Content Funnels Explained
It all starts with K
Your content funnel starts with your knowledge of your audience's needs. They're not there to screw around. When somebody looks up âHow to immigrate to Canadaâ on a search engine, they're looking for a page that will give them legal information on how they can leave their country so they can become citizens of Canada.
They're not there to research dog food. They're not there to vacation in Hong Kong. They're looking for a specific type of information because they have specific needs. A well constructed K page gets to the heart of the matter.
Cut straight to the point
A well constructed K page in a content sales funnel addresses specific questions. For example, if somebody want to immigrate to Canada, the first thing that they want to ask is, âAm I qualified? Do I have the right education for it? Do I have the right background and experience?â
Your pages should be set up based on these questions. There are great resources online you can use to find these questions. The most common, of course, is Google adwords keyword planner tool. You can also use a tool called asktheaudience.com.
Whatever the case may be, think of organizing your k pages around questions because people work with their problems in the form of questions.
Insertion Point #5
By organizing your content around questions, you make them easier to promote. Please understand that the human mind tends to navigate and process information in two forms: questions and stories.
It's much easier to produce content based on questions. Theyâre short; theyâre choppy; and theyâre easy to process.
Why should you do things this way? If you paid attention to the way you yourself process information from the Internet on your mobile device, you would understand this clearly. When was the last time you opened up your Twitter app on your mobile device and just read everything very carefully? Probably never.
Instead, most people would scan. They would basically just keep scrolling down their Facebook timeline and then if they see a keyword or an image, then theyâd stop. That's how people process information and, if you ask me, thatâs the only way people can process information because there's just so much information on the Internet.
In fact, according to some estimates, upwards of two million new pieces of information are created every single day. Thatâs a mind-blowing account. So, people have developed coping mechanisms and one of them is just scanning.
By organizing your content in the form of questions or around questions, you make it easy for people to read since theyâre easy to read and theyâre easier to promote. How?
People are already asking questions related to your stuff on Twitter, Quora and forums and a variety of social media platforms. Your job is to find those places and slip your content into existing discussions. In other words, if you are in forum, it's probably not good for you to create a specific discussion about what youâre promoting.
Believe me people are not going to care. However, people will care when somebody already asked a question and then other people are giving their answers and then you come in and come up with a much better answer and then supply a stripped-down version of your content and then you end with your link as some sort of source.
Thatâs how people will take you seriously. Of course, pay attention to what I said earlier. If you're going to all these places, make sure you build credibility and authority first. Don't just get in, spam and leave. Youâre going to get banned if you do that.
Organize your question-based pages around themes
Just as questions can fall under a certain category, you can create articles around questions and then organize these articles around a category. This is not just a housekeeping tip. You're doing this so you can maximize the value of each page.
Interlink your K pages in your content sales funnel for maximum effect
You can't just interlink saying that there's another page somewhere in your website. You have to organize these links based on questions or concerns and tie them around certain themes that you know your audience members would be interested in.
Make Each Page Count
Don't just write content just because you have nothing else better to do. Every single word, every single paragraph, every single page must have a purpose. That purpose should be obvious to you by now. Your purpose is to push people down the conversion funnel.
Whether you are using a content funnel or an actual conversion funnel, your job with every new piece of content is to push them down to the next step and the best way to do this is to amplify their desire or respect for your authority. Basically, you get them excited about the next step.
To put this in practical terms, please understand that when people are looking for a basic question, they usually have another question at the back of their mind. For example, somebody goes to your pizza website because you have a page on how to bake a Napoli pizza. So, your first page lays out information regarding what a Napoli pizza is and a basic recipe. Pretty straightforward
However, you call people to action with key questions like how to get the right heat temperatures for your Napoli pizza, how to make sure you don't scorch the bottom of your pizza. In other words, you start with general information that clues people in. That's what theyâre looking for.
Nonetheless, once they get that, they are going to be impressed because now you're drilling down. They know that once they start making their own Napoli pizza, there will be these issues that would come up.
Let me tell you when I got a pizza recipe on the Internet and I did it, it wasn't like the Pinterest pictures that I saw online. Not even close. Why? Because I didnât drill down and up. I didn't know about scorching the flour. I didnât know about manipulating the dough so there's no gooey, uncooked portion in the middle, that kind of thing.
That's what people are going to be looking for because now you've given them basic information and then youâre cluing them in by saying, âWell, there are other stuff that you need to know and if you don't do these, you're not going to get the results that youâre looking for.
So, people who are truly interested in the topic will start seeing those and, basically, you are calling them to action to click deeper and deeper into the bowels of your website.
Compare this to basically just random interlinking where you go from one page to just another regular page, which may not be all that related, you're not going to be building authority. People are just going to bounce out of that page because thatâs not the information theyâre looking for.
You have to start with a general question and then create subsidiary pages that are based on closely related questions and this maintains the interest of the person and then actually amplifies their desire for a specific product or solution later on. That's how you build trust and credibility at the same time.
When they click on these links, they find themselves deeper and deeper into your website and they give themselves more opportunities to really absorb the knowledge that you are giving them. The whole point here is to demonstrate to them that you are sufficiently knowledgeable about your niche.
If you're able to do this, then you start building trust. They then are more likely to like your take on their problem.
Establish credibility and authority by using multimedia
As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. This means if you really want to maximize the amount of authority and credibility you're building in the minds of your target audience members, you need to use the power of multimedia.
I am, of course, talking about videos, pictures, diagrams, info-graphics, you name it! This not only makes your content easier to read, it also makes sure that people aren't bored by your content. Please understand that most people now view online content through mobile devices.
They don't have all the time in the world to keep scrolling as you crank out massive blocks of text. You might want to break those pieces of text up. You may want to shorten those pieces of text and break up the boredom by using a picture, a diagram or a video.
If you do this, you are more likely to keep them on the same page and you also increase the likelihood that they will click on a link to get deeper and deeper into your website.
A Quick Word about Third-Party Multimedia Content
Please don't interpret what I just said in the section above into some sort of mad dash to appropriate other people's intellectual property. You canât just take a video off YouTube and embed it in your content simply because it's related to your contentâs topic. That might land you in hot water.
You have to do it the right way. Whether youâre using infographics from Pinterest, videos from YouTube, explanatory photos from Pinterest or Instagram, you have to respect the rights of the owners or creators of this content.
How do you do that? Very simple. Give them attribution and link to them.
I know youâre probably paranoid about your website becoming some sort of âtraffic leak.â I understand where youâre coming from. You worked hard to create all this content and you obviously worked hard to drive traffic to your site. It would be a shame to see much of that traffic go to these third-party links and never to come back to your website again. Believe me, I get that. However, here are some ways you can make these concerns go away.
Make Attribution Links Open in a New Tab
If you're worried about losing traffic because of your attribution links, make those links open a new tab.
This way, when a visitor to your website clicks on that link, a new tab is created. Your tab is still open. You havenât lost that person. They can look at that content, check out the website that created the infographic that they're interested in, and then once theyâre done, they can close that and go back to your site. Pretty straightforward.
Use Materials from Non-Competitors
This is the most important piece of advice I can give you regard third-party multimedia content. Remember youâre using this multimedia content ...