects to a product is this article on a gas leak explosion that happened in Lebanon Pennsylvania. This article was written within 24 hours of the gas leak explosion which was the talk of local Lebanon PA residents. It strategically placed its product as the solution to the problem and informed the readers on the importance of business insurance.
PR Risks In Marketing With Time Based Articles
One thing to be extremely cautious of is writing timely content that trends but makes your business look insensitive. For instance, if the gas leak explosion in the article mentioned above resulted in a person’s death, it would be unwise to write the article to market your business. Public perception would potentially view the blog post as insensitive.
Getting The Most Out Of Your Timely Blog Post
If you write a timely blog post share it! Post it to social media and comment on discussion boards! We wrote the article on how to list your jobs on Google using schema markup during a timeframe where employers were desperately trying to hire employees. We then posted the article and went onto a large number of local discussion boards. Any Facebook posts that mentioned a local business was hiring received a strategic comment that linked to our article.
This is an example of dynamic internet marketing. It is using timely SEO-optimized written content as a tool on social media. To take it a step further the article could have also been sent out in an email blast.
Benefits Of Timely Content
Writing timely content and utilizing it in your marketing strategy can lead to a lot of benefits. Go through our lists of benefits to writing newsworthy content on your small business’s website.
1. Newsworthy Content Can Rank Quickly
One of the best parts of a new trending topic is typically it is completely new. There aren’t massive articles written by millions of conglomerate companies the have much stronger domain authorities than your small business. So when you write content on a topic that is trending it is more likely that your article will rank due to the lack of competition.
2. Timely Content Is Great For Link Building
First! How many YouTube videos have that comment? How often does it seem that simple comment of “first” has a large number of likes? Getting first in Google for a trending topic can lead to a large number of links. When competitors or similar businesses plan to write a similar article, they could use your article as a resource. Search Engine Journal is notorious for this in the marketing world. Typically they are always first with a short little article.
3. Content On Trending Content Can Build Your Brand
As mentioned in the first point there is a lack of competition when you write timely content. Since you will rank towards the top of the search results for a trending topic your business can become a type of influencer. That influence builds your brand and can lead to future sales.
4. Timely Content Doesn’t Have To Be Long
Sometimes it is better to get newsworthy content live on your website quickly rather than having a more thoroughly written article. Write quickly and publish quickly, but make sure your article is complete and accurate. It is a good idea to return to your article and extend it with additional content when more information is released about the news-related topic.
5. Local News Is Best For Ranking
If you write an article about local news you will not get a large amount of traffic, but you will get traffic because there is even less competition locally. Writing about local events or news that is relative to your business can garner local links and greatly help your local seo.
Drawbacks Of Timely Content
Surprisingly there are a few negatives you should be aware of with trending content. Be aware of these so you can appropriately communicate these drawbacks to your boss or manager.
1. Trending Content… Trends For A Time
Trending content can make a huge splash in marketing. Your business can see a large increase in traffic, but once the topic is no longer trending your traffic will drop. Effective marketing reports are highly important to manage expectations.
By providing reports you can show the reason traffic dropped is not because you are bad at internet marketing but because you are a great internet marketer. You wrote a timely article that got our website trending. Now that the topic is no longer trending, our traffic has returned to its regular amount.
Below is a screenshot of an article on thawing your frozen pipes. This article was written just before Texas had a massive cold front that led to frozen and burst pipes. The timely piece resulted in a massive influx of traffic for a small local insurance company.
2. Swing And A Miss!
Sometimes timely content misses its mark. Actually, a lot of times timely content does not result in a lot of traffic. Typically after writing five to ten newsworthy articles and not seeing any benefit and growth from them businesses stop focusing on writing newsworthy content.
The reason your newsworthy content is failing is that you are not using it to correctly market your business. Below we provide steps to effectively use newsworthy content in your content marketing strategy.
How To Effectively Market With Trending Content
Below are a series of steps you should take to market your small business effectively with timely content.
1. Pick A Relevant & Timely Topic
Finding the right topic is probably the most important step. While you may think it is a trending topic, it might not be. always follow the data and use that to guide your writing on trending topics. A great tool to find relative and timely topics is Google Trends. It literally tells you what people are Googling near you.
Additionally, you can’t just write about anything. You should try to find something newsworthy that relates to your business. Make sure you write about a topic that is relevant to your company and its services.
2. Write The Article Quickly
An article that is written about a timely and trending topic is only useful if it is written and posted in time. Get the article together and be sure to submit the article to Google Search Console so it can be indexed as quickly as possible.
3. Make Sure The Article Is Unique
Many businesses fail in writing a timely article because they simply copy a press release. A copied press release is useless because it is copied. Make sure you provide information and context that a press release was unable to present. Making your article unique will make people more likely to read and link to your piece.
4. Make Sure The Article Is SEO Optimized
There is no point in writing an article if it isn’t SEO optimized. Many news sites do not write SEO-optimized content. By writing your content in the correct SEO-optimized structure you can easily outrank a large number of local news sites. Make sure you utilize SEO throughout your website.
5. Share The Article On Social Media
If it is timely and newsworthy you should share the article on social media. This is a great opportunity to show your business is up to date with the latest news and relative trends. Make sure you use the correct hashtags and post in relative groups.
6. Write Timely Topics A Lot
Since trending topics pop up and disappear regularly, make sure you are continually writing newsworthy content. This will also help to fill out your website and grow your expertise within your field. It will also help your website to gain links and grow your domain authority.
Looking To Benefit From Content Marketing?
Contact us to write your newsworthy content. We will help your business grow with a content marketing strategy that strengthens your website. The most effective content marketing strategy is to have both trending and newsworthy written content as well as evergreen and cornerstone content on your website. Work with us to develop your content strategy.