Content Marketing - Express Writers

Keep Calm and Write On: A Guide on How to Handle a Negative Online Review

December 31, 2020June 30, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Imagine this… You sit down at your computer one fine morning, coffee cup in hand, and begin to make your online rounds. You check all the usual things: social media, analytics, blogs, and email – until you gasp in horror and stop in your tracks. Someone has left you a negative online review! While this is a shocking and upsetting experience, you’re not alone. Ever heard the saying… Haters Gon’ Hate? The truth is that any business that works with customers on a regular basis is bound to get a bad online review or two, and while it’s never a fun situation to be in the middle of, a negative online review doesn’t have to be a catastrophe. HelpScout reports that for every one customer who lodges a complaint, 26 customers stay silent. Kind of sucky: but a fact. Although it feels bad when it happens, you won’t be (anything close to) scarred for life. By the end of today’s post, you’ll actually learn that it could be a good thing! And negative online reviews have happened to us too: so I can tell you, personally, that you’ll come out of the fire refined. 5 Key Tips You Can Put to Immediate Use in Handling A Negative Online Review In five steps, here’s a simple breakdown of what to do post-apocalypse (after you’ve received that yucky online review). 1. Stay calm Refer to our Keep Calm & Write On graphic. (Save it, print it out, hang it up, do whatever you like.) You’re a business owner: you work hard for your company, and it’s understandable that finding a negative online review would make you feel hurt, sad, and even angry. If this happens, though, the first thing to do is to stay calm. Nothing good ever came from blowing up at a negative online review, and you’re liable to do irreparable damage to your company if this is the path you choose. As a general rule, it takes 12 good experiences with a company to make up for one negative experience, so you could be digging yourself a big hole with your customers if you fly off the handle before thinking through things. Instead of being reactionary, take a step back from the review and give yourself a bit of time to consider the situation. Begin by sizing up the content of the review. Is it factually correct? Is there a way to address or resolve the problem for the customer? Does the review offer insight into something your company could do well to fix, anyway? For example, if a customer at your restaurant complains that it took 30 minutes to get a glass of water after sitting down, and you were indeed tragically understaffed that night, there’s a simple solution. In this case, the correct path would be to apologize to the customer and offer a comped or discounted meal the next time they return. Once you’ve addressed the complaint, you could even consider hiring more staff or implementing different protocols to prevent that type of situation from happening again. If the report is factually inaccurate, however, your approach will be different. While malicious reviews don’t happen very often, they do happen. Luckily, there’s a way to deal with them. If someone is making dishonest or defamatory statements about your company, it’s within your rights to ask the third-party review site to remove the comment. This is true regardless of whether the review is on Yelp, Facebook, or Google. Keep in mind that getting reviews removed can be an extensive and arduous process, so it’s one to undertake carefully. First of all, you’ll need to provide proof that shows the review is factually inaccurate. If you can’t do this or can’t wait for the third-party site to decide on the review, set the record straight in the comments section below the review. Just remember to be neutral and professional to avoid making the situation worse. Take it from Amy’s Baking Company – which won catastrophic web-wide recognition when the owners repeatedly and aggressively lashed out at a displeased reviewers on Yelp. As if the above wasn’t bad enough… So, there you go on a brief rundown of what not to do. Now, let’s look at best next action steps. 2. Take Action/Offer a Solution Customers don’t often go out of their way to write negative reviews for no reason, so it’s in your best interest to heed the review and do everything in your power to rectify the situation. Your first case of action here is to determine if this is a legitimate customer – because you can only service the legit negativity. We hate to say it, but yes, there are people out there who will leave fake negative reviewers (are either paid by competitors, are the competitor themselves, are are acting out of personal angst). If you know this is a stranger, and not a legitimate complainer: well, here’s one scenario you could take inspiration from. I’m going to tell you a little story. The Story of Jane, Bill, & Will: (Or, the Art of Handling the Fake Negative Review) Let me run you through a story about what we’ll call Bill the Fake Reviewer Writer. Bill heard of a made-up negative story about a company, word-of-mouth, from Jane. Jane was fired from her company just that week. At Jane’s very frequent pushing, Bill went and published a fake review on Jane’s company. He was amped up by Jane and wrote a lot of angry words, calling the company names and even going as far as to put libel on the company owner. It was a weekend and late in the evening. Still, the company social manager was online and saw the angry posts being left by Bill; he alerted the company CEO within minutes of it happening. Let’s call that CEO Will. Will took a breather (see #1). After ten minutes, he immediately replied to Bill, cordially starting with hello. Then he stated facts: 1) we’ve never served you and 2) please provide proof on and who is spreading information about the things you’re currently stating. Bill couldn’t, told by Jane … Read more

Break the Internet: Learn What It Takes to Create Viral Content From 5 Of the Hottest Pieces On the Web

June 19, 2024June 23, 2016 by Danielle N.

Brannon Powers is a Content Specialist at Express Writers. Ever wanted to see a piece of your content go viral (aka, break the internet)? It’s a dream of many of us as marketers, but in order for a piece of content to “break the internet,” it needs to go viral in a big, big way: and it takes a special mix of things in order for content to be able to do that. In addition to being interesting, it also needs to have that special “something” that gives it an edge over the competition. In this post, we’re going to break down some of our favorite viral pieces and help you understand why and how they got that way. Keep reading. What Makes Viral Content… Viral? Viral content doesn’t just happen by accident. Instead, it’s a highly strategized and intentional form of content that draws upon a few proven, essential things to become popular. There have been multiple studies conducted on the topic of what it takes for content to go viral and every study finds the same things: great content has a series of traits that help it stand out to audiences. We’ll breakdown the 7 trademarks we think all viral content has in a moment: but first, we need to take a look at a few content pieces online that deserve everyone’s attention, so you can be inspired on what they did right. Drumroll please. Here are a few of the hottest content pieces on the web in our beloved industry, content marketing and SEO. 5 Content Pieces that Went Viral 1. “Google is Hiring an SEO Manager to Improve its Rankings in Google” – Search Engine Land One of the most-shared articles on Buzzsumo under the keyword “SEO,” this sucker earned more than 21,000 shares across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+. The reason for this is clear: the headline is shocking. Anyone who knows anything about SEO would know that Google is a company that does SEO, so the fact that the king of the castle would have to hire a king to teach it to be king is shocking. To provide extra value for readers, this piece of content also includes a screenshot of Google’s own job listing and excerpts about the requirements and experience needed to qualify. 2. ”7 Social Media Experiments That Grew our Traffic by 241%”– Buffer With more than 12.7 thousand total shares, this piece is a fantastic example of content gone viral. This article was shared on Twitter by HubSpot, SEMrush, and the Mayo Clinic’s Social Media Network department, to name a few. So what makes it notable? Well, to start with, it promises great things. The article is apparently aimed at marketers, and the implication that Buffer grew its traffic by 241% (a number so large it’s almost hard to comprehend) means, of course, that the people who read the article can, as well. It’s a confident statement, but since Buffer has already done it with their own content, they’re sending the clear message that their readers can, as well. When you visit the article, the writer also does an excellent job of getting right inside your head. The opening line is, “If you’ve asked this before…’How do we get more visitors to our website?’…you’re certainly not alone…” By making the content relatable for readers, the writer inspires trust as well and a relieving feeling of “oh yeah, he gets me.” Finally, the article uses a handful of really well-done images to demonstrate its point, break up the text, and provide proof of the headline’s claim. 3. “The Nit-Picking Glory of the New Yorker’s Comma Queen” – Ted Pop quiz: what made this headline go viral? Interest, authority, and visuals? Right, you are. This article is actually a video published by Ted. It has more than 11.7 thousand total shares, with more than 9 thousand shares on Facebook alone. But why? There are a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s a video, which makes it perfect for social media and quick sharing. Second of all, the title is quirky, entertaining, and authoritative. “A comma queen?” the reader thinks, “What’s that? I must know!” Once the interest has been piqued, the reader absorbs the reference to The New Yorker, which is one of the most authoritative literary journals in the world right now, so the article immediately establishes credibility. Finally, the word “glory” promises that this will be entertaining, funny, or both. Oh, also, who cares about the Oxford comma? She does. 4. “3 Unusual Hacks to Dramatically Up Your LinkedIn Game” – Moz With more than 17 thousand shares, this Moz article by Larry Kim went viral in a big way. Can you guess why? First of all, it’s the first how-to article in this list, which makes it appealing to readers right off the bat. Secondly, it offers three points, and while longer lists do tend to rank well, this one communicates to readers that it’s immediately actionable, and absorbable now. As in: they can be using these tips on their LinkedIn accounts today. This piece does a few things right. First, it’s beautifully laid out, with plenty of white space to give the reader space to navigate through the content. Additionally, it makes use of graphics that make the reader feel like they’re wandering through a great story, like this one: Thanks to the mix of helpful text and unique graphics that give the piece a distinctly festive and fairytale-esque feel that stands out, this piece manages to be exciting to readers while also being useful, relevant, and actionable. It’s also a long piece of content, which dives into the reader’s questions, answers them thoroughly, and offers plenty of evidence, screenshots, information, and proof to back the material in the content up. 5. “Why it’s Impossible for you not to Read this Sentence” –The Independent Why did this piece go viral? If you guessed the headline, you’re right. With upwards of 5,400 total shares, this article on brainwashing and the written word reached audiences across the … Read more

5 Surefire Ways to Convert Your Clients on Why They Need Great Online Content

December 31, 2020June 21, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Great online content is a powerful marketing tool. You know that, and I know that: but your clients might not. If you’ve had the experience of picking up a client with no knowledge of web marketing, you understand how frustrating it can be to try to sell someone who knows nothing about online content on the actual benefits and investment of content. Even though you’re certain that online content is an effective way to market a business, your client might not be. Luckily, you (and they) don’t have to be stuck in content limbo forever. These simple tactics will give you the edge you need to convince a non-content marketer about the value of content. Read on to learn more. Converting Them to Online Content: What Makes it Difficult? While many marketers are more than willing to embrace content marketing as a whole, some haven’t turned the corner just yet. These clients may be unfamiliar with the world of web marketing or simply wary about the expense and effort associated with developing a content marketing strategy. For some people, content just seems unnecessary (even though you know it’s not). While dealing with these clients can be frustrating (especially when you’re well aware of how useful content could be to them), it’s critical to understand where they’re coming from. So much of building a successful client-agency relationship is compassion. By being compassionate about how your customer feels and understanding why they hold the beliefs that they do, you can tailor your approach to suit their needs better. This, in turn, helps you go the extra step and make them into content believers not only because you told them they should be, but because they’ve seen and understood the benefits of content on their own. This creates longer-lasting relationships and a more productive client-agency partnership. 5 Practical Tips to Create Content Evangelists 1. Create a comfortable environment Imagine walking into a room and sitting down with a total stranger. Before you’ve had a chance to so much as sip your water, said stranger starts pitching you on the value of including space rock dust in your marketing strategy. You’ve never heard of such a thing before, but the stranger keeps pushing and pushing. “You need this!” they insist. Before long, you’re running from the room, screaming as you go. Sound dramatic? Maybe. But this experience isn’t all that different from how a new client will feel if you fail to create a comfortable environment based on mutual trust before you start pitching. People tend to be resistant to new ideas. According to the Harvard Business Review, this can be due to factors ranging from uncertainty to a perceived loss of control. Regardless of where your client’s resistance is coming from, the only way to overcome it is to build a foundation of comfort and trust right off the bat. To make your client comfortable, be respectful of their time and don’t get overly complicated with your solution. While content is a large and multi-faceted thing, simplifying it for your client is the best way to help them warm up to the idea without feeling like you’re trying to sell them snake oil. 2. Back yourself up with some serious stats If you can’t provide data to back up your claims about why your client should be using online content, you’re sunk in the water. In addition to helping you come off as knowledgeable and authoritative, good data can give your client the objective proof they need to take the dive into content. For examples of great statistics, consider the following: In 2015, 67% of all B2B companies reported that content marketing was within their top three priorities Implementing an inbound marketing strategy (that includes content) can double a website’s overall conversion rates – taking them from 6% to 12% 41% of all marketers say that content marketing has a positive ROI 44% of B2B marketers have developed a documented content strategy When it comes to reach and engagement, blogs and social media platforms reach 80% of U.S. internet users and account for approximately 23% of the time users spend online 61% of customers are more willing to make a purchase from a company that creates custom content for them Marketers who blog are 13x as likely to earn a positive ROI than those who don’t 70% of customers report that they’d prefer to become acquainted with a company via helpful articles and blogs rather than ads The good thing about trying to convince someone of the power of content is that there is a ton of online material out there to back you up. Great stats roll in every year, and it’s easy to find solid data to back up virtually any claim you’re making about the power of content marketing. Two top sources that keep track of the real ROI of online content, perfect to help your case for convincing are Hubspot and Content Marketing Institute. 3. Show your client where content has worked in the past If you’ve got a customer who is notably reticent about the idea of adopting content, you might need to demonstrate to them that other companies have had success with content. One great way to do this is through case studies. For an example of a compelling case study, consider one that Content Marketing Institute recently released. The case study focuses on Eloqua, a marketing automation company. Before implementing a content marketing strategy, Eloqua had been in business for ten years and had built a good reputation. As the popularity of marketing automation blew up, however, the company started to feel pressured to keep up with their competitors, so they opted to implement content marketing to meet their goals. Specifically, the company wanted to create a new branch and build hype around the launch of a new product. They planned to do this by developing content and building relationships with their customers. They worked to develop a distribution schedule for their content, utilize cross-platform functionality, and reach out to their audiences more effectively. Soon after they launched their new … Read more

10 All-Too Common Content Marketing Errors: Are You Making Any of These?

December 31, 2020June 14, 2016 by Adam Oakley

You’ve probably done a few crazy things in your marketing stints online, right? But, hey, we learn from our mistakes. Or we should. I’m not perfect, too, so I’ve made a list of ten very common content marketing errors that I’ve noticed that are still trending at a popular pace online. Online marketers, businesses producing content, and freelance copywriters at all stages are vulnerable to these. Know, avoid, conquer (or something to that effect). Keep reading and learn what to avoid so you can be 100% successful in your content marketing path. 10 of the Most Common Content Marketing Errors & Pitfalls 1. Giving Up Too Soon Joe Pulizzi once said that content marketing doesn’t fail due to its content quality, but rather because it is inconsistent—or it just stops. My simple advice as an avid content marketer for over five years now: never quit. And along with that: don’t expect overnight results. Achieving the below ranking took me–ready for it?–eight months. That’s right: eight months after I published this long-form piece of content (a combination of an infographic + transcript in a blog post) I saw it hit the top three results in Google. It can take a long time. But when you hit it, guess what? That wait, and that time and effort, was all worth it. In fact, consistency is the greatest way to revitalize your content marketing program that has become stagnant. This reminds me of the “don’t give up on your dreams” miner cartoon. Nothing puts it in more realistic terms (for me) than this simple visual. This exactly represents what happens when a content marketer turns away too soon: they just miss the diamond. 2. Ignoring Quality and Focusing on Quantity Quality is important for many reasons. It increases your engagement, builds trust, and promotes thought leadership. But most importantly, Google thinks quality is important. Since Google is the boss when it comes to how it ranks and who it sends to your site, it gets to make that call. To make sure Google is viewing your content favorably, look for any obvious signs of trouble: Prevent and remove any user-generated spam that appears on your site Keep an eye on your site for hacking and remove such content as soon as it appears Those are external factors. To really ensure content will achieve a high quality status, follow these easy guidelines: Create unique content Avoid keyword stuffing Make use of internal links so users can easily navigate to other content on your site Make your content trustworthy and accurate Include helpful features like key takeaways, images or videos 3. Not Marketing Your Own Content Hey, it’s called content “marketing” for a reason, right? In Neil Patel’s The Advanced Content Marketing Guide, he explains that the secret to content marketing comes down to three things: coming up with quality content, ensuring search engines find it and promoting it. If you fail to market your content, it’s never going to spread its wings and being new followers and fans, let along potential customers. 4. Your Offerings Have Become Bland Leaving your content to sit and become outdated seriously hampers its ability to attract and audience and keep them engaged. It also reflects poorly on your ability to related to readers and their current concerns or challenges. Freshen up content with these tips: Think outside the blog – experiment with new formats, such as infographics, e-books or webinars. Paint a visual – use visual imagery as instant eye-catchers. But don’t stop at the odd photo or chart. Increase interest by creating visual-centric formats such as video or SlideShare. Create conversation – content marketing works well when your audience can interact. Ask questions, make a controversial viewpoint and give readers the chance to weigh in on the discussion. 5. A Dead End to Your Storytelling “Content marketing” in itself can be misleading. You may think that the content itself actually does all the marketing work. Nothing is further from the truth: there’s no way you can just expect your readers to take in your content and instantly become engaged, loyal, paying customers. You need to guide your readers towards the next step in their purchase process or engagement, and that requires a very strong, clear call to action. Otherwise, you’ll make the worst snafu among content marketing errors: not turning your content into ROI. Readers expect to be told what to do after they have read your content. That’s the entire concept behind marketing – you want your readers to do something based on the information they have just received. If you are not including a call to action in your blogs and other content forms, start right now. That call to action doesn’t need to include a million-dollar deal. It can be as simple as signing up to your mailing list, linking to another resource that you offer or any other conversion point you want to support. Without that call to action, your content is just leading to a dead end. 6. Failing to Write in Drafts As a writer, you don’t simply sit down, pour sweat, blood and tears over your keyboard and hit the post button, right? What about typos? What about poorly constructed sentences? What if you lost your train of thought somewhere along page three? And worst of all: what if you burn yourself out in one sitting? You need time to think of your content as draft stages, so you can edit your writing. But don’t do it right away. Finish your piece and walk away. Go back and edit later when the piece is cold. You’ll view it with a fresh sense of perspective and curiosity. Sure, not all writers love editing. But think of it like this: editing can turn your “great” piece of work into a masterpiece. Hubspot offers some great editing tips here that will help. 7. Failing to Proofread A Final Time So you’ve written a blog, you’ve edited it; it’s good to go, right? Wrong. Go back and proofread it that one last time. Editing is about making those big, deep-line … Read more

15 Businesses That Are Boss At Content Marketing & How You Can Be, Too

December 31, 2020June 13, 2016 by Adam Oakley

“If only I could get more people to my site, they’d see how cool we are.” Great, but it’s not just about getting the traffic, but keeping it. So, how do you do it? One way to succeed big time is by creating some really, really good content marketing. That’s awesome, right? But now you’re wondering, “How do I do that?” I’ve got you covered with some inspiration. There are a bunch of companies who are getting content marketing right, from brand new startups to tried and true giants who only get better and adapt to it over time. To get your juices flowing and tweak your brain with some perspective, let’s look at these companies who are dominating the content marketing arena. And since you want to know how to do it, too, we’ll take a look at the end on how you can use what they’re doing right to help you create what makes the most sense for your own business. I’m using an 8-point system upon which I’ve based why these particular companies are masters at content. We’ll dive in to all that later. Ready? Let’s go. I’ve divided up the fifteen winning brands into seven segments of categories. Then, keep reading for the 8 points that make all these brands stand out. Enjoy! I. The “Taste” Makers: More Than Just Another Drink or Meal 1. Coca-Cola On the face of it, it’s just soda pop, but this iconic brand has positioned itself to be synonymous with emotion. Their content is vivid and fresh, and they’ve figured out how to stay current yet nostalgic at the same time. Creating a feeling of inclusion and diversity is key for them, because they clearly understand their consumer is everywhere. On their site, they post a lot of content about current events (especially sports), which further appeals to and brings in current readers and consumers by their interests. And by pushing a feeling of comeraderie, it makes you genuinely believe the way to someone’s heart is through sharing a Coke and a smile. To still be able to evoke that sense with your content after 130 years is pretty stellar. On Twitter, they pull in celebrities to talk about why they love Coca-Cola, making them even more relatable to “today’s” market. 2. Red Bull “Red Bull gives you wings,” and they definitely ensure their content drives that home. This energy drink has become the gold standard by which all others compare, and for good reason. Their marketing has been pushing their extreme sports/lifestyle tone since day one and has continued that intensity even they’ve grown. One thing they win at online that you might not have known about is in interactive cartoon collections. It’s some of the most creative stuff I’ve ever seen, and solidifies that content marketing is done very well when you bring in custom artist illustrations (I do this quite a lot to make a good point, see my copyrighting vs. copywriting cartoon here). Check it out at My Wings and Flying Planet – be sure you have a few minutes before you click. 😉 And, they show the deep global roots of their product in The Red Bulletin. 3. Whole Foods Whole Foods is touted as “America’s healthiest grocery store” for a reason. This brand truly wins at everything. Not only are they known for their name, but they’re known for their mission, purpose, and values–which they convey excellently online. One way they win (out of many) is by putting emphasis on the consumer. “Your Stories” is a featured tab on their home page, right next to Our Stories; and it goes to an Instagram feed where anyone posting with the hashtag #foods4thought can be featured. Good move, Whole Foods, good move. II. Fresh, New Stories with a Colorful Edge 1. Poo~Pourri You already know how much we love this adorable site. They call their visitors Poo Pals, have an Alice in Wonderland meets every iconic music video theme ever intro that will make you blush, giggle and dance, and a slogan that touches on hidden concerns. But what makes them queens of content marketing is how in your face they are with what their product is in a way that makes you feel like they don’t just know you, but get you. And it’s pretty. Their entire site—how they present the product, the fonts they use, and the colors they’ve chosen—is beautifully whimsical. Even their social media icons are uniquely them. 2. Squatty Potty “Healthy colon, happy life” sums it up in one wonderful slogan for this creative company. One way they absolutely win is the clarification of exactly how the product works on their home page. Oh, and their superbly creative YouTube video story that involved a prince, rainbow ice cream, and a pooping unicorn that won with 24 million views to date. (Involve all those protagonists in a story, and you can’t help but win.) (And all evidence to the contrary, we promise we’re not obsessed with bum issues.) However, when someone takes on a subject matter that is so uncomfortable in a way that makes you readily embrace it, you’ve got to sit up and notice. Or squat, in this case. Different from the cute Poo~Pourri, Squatty Potty gives a medical reason for their product, but in a way that’s so relatable, you can’t resist it. No bells, no whistles, just straightforward yet creatively crafted content. III. The Movers: Cars Taken to a New Level 6. Subaru Subaru tapped into the depth of why you want a car that runs well like no one else did. They’ve done a great job of creating content that marries the durability of their product with the emotional resonance that creates. Turning a car into a friend as opposed to a status symbol isn’t new, but how they do that and continue to play on that feeling to keep you coming back for more is a winning combination. 7. Mini Cooper When you think Mini Cooper, you’re thinking something cute to zip around in and they know that. … Read more

TL;DR: What It Really Means & How To Use This Concept For Better Marketing

March 24, 2022June 9, 2016 by Adam Oakley

If you’ve spent much time on Reddit, aka “The Front Page of the Internet,” it’s likely you’ve run across the term “TL;DR.” But, do you know what it really means? If the answer is “no,” you’re not alone. TL;DR is a widely used slang that means “Too long; didn’t read.” While the term itself a bit vague, what you might not know is that there’s an entire concept behind TL;DR to take away and use as inspiration for better marketing in an age where everything (technology, people, time) seems to go at a supercharged fast pace. We recently delved into researching what’s behind this term and how to take away the concept of too long, didn’t read as a marketing lesson. Keep reading to learn more. [bctt tweet=”Clueless on what TL;DR really is? @JuliaEMcCoy explains what it really means and how you can use it for better content marketing.” username=”ExpWriters”] The Concept of TL;DR: A Reddit Phenomenon In a way, TL;DR describes our online lifestyles right now. Since people today have shorter attention spans than goldfish, fewer and fewer of us are bellying up to long-form content that takes a dictionary and a few advanced degrees to slog through. Use Reddit and you’ll come across TL;DR sooner rather than later. Many other similar platforms have taken inspiration from this online short-style giant. Why does Reddit love TL;DR? Well, since online forums can give way to lengthy debates and complex arguments, the TL;DR tag is used to help people locate summaries. For example, if there’s a long thread that you’re interested in, but you don’t feel like combing through it to pick out the useful bits, you can scroll to the end of the page where you’ll typically see a bolded TL;DR section. This section offers a pared-down version of the page, which helps users navigate relevant content quickly and easily. Here’s how that works on Reddit. Because so few people are reading long-form content or, worse yet, digging through pages and pages of irrelevant results to find the content they want, Reddit has capitalized on the TL;DR phenomenon and created an entire TLDR section on their platform. In this section, the curators behind Reddit have “condensed the best of Reddit” to make it easier for users to get easy access to quick, daily recaps. If you’re having any doubts about the awesomeness of this, let me tell you that the headlines alone are enough to win you over. Example? “Germany recognizes the Armenian Genocide, Elon Must wants to launch people to Mars in 2024, and King Tut’s dagger was made from a meteorite.” How’s that for scope? Click on the TL;DR Reddit and you’re greeted by a handy page that breaks the topics down into subreddits like world news, science, technology, politics, and even astronomy. From there, you can navigate to the bit that you’re interested in and interact with all of the comments and shared links on that page. By condensing information into simple TL;DR pages, Reddit and other online messaging platforms provide better service for their readers and help organize information in an intuitive and straightforward way. [bctt tweet=”Reddit is the birthplace of TL;DR. Know how this concept can help you create better content marketing in this post by @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”] Why TL;DR Matters Today Now More Than Ever In the last 16 years, the human attention span has taken a dive from 12 seconds to approximately 8 seconds, where it’s currently stalled out. The resulting forgetfulness and distractibility are evident in virtually everything we do. In fact, a whopping 39% of Americans have lost an important item or forgotten a critical piece of information at least once in the past week, and people working in office settings check their email approximately 30 times each hour. As it stands right now, the average American checks his or her phone about 1,500 times each week. Whew. When you take all of this distractibility and partner it with online marketing, things get even more startling. Despite the time, energy, and attention most marketers put into their content, most users only read 20% of the words on a page and leave web pages within 20 seconds. Because of this, developments like Reddit’s TL;DR sections are critical to keep people interested and engaged with content. [bctt tweet=”‘In the last 16 years, the human attention span has taken a dive from 12 seconds to approximately 8 seconds… developments like Reddit’s TL;DR sections are critical to keep people interested and engaged with content.’ – @JuliaEMcCoy on why TL;DR matters today.” username=”ExpWriters”] Using the Concept of TL;DR to Improve Your Marketing: 5 Tips If Reddit can do it, so can you! (Scroll down to see exactly how Reddit does it.) While you don’t necessarily need to pare all your content down to bare bones (long-form content still converts better, after all), it is wise to organize your content in such a way that it’s easier for readers to pull what they want from it. Here are a few tips to do just that: 1. Focus on clarity Making your marketing messages and content more clear is the first step to making it easier for your users to interact with. Do away with flowery language and unneeded words for simple, succinct writing that gets to the point. Break up long sentences, divide long paragraphs into smaller ones, and make use of headers, subheaders, lists, and bolded bits to help your readers find their way through your text. These are simple tips, but they’re important for people who want TL;DR-focused content. 2. Make it easy to navigate When it comes to websites, blogs, advertisements, and social media platforms, navigability is essential. If users have to call in a Ph.D. to figure out how to get back to your home page, they’re going to leave your site and never come back. Because of this, ensure that every piece of your site is simple to navigate for all readers, including the newest ones. 3. Make it shorter If you can cut your content down a bit, do it. … Read more

Are You Missing The “Value” Points Of Your Online Content? & Other Reasons Your Content Isn’t Working

December 31, 2020June 7, 2016 by Sarah Shade

Sarah Shade is the Content Specialist at Express Writers. In order for customers to want to read your online content, it needs to be valuable, unique and exciting. No big deal, right? While everyone knows that creating, curating and distributing valuable content on your website and throughout all your web marketing is the key to online marketing success, it’s not always that easy to create content that wows your audience in a world were 27 million pieces of content are shared across the web. If your content hasn’t been working lately, it’s possible you’ve been missing important “value points” of great content or that you’re simply not giving readers material that is applicable to them. Fortunately, these problems are easily fixable and content marketers who have been struggling to create successful content can do well to go back to the basic value points of fantastic content. What are “Value Points?” Value points are the things that make your content stand out from everybody else’s. For example, if there are 5,700 articles on the web on how to plant a garden correctly, the strength of your value points is what will make your article the one people choose to click on. The 5 Value Points Your Online Content Should Have Although the above definition sounds intimidating, value points can be broken down into very specific sections that outline how, exactly, content goes about providing unique value to its readers. 1) Your Content Should Be Capable of Shifting With its Audience You’re a good content marketer so you’ve probably taken the time to develop target personas, right? The thing about even the best target personas, however, is that they change with time. Your target persona at the beginning of your business’s lifespan will absolutely not be the same as your target persona five years later. Additionally, target personas can (and do) vary by product, location, form of content and even website or social media platform. The people you target on Instagram may not be the same people you target with your videocasts, and so on and so forth. With this in mind, one of the most notable value points of great content is that it is capable of shifting as its target persona does. If all of the online content you create is aimed at Jane Doe, a 53 year old woman who lives in the Midwest, works a middle class job, is concerned about coupons and saving money, isn’t particularly tech-savvy and wants information about living frugally, all of the John Does and Laura Jones out there are going to be left in the dust and, as such, they won’t find your content interesting or valuable. With that in mind, take the time to research all of your target audiences and then create content that caters specifically to them. Update your target personas as your business grows or your values change. A great way to stay on top of shifting trends is to use a tool like Prismatic or Klout, which allows you to keep tabs on the people you follow via keywords, so you can stay abreast of what’s going on in your industry. Additionally, be conscious of the customer’s position in the buying journey. If they’re in the early phases of research or inquiry, they probably don’t want product-specific content. With that in mind, seek to offer content that isn’t directly related to your company’s product, good or service but that offers helpful information nonetheless (For example, consider clothing company ModCloth’s Twitter feed, which offers everything from tasty sangria recipes to shots of the company’s clothing). This is a valuable and non-intrusive approach that is absolutely killer at attracting new customers Additionally, it is the primary way you can ensure your material provides solid value to readers and differentiates itself solidly from the churning sea of content consumers deal with daily. 2) Your Online Content Should Fill in the Gaps With upwards of 27 million pieces of online content whipping around the web on a daily basis, it’s hard to imagine that there are any gaps anywhere, right? Think again. What takes content from being run-of-the-mill to outstanding is its ability to see the things other content misses. Maybe those garden articles all tell customers how to plant a garden but they leave them wondering when and where. By providing an answer for these unanswered questions, you meet an important value point and set yourself up for success by dominating the market for those queries. By filing in knowledge gaps or acknowledging unacknowledged challenges, you can stand out in the eyes of customers who want valuable, solid information. 3) Your Content Should Play the Long Game While it’s great for content to go viral, it’s also valuable for content to draw a steady stream of customers for months on end. With that in mind, don’t allow yourself to be perpetually obsessed with content that goes straight to the top of the charts immediately. While viral content does offer specific value, the value is typically trend-based, which means it may not offer sustainable use to customers or readers. In order to reach its peak value potential, content needs to be able to play the long game, as well. By dedicating yourself to creating varied content with a wide array of goals and functions, you can provide a variety of valuable pieces to customers. 4) Your Content Should Be Unique While it’s all well and good to cite statistics and provide great information, truly memorable content will stand apart via its use of new information, anecdotal evidence, themes relevant to a specific audience or well-placed action tips. Again, there’s a lot of content out there and everything sounds roughly the same. In order for your content to stand out, it needs to be unique and offer the value point of substance and relate-ability to customers. With that in mind, offer anecdotes that come from your personal experience or that they can relate to directly and, once you’ve disseminated information, offer them a … Read more

How to Use the Three E’s in Your Content Marketing: Educate, Engage, Excite

June 21, 2023June 2, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Content overload. It’s what happens when consumers are so flooded with advertising material, blog posts, social media material, and visuals that they shut down and stop processing any information at all. Unfortunately, content overload is becoming a larger and larger problem in our online world. According to Buffer, 400 million tweets are sent each day, 4.75 billion daily updates are shared on Facebook, and a staggering 5.3 trillion ads appear online annually. What’s more, the number of brand messages a customer encounters a day has skyrocketed from about 3,500 back in 2005 to over 10,000 today. With all that content flying around at the speed of light, it’s easy to see why creating unique, original content that stands out has become so difficult. Luckily, you have a secret weapon. It’s called “The Three E’s:” and I’m here to help you learn how to use it. Content Overload: An Unfortunate Truth Wouldn’t it be great if you could sit down, write up a piece of content, send it out to your followers, and just trust that it’s going to go viral? While this may be the stuff of dreams for content marketers everywhere, it’s an unrealistic expectation. Today, the explosion of digital platforms like websites, blogs, social media sites, and forums has saturated the content market and companies of all shapes and sizes across all industries are using these platforms to reach their readers. As it stands right now, 94% of small businesses and 93% of B2B companies are using content marketing as a significant portion of their marketing strategies. Unfortunately, this explosion in the popularity of content hasn’t coincided with an increased human attention span or ability to digest content. According to recent research, most modern humans have attention spans (8 seconds) that are shorter than that of a goldfish (9 seconds on average). Because of this, it’s critical for content marketers to learn to craft content that goes to the heart of readers and produces quick, effective engagement. Content Marketing’s Secret Formula for Success: The Three E’s How, you might ask, do I create unique, engaging content for people who pay less attention than shimmery yellow fish? Great question. The answer lies in the three E’s. Engage With so much content out there for consumers to interact with, your primary tool for ensuring that they interact with your content first is to get them engaged. This, however, is easier said than done. Engaging your customers means identifying a target audience and knowing how to reach them. This allows you to understand the specific issues and questions your audience is grasping with and provide them with content that helps to answer their questions, address their concerns, and provide value. Once you’ve determined who your target audience is, you’ll need to keep monitoring and updating it to accommodate the changes in your brand and your customer base. By doing this, you can ensure that the content you post on social media and other online platforms is valuable, original, targeted, and engaging for your target audience. Only once you’ve got engagement down can you move on to the remaining two E’s. Educate When consumers go online to search for content, what they’re looking for is information. Because of this, the second critical “E” you need to think about during the content marketing process is how to educate your customers. Once you’ve gotten them engaged with your content, you need to reward them by offering educational, exciting content that they can connect with. While there are various ways to educate your customers, one of the easiest and most reliable is to answer questions and address concerns. While it’s obvious enough that writing informative, industry-specific blog posts is one good way to educate your followers, you can also educate them by taking steps to make your brand more accessible and human. This means offering outstanding customer service, granting coupons or discounts, and taking every available opportunity to educate your consumers about your company, mission, and products. In addition to providing value to your customers, this step also helps deepen the relationship with your brand and solidify your presence in your clients’ minds. For a few examples of brands that are doing this well: Whole Foods, which is famous for offering helpful tips, tricks, and information to its customers via its social profiles: Want to learn how to cook a whole fish? We have a few tips. Learn how: https://t.co/UkQUMYq6zq. pic.twitter.com/DPMuCd0AyB — Whole Foods Market (@WholeFoods) May 31, 2016 Or even Mint.com, which uses its blog to help its primarily young user base navigate life’s pressing financial challenges in intuitive ways (even more appealing featuring a hipster surfing the web on an IKEA-style couch with his dog): Through high-quality yet accessible education, these brands have managed to make names for themselves as industry leaders while also encouraging their customers to stay engaged with and interested in their content. Excite Once you’ve engaged and educated your reader, it’s time to close the deal by exciting them about your content or topic. Because there’s so much content available to today’s consumers, ensuring that they’re excited about yours is one of the best ways to ensure that they keep coming back for more. By doing this, you can generate content that helps create conversations within your follower base. This, in turn, keeps you relevant and ensures that customers will be thinking about your content, even when they aren’t actively engaging with it. While there are dozens of ways to excite your followers about your content, some of the most common involve giving them ownership of the content in some way, shape or form. This explains the current popularity of user-generated content. User-generated content is content that brands encourage users to create and, when used correctly, it can have a significant impact on the success of your overall content marketing strategy. As it stands right now, a full 64% of millennials want to be able to share their opinions with brands. What’s more, the vast majority of consumers place lots of trust on user-generated content, so including it in your marketing strategy is a great way to … Read more

How to Go After Anyone Stealing Your Content: 5 Rules of the Game

January 1, 2021May 31, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Imagine this: you’re surfing the web one day and you come upon a website with copy that looks surprisingly like yours. The headlines, slogans, content is nearly identical, the layout is a duplicate, and the images are so similar that pretty soon you’re grinding your teeth in anger. Who dared to steal your work in such a disgraceful, copycat way? Well, instead of just fuming, let’s talk about the action steps that you can take to identify and stop content theft from happening in it’s tracks. As expert online copywriters, we know exactly what you can do—and we’re sharing it here! Content Theft: What In The World Do You Do? We’ve had many people pose as us, since a successful writing agency seems to be the perfect candidate for struggling writing agencies to mimic. (In this case, flattery is not the best compliment.) Some have copied our service pages word for word. The good news is, these posers didn’t last. While content theft is a tragic and infuriating scenario, it’s one that affects many writers and marketers every year. From large-scale operations that duplicate entire websites to lazy bloggers who are happy to just copy and paste your text into their content fields, there are dozens of ways for people to steal your content. Luckily, there are also dozens of ways for you to go after them when they do. Let’s talk business. Stolen Content: The Writer’s Worst Fear While it may seem insufferably audacious for anyone to steal content and use it as their own, it happens literally all of the time. According to a 2013 statement by Google’s Matt Cutts, anywhere from 25-30% of the web is made up of duplicate content. This is a shocking number, I know, but I have something else that’s even more shocking for you: Google doesn’t penalize duplicate content. Because there are many different types of duplicate content (including legitimate, syndicated duplicate content that’s been published or shared on a variety of platforms) Google refrains from punishing duplicate content unless it is obviously spam. While this approach is meant to prevent webmasters who have duplicate content published on multiple URLs from incurring penalties, it also makes it difficult for Google to smack down people who blatantly steal your content. Even though Google doesn’t out rightly penalize people who steal your content, stolen content hurts in a myriad of ways. Most notably, stolen content makes it harder than it already is for your site to rank well in the SERPs and gain the traffic boosts high-quality content typically affords you. When a person steals your content, it’s possible that the blog post you spent hours writing, proofreading, researching, and editing will be doomed to the fifth page of a search result while a stolen copy ranks as #1. Because Google doesn’t always understand who is the original owner of a content, this outcome is not only possible but probable. Luckily, all hope is not lost. While it may be difficult, there are many effective ways to go after people who steal your content. Locating and Addressing Stolen Content: 5 Proactive Steps to Stop Content Theft To discover and address stolen content online, follow these steps: 1. Use a plagiarism checker to find stolen content Plagiarism checkers are some of the most effective tools for locating stolen online content. While these may be simple tools (they work by scanning input content for duplicate words or phrases on the web), they’re reliable and are by far some of the easiest and most reliable sources to begin addressing stolen content. Here are two good plagiarism checkers. Copyscape: Copyscape is a simple, easy-to-use platform that scans the web for duplicate content. One of the most frequently used tools for copywriters and editors, Copyscape offers both a free and paid service. The paid service is more extensive and it’s what we at Express Writers use to check all of our content for plagiarism and theft. To use Copyscape, simply purchase credits (a steal at $0.05 each) and then input your content to find out if it shows up anywhere else on the web. Check out what happens when I put in a snippet of a recent blog post titled “25 Reasons Every Business Needs a Go-To SEO Copywriter:” If you hit Compare Text, you can see exactly how much of the content is “duplicate” and where it’s found–and how much duplicacy is there (they give you a final percentage). Copyscape is effective, simple, and cheap enough that even small businesses can use it to find out if their content has been stolen or not. 2. Grammarly: Grammarly is an online grammar and spelling checker that’s become popular in the online marketing community. What many people don’t know, however, is that Grammarly also has a powerful plagiarism detector that checks over 8 billion webpages. Check out what happens when I input the same blog snippet for “25 Reasons:” Ideal for finding exactly the URL that’s stealing your content, Grammarly is a powerful tool that can help you track down stolen content quickly and easily. 2. Implement electronic alerts to monitor your content Electronic alerts like those offered by Google Alerts are a fantastic way to get a heads-up whenever someone attempts to steal your content. Free, simple, and easy to use, Google Alerts allows you to input your content into the search query and get an alert if Google detects duplicate copies online. Keep in mind that Google issues an alert for every single word you input into the search query, so not all of the alerts you get will be actual duplicate content. While it can be frustrating to sift through the results, this is an effective way to receive notifications about any duplicate content before it gets out of control. With BuzzSumo, you can also set up content monitoring. I love this tool and have a daily email notification set up to come to my inbox anytime someone mentions “express writers” on the web. (On the plus side of brand monitoring, … Read more

Does The Future of Marketing Lie in H2H Marketing?

December 31, 2020May 3, 2016 by Adam Oakley

If you’re in the online marketing world, there are literally hundreds of acronyms to remember. SEO, PPC, B2B, B2C, YMYL, and EAT, just to name a few. One newer acronym, however, is standing out these days: H2H, or human-to-human, used to represent a type of marketing much like B2B, B2C. It’s sometimes also called P2P (person-to-person) marketing. I just heard of H2H a few weeks ago from members of our #ContentWritingChat Twitter chat. (Thanks, @alberMoire and @Renoe!) And I love what H2H represents so much, I had to take it to the blog, research it and write about it. H2H marketing is a herald term for amazing things. Quite possibly, the future of how marketing is done. As web marketing changes to focus less on pushy sales strategies and more on providing customers with real, genuine value and relevance, the importance of human-to-human marketing is quickly becoming even more pronounced. Could H2H soon usurp the more traditional, colder B2B and B2C marketing, and take over the world of marketing forever? Here’s what you need to know about why and how H2H marketing tactics will affect the future of marketing as we know it. Why H2H Marketing Is Golden If you’re the owner of a business, chances are you don’t walk around introducing yourself as your business. There’s likely no, “Hi, I’m Mountain SEO & Marketing, Inc. Nice to meet you!” While you may claim your business as an entity for which you’re responsible, nobody is their business. At least not literally. While this may sound obvious, it’s actually really important. While businesses are big, powerful entities, we need to remember that a business is only the public-facing facade of a group of actual people who are doing a specific type of work together. While it’s tempting to regard businesses as entities in and of themselves, we need to remember that behind every business is people, and it’s the people who are actually making the decisions that drive the company. This, my friends is where H2H marketing enters the picture. Just like nobody introduces themselves as their companies, companies aren’t ultimately the ones making purchasing or marketing decisions. While businesses may utilize products, people within the business are the ones who are actually purchasing them. In light of this, H2H seeks to focus on catering to individual people rather than big corporations, and it’s the foundation for much of what’s going on in today’s inbound marketing world. The Connection Between Inbound Marketing and H2H: 6 Key Similarities There’s an argument to be made that the rise of H2H came about at the same exact time as the death of outbound marketing. Because inbound marketing has been designed so deliberately to focus on creating human interactions and relationships, it feeds perfectly into the foundation. In fact, inbound marketing is one of the main reasons that H2H is currently enjoying the prominence that it is. There are six important places where inbound marketing and H2H intersect. Check them out: 1. Inbound marketing focuses on finding pain points One of the most effective marketing tactics of all time is to find a person’s pain points. Pain points are real or perceived areas of difficulty that drive customers to purchase a product, good, or service. For example, if a person is sick of constantly looking for important receipts or losing critical paperwork, the pain point is likely a disastrous lack of organization. Once that pain point becomes unbearable for the person in question, they’ll likely head out into the market and search for a problem to help them relieve the pain point. In this case, the makers of a virtual organizational platform like Evernote would have a good chance of making a sale. By identifying pain points, companies succeed not only in making more sales, they also succeed in getting to know their customers on a deeper level. 2. Inbound marketing seeks to build knowledge about customers Gone are the days when companies just marketed to whoever would listen. Today’s successfully businesses are focused on identifying target personas and creating an increasingly more personalized marketing experience for clients. In order to do this, however, companies must get to know their clients, which forges exactly the type of relationship upon which the H2H philosophy is based. 3. Inbound marketing focuses heavily on optimizing website for people While search remains an important marketing tactic, the trajectory of inbound marketing has demanded that companies focus first on optimizing their content for people and second on optimizing it for search engine crawlers. This creates more valuable sites and a better user experience. It also places the customer at the front of of the marketing experience, which is critical if a company is to market successfully to its consumers. 4. Inbound marketing wants users to have a good time In the world of inbound marketing, user experience is a hugely important metric. This means that companies who arrange their web pages in order to provide a positive human experience are likely to draw more users and succeed more at H2H marketing than those who don’t. When users have a great experience with a company either through emotionally evocative advertising or outstanding service, they’re more likely to come back thanks to the human connection that’s just been formed. 5. Inbound marketing drives social media connections In today’s world, people head to social media to connect with other people and inbound and H2H marketing are right there to meet them. When brands build relationships with customers via various social media outlets, they provide more positive experiences and start more conversations. This, in turn, leads to a deeper relationship between company and consumer and encourages brand loyalty in customers. 6. Inbound marketing focuses on guiding sales decisions While outbound marketing of days past focused on cold sales and all but forcing people to purchase a product, inbound marketing focuses more on guiding people toward sales decisions in a valuable and informative way. Today, people want to start with information (in the form of valuable content marketing material) and work their way eventually into making purchasing decisions, which is a tenant straight out of … Read more