When it comes to building credibility, attracting new customers, and keeping them coming back for more, relevant and high-quality content is critical. As an added bonus, your content also serves an important role in boosting your site’s organic rankings, making it more likely that potential customers will find you in online search results.
To really maximize results, you’ll probably need to do more than just write a few articles and throw them up on your site. Content syndication is one of the best ways to capitalize on your expertise and maximize your exposure, reaching more consumers and boosting your bottom line.
Why Content Syndication is Key
A huge part of attracting the right audience to your eCommerce site – and getting them to return again and again and eventually convert – is to establish yourself as an authority in your subject area. If you post content that demonstrates your robust knowledge, then customers, affiliates, and vendors will come to respect you as a credible resource, and will be more likely to purchase your products or services.
One of the quickest ways to build a reputation as an expert in your industry is to post give away quality content for free on your website. But imagine how many more consumers you could reach—and how many more potential sales you could garner—if your online content was picked up by several other sites or blogs. This proliferation of content to third-party websites is known as syndication—and the potential benefit to your business is virtually limitless.
How to Syndicate Your Content for Success
There are a number of ways to syndicate content—the trick is to find the strategies that work best for you and stick with them. Below are some of the ideas recommended by online marketing experts to promote any eCommerce business:
- Create a blog hosted somewhere other than your own website, and use it to not only share your own content, but also to comment on other blogs. Social networking is the name of the game when it comes to pervading online markets, and establishing a presence in a community of like-minded bloggers is a great way to increase your exposure and drive business to your site.
- Networking sites are becoming more and more abundant, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable. Although some are more focused on social relationships, others (sometimes called “business networking” sites) allow entrepreneurs to share contacts and information. The best way to use sites like Twitter, Facebook, SocialMarker, Reddit, Propeller, Faves, Digg, and Del.icio.us is a combination of the two – act like a real person, share and interact with other users, and post a blurb and a link to your content in other places every couple of days. You’ll most likely be amazed by the results you can get from this type of easy, low-key approach.
- Get a gig writing for a respected website or online magazine in your field. It might not pay much, but a professional magazine might agree to provide a link back to your own site, allowing you to attract hundreds of new customers and build instant credibility without a large marketing expense.
- Connect readers to other great information in your field of expertise. Turning yourself into a useful hub of information by providing relevant, high-quality links is an easy way to strengthen your reputation. Even if a customer doesn’t purchase anything the first time they visit, they’ll be more likely to return to your site when they are ready to buy if they remember the valuable information you provided.
- Mix it up with “101″ type articles, how-tos, product demos, care and maintenance tips, industry news, and interviews. When you keep your content fresh and relevant, you’ll ensure that your readers return again and again. You might also consider incorporating multimedia formats, such as audio blogs and video clips, since everyone learns best from their preferred medium.
Invite Readers to Share Your Content
Finally, it’s essential that you encourage readers to share your content with others who might be interested. Adding “tell a friend” buttons to each page on your site provides visitors with a subtle reminder to share useful information with others. A “bookmark this page” button is another simple way to encourage return visits.
Making the effort to provide fresh, useful content and syndicating it across the web costs little more than your time, and there’s no limit to the dividends you can enjoy by pooling your value-adding information.
Matt Prindle (13)
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Hasan Luongo (5)
I’ve never though about adding a “share this” button to my website pages before. Its on my blog of course, but not on my retail site. Great advice!
Great post. My wife and I are newbie?s to this ionline nformation marketing environment. With so much information everywhere new people to this movement are looking for someone who they can trust. Your posts are very inspirational and have answered several of our questions. We think you are a great source of information to those of us who are new to online/social marketing.