Content upgrades are the best way to capture leads on your website today. The basic idea of a content upgrade is that you are offering further reading on a subject, and it is connected to the post or landing page of similar content. Often these are short, valuable pieces of additional information; sometimes they can be exclusive video or audio files. Either way, you'll have leads clamoring to give you their information.

So you may be asking yourself, "How can I implement this for myself?" Here are the steps you can take to begin your content upgrade campaign. 

1. Begin with killer content. This is the first step of any content upgrade. You need content that will draw people to your site. This is a blog post or article--something you can advertise for, and other people can share.

Don't know what to write about? Head to a content tool like BuzzSumo, and search for terms related to your business. What articles are getting shared the most? Write something along those lines, and you'll be well on your way.

2. Go Deeper. Build your content upgrade by going a step deeper on the same subject. Here are some ideas that make excellent content upgrades:

• Create a checklist based on a how-to post. People like checklists, and they are easy to create.
• Take the top 10 from a "100 factors" kind of post, and give a detailed look at them.
• Create a list of tools related to a particular type of advice. (I could easily add the top 10 tools to use in creating content upgrades to this post on content upgrades.)
• Compile a list of links from around the Web telling people how to do something based on the tool they use. For example, set up lead nurturing in Infusionsoft, Act-On, Aweber, etc. The best part is you don't have to create all of the tutorials; you just have to find them.
• Offer a screencast showing readers exactly how to do what you've written about in your post.
• People love templates; if you write a post giving advice, offer to share a template, completed example, or form they can use to do what you've suggested. 

3. Distribute and Collect. Once you've created the content and the upgrade, you'll need a system that can distribute the content to your leads in exchange for their email addresses. You can do this through your CRM or a WordPress plugin like ThriveLeads.

The goal here is to have a system in place that immediately distributes the content once the lead is collected. People don't want to wait, and they'll stand a better chance of continuing to read your content if they have it right as they are thinking about it.

4. Follow Up. Finally, you'll want to have a follow-up system in place prior to collecting leads. These can be automatic or manual; it just depends on how you want to follow up. If you want to go the extra mile, create automatic campaigns for every content upgrade.

This article originally appeared on Inc.