Content Upgrades for List Building, Growth & Sales – WPCP: 114

The WordPress Chick Podcast

This post is brought to you buy Sitelock I've been talking about Content Upgrades for a while now. Not that I'm an expert by any means, but it's definitely a focus and something that I have first hand experience with. And it works. I don't quite remember when I first tested using content upgrades (it was a while ago)... actually, I think it was when I created a PDF for a tool called Reachly (they don't exist anymore) that was for Pinterest. It was the early days of Pinterest and I was using it quite a bit (more for fun than for marketing) and when I came across Reachly (which I think eventually became Pinerly), I fell in love with it. It had a beautiful interface and was super easy to use. I have no idea what inspired me to create the PDF, but I just got caught up in the moment and went to town. I had heard about content upgrades before but hadn't paid too much attention to them. At the time I had an opt-in offer on my site but was not focused on building my list (more on that in a bit). First, let's talk about what a Content Upgrade Is I know... it sounds pretty obvious, but there are a few different schools of thought on the matter. Some might tell you it is only when you provide more/additional content that is relevant to the content the visitor is reading /consuming. For the sake of keeping things simple, I'm going to say a content upgrade is anything that provides additional value to your visitor. Meaning, if you have amazing content that your reader might want to reference in the future, then providing that content in the form of a downloadable PDF is helping them (I don't know about you but I suck at bookmarking things and coming back to them. I just don't want to do it, so instead I save links and rarely go back to them. I know... doesn't make much sense). Keep in mind though if you're going to copy & paste a post into a PDF for easy reference, simply be transparent about it. Don't position the opt-in like they're getting something more. What I've done in the past is something like "If you want to download this post for easy reference click the button below" (or however I've linked to it). Personally I prefer creating something additional to the original content. It gives you more credibility with your audience and creates an asset for you in the process. Content Upgrades aren't just PDFs I think the default for creating a content upgrade is something in the form of a PDF, usually an ebook or guide. Here are a few other options for content upgrades (and yes, I know some of these are in the form of a PDF but think 'not an ebook'): If you're stuck with what type of content to create for your content upgrades (I'm starting to feel like I'm keyword stuffing here with the amount of times I'm using the word content), take a step back and think about what would help you the most. One thing I find most helpful is an actual example of when something has been used or implemented. Take this podcast & post as an example (this literally just came to me as I was writing this). I'll be including some tools and resources for content upgrades below. I could (can?) easily create a downloadable PDF with links to all the tools, a checklist for the process of creating a content upgrade (which may vary depending on what tool you're using) and maybe a video with one of my favorite tools (this could actually be a product to sell.. hmm... maybe I'll just include the checklist ;-) ). I could also include the audio download of the podcast for easy reference (no point in making someone come back and listen to it, right?). How you do this depends on your own personal creative process. There are times when I get ideas out of the blue (when I'm not at the computer) and I'll send myself a note or save a note in my phone so I don't forget it (the joys of getting older), but most of the time my creative juices start flowing when I'm doing the work.