Marketing Success Goals — Specialize or Go Big

By Rhonda Campbell

Last night’s research work clarified a successful marketing strategy. It surprised me to see that an audiophile review article had gotten more than 21 thousand social media shares. Who would think so many people are interested in old stereo systems?

What’s behind the content marketing success? The audiophile review article specializes. The topic isn’t broad. It’s narrowly focused. Specializing with marketing content (i.e. blog posts, images, videos) is an excellent way to get traffic.

Passion Turns Personal Specialties into Marketing Success

Passion is a must to succeed with a specialized marketing strategy. You simply must be passionate about the topic that you are investing  your time in. If you’re passionate about a topic you might:

• Focus more on the depth of the content rather than search engine results for similar topics
• Commit to uncovering rarely (or never before) shared material
• Get to the core of the data
• Feel like you didn’t put in your best effort when you generalize
• Provide details that quickly educate, instruct or inspire

Why Specializing Works

Specializing works for marketing success because it speaks to people who are equally as passionate about topics that you are passionate about. Add keywords to your marketing content to attract these passionate folks, not to build out the content. Think of the keywords as a door knock, an effort to invite the right people over.

If you’ve ever worked as a content marketing strategist for an agency, you’ve probably written articles and landing pages across industries and markets. You may have written about auto repairs, sports heroes, healthcare initiatives, financial savings strategies, college degrees, stereo systems, computer software, hotels and legal services.

Are You Really Passionate About All Those Things

Even if you’re a talented marketing copywriter, that’s not specializing. It’s why some small businesses only work with marketing strategist who have an in-depth background in the products or services that they provide. People can tell when you’re passionate.

Other signs that you specialize with a certain type of marketing content are that you:

• Only write about one to three topics at your blog or website. True specialization generally sees a person investing time in only one topic at their blog or website.
• Visitors to your blog are highly educated about the topics that you cover. You can tell by the comments that they leave. Why? Their passion in the topic hasn’t just sprung up. They’ve been reading up on, researching and enjoying participating in activities related to the topic for years.
• You share valuable information on a topic without having to conduct research. You’re simply that familiar with the topic.
• Your website is a resource of choice for people researching the topic that you write about. For example, college students may refer to your website when writing a research paper.
• You’re not trying to reach everybody, just the people who share your passion.
• Sites like Buzzstream gravitate to your site, generating lots of inbound links for you

Big Path to Content Marketing Success

Don’t want to specialize, but want to attract thousands of readers? Try partnering with mega firms. Examples of this include running Facebook ads, targeting marketing content on Outbrain and/or distributing press releases through major agencies. You can also ghostwrite for major media brands like Forbes, Entrepreneur, the New York Times, Newsweek and Entertainment Weekly.

Look for major media brands that pay ghostwriters. Some top brands allow you to leave your picture, name and a short bio. Include your website URL in your bio, taking you out of the ghostwriting sphere. The upside is an increased income and more traffic for your content.

In addition to writing for major media brands, you can network, market and write for popular websites and top social networking hangouts. eBiz tracks the top social networking spots and  the most popular websites. Some of the spots might surprise you. Others certainly won’t. ComScore also ranks popular websites. These are websites that generate large audiences. Leave comments, seek out inbound links and engage writers, editors and publishers at these websites for partnerships.