But how to engage influencers into creating content for your company blog? Benefits of holding a content marketing contest There so many marketing opportunities behind this idea that it will make your head spin: Free editorial content from notable names in your niche published on your blog will attract more clicks, grow your email list and diversify your rankings Social media shares that content will bring will build your brand awareness Partnering with other businesses in your industry for them to provide prizes for your winners will build important connections Involving niche influencers and popular media outlets to judge and announce your winners will bring more connections and exposure. Brainstorm and research topic areas Obviously, hosting a content marketing contest starts with what any content marketing tactic should start: Brainstorming and keyword research. Reach out to participants Now that you know the topics you want to focus your content marketing contest around, it’s time that you reach out to prominent writers and bloggers in your industry who you think will want to participate. For general how-to content contest, you’ll need to create a list of influencers who: Will want to participate Are probably to busy to participate, but will agree to help you spread the word and collect more entries. You can use your current customer management platform to organize all the new contacts and leads you’ll be building throughout the contest. Collect in and present your entries There are plenty of ways to easily collect entries for your contest. You can embed both to your blog when announcing winners. I use Drumup for all my social media campaigns, because it makes it so easy to organize content that needs promotion. Furthermore, set up each article to go live throughout your social media channels several times in the future to reach more of your followers: You also want that content to spread beyond your immediate social media circles!
The purpose of a content marketing campaign is almost never a boost in sales: People who want to consume and share information rarely intend to buy. Content marketing is mostly about influencing the influencer, i.e. those people who can impact your customers’ buying decisions.
Hence the most effective content marketing strategy is the one that involves influencers, especially influencer-driven content.
According to the ANA survey from Linqia, 57 per cent of marketers report that influencer-driven content outperforms brand-created content:
- Naturally, people prefer to engage with people rather than brands, hence influencer-created content triggers more audience engagement than brand-created content
- With the above in mind, it’s obvious that influencer-driven content results in higher ROI – and also thanks to the fact that it spreads easier using the power of participating influencers.
But how to engage influencers into creating content for your company blog? One of the most effective ways is to set up a writing contest: Have them contribute content to your blog for a chance to win a prize or a set of prizes.
Benefits of holding a content marketing contest
There so many marketing opportunities behind this idea that it will make your head spin:
- Free editorial content from notable names in your niche published on your blog will attract more clicks, grow your email list and diversify your rankings
- Social media shares that content will bring will build your brand awareness
- Partnering with other businesses in your industry for them to provide prizes for your winners will build important connections
- Involving niche influencers and popular media outlets to judge and announce your winners will bring more connections and exposure.
Furthermore, think about the customers you will be able to engage when announcing the contest in your newsletter and on your social media channels.
There are so many reasons to try this tactic that you may be wondering why you haven’t done it before. Well, it’s tough and time-consuming, but the steps below, together with some handy tools, will make it possible.
1. Brainstorm and research topic areas
Obviously, hosting a content marketing contest starts with what any content marketing tactic should start: Brainstorming and keyword research. There are mainly two approaches you can take here:
- Focus all entries around your brand: Invite your current customers to submit content that talks about your product. How are they using it? Which problem did it solve? This way you’ll enrich your blog with a variety of user-generated content that will bring many more users who will be encouraged to give it a try too. Of course, that will engage your userbase but it will limit your contest entries to your current customers.
- Focus all entries around your general niche. This can be timed out to upcoming holidays (e.g. “Submit your Christmas recipes”, etc.) In order to keep the topics relevant to what your product does, you may want to come with a set list of topics which is where keyword research comes into play.
When I plan any content marketing campaign, I always start with keyword clustering, which is something I’ve explained how to do in a previous article for SEW. Playing with keyword groups always gives me a nice perspective and helps me brainstorm.
Here’s an example from Serpstat breaking down a very cluttered topic into nice categories to pick one to go with:
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