3-2-1 Fridays: Building topical authority. content upgrades, and another AI prompt

Hey friend, welcome to today’s issue of Efikó. This newsletter by Dozie Anyaegbunam helps you curate content marketing and life insights from across the web. Anyway, hello, it’s good to see you. You’re doing great 😀

Hey people,

How’s your week been?

I’m still coasting on the highs of last weekend — May’s birthday.

Plus, I had the most restful Monday of my adult life. I had taken the day off. And I spent it gardening and just lazing around.

I will try to do more of those sorts of breaks in the coming months - take a couple of days off when the wife is working and the kids are off to school.

A small addition to the newsletter: We’ll now have a section that promotes The Newcomers Podcast whenever we have new episodes. I hope y’ll don’t mind.

Now, what insights do I have for you all today?

1. Traffic isn’t the goal. The goal is topical authority

Insight from Tyler Hakes.

I’m glad more industry voices are beginning to talk about this. Because it feels like, in recent years, the only thing content marketers talk about is traffic.

This doesn’t mean traffic isn’t a great metric to measure your work. But instead, you should be going after the right kind of traffic.

Your content strategy should be about finding the topics and keywords to drive the most conversions, opportunities, and revenue.

These topics MUST also speak to folks not yet in the market for your product.

Why?

Because most of the time, people aren’t actively looking for your product when they are on the internet.

So what to do?

• Agree on your topics based on your audience's needs & problems

• Find the right keywords

• Group by semantic relevance

• Group further into clusters

• Categorize by search intent

• Start creating!

I’ve probably simplified this a lot more than I should. But I hope you get the gist. Shoot me any questions if you need me to clarify anything.

2. The Liam Carnahan way of doing content upgrades

Insight from Liam Carnahan.

Content upgrades are like finding an easily accessible oil well.

You don’t have to drill for days. They provide immediate value and give you some quick wins while you work on your long-term plans.

Here are a couple of nifty tips from Liam:

1. AI tools like Frase AI or some clever ChatGPT prompts can help you identify areas to expand content based on competing ranking content.

2. Add relevant links to related content you've created, especially newer articles (I would say, make this a regular exercise. It does wonders for your rankings and traffic numbers).

3. Gather quotes from experts on the subject and integrate those into the article.

4. Look for new keywords (AHREFS lets you do this) that weren't around when your article was written (You can also use Google Search Console to look for keywords the article is ranking for but aren’t used in the article. You can find the how-to for this tactic here).

5. Add new stats/research that has come out since you wrote the article.

6. Spice it up with new graphics, imagery, or videos related to the article.

Which tip are you trying out next week?

3. AI prompt for writing more “helpful” content

Insight from Jess Cook.

I had to share one insight about AI because, you know, we all have to get better at using Ai in content marketing.

AI can be a great way to unlock your creative juices if you are stumped with a section or looking to expand on a phrase. How?

Copy the blog, outline, paragraph, or sentence into your AI tool.

Then type this prompt: “This is important because.”

And hit the enter button.

Here’s me doing it with ChatGPT:

Jess Cook uses Jasper for this prompt. But you can use any tool you have access to.

Yes, it might give you some wrong answers. And you’ll need to edit and fact-check what it spits out.

But this reduces your work exponentially.

2 things I am thinking about

i.

ii.

One book recommendation

Folasade Dani is one of my favorite Nigerian content marketers. And she co-authored a book where she talks about storytelling, distribution, search engine optimization, and more.

Get the Content Marketing for Professionals book if you can.

New on The Newcomers Podcast

The Newcomers Podcast is an inside look at the struggles, lessons, and inspiring moments that come with starting life in a new country.

Thanks for reading to the end. You all make writing this newsletter worth the trouble.

Be good out there. If you can't be good, be careful.

I'll return on 5/12 with a Friday Deep Dive.

Dozie.

P.S.: If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it on LinkedIn or with a friend.