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As the old web marketing adage goes, content is king. Without good content, your website’s online presence will be meaningless. But while content is the lifeblood of your web marketing campaign, it has to do something. In other words, if your content marketing strategy is ineffective, it doesn’t matter how good your content is, it will fall flat every time. Here are 8 ways to turn your dormant content into active content through smart distribution.

Plan Ahead

Consider your goals. Figure out what you want your content to accomplish, and ask yourself qualifying questions.

What type of conversions are you looking for? Sales? Email list signups? Whatever you’re working with, clearly define what your end-goal is. Whether you’re publishing content for internet service providers or working on a private blog, planning is the first key to success.

Be a Leader

Know who you are as an expert in your field, and develop your content authoritatively. Be forthright enough to want to establish yourself as a leader in your industry. Approaching content development from this mindset will drastically change how your content strategy is shaped.

Publish Content that Sings

Two seconds. That’s all the time you have to convince a reader to keep reading according to several widely-read studies on web-users’ online reading habits. The new generation of web readers skim, they don’t read. Therefore, your content has to be great from the start: headline and first sentence especially.

Optimize Your Content

Optimize your content for search engines. This seems like a no-brainer, but many beginner content strategists falsely think that good content will simply yield good results on its own.

The thing about good content is that it has to read by actual people. If search engines can’t find your content, then neither will anybody else. Optimize your content. It’s worth mentioning twice.

Faster is Better

Publish your content quickly and often. Always look for new ways to improve the speed at which your content is published and distributed. This will go a long way to keep you a step ahead of your competitors. Use internet service providers that will let you publish massive amounts of digital content quickly.

Backlinks Are Your Friend

Backlinks legitimizes your content to major search engines. The more backlinks that point to your content, the more value search engines will ascribe to your content.

Leave comments on blogs, and forums with links to your content. Be careful to only participate in blog or forum conversations if your content contributes to the topic. Consider submitting content through article and blog networks, like Yahoo! Contributor Network, Ezine Articles or Buzzle.

Socialize Your Content

The web is social, so your content should be social. But don’t just post your content’s title on Facebook or Twitter. Instead, pull key points, quotes from your content, or ask a question and publish it alongside your content’s link.

You may also consider posting to LinkedIn professional groups relating to your industry. This serves as a good way to track user interaction on blog posts submitted to a LinkedIn group.

Research & Develop

Integrate new products or services into your content. This lets you test new products with potential customers. Always be in R&D mode, so that your content will keep growing and developing your products.

Most importantly, never stop innovating. The internet is arguably the fastest platform for marketing and distribution, and it is constantly evolving. Online businesses, search engines, and social media networks continually find more effective ways to provide better results for users, and staying on top of these changes is the best way to find success.

About the guest author: An expert on internet service providers and all things tech, Blake Sanders is a writer at broadband comparison site Broadband Expert, where he specializes in high speed internet, cell phones, and industry news and information.

Note: Photo courtesy of desiitaly via FlickR Creative Commons.

Related article: The Basics of Quality Content