Students create a blog, optimize it with SEO, and promote it via social media!
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Perfect for marketing, and social media marketing courses.
This 8 week long project will have students learning and practicing the skills of a content marketer. I built this unit after 20 interviews with professional content marketers. Students will:
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Brainstorming blog topics
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Students find examples of successful content marketing campaigns to get inspiration.
They brainstorm a variety of topics they can be an authority on and are passionate about. This is an exciting exercise for students. They get excited about topics they have skills in, or are passionate about. Usually, I will review their short list of topics and help them choose a topic which there is a lot to write about. |
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Conduct content audits of competing sites
Next, students perform content audits of competing sites.
Content audits are a very important tool which marketers perform to ensure that what they create is Best-in-Class.
Content audits are a very important tool which marketers perform to ensure that what they create is Best-in-Class.
Use the Inbound Marketing strategy to create website
Inbound marketing is the practice of creating real value for customers, answering their questions, so they FIND YOU, instead of the marketer pushing their products/services on customers. When a customer finds a company who is adding value to their life, they are more likely to see that company as a trusted expert and make purchases.
Students love learning about this marketing paradigm because they quickly see the shift from Outbound Marketing, pushing marketing in front of people, to Inbound Marketing, having people find you when they have questions. Students appreciate the shift in mentality both from an ethical perspective and an effectiveness perspective.
Students love learning about this marketing paradigm because they quickly see the shift from Outbound Marketing, pushing marketing in front of people, to Inbound Marketing, having people find you when they have questions. Students appreciate the shift in mentality both from an ethical perspective and an effectiveness perspective.
Optimize their website for search engines
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Getting your content to rank on the first page of Google is so important.
Imagine all of the Google searches you have done this week. How many times did you look down the list of results and then go to page 2 to analyze more results? If you are like most people, you rarely go to page 2. That is why content marketers do all they can to optimize their website for search engines. In this part of the project students learn about Pillar and Cluster content architecture. Long story short, a piece of pillar content is a long piece explaining everything about a topic. You will find pillar pieces with titles like, "Wind surfing! Everything you want to know". The pillar piece covers lots of ground in exploring topics within the theme. Then there are cluster content pieces. These are shorter, more focused pieces of content that branch off the pillar piece. For example, if the pillar piece is "Wind Surfing! Everything you want to know", some of the cluster pieces might be, "7 best boards for wind surfing", "Best training programs to learn wind surfing", "4 best wind surfing locations in America", etc. Importantly, pillar and cluster pieces are linked to each other in the website through internal links. When a user reads the pillar piece, there should be links to the cluster pieces. This link structure does three things. First, it increases the content that your user reads because they naturally follow links to more information. Second, this link structure provides search engines with a wholistic view of your site which helps increase your ranking. Third, the cluster pieces are great opportunities to promote content with Social Media. It is easy for marketers to promote headlines like, "4 best places to wind surf in America" on Instagram, Facebook, etc. |
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Create and publish the pillar piece
In this part of the project students create an outline of their pillar piece.
They use the information from their content audit to inform their topics, and add value that other sites are not offering, to make theirs Best-in-Class.
Students build a website with services like Weebly, or Wix and start the writing process.
We look at data showing the optimal length of content to rank high in search engines, (over 1,400 words).
We look at examples of how to structure the page, strong title, hero image, social proof, etc.
They use the information from their content audit to inform their topics, and add value that other sites are not offering, to make theirs Best-in-Class.
Students build a website with services like Weebly, or Wix and start the writing process.
We look at data showing the optimal length of content to rank high in search engines, (over 1,400 words).
We look at examples of how to structure the page, strong title, hero image, social proof, etc.
Create and publish cluster pieces
Students create outlines for their cluster pieces
Learn and use professional (free) content marketing tools
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A important part of optimizing your content for search engines (SEO) is understanding the keywords people are using to search for content like yours. Then strategically building those keywords into your content in a way that the search engines recognize. There fun and fun are tools to help:
Ubersugest Searchvolume.io Both tools help you understand searchers' keyword usage. Ubersuggest goes to the next level by evaluating competitor sites' keywords, making keyword suggests, etc. |
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Promote content using social media platforms
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Once students have their content created and published to their website, they can now promote their content via various social media channels.
More tools to help. Title Generator helps students develop a variety of awesome headlines (which appear in Google searches). Headlines are important because, if a user doesn't click on your headline, you will not get traffic to your page. Students also learn to create a social media planning calendar. This is an important tool that every social media marketer and content creator lives by. |
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Explore for curriculum from Awesome Business Curriculum
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