Content Marketing - Express Writers

How to Utilize Your Content Distribution Channels Correctly

December 31, 2020April 24, 2015 by Josh McCoy

Annie is a Content Manager at Express Writers. Content distribution channels provide a means of connecting with your audience on a number of different levels. These channels can include (but are not limited to) blogs, web page content, eBooks, whitepapers, infographics and email newsletters. They provide a method of communicating with your audience and engaging them with your message. In order for your content distribution strategy to work properly, you need to utilize your channels at maximum efficiency. But how exactly do you manage content distribution channels (correctly—without over-spamming anyone, or using one channel the wrong way)? Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Basket This old adage works well when evaluating your content distribution channels. Because of the number of available channels that you have, you should utilize at least a handful of them to get your message out to your audience. Channels such as social media networks and guest blogging opportunities are great resources since they allow you to direct your content to focus on your target audience. This ensures that you have the maximum exposure possible for your content and raises the possibility of engagement from your audience. By delivering your content in multiple channels you allow your company to build a loyal following of customers on a number of different platforms. This gives you leverage when it comes to influencing customer decisions in the long run. Multiple channels increase the overall amount of people who are aware of your brand name and image. Once you product high-quality content consistently, you’ll be able to draw and keep an audience that agrees with your point of view and enjoys the content you create. Too Much of a Good Thing There is always the lurking problem of overreaching. Whilst trying to cover as many content channels as you possibly can is a good idea, you should be aware that when you cover more content channels the content quality you produce may drop. The happy balance you’re trying to seek is to produce enough good, high-quality content pieces to fit a measured amount of content channels so that you don’t sacrifice quality in the name of coverage. It’s much better to focus on a handful of channels and deliver high quality content than to try to cover the spectrum and fill all your channels with mediocre or low-quality content. How Can I Utilize Content Channels to Boost Blog Traffic? 5 Methods The crux of the matter is that you want to leverage your content production in order to drive traffic to your blog. Content distribution channels provide the most ideal method of directing customers to your blog through measured content that is designed to do this. When you create compelling content that makes a user want to know more, including a handy link to your blog in a call-to-action can encourage the user to visit your blog. But how does it work? Here are a handful of ways you can utilize your content channels in order to distribute content to drive your blog traffic. Guest Blogging: Guest blogging opportunities may come to you in the form of invitations to write on a topic or you can simply address the owner of the blog and ask them for a chance to guest blog for them. Guest blogging gives you a powerful method to drive traffic to your blog. It gives you ready access to an audience that is already within your niche. With the right type of compelling content and well-placed links you can direct users to read some of your own blog entries, possibly gaining new followers in the process.As a content distribution channel, guest blogging should never be discounted. It gets your message out to the people who would benefit from it the most: people within your target audience. By giving you a focused group that is already interested in your niche, it creates a simple way to distribute content efficiently and effectively to the people who would appreciate and benefit from it the most. Email Marketing: A number of marketing professionals consider email marketing to be on its last legs as a content distribution channel. I tend to disagree. Email marketing is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for someone who isn’t skilled in the area or dedicated to becoming so. Email marketing contacts your audience directly and gives them the feeling of having a direct connection to you.Email marketing is based around sharing your content through personal email addresses, inclusive of clickable links back to your blog. For many users, emails are the best way for them to keep connected to a blog that they are interested in. Many people don’t have the time to go check a blog every single day to see when updates come around. Strategic email updates to your subscribers gives them the ability to see when you’ve updated and to judge whether the content interests them enough to go read it. It’s a very efficient methodology, but requires compelling copy and high-quality content to succeed. Utilize Influencers: In any social media setting, there will obviously be a handful of individuals that are more influential than other people in the same niche. What you should be aiming to do is to get in contact with these influencers. But how do you find out which people are the ones worth contacting? Simple tools such as Followerwonk allow you to see the extent of a person’s social media outreach and allows you to target the influencers within your demographic of interest for the highest return.Utilizing influencers can be direct (emailing them or messaging them and asking them to share your content) or indirect (sharing content with them and asking their and their followers’ opinions). Both of these methods are useful in their own ways, but instead of simply leveraging the influencers, you should try to engage them. It’s much easier to get an influencer to share your content if you actually pique their interest. It’s unlikely that they’ll share content of … Read more

Is Digital Technology Making It Harder To Connect With Customers?

December 31, 2020April 23, 2015 by Adam Oakley

The digital age has introduced a number of advancements in the realm of communication. Never before in the history of mankind have people been able to connect so freely and easily to other people with similar interests. However, this increased level of connectivity comes with a cost. Human beings’ ability to empathize with others and to make real, emotional connections tend to be compromised when they interact over a digital platform. Even though they can speak to another person miles away, face to face contact has a certain “human element” that digital connectivity lacks. In this brave, new world, is it harder to connect with customers? The Rise of the Internet In the late eighties and early nineties, when desktop computers were still novelties and connections between them were limited to dial-up speeds at best, human interaction was still the default method of communication. Phones provided means of communication over large distances and allowed for a certain level of abstraction between the callers, but the voices was still an organic way for the users to connect. All that changed when the Internet spread all over the world. By granting access to applications like instant messaging and chat rooms, the Internet provided a means of escape that was completely new. It allowed one to create a persona completely out of whole cloth that may or may not represent who you are as a person. With these abilities came the increased cynicism and doubt that would naturally follow when the only thing you know about a person is based on what that person tells you. This doubt is what makes communication in the digital age so difficult. Making a Connection The primary aim of marketing content is to create a connection between you and the buyer. This connection may vary depending on the audience and what approach you have towards developing it. On the whole, your content should reflect what you want your buyer to think about your product. What the buyer thinks is of the utmost importance, because it is what will inform his or her final decision on a purchase. In the twenty-first century, making a connection is a lot more difficult because of the attitudes that have been developed through the years of the Internet’s dominance in the realm of communication. People are no longer as trusting as they used to be. In addition to this, the vast amounts of quick information coupled with high-speed connections have reduced the average user’s attention span. It’s one thing to try to make a connection with a potential buyer that already doesn’t trust you, but having to do so in a fraction of a minute seems like a Sisyphean task. The Development of New Storytelling Techniques Traditional storytelling was how marketers used to connect to their potential buyers in the past. By presenting a story that followed the arc of a hero, ending in a climax and sudden realization of the truth, pre-digital age marketers were able to grasp the attention of their clientele and have them relate to the story from an onlooker’s perspective. This traditional type of story arc has been thrown out the window in recent years because the audience doesn’t have time to empathize with people other than themselves. And so, to deal with this shift in priorities, we made the potential buyer the protagonist. What this did was create a connection between the audience and the product that was more tangible. It allowed the user to feel, to sense and to anticipate the product, so much so that it encouraged the user to buy it. It is because of the advances in technology that we have been able to do something like this. Immersing a potential customer in your product is a lot easier when you have the processing power of a computer at your disposal. In this way, the digital age has made it possible to connect to users on a whole different level. How Do We Deal with Information Overload? In Aldous Huxley’s “A Brave New World” the society that he presents was faced with the problem of having too much information thrown at them. In the modern world, we have the same problem. Developing a connection is important in getting past all the noise and making a genuine link to your audience. Because of the impersonal nature of the Internet, making connections in this way raises your importance and therefore the importance of your message. Good content capitalizes on this and develops loyalty through continued interaction. This loyalty is how we can break out of the necessity of short-burst information that is likely to get lost in the surrounding clutter. The keyword is easy. Make things easy for your consumer. Make sure your site is mobile friendly. Make sure people can sign up easily—in less than 10 steps. Make sure your blog is easy to get to and easy to read on all screens. Making things like these easily accessible to your customer in these simple ways can make huge differences in your potential buyer feeling overloaded or happy with your content. And, cultivating ongoing customer loyalty makes it easier to connect with customers and the digital age makes it simple to build customer loyalty. How to Connect with Customers: Keys to Communication As much as it has been said before, the way to connect with customers digitally is to understand their motivations. When you figure out what makes your potential buyers tick, you can leverage that to access their emotions and connect with them directly. Although the Internet has made it difficult to develop a connection through traditional methods, it has forced us as marketing professionals to find new and innovative ways to deal with this. Social media, blogging, video ads and infographics provide us with ammunition that we can use to make that all-important breach in the impenetrable fortress that is the user’s emotional cache. How we utilize these tools directly affects the success of our overall campaign and how well … Read more

How Just Creating Content Could Damage Your Online Marketing

December 31, 2020April 17, 2015 by Adam Oakley

In a world where the answer to every unanswerable question is “Google it,” it is easy to see why marketing people really want to be friends with the almighty search engine. In other terms, Google is the stereotypical popular girl in every high school or frat movie, and companies are the minions hanging on to her every word. If Google says SEO matters, then Company A is going to use SEO as much as possible hoping against hope that Google looks over and finally notices them. The Story Says: Lose All Your Followers Trying For A Quick Success, Or Gain Steady & Sure Results And for a while, Google just might. However, if you ever watch all the way to the end of one of those movies, you know there are only two possible endings. The first is that the popular girl turns out to be the bad guy and nobody should have been trying to impress her in the first place. The second is that the popular girl turns out to be a regular girl who doesn’t just want a lot of yes men. She wants a real friend who truly cares about her. In today’s writing market, we are at the part of the movie where we see Google is really looking for quality friendships (i.e., good writing), not just someone spewing out whatever it is they think Google wants to hear (i.e., bad marketing). (See, Google, I made you the protagonist, not the villain—your turn to rank me higher.) Why Getting Ranked Is NOT the Same as Making a Sale When you want to get ranked highly for a term such as dentists in Detroit, you don’t want to sound like you are trying to get ranked for the term dentists in Detroit. Because if you oversell the fact that you are advertising dentists in Detroit, people might find you when they search dentists in Detroit, but they will think you are the dumbest of all the dentists in Detroit – and who wants a dumb dentist, in Detroit or elsewhere? When you care more about getting in your keywords and less about writing quality copy people care about, you get writing as seen in the above paragraph, which was probably as annoying to read as it was to write. Nobody is going to trust you or use you if that is how you sound. Good writing trumps bad marketing. There is an old sales trick that even people who have never worked a day in sales might know: when you are trying to sell someone something, repeat their name a lot so that you remember it because no one wants to buy something from someone who can’t be bothered to learn who they are. Really good salespeople can weave a name in and out of conversation, and you don’t even realize what is happening. You think, ‘Wow! This guy/gal is great. They get me.’ And before you know it, you’ve got way more wrapping paper or Girl Scout cookies (or whatever else they happen to be pedaling) than you could ever need or want. Then you’ve got those salespeople who learned this lesson on the first day of class and ran with it. That’s when you get conversations like this: “Hi, Ethel. It’s nice to meet you, Ethel. How are you doing today, Ethel?” “Oh. Um. I’m, great. Thanks. And you?” “That’s great, Ethel. I’m great, too, Ethel. We should get lunch and talk business, Ethel.” It’s these salespeople that, while certainly never forgotten, make you more likely to believe they are a serial killer or otherwise mentally deranged than make you want to buy their product. Writing content for content’s sake is analogous to being the crazy, serial killer-type salesperson. Yes, you might get noticed, but who really cares if you scare away all your potential victims, err, I mean clients? Getting noticed is not the same thing as making a sale. If you really want to sell your content, you have to be like that salesperson who knows how to artfully weave in a customer’s name – or keyword as the case may be – into a conversation in a natural and pleasing manner. You have to take the time to get to know the person (or people) you are selling to and talk to them as if they are actually human beings, because they are, instead of just shouting out a lot of marketing tactics you’ve heard might somehow work and hoping someone hears them. In other words, you have to connect with your audience or you’ll end up sounding like a lunatic. The Quandary of Quantity Vs. Quality Content If you have ever looked at an advertisement for a writing position, you tend to notice that terms such as ‘SEO experience’ and ‘quick turnaround’ often find themselves placed higher than the less important qualifications such as ‘good writing.’ Companies that are looking for anybody who happens to have a working computer and is willing to write for practically nothing are relying on the infinite monkey theorem. You’ve probably heard of it. Apparently, if you give a monkey a typewriter and let him hit keys at random for long enough, he’ll eventually type a Shakespearean piece. However, instead of hiring a hundred monkeys and hoping they’ll eventually get you something great, there is a better solution. Just hire Shakespeare (well, a good writer. I don’t think you’ll be able to get a hold of Shakespeare.) Putting the time and effort into getting a real writer capable of great writing in lesser quantities, is going to pay off a lot more than hiring a bunch of sub-par, pseudo-writers who only offer a lot of content fast. After all, we are still reading Shakespeare today, but I’ve yet to hear of a real monkey who has successfully proven the infinite monkey theorem. Three Steps to Avoid Creating a Blogs ‘R Us What you have hopefully gotten from everything I have said is that you … Read more

The Great Content Roundup: Week 9, How Much Is Too Much Promotion?

June 19, 2024April 15, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Welcome to my Great Content Roundup, folks! Today, I’m looking at a big question that applies to businesses of all sizes. When do you start promoting yourself (your content, your business) too much? The only exception I could think of is local ice-cream shops – I probably wouldn’t ever get tired of seeing their posts, but maybe that’s just me. Recently, I’ve encountered some businesses that over-promoted the “heck outta themselves,” excuse the grammar. I’m talking every HOUR on Twitter they were tweeting about their app. Every other day the rep was messaging me, either on LinkedIn or on my personal email. Granted, the company had a nice Twitter community going and what looked like some actual real interested followers who were devoted fans—but as a prospective client of theirs, I was turned completely off and decided to tell them to “stop spamming me” a few days ago. Now this experience was so fresh and real in my mind, as I read content this week I couldn’t help but place it next to what I was reading about. So, let’s delve into: The Great Content Roundup, Week 9: How Much Is Too Much Promotion? Social Triggers has a great rule on how to build a blog audience: the 80/20 rule. Spend 80% of your time promoting OTHERS’ content; and 20% of the time promoting your own. This is exactly what we do at Express Writers (view our Twitter as proof); and we connect with new followers and great industry friends all the time. 80/20, folks. Those that flip this for 80% self-promotion will soon be labeled a spammer. Neil Patel mentions somewhere in his very useful post How To Inspire Your First Time Blog Visitors To Trust You that you absolutely have the right to share your own content on your profiles. I agree. Um, hello: you own the profile—and you should use it for your advantage! But, he also says this: Blogging is not a one-way street. It’s an exchange between you and your readers. I think this applies to all content you publish. He says you should listen more, and answer questions. (Brian Dean at Backlinko is a very successful example. He emails his new signups with this question: “Reply to this email and tell me one thing you’re struggling with. Even if it’s teeny tiny.”) Patel’s post here is golden. Buffer’s Guide on Content Promotion: How Content Promotion Works for Blogs Big and Small: Our 11 Favorite Content Distribution Strategies. This is an amazing piece, I highly recommend reading it through. The part where the author follows up and emails the person he mentions in his blog for a kudos, thank-you, and new loyal fan—GENIUS! Might I say. And I’m always saying you should mention your influencers. Also, #6 – the top content community is Inbound – I’m on Inbound and can attest to it as a wonderful community gaining us new fans, followers, and engagement overall. The only downside to all this is time. It’s going to take a LOT of time for one person or one marketer to follow all the steps. I recommend involving a team in this process.

What’s The Real Difference Between Marketing and Branding Content?

December 31, 2020April 9, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Marketing and branding are two of the major buzzwords that we use in the industry. The confusing part is that non-industry professionals often mix up branding and marketing and use the terms interchangeably. There is a distinct difference between marketing and branding that can be easily explained. Before we jump into the differences we need to understand what each term means on its own. Both of them are powerful means of spreading information, but both have their own specific uses. Let’s clear up some misconceptions about the terms before we delve any further into their inherent differences. What is Branding? Branding is the process by which you reduce a company’s reputation to a single word. A brand is an easily recognizable representation of the particular company. Something that resonates with the user so that at a glance they know what they’re dealing with. Branding gives personality to a company and attaches an attribute to the company that appeals to the demographic of its core audience. Thus, companies such as Toyota are known for their reliability or Volvo is known for their safety records. Each of these brands have built their brands into easily recognizable traits that allow them to appeal to their customers in a unique way. It makes their business into more than just another faceless entity. What is Marketing? Marketing is a blanket statement that covers all forms of interaction with the customer as well as utilizing models in order to develop targeted advertising to reach out to a specific type of consumer. Marketing incorporates all forms of advertisement. In addition to this, marketing also deals with understanding the consumer or the audience and developing ways to utilize this deeper understanding. Where do Branding and Marketing Meet? Because these two disciplines are concerned with getting information out to the customer, they must meet at some level. Marketing and branding are both different facets of the overall content development strategy for a company. Your marketing should incorporate branding into it in order for you to cultivate customer loyalty. Branding allows you to represent your company in a certain light and build off the information that is gained by marketing. On the other side of the coin, marketing allows you to build a rapport with your audience and introduce them to your branded theme. These concepts go hand in hand, but they are not interchangeable. What is the Major Difference between Marketing and Branding Then? In a word, marketing is tactical whereas branding is strategic. I know what you’re thinking. “Isn’t tactical and strategic the same thing?” No, they aren’t, as Kissmetrics points out. Marketing is where the brand is presented and it contributes to overall branding. However, long after the marketing campaign has been exhausted the brand loyalty will remain. This is where branding and marketing part ways. When we say that marketing is tactical, we mean that it deals with getting its payload of information delivered. It doesn’t try to shape the user’s long-term feelings towards the product, it simply gets in and convinces the customer of the benefits. Branding, on the other hand, seeks to embrace a more long-term view of the customer. By strategic leverage of the brand, we can eventually call upon the customer’s loyalty to the brand in order to close a sale. But this is something that requires you to give back to the customer. You need to cultivate your brand image in such a way that the customer associates an idea with your brand. How Marketing Works Alongside Branding To Build Business Do you remember those old TV shows where there would be a sleeper agent that needs a secret code to “activate” them? Marketing is a little like that. It discovers and “activates” buyers, encouraging them to close sales. Branding goes one step further by making those buyers into loyal customers. One of the most common examples of this is the market for Apple products. Apple has made an art out of branding and this has carried over into products in many different branches of the electronics industry. Taking a look at the Apple target demographic, we see that their aim was to produce a product that was sold solely for its importance as a status symbol. Thus, their marketing spread the message that apple products are available, but the branded apple product was joined by its numerous sister products that fall under the brand. When the consumer sees Apple now, then it’s understood that they are paying for Apple’s reputation as something that the cool, the chic and the hip use. Building brand loyalty is what branding does and by making loyal customers out of your one-time buyers, you develop a ready market and audience that are willing and eager to receive your content. Which One is a Better Investment? Both marketing and branding are good investments and have their own type of returns. Marketing can easily be done wrong and if so, it can become a money sink into which a lot of cash if poured but the returns are mediocre. Well-researched marketing gives great returns on investment but the success of the campaign depends as much on the amount of effort put into it as the amount of money. The returns are, of course, seen in conversions and sales. Branding, because of its status as a long-term investment, is usually easier to adjust as time goes by. Catastrophic failures in branding do occur, but these are usually due to bad planning as opposed a lack of funding. The return you get from branding is customer loyalty, something that can be leveraged over and over again. Marketing is necessary to make branding work, but your real benefit comes from having a loyal customer base to call on when releasing new products. Development of a User Base Not so far back, probably less than five years ago, a large volume of the marketing community was involved in “renting” their target demographic. They worked from the start of their campaign … Read more

17 Content Curation Tools to Boost Your Blog Traffic in 2017

June 19, 2024April 3, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Be honest. Don’t you wish creating fresh, hot new content every week was easier than it is? I know I do. No matter how many cool copywriting tricks you’ve got up your sleeve, when deadlines start breathing down your neck, no one is 100% immune from the dreaded blank page blues. Looking for a way ease the pressure of having to constantly produce stellar content, in early 2012 a bunch of smart Internet folks came up with the idea of content curation. The basic idea of content curation is that, no matter who your audience is, there is already so much good, relevant content being produced daily. These days, content curation is common practice now, and forms part of any professional content marketing plan. The problem is, there is most definitely a right way and a wrong way to do content creation. The wrong way can end up making you look like a spambot, scraping random junk from the Internet and slapping it up for your audience. Not only is this a no-no according to Google, but you’ll trash the hard-earned trust you’ve built up with your readers. So what should you do instead? Glad you asked… How to Do Content Creation the Right Way In the grand scheme of marketing, content curation is vital to any content campaign because it can help you get incredible content pieces to share with your audience, as well as helping you figure out new topic ideas. Remember, when you curate content, you are only looking for content to gain inspiration from, not to copy. Use content curation as a way to inspire yourself and enhance your own individual content strategy for your clients. Content Creation vs Curation: The Ideal Mix A few years ago, the accepted wisdom was that the ideal ratio between created and curated content was 80/20, that is, 80% created content, and 20% curated content. According to more up-to-date research, and depending on the industry, a mix of 65/35 (with original, created content still forming the larger proportion) seems to be a more acceptable ratio in 2017. Convince&Convert even go further to show what it looks like to be a “curator,” “balanced” on social media, or the danger line of a “self-promoter,” very useful information for the content curator: Keep in mind that, within this balance, your curation should be focused more on your social platforms than on your own blog, which is where only your original content should be featured. Your blog is your online real estate – why put someone else’s content there? To produce that ideal mix, though, you’ll need some smart tools to help you. The Top 17 Content Curation Tools for Smart Marketers Here are some of the top content curation tools you can use to help boost your content starting today. 1. Trap.It Trap.it pulls in relevant third-party content from all over the web, including industry research, insights and trends, which can be organized into topic-specific libraries for instant reference. Trap.It is also an “intelligent” curation tool, which means the more content you curate the smarter it gets, so you’re never lost for inspiration. Best of all, you can distribute the curated content you’ve “trapped” across all social platforms to engage your audience without spending hours on the web. 2. Feedly Feedly helps you to curate blog content that can be used as resources for future posts or give you great ideas for upcoming content. Feedly is also great for following authorities and influencers in your industry, so you can stay on top of the hottest conversations and create content based on the latest trending topics. It doesn’t pull images, but the lack of visuals doesn’t diminish the importance of this tool. 3. Pinterest Like Feedly, Pinterest is great for keeping up with celebrities, pop culture icons and leaders in your industry. Depending on your niche, Pinterest is also fantastic for collecting useful “hacks”, tricks and tips you can build your content around. Save these ideas to boards on your account, and work with them to curate excellent content for you and your clients. 4. Quora Quora is fast becoming the go-to platform for finding out what people want to know. You get expert, authoritative opinions and answers to questions ranging from what it feels like to be a CEO to how to apply to the best colleges, and almost everything in between. Quora is a gold mine for insightful perspectives on hot topics you can use as the basis for a wide range of content. Just set up an account, and then search your keywords to find excellent content to store away for future use. You can also set up your account to be notified about articles relevant to your field, so you can get more articles and interesting ideas in your inbox. 5. Scoop.it Used by more than 2.5 million marketers, Scoop.it just might be a content marketer’s dream come true. This powerful curation platform allows you to search for content according to keyword, share curated content directly to your social channels, and embed everything you find on your page. What’s more, the platform also offers predictive insights and an accurate ROI measuring tool that helps you get the most from your curated content. At Express Writers, we love the CEO of Scoop.it, Guillaume Decugis! I’ve recorded a podcast on the Write Podcast with him talking how to fit curation into your content marketing strategy, and we even had him as a guest on our Twitter Chat #ContentWritingChat talking content curation principles. 6. BuzzSumo BuzzSumo is a smart marketer’s “pro tool” when it comes to content curation. BuzzSumo keeps you up to date with the latest trending topics in your industry by sending automated alerts every time new content in your industry is published. Use BuzzSumo to search for content by topic, and share it directly from a simple dashboard. I absolutely love the “Content Research” tab, to research and interact with the people sharing our content, and to hunt down hot topics. Ideal … Read more

Why We Aren’t Fooling You About Good Content! Happy April Fools’ Day!

August 25, 2022April 1, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Happy April Fools’ Day! Depending on how much your friends or family like to prank, we’ll be considerate and avoid all pranks away this morning with this blog (you’re most welcome). We’re here to talk about having great content—which isn’t a joke developed by copywriters and Google, it is actually incredibly important. We promise we aren’t fooling you, and you will be incredibly happy if you focus on having great content. However, you might be wondering just how you can get excellent content all the time, especially if you are a very busy business owner. I am going to look at different content tips as well as services to help you create or receive excellent content you will be proud to share with your clients. Let’s take a look! 11 Awesome Ideas and Services to Help You Improve Your Content There are several ways to improve your content and make it the best, and I am going to look at a few of these. Expert Landing Pages are a Must. When you create your website, you always want to make sure that you have expertly crafted landing pages and web content. Having great web pages means that you have a higher chance of converting visitors into leads, and building your customer base. This is something that you obviously want because more customers means more revenue, and those customers might just tell others about your company and so on. Having these great, crafted landing pages is vital, and you need to find people who can expertly create them for you if you have any trouble whatsoever. Blogs Are Vital to Any Online Presence. When you want good content, you need to have an ongoing blog for your business. Blogs currently run the content world, and these are what will help bring people into your business’s website and convince those people to search the rest of your site. You can use your blogs as new, individual landing pages, which gives customers several places to choose and learn more about your company and services. Blogs provide a unique opportunity to help your clients out while encouraging them to choose your company for their needs. If you want to get the most out of your blogs, hire our expertly trained blog writers who will know just what to do for your blog and business. Get a Content Audit for the Best Content. Content audits are oftentimes overlooked because they can be time consuming. However, a content audit is a great way to make sure your content is still quality and fits with any new Google algorithms. A content audit is something I regularly encourage people to get because it really does help you learn more about the behind-the-scenes aspect of your site, and lets you know what you should change. You can take a DIY approach to content auditing, but it does take quite a bit of time, so the most efficient step is to hire our trained content auditors. Trained content auditors can help find everything you need to know to improve your website, making it the best it can be. Content Curation is the Way of the Content Future. Are you looking for excellent resources to share with your clients or to generate blog topics and titles? Then you should be actively engaging in our (recently launched service), content curation. This is a perfect way to find high quality resources that will help you create consistently great content. In addition, content curation will help you stand out as a leader in your field, and if you curate top quality material, you are more likely to be trusted by your customers. Trust is a great way to bring in more customers and keep your existing ones. Optimization is Still Important. While I have discussed all the different methods you need to use when creating content, optimization isn’t over just yet. It is still vital to content because those keywords can help with the big picture. Optimization implements your chosen or needed keywords into your blogs and web pages to help them rank on the search engine results page. Your website, with its multiple landing pages gives you many opportunities for optimization, which will greatly benefit your business. Keyword Research Helps You Find the Right Keywords to Use. When you use the above optimization, you will need to make sure you’ve researched the best, most impactful keywords for your site to get the best results. You can do this on your own through Google Analytics to see which words are bringing in more clients. One of the best ways, however, is to have our SEO experts do keyword research for you in your industry to find the ones that will have low competition while also being able to drive a lot of traffic and engagement. Depending on your business, there are a variety of keyword types that can work for you. There are the basic keywords that incorporate your services, but another form of excellent keywords is the long tail or local keyword for local based companies. This will help you come up on local searches easily, helping people in your area find your business. Hiring Niche Copywriters Helps Significantly. When it comes to your business, it is one of a kind and might have a very specific audience. Because of this, you are considered a niche industry, and you need writers who can write specifically for it. This oftentimes holds niche companies back from developing blogs because the owners and workers don’t have the time to dedicate to writing blogs every week, but they don’t want just a generic copywriter. This is where a niche, industry copywriter comes in. You can find one that can write for your industry to help make the biggest impact and bring in more clicks and leads. Have an Epic Social Media Presence. One of the best ways to have great content is to make sure you have an epic social media presence. This can help you … Read more

How Curation Can Empower Your Content Creation

December 31, 2020March 24, 2015 by Adam Oakley

A constant content flow that has the power to keep you and your brand in the public eye is an invaluable asset. Nonetheless, the process of creating fresh, reader-oriented, 100% original content for different platforms demands a lot of time and money. Successful content and social media marketing require the highest level of commitment and consistency, whereas you, as a budget-conscious small business owner, have the responsibility to manage your resources wisely and limit your spending without making any quality compromises. This is where content curation comes into play, allowing you to increase your online visibility without breaking the bank. What Is Content Curation and How Could It Help Me Grow My Business? Content curation represents the act of identifying, collecting, organizing and displaying content that is relevant to a certain area of interest and a particular audience. According to an article published by Search Engine Journal, this concept refers to the process of discovering and using quality content pieces with a real substance, elaborated and published by high-authority sources. You may be wondering: how could this strategy benefit my business? Truth be told, there are several benefits associated with content curation. First of all, this technique enables you to save time, money and energy that you would otherwise have to invest in content creation. Secondly, the almost overwhelming abundance of premium content launched by reputable sources allows you to select the best pieces based on the interests and expectations of your audience, and also according to your own mission, vision and goals. Thirdly, content curation is a social act by definition; therefore, it could represent a viable and extremely effective method to establish new partnerships with prominent players operating in your industry, make new contacts and rely on the type of writing that can give you the chance to reach a larger segment of public. An example of curation is what we’ve been doing. The Great Content Roundup accrued over 200 shares in just a few days. Content Creation vs. Content Curation: Which Tactic Works Best for Your Business? An article published by Social Media Today reveals that content curation and content creation are two excellent methods that any company can use to fill its content pipeline. Both processes have their pros and cons and should be seen as the two halves of the same whole; not as two disparate strategies implemented to achieve a steady content flow. 4 Benefits of Content Curation Cost-Efficiency. When you have sharable, world-class content at your fingertips, you can choose to curate your favorite pieces instead of crafting new ones from scratch. Time-Efficiency. When you don’t have much time to create your own content, you can promote the most brilliant ideas introduced by reputable industry experts to give your readers the food for thought that they’re expecting to see on your blog/website/social media account. The Chance to Build and Maintain New Connections. By consuming other people’s web content, you encourage the development of new potentially fruitful partnerships that could support your boldest marketing goals in the future. The Opportunity to Help Your Readers Explore Various Perspectives on a Certain Topic. Content curation lets you introduce newsworthy facts from multiple perspectives, enabling your readers to form an educated opinion on a particular subject. On the other hand, content creation also has its fair share of benefits, including the following ones. 4 Benefits of Content Creation The Opportunity to Make Your Voice Heard Through Original Content. Your tone of voice, the originality of your ideas and the way in which you bond with your readers and encourage their feedback are the main elements that reflect your uniqueness. Through content creation you can celebrate your individuality and make sure that you’re not at risk of drowning in a sea of copycats. The Ability to Demonstrate Your Skills and Knowledge, While Consolidating Your Position on Your Niche. Unique, highly researched content helps you talk like an expert and be identified as one by your audience. The Chance to Craft, Publish and Promote Quality Content That Is Exclusively Yours. Words. By creating quality content you can boost your level of exposure. First of all, world-class writing encourages visitors to land on your page over and over again; secondly, the superior quality of your content pieces may stimulate other curators to showcase your masterpieces, implicitly spreading the word about your business. A Deeper Connection with More Loyal Readers. Last but not least, generally speaking a constant content flow based on original pieces could improve your relationship with your readers and boost their loyalty, who will see you as an inspired creator, as opposed to a mere curator with no voice of his own. [Tweet “Creation without #Curation is like Cake without Icing. #Content”] 5 Tips on How to Simplify and Optimize Your Content Curation Ritual Both curation and creation can support your everyday marketing goals, allowing you to support the growth of your small business. The key is to maintain a solid balance between the percentage of curated content and original content that you publish on your website. In our article published on SiteProNews, we have listed the main steps that one should take to guide a healthy content curation strategy in the right direction. Here are five tips that you should apply to curate content like a pro. Discover the Particularities of Your Audience (Including Its Area of Interest). What kind of subjects would make your readers tick? What type of content pieces should you actually curate to stay on the same page with your readers? Make Sure Content Creation Is Just a Piece of Your Content Marketing Puzzle. These days, in order to maintain your competitiveness in any industry, you have to be more than an enthusiastic curator. Perfect your content crafting skills and let the whole world hear your unique story. Add Value to Each Content Piece That You Curate. Make sure every single content piece that lands on your website/social media channel bares your creative imprint. Instead of copy pasting info coming from … Read more

5 Rules to Create an Awesome Ebook to Market Your Business

August 3, 2023March 16, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Want to create buzz around your brand, build trust with your audience, and add tons of fresh names to your email list – all at the same time? Create an ebook. This type of content is a winner for marketing your business. The trick, however, is to keep the content inside the ebook totally free of sales pitches and chock-full of value. It needs to reach must-read status for your audience to want to pull the trigger and trade their details in exchange for a download. Sounds good? If so, let’s get into why ebooks are so awesome for business marketing, plus five rules to follow when creating your ultimate lead magnet. Why Create an Ebook for Your Business Marketing? Ebooks are valuable for your marketing because they don’t look like marketing at all. If you do it right, your ebooks should provide nothing but relentless value in the form of expert, informative, useful content – without selling or pitching anything. That, right there, is their draw for your audience. They get tons of value in exchange for nothing more than their name and email address. It’s not a hard trade, and it will pay off for you in spades because your list will grow by leaps and bounds. (And, as we all know, your email list is a powerful tool.) Another huge plus: Ebooks are relatively inexpensive to produce. All you need is some well-written content and basic design to pull it all together. Here’s an example of an ebook from Jeff Goins on growing your blogging audience: It’s a 55-page PDF that includes a table of contents, 3 parts, an introduction, and a conclusion. Pretty cool, right? Yours doesn’t have to be nearly this long, either. You can create an ebook as short as 3-5 pages, as long as the information inside is super valuable. Feeling excited yet? Follow these 5 rules to create an ebook, and walk away with an awesome lead magnet that will draw in tons of interest and new subscribers to your list. How to Create an Ebook: 5 Basic Rules 1. Find the Right Topic, Tone, and Style If you want to create a desirable ebook, you have to begin the process with the right topic in hand. After that’s accomplished, you need to write the ebook with a tone and style that’s consistent with your brand voice. How to Find the Right Ebook Topic When I say the right topic, I mean one that your readers will eagerly look forward to reading. It’s one they want to know about, have questions about, and one for which you can provide concrete, valuable answers. That’s why, before you start on your ebook, topic research is essential. Here are a few tips to begin: Search for industry hashtags on social media and look to see what people are talking about. Follow conversations and find the questions people are asking. Could you answer topically related ones in your ebook? Search for industry keywords on BuzzSumo and see what major topics come up over and over in top-shared posts. Look for knowledge gaps you can fill with your ebook content. Look at your own blog posts for inspiration. Which topics are most-shared? Which ones get the most follow-up questions and comments? You could potentially create an ebook that dives deeper into these subjects. Consider common customer problems you hear about regularly and write an ebook that helps solve them. [bctt tweet=”Before you start on your ebook, the first step you should do is topic research. Here are a few tips in finding the right topic for your next ebook. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”] How to Ensure Your Ebook Tone and Style Are Consistent with Your Brand AND Non-Salesy When creating ebooks, consistency is key. If the writing style and tone of your ebook content differs from your brand style and tone, it will be glaring to readers. That disconnect makes for a disjointed experience with your brand, which you never want. To keep the writing style and tone on-brand, ensure you/your writers are familiar with: Your brand style guide (Don’t have one? This how-to from 99designs is a good primer) Your blog posts Any other materials that effectively showcase your communication style For a good example of a brand with a consistent style across their content and communications, check out our post on Panera Bread’s content marketing. Image: Mitre Agency After you (or your writer) have a clear idea on your brand tone and style for writing your ebook, you need to turn your attention to non-salesy writing. The purpose of your ebook is NOT to sell your brand, products, or services. Its only purpose should be to hand your reader tangible value in the form of useful information. That’s it. To avoid salesy language: Keep your focus on the reader, not on your brand. Think about what the reader wants/needs to know to fully understand the topic you’re covering. Answer questions you encountered in your topic research. Provide your unique expertise on the topic. 2. Include Premium Content To create a must-have ebook, it needs to include premium content. That means: You haven’t written about the topic elsewhere, like on your blog, where readers can easily access it. If you have written about it before, you haven’t covered the topic in a deep way. The topic requires research to provide a full picture. In other words, premium content needs to be exclusive, exhaustive, and the highest quality possible. It needs research and your best writing. The main reason premium content in your ebook is necessary, though, is because it builds trust with your readers. When you offer such a valuable resource for free (in exchange for their name and email address), your reputation and authority will grow by extension. That’s why an ebook is so valuable to you as a marketing tool. Great example: Brian Dean of Backlinko started offering “content upgrades” (A.K.A. premium content) to his blog readers in exchange for their email. In this way, … Read more

Is The Dress Blue and Black or White and Gold? How It Went Viral

December 31, 2020March 11, 2015 by Adam Oakley

If you are less interested in the way in which your brain perceives colors and more determined to find out how a picture of a dress had the power to break the Internet and fuel one of the hottest debates of the year, chances are that you are also wondering why #TheDress made history this month. The dress that managed to go viral online is a chameleonic product in its own right: some think it’s blue and black; others swear it’s actually white and gold (while more than a few debaters label it as an eye sore regardless of its color and end this discussion without any further ado). #TheDress Debate: What’s The Real Science Here? The science behind this controversy provides a logical explanation for this weird phenomenon: the human brain has been trained to focus on the actual relationship created between colors, and not just the hues themselves. This hypothesis, introduced by Beau Lotto, a reputable professor of neuroscience from the University College London and cited by BBC in a recent article, allows us to reach the conclusion that people interpret the chromatics of the dress differently simply because they focus on different aspects; some pay more attention to the actual colors of the dress, while others “decode” the hues based on the background light or the shade of their very own computer monitor. Defining the Color or Virality Long story short, #TheDress debate made you laugh, made you raise an eyebrow or made you schedule an appointment with a local ophthalmologist. Science may be able to explain why people see this dress in different color combos, but how could one justify the virality of the picture that started and fueled the most ample social media conversation at an incredible speed, becoming the number one trending topic in the United States overnight? 3 Reasons Why #TheDress Became America’s Favorite Conversation Starter How did this controversial (and in reality, awfully plain) dress manage to simultaneously gather more than 670,000 people on Buzzfeed, convince 900,000 visitors to take a poll and give no less than 10 million people at least one good reason to read the entire post? Here are a few plausible reasons why the blue and black/white and gold dress has succeeded in creating quite a stir worldwide. We All Like to Paint a Pretty Picture in the Colors of Controversy. We all love mysteries and strange phenomena that defy our logic. Moreover, we appreciate one-of-a-kind topics with a peculiar novelty factor that feeds our curiosity. Undoubtedly, the dress debate has stayed in the public eye for quite some time now due to its ability to bring people together and make them question an otherwise insignificant aspect of their mundane existence. People Tend to Share Positive Stories. A recent article published by CNN highlights another important reason that somewhat justifies the ever-growing popularity of the chameleonic dress. Readers are always fond of positive stories that make them giggle, laugh or shed a tear (of joy). Tired of shocking “hard news” and the drama associated with their own daily lives, they turn to the simplest forms of entertainment that evoke constructive emotions for a change. Pictures of “the dress” may have made you frown or experience frustration for a few seconds, but at the end of the day they have also given you the opportunity to start a relaxing conversation with your loved ones and get your daily worries off your mind. All in all, this is what viral content actually does: it sits people down, helps them unwind and gives them something to talk about. The Dress Debate Has All the Main Attributes of a Grand Viral Hit. Unique, unplanned and unpolished, the pictures of the black and blue (or white and gold) dress still have all the elements of a major viral hit. According to Neetzan Zimmerman, the well-known viral content expert, #TheDress defines the concept of Viral Singularity. In other words, it is divisive, dumb and extremely sharable. It responds to the readers’ need for fun, uncomplicated yet somewhat challenging content that would undoubtedly make a great party conversation starter. During the dullest event, instead of chatting about the weather, you could always try to find out how your new interlocutor perceives the colors of this iconic dress. As Long As It’s Viral, It Doesn’t Really Matter If It’s Black or White Aside from giving us the impression that we may be colorblind, #TheDress debate has also inspired another moment of revelation: the one in which you realize that crafting viral content is not as difficult as people say it is. Here are the main ingredients that you should combine to take your story to a whole new level: a fun, uncomplicated piece of information generating positive emotions, a little bit of controversy created around your story and a new perspective that will make your readers question everything they have ever read, heard or spoken. When you craft content that encourages people to quarrel, take sides and share their (unsolicited) opinion via social networks you are automatically prepping yourself for success, while getting ready to step into the spotlight. Image source: yibada.com