A Handy Content Marketing Glossary Of Terms
In the following we will be discussing an important topic that is “A Handy Content Marketing Glossary of Terms” and will discuss it in detail within the article: Content marketing is a pretty big deal these days, as it has been for years now. If you haven’t quite caught on to its importance yet, we already covered a few reasons for developing a content-rich small business website and how content marketing provides invaluable insights into your target market’s buyer personal. The bottom line is, if you want a real internet presence and to capitalize on the power of the web to build your brand and generate more leads and sales, content marketing belongs in your strategy repertoire. So, we thought we’d publish a glossary to explain some of the terms we’ve noticed not everyone is completely clear on.
Above The Fold
The part of the web page that you simply see in your browser window when you first load a website is known as “above the fold.” This term harkens back to ye olde days of newspapers when above the fold literally meant the content that appeared above the crease in the paper when folded in half. Online, it’s the section that’s first visible without scrolling down the page. The reason this section is so important is that because it’s the first (and possibly only) thing a readers sees, this content should be extremely engaging if you want your website visitor to keep reading/scrolling.
A/B Testing
Also known as split testing, A/B testing refers to the process of testing two variations of one specific element on your website, landing page, ad, etc. while keeping everything else constant in order to deduce which version is more effective.For instance, you can try out two variations of the title of a blog post over a period of, say, two weeks, to see which one gets a higher click-through rate.
Algorithm (Updates)
An algorithm is simply a set of rules that tells you how to perform a specific task, especially those done by a computer. A simple example of this is the recipe (set of rules) that you follow to bake a cake (perform a task).In marketing, a search algorithm is a specific set of rules that a search engine follows to retrieve and analyze data to determine the relevance of web pages in accordance with the search query. Typically, a major or serious goal behind content marketing is improving your site’s rankings on the search engines, especially Google. Because Google uses a fairly complex algorithm to value and rank content, they regularly make changes to their ranking algorithm and these are referred to as algorithm updates.
Analytics
Content marketing is not just about creative processes such as writing blog posts. You need to use a number of that left brain juice, too, if you would like to bring in better results. Analytics is essentially the noun form of analysis and means the systematic and detailed examination of data. Why does a content marketer care about analytics? Well, as the old saying goes: What gets measured gets improved.
Tools like Google Analytics allow you to measure your content output to determine if it is performing well and, if not, show you where you need to improve it to attract more traffic, get more shares, earn more conversions, etc. To learn more about what you should be measuring, see Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) below.
Attribution Models
People don’t usually just read an article on your blog and decide to do business with you. If only it were that easy! Rather, they browse your website and social channels, learn more about your business and, if all goes well, eventually convert into a paying customer. So how does one know which of those marketing channels (blog, social media, emails, paid ads, etc.) contributed to the conversion and by how much? Enter attribution modeling, which is a part of the aforementioned analytics. According to Google, an attribution model is actually the set of rules that determines how the credit for sales as well as conversions is assigned to touch points in conversion paths. That’s how you’ll know just how much business your content is actually generating.
Backlinks
Backlinks are hyperlinks from other websites that lead to your website. Generally, when it comes to backlinks, the more the merrier in terms of search engine rankings and traffic. However, the quality of links pointing back to your site or blog is equally important, if not more. That is to say, a couple backlinks from high-authority websites far outweigh twenty links from low-authority or spammy websites.
Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)
Bottom of the funnel (or, as we hip pros call it: BOFU) is, literally, the bottom of a marketing funnel. It’s the “commitment” or “purchase” stage of the buying process of the customer. When a person is at this stage, they’ve usually discovered a problem that they have, done some research on how best to solve that problem, and then narrowed it down to a few companies’ products or services.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who land on your website and then immediately leave (“bounce”) without engaging with the content or viewing any other page. A high bounce rate (over 60%) may appear negative but it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For example, if your website is primarily a blog and if the bounce rate for a post is higher than usual, maybe your visitors are getting exactly the answer they are looking for, which means a great user experience for them. On the other hand, this may not be the reason, which is why it’s important to track and analyze your content’s data with Google Analytics or a similar tool.
Call to Action (CTA)
A CTA is essentially a button or short and specific line of text that urges the user to take a desired action such as share your article, subscribe to your newsletter or download a PDF. A call to action is typically one of the website elements that marketers A/B test to determine which copy, colors or position on the page gets the most clicks.
Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
CTR is the percentage of users who click on your link when they see it. So, if 100 people see your site’s link on Google and 10 people click through to visit your site, then the CTR would be 10%. This data can help you understand which content titles and email subject lines grab more attention.
Content Management System (CMS)
A CMS is just software that facilitates the publishing, editing and organizing of content. The most well-known and well-designed content management systems include WordPress and Squarespace.
Content Strategy
The process of strategizing all your content-related activities – everything from what to produce and when to the actual creation and promotion – is known as content strategy. As content marketer Ana Gotter puts it: “Great content is nothing without a strategy or method behind it, and this is often the most important marketing mistake that I see brands consistently make…. A content marketing strategy is crucial, and you should ideally have one in place before you begin creating. Your strategy should take your business goal(s) into account so you’ll be able to have a big-picture view of how you want to accomplish them.”
A good content strategy also includes the identification of appropriate channels that could be most effective in attracting and engaging prospects throughout their buyer’s journey.
Copywriting
The actual writing of any marketing or advertising text (aka “copy”) is known as copywriting. Copy typically refers to textual content that’s intended to directly drive a desired action from the reader by highlighting benefits or features of your product/service. In contrast, “content” it usually refers to blog posts, images and videos that are informative, educative or entertaining in nature.
Editorial Calendar
Content marketing is all about consistently putting out solid content that’s super valuable to your audience. And to be consistent over the months and years, a properly planned calendar, known as an editorial or content calendar, is a must. An editorial calendar actually outlines the topics you’ll cover, the content format (that is blog post, video, infographic, etc.), and when as well as where to publish each piece, therefore further helping you stay focused on your content marketing goals in the long run. To create your editorial calendar, you’ll be able to use a tool like CoSchedule or a simple and easy spreadsheet like Google Spreadsheets.
Engagement
No, we’re not talking about your best friend’s wedding engagement! In marketing jargon, engagement refers to the ability to persuade your audience to interact with your content in a meaningful way, such as commenting on your post, sharing it on social media, answering your quiz and thus ultimately, buying your product.
Evergreen Content
Content that stays relevant and useful to your audience for years to come, rather than being topical or dated is called evergreen content. The benefit of this type of content is that it has great SEO value.
Gamification
Gamification is a way to make things more interesting for your audience by integrating game-like mechanics — awards, badges, leveling up, earning points, and ranking on leaderboards — to encourage engagement and brand loyalty. For example, the Starbucks uses gamification with its mobile app that rewards you with free drinks and food items for achieving a certain amount of stars.
Gated Content
Gated content is exclusive, high-quality content that’s not available to everyone who simply visits your website. Instead, it is only accessible to visitors who are actually willing to exchange their valuable personal details (like name as well as email address) for it. Hosting gated content is actually a tried-and-tested way for increasing lead generation.
Guest Posting
An age-old way to earn backlinks (see “Backlinks” above) and higher brand visibility for your website is contributing quality articles to other websites and publications. This is referred to as guest posting and apart from improving rankings on Google, it also helps build trust with new audiences.
Hashtag
Social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram have popularized the use of the hashtag, which essentially are just words with a pound sign (#) in front of them. Hashtags are included in the captions of posts to associate them with similar content around the web. Aside from being trendy, hashtags improve a post’s visibility, as you can search for hashtags on search engines or social media to find related content. For example, you can actually search for #olympics to find all the content related to the Olympics on Twitter or even on Instagram.
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
HTML is the standard, universal language used to create every website or web page you see on the Internet. It is used to provide structure to a website’s content such as adding paragraphs, headings and images. For the majority of content marketers and bloggers, you’ll stick with the “visual” tab in WordPress and never venture into the “text” tab.
Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is an approach to marketing wherein you focus on creating useful content that attracts audiences to your website as opposed to using disruptive ads to forcefully get their attention. Content marketing actually aligns perfectly with inbound marketing as well as both have the same goal of earning the audience’s trust by actually providing value.
Infographic
Infographics are impressive visuals that provide information on a few particular topics in a very simple and easy-to-consume way. They are usually full of statistics and facts (rather than tons of text) intertwined with delightful illustrations to explain an idea elegantly and crisply.
Keywords
A keyword is a word or short phrase that can be used to summarize the content of a web page. In terms of SEO, keywords are entered into the search bar by users to find content on a specific subject, and search engines make use of them to determine the topic of a web page. For example, the keyword of this blog post might be “content marketing” or “content glossary”. The main keyword of a blog post or page is actually strategically placed in the title, subheadings as well as sprinkled throughout the content. However, overusing keywords are often seen as keyword stuffing and can hurt your search engine rankings.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
KPIs are a set of quantifiable metrics, such as new users, cost per lead and click-through rate, that are used to evaluate your marketing performance against specific business goals.
