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Helping Affiliates Create Satisfactory Long-Form Content

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Helping Affiliates Create Satisfactory Long-Form Content

Affiliates are important to have, if you own a business (brick-and-mortar or online). Nowadays, in the online realm, you and your business will need all the publicity that you can get. That’s where affiliates come in!

With affiliates, you’ll be able to spread the word further about your product or service. One of the best ways to go further with affiliates is to have them produce long-form content. Long-form content can come in various forms, including online guides and eBooks.

Long-form content can be great work for affiliates, while it can be a gold mine for businesses. So, if you’re not taking advantage of long-form content, then now is the time to do so! Good news! You’re in luck!

In this guide, you’ll learn about long-form content, why it’s beneficial to your business, and how you can help your affiliates create satisfactory content in this form. Let’s dive right in! 

Long- Vs Short-Form

“Search engines like Google seem to favor long-form content rather than short-form,” says Jorge Marcos, a tech blogger at Assignment Writing Service and PhD Thesis Writers. “With long-form content, you’ll have more keywords that will do well in Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. With more SEO in your content, you’ll be ranked higher in search results. This, in turn, allows people to get to your site right away without having to search for you for too long.”

Plus, long-form content allows you to expand on your authoritative status when it comes to a niche. More educational value and in-depth discussions means more SEO, thus helping you establish yourself as an authority in your chosen niche.

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Formatting

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Source: Pexels 

As for the format, there are many styles that you can incorporate. How you want long-form content to look like will depend on your business and niche. Just keep in mind: How you format your content will also need to be adaptable to a particular market. 

Here are some formats to consider, if you and your affiliates need ideas:

  • Blog articles are great content to create at any time of the year.
  • A guide or brochure is perfect for describing products, services, etc. They can also incorporate visuals like images, videos, etc. Users can download this content, if you’d like.
  • An end-of-year review
  • The launch of a product/service
  • Monthly updates (i.e. newsletters that users can subscribe to)
  • White paper content
  • E-books, etc.

Again, how you format your long-form content is up to you. As you figure out the format, you’ll need to communicate said format to your affiliates.

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Patience

Understand that creating long-form content takes time. In fact, creating this type of content requires the following from affiliates:

  • Research
  • Rough drafts
  • Gaining feedback
  • Revising and editing (more than once)
  • Gaining more feedback
  • Producing a final draft
  • Getting the greenlight on the draft, AND THEN
  • Publishing

So, be sure that you give your affiliates plenty of time to produce great long-form content. 

How It’s Successful

Long-form content can make businesses successful in their endeavors in the following ways: 

  • This type of content is flexible. In other words, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Businesses can think outside of the box, and create the content that they want.
  • This type of content can either be offered in full, or be piecemealed in order to get consumers to invest in it further.
  • This type of content can be viewable on desktop, mobile, etc. Now, if you plan on making content viewable on mobile, then you’ll need to make the format mobile-friendly.

As you think of these prospects, you’ll need to communicate them to your affiliates, because they’re the ones that will make the content on your behalf. 

Ensuring That Affiliates Produce What’s Needed

“It’s important to make sure that your affiliates have what they need when producing content for you,” says Martha Winston, a marketing writer at Coursework Service and Essay Services. “Help your affiliates as much as possible, when working with them. You can help them by giving them then information needed to succeed in their venture. Don’t just offer a title or a simple idea; show them headlines from research, along with guidelines of what long-form content should look like. You can even offer them examples of what the long-form content should be, like an interesting long-form article from the web. How they write a long-form article is more important that what they’ll write.”

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What You Need

1667825417 837 Helping Affiliates Create Satisfactory Long Form Content

Source: Pexels 

When it comes to long-form content, there are many things that affiliates will need to implement to make it a success. Some of the things needed for long-form content include:

  • Imagery (i.e., graphics, images, videos, etc.)
  • Your company logo
  • Snapshot of product, etc.

These elements will help affiliates focus on other things, rather than be solely focused on the written word. This is especially helpful in combating writer’s block, because too often, writers – including affiliates – struggle with producing written content on the fly. So, why not break the monotony by having them focus on the “fun stuff,” while creating long-form content?

Rules To Follow

So, now that you know how successful long-form content is, and what’s required from both you and your affiliates, it’s time to look at the guidelines for making great content in this fashion. 

Since you know your brand better than anyone else, you’ll need to set some ground rules for your affiliates to follow when they’re creating long-form content for you. So, here are things to consider when creating your guidelines:

  • Word count
  • Topics
  • Deadlines
  • Milestones
  • Writing style
  • Drafts
  • Images (if needed), etc.

By having guidelines in place, not only will you have a guide for the content that you expect from affiliates, but your affiliates will have a roadmap on what they’re expected to create. 

Conclusion

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Source: Pexels 

So, there you have it!

Long-form content can do wonders for your business. However, in order for your content to work, you’ll need to make sure that your affiliates are on the same page when it comes to said content. Think about what you want in your content: the topic, the formatting, any imagery if you wish, and so on. 

We hope that this guide will help you help your affiliates create satisfactory long-form content.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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