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Content Marketing

Brand Showcase: Target’s Copywriting Is on Target

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Brand Showcase: Target’s Copywriting Is on Target

Target. That wonderful, mystical land where one can buy shoes, clothes, novelty tees, movies, Legos, and food when they were simply going in to buy a crafty little graduation card. Target is a place that sucks you in, makes you spend every penny to your name, and you never feel like you wasted a dime. How do they do this? How do they bring in thousands of people a day and convince them to buy what they need and more? Copywriting Tips from Target Let’s take this opportunity to look at Target’s various copywriting and marketing campaigns, as well as taking a little journey through the store to see just what makes us spend all our money there. 1. All The Things! First off, Target tries to appeal to a very wide demographic from Millennials to the Greatest Generation, all while “targeting” the latest group of little ones with cute designs. They have something for everyone in their store and they know that’s what brings in the cash. However, their “something for everyone” isn’t dollar store cheap material; most of Target’s merchandise is very good quality. Many of their clothing items and shoes are even designed specifically for Target by many well-known designers around the world. What can a copywriter take away from this point? Offer something for everyone and you will please a wider audience. Take the time to learn your demographics – you may be surprised by just how diverse your potential customer base is. 2. Epic Lighting and Easy To Find Items. Their content marketing goes beyond just their Internet and mail content – it goes into their store design. The store is one that makes every shopper feel chipper, which helps foster the feeling of needing to purchase everything in sight. The lights are bright and the aisles are laid out in an interesting and easy-to-follow pattern. Because of this, we are all ready to purchase everything we see since we can easily go through the store. This is an incredible lesson for copywriting experts and for web designers. While you most likely will not be focusing on a physical shop, you will be focusing on the website people come to. If it is drab and difficult to navigate, people won’t stay for very long. Follow Target’s example and make your site an easy and fun experience for readers. 3. Creating Memorable Advertisements That Last Forever. Target has some of the greatest ad campaigns and many of these campaigns are ones that we will remember for a long time. For example, everyone remembers the Target dog, especially when it came to the Holiday season. Whenever you saw that dog, you thought of Target. Whenever you saw that dog on an item, you bought it. Their latest ad campaign is called “The Everyday Collection” which features photographs that look like high fashion photo shoots but they incorporated the typical everyday items such as laundry detergent, food, and vitamins. It is very much a typical Target ad campaign filled with witty one-liners, all while advertising their product. Every single marketing campaign is incredible; just look at their 2013 back-to-school campaign and their 2013 Holiday season campaign. The lesson copywriters can learn from this is common sense – create content that will be memorable. After you have begun creating memorable, compelling content, you will start seeing some excellent results! 4. Responding to Controversy. Controversy is never too far these days and it seems just about everyone is right in the middle of one. Target isn’t any different. They’ve had their fair share of controversy from the big security breach pre-Heartbleed to the Terry Richardson controversy. Target always takes adequate steps to ensure that these controversies are dealt with properly by not reacting immediately and thinking over the issue. This may not seem like part of a content marketing strategy, but Target always considers how many customers they will lose if they do not carry out appropriate measures. Instead of sweeping these issues under the carpet, Target deals with them in the open. This is a great lesson for every company to learn. Your copywriting can be great, but it can only go so far; having proper responses to any controversy whether large or small will help keep your business afloat. 5. Making Things Fun and Enjoyable For All. Target is the expert at making their content strategy a fun and enjoyable one. Their commercials are always upbeat or silly, their ad campaigns in the local paper always capture your attention, and they’re just plain ole good at creating successful marketing techniques. Many times, they utilize storytelling in their ads and content, which connects with their customers. This shows every copywriter why it is important to actively engage with your client base and make things fun. Create something that is unique to your company and that people will enjoy. In The End… Use Target as inspiration for how to engage with your customer base and how to have fun with your content strategy. Having fun is a huge element in the majority of Target’s marketing campaign and it sure works like a charm! You’ll start seeing excellent results if you follow some of Target’s great copywriting strategies.    

10 Necessary Skills for Today’s Modern Marketers

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10 Necessary Skills for Today’s Modern Marketers

The world has changed so much. 50-60 years ago, the “complete marketer” could just walk into his or her newspaper and print store, finish editing yesterday’s draft of today’s newsletter or news piece, publish and print, circulate, and that was almost their entire circle for marketing.  Today, 2014 – wow. You might as well say we advance 50 years in a year, with the way online marketing increases in value, assets, tools, structure, and possibilities every single month. There’s the online press release that can be sent to over 200,000 journalists at once via PRWeb; infographics that can be designed, created, shared to go viral; blogs, articles, email campaigns, website content, all your social media platforms like G+, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and oh-so-much-more. Valuable Skills for Modern Marketers With all these valuable tools and structures available, what are the crucial skills that a modern online marketing genius should (or already will) have? Let’s take a look. 1) Adaptability. Adaptability is a key skill that should be displayed by all modern marketers who don’t plan to change their profession anytime soon. Why? Take a look around. The so called complete marketer is now the 21st century version of the Homo Universalis, who basically has a plentitude of intellectual interests and is good at everything. From creating content creation to analyzing web analytics and developing and creating successful social media campaigns, the modern marketer can do it all on time and on a budget. According to the Guardian, one of the biggest challenges that marketers face is poised by technological advancements. However, what doesn’t kill today’s modern marketers makes them stronger. The 21st century men of letters who know online marketing like the palm of their hands are able to adapt to any kind of new situation. Even when they get thrown off their routine by a sneaky algorithm update sent with love by Google, they still manage to get back in the game in no time. Adaptability is one of the most important skills of all times that ensured the survival of the human race. At this point, all modern marketers should put this skill to good use and learn how to explore technological advancements to their best advantage. With so many tools and resources available online, their daily tasks become simpler and less time-consuming. The key is to get familiar with innovations in order to fill their digital skill gap. All in all, a successful marketer is part artist, part scientist. Once these professionals learn how to get closer to a beneficial left brain-right brain balance, their success is guaranteed. HubSpot supports the same idea and introduces a new point of view. According to HubSpot, modern marketers should have mad coding skills. This would help them be on the same page with the nerd that is developing, maintaining and improving websites. To code or not to code?-this is the question. Even though coding skills are not considered an important part of the marketers’ job requirements, they represent a major plus that is always appreciated by employers. Why is it so important for marketers to code like a pro? Here are only a few reasons why understanding code is important: Knowledge Is Power: As a marketer, you have to have full control over the project that you’re working on, and this means that you have to understand the basic structures that bring your blog, website or app to life. Knowledge is power and it also represents a major source of inspiration. Once you get the basics of coding, you can create your own masterpieces (new tools and apps, for instance) that could wow your customers and spread the word about your geniality. Fix Simple Issues on Time: Do you really want to call your website developer every single time you stumble across an itsy bitsy error that can be solved in 2.5 seconds by a pro? The answer is no. Calling an expert just to ask him to resize your pictures or embed a YouTube video is embarrassing and doesn’t make much sense, from a financial standpoint. You can save time and money by learning to do all this on your own. It’s much easier than you may be inclined to think. Gain a Competitive Edge: The online marketing industry is extremely competitive, so why not burry your rivals 6 feet under by simply learning how to code? 2)  Awesome Copywriting Skills. Marketers should be talented writers. But they should also have the highest level of empathy and the ability to write for a certain segment of public. Web content as we know it should be original, informative, educational and entertaining. Therefore, all marketers should be able to create and publish content with their readers in mind. Crafting content pieces without any substance or motivation would be like planting palm trees at the North Pole. All their masterpieces should include powerful calls to action enabling prospects to act in a certain way (buy a product, subscribe for a newsletter, post a comment, test a new service and so on). 3) Superior PR Skills. According to MediaBuzz, if you want to become a successful marketer, killer Public Relations skills are a must-have. As a marketer, you have to interact with clients, staff members, brand evangelists, bloggers, media representatives and more. Your goal is to build solid relationships that will stand the test of time. You use every single opportunity to make new connections and preserve the old ones. In a world in which everybody knows who’s who and only want to work with the cream of the crop, you have to learn how to make a name for yourself, take your company to a whole new level, spread the world about your accomplishments and your competencies and fish for new clients. Obviously, in order to do all this you need killer PR skills, which are an important component of today’s marketing mix. 4) SEO Skills. Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that you can’t live without these days. SEO is just as important … Read more

16 Ways To Get MORE Mileage Out Of Your Web Content

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16 Ways To Get MORE Mileage Out Of Your Web Content

The World’s Largest Webinar happened last Wednesday (#WLW14). Hosted by Hubspot, it featured three awesome leaders from today’s most powerful online platforms: Hubspot, Facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter. We at Express Writers were a part of the lucky 34,000 who attended. Our exclusive recap blog features our notes from the webinar. During the webinar, Russ, Twitter’s speaker, spoke about some ingenious ways to get more mileage out of your web content. He basically described content as if you have “fundamental” pieces like blogs, ebooks, etc. These can be cut up and delivered in bite size pieces to your social media audience and go a LONG way. How Do You Repurpose Web Content? It’s pretty simple, really. It may seem a little daunting at first, but you will find yourself getting more bite size pieces of content quicker than ever before. In the following section, we will talk about the different ways in which you can repurpose your content and get more mileage out of one simple post! How nifty is that? 1. Use Your Email Campaigns. This is often a lost gold mine of information. Russ, Twitter speaker at #WLW14, shared some awesome tips regarding using email campaigns for Twitter. You might not realize it, but those emails can produce some amazing Twitter content! Here are a few ways you can use your email content in this fashion: Cut Up That Newsletter. Instead of telling people to click the link and read a longer blog, give them small pieces of information from your newsletter. You can fashion this by saying, “did you know?” or giving other information that your client base will appreciate. Send Out Tips All Day. An important aspect with Twitter is consistent interaction. Once a tweet has been made, it will be seen for a few minutes before being lost in the myriad of other tweets. Tweet out tips from your long newsletter or blog post. Those bullet points you love so dearly will help a lot when doing this! Always remember TL;DR (Too long; didn’t read) when it comes to content and Twitter. The Twitter universe relies on short tidbits of info, not long drawn out opinions or news. 2. Cut Up E-Books Into Blogs. Give your blog copywriters your ebook — they can easily use that as fodder for more than 5-15 blogs, depending on the length and the topic areas covered in your company ebooks. The sub-sections of an ebook will make excellent blog postings and each post can end by encouraging people to pick up your ebook to learn more. 3. Re-share Older Blogs. SocialMediaToday often retweets blogs published on their site over a week ago. They re-purpose the blog by tweeting it many days after it was published. Consider doing this for your “older” blogs. In Internet-land, a few days old is very old and a week old blog is ancient. If you want to make sure your readers read a specific blog or blogs, retweet, retweet, retweet! 4. For Your Social Media, Get Someone Who Can Speak Social. It’s not easy to write those one-liners that go viral on Twitter – being concise, short and still impactful can be more difficult for some brains. A social media manager is a great investment. That is, someone who knows how to copy write for your social media. For example, a person can take your old blogs and give them a fresh new one-liner for a short Twitter message. These one-liners are what will bring in the Millennials and the Millennials are who will bring in the business for many companies. 5. Create a SlideShare. Many people love slideshows. It gives them the ability to learn bits of information at their speed and is always divided up nicely. This is a great way to highlight the most important parts of your content. This ensures that your readers will read what you want them to. Just make sure you don’t over share on a slide show. Professors did this to us in university and we all hated it, so don’t make their mistake. 6. Make a Whitepaper Post Out of Your Content. Do you want higher-ups to take notice of a content piece your company has published? Craft a Whitepaper. This may be a chance for you to hire a professional, but creating a Whitepaper for your business is a great way to publish content in a more professional setting. It will get you noticed from professional entities and they are more apt to take your company seriously if the content isn’t in blog format. 7. Turn that Long-winded Post Into A Handy Infographic. The Internet really has a hard time sticking with long posts, as we stated above. Millennials use that annoying semi-colon phrase (TL;DR) but it holds a lot of weight when it comes to constructing great online content. Infographics are very popular with many in the web community and are great if you are aiming to get your content viral, according to Quicksprout.com. Don’t worry, you can still write up that long-winded post! Infographics serve as a chance for you to highlight key points that readers might miss if they are reading the long version. These are easier to read for many people and you’ll find those people want more, in-depth information after reading one. (This is where that long-winded post comes in handy.) 8. Lights, Camera, Action: Make A Blog Post A Video Post! Video blogs and posts are all the rage right now. This is a chance to put a face and voice to the business. Videos make readers feel like they are getting a different, more personal experience when they see someone from your company sharing information via video blog (also known as a vlog). You can write up a script from your blog or select a specific aspect of your blog to define. A great example of this is Mashable’s blog series on the Heartbleed bug that affected a huge portion of the Internet. They wrote various articles on different aspects of the bug and attached a video at the bottom discussing what the … Read more

A Blogger’s Kidnapping Prank: When Viral Content Goes Too Far

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A Blogger’s Kidnapping Prank: When Viral Content Goes Too Far

Every company wants to have viral content and some may be willing to do whatever it takes. The question posed is whether or not “whatever it takes” is a good notion to have. Many viral video ads out there are hilarious and have converted into incredible sales for companies, but many question the ethics of some of these ads. Let’s use the example of the Pepsi “Test Drive” ads and discuss if “whatever it takes” should be left to the professionals. Pepsi Max: Test Drive We have all seen this video at some point and it is pretty funny. Jeff Gordon dresses up as someone who is interested in buying a car and “kidnaps” the salesman, taking him on a wild ride. We all laughed at it and loved when Jeff Gordon revealed who he was, but some felt sorry for the poor salesman. Some even wondered what else could have happened to the salesman or other unsafe ways he might have reacted. These concerns led to one blogger saying the video was faked. He said the salesman was an actor and “in on it.” He also stated that Jeff Gordon didn’t really do the driving. The Response In response to this blogger, Ray Wert (a friend of the blogger) decided to get the ultimate revenge. He had his friend kidnapped by Jeff Gordon and they filmed “Test Drive 2” for Pepsi, proving that this wasn’t a hoax. It was, again, funny and especially entertaining watching revenge being enacted on someone. In this case, the blogger thought he was in the taxi of an ex-convict who decides to run from the police when they pull him over. They ended by driving the taxi to a garage filled with Pepsi logos and told the blogger he had been, well, had. Should This Be Left to the Professionals? In short, yes. Pepsi and other companies that have staged these types of pranks have strategies in place. They don’t make the kidnapping public and they do it in a confined area. Just look at how many people it took to pull off the “Test Drive 2” prank. When other companies go about kidnapping, it can cause a negative stir and hurt business. In April 2014, a group decided to film an educational video on child kidnapping and the response of witnesses, according to the Dailydot.com. This left parents enraged when they found out this “prank” had been pulled and it didn’t bode well for the group that performed it. In Australia, five men were arrested for a YouTube kidnapping prank because of an observer calling authorities. It took five months of investigation time to learn what exactly happened before the men were charged with creating a “false belief.” This shows that it takes more than a handful of people to adequately and safely pull off a prank like this; only then do many consider it funny. Take a Lesson from Spock Be logical about doing pranks as a form of advertisement. Leave the hilarious ads to the professionals and stay away from causing extreme negative side effects for your company. Just play it safe and find new ways to launch viral content and bring in customers and readers without possibly breaking laws and angering a lot of people.    

Too Much Content: Could It Happen?

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Too Much Content: Could It Happen?

Short answer: yes. Too much content can actually scare potential clients and readers away. If they have to wade through a pool of different content to get to the meat of your website, they will run away very fast. “When is content considered too much?” you ask. Let’s discuss this and how to avoid publishing or creating overwhelming amounts, and as a bonus give you some ideas on how to use your content to tease readers into wanting more. So, get your thinking caps on and get ready to learn about The Day of Too Much Content. How Do I Know I Have Too Much Content? If you start noticing that you are losing readers and visitors it is a very good indication that your content might be overwhelming. We know that you have spent countless hours preparing your content and we know that is pretty awesome, too. Just because the content is great and has had a lot of preparation does not mean that your customers will like it, though. Less really is more when it comes to content writing. Business2Community suggests self-examination when you start realizing your website is losing readers. We are going to unpack what this means in the following section. 1. It’s a Tough Crowd, Charlie Brown. Just ask any comedian – audiences are hard to please. When you are writing your content, you need to know your audience and what they expect from you. If you aren’t talking their “language” you are going to lose them quickly. If your audience is in the tech world, you shouldn’t write things that aren’t related to that field. If your audience doesn’t know much about tech, don’t write about tech. Simple as that. Too much of the wrong content will hurt your company. 2. Are You Living up to Your Expectations? You have expectations for your company; everyone does, but are you living up to them? If you aren’t, it is time to re-evaluate your content strategy and re-evaluate what you expect from it. You may think you’ll go viral if you post a ton of photos a day on your social media site but instead you realize that your page likes are going down. This means you need to stop sharing so much and start sharing small, impactful photos or updates. Don’t spam people’s newsfeeds. 3. Where is Your Audience Going? Are you sending them to your front page or to a specific landing page? If you’re sending them to your homepage, you should know that they will feel very overwhelmed. Most front pages are packed with information, photos, links, ads, etc. and that gets very confusing and overwhelming. Tweak your landing pages to bring in customers to a specific place. You can use a landing page to give a brief description of your company, encourage people to sign up for updates, and give links to your social media sites. A landing page is crucial to a successful website and company. Tease Audiences into Wanting More If you want to bring in more people, you have to tease them, not overwhelm them. Here are a few ways you can do this and start gaining back your readership. 1. Giveaways. People love getting free stuff and giveaways are a perfect opportunity to build relationships with clients. You can use giveaways to keep your existing clients but you can also use them to bring in more readers and promote your company more. Giving people the ability to get extra entries is one of the ways to do this. Tell people they get one entry simply by commenting but can get X amount more (chose how many entries you’d like to give) by sharing on social media sites and blogging about it. People will do whatever they can if there is a potential to win, so take advantage of that! 2. Spoilers. If you have a big announcement coming up, think about spending a few days/weeks prior by vague tweeting and updating. This will start garnering interest because curiosity is a major part of human consciousness. Occasionally let something “slip” to make people chortle at your “mistake” as they attempt to solve what the big news is. You can even implement giveaways into this and give a prize away if someone guesses the big news (just don’t tell them until you have announced your news!). 3. Ask for Input. Your clients and readers are the best resources to utilize to find out if you post too much content. Send out questionnaires and make a web poll for them to access. You could create an anonymous tip box where people can freely tell you what needs to change. Take their suggestions and start implementing them into your content creation and you will see tremendous growth in visits to your website. Creating client participation is very important to all businesses. Make Changes and Succeed Creating enough content that isn’t overwhelming will save your business and will bring in more clients. Stay away from making common mistakes with your content and begin to be more personal with your readers. This isn’t the time to feel bad that your site isn’t drawing in readers; it is time to take action and make changes!    

7 Essential Ways to Market Your Content

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7 Essential Ways to Market Your Content

Your content is written, but your funds are limited. So what do you do? Clearly you would think that you should start looking for marketers to market your content, but those limited funds come right back up. This is a chance for you to save some money and begin marketing on your own. You can still utilize the services from other companies, but this blog is going to help you learn several nifty ways to market your content without breaking your bank account.  To Market or Not To Market Believe it or not, there are people who wonder if marketing is important. In fact, you might be one of those! We can tell you that marketing is of the utmost importance when it comes to getting your content and product out there. How else will people find you? How else can they learn about your amazing products and services? Just because you have published your content does not mean it stops there. You have to market or else your other efforts will fall flat and you will notice your site going downhill fast. There are many ways in which you can market your content and according to Convince and Convert, some of these are: Emailing employees on an internal network. If you do not have an internal network, you can still do this via Google+ or sending out an employee newsletter. Social Media news release. Traditional news releases. Appearing on local news stations. YouTube demos for apps and other products. These are based on what one company did when creating a nifty app to help parents find the best car seat for their children. The app was successful because of the marketing this company did. Instead of treating the release as the end of the line, they advertised their product as much as they possibly could. While some of their methods may not work for your business, following some of what is listed above will help you. Do not neglect marketing or you will live to regret it. Now, we are sure you are wondering how to market your product, content, and services. We will discuss a few handy tips and products that can help you immensely as you begin your marketing campaign. 1. Great Strategies and Strong Foundations. In order to market your content, you need to have solid content foundation. You cannot just jump into the content marketing game, you need to have a plan and follow it. Strategy is the best way to make sure your content will be noticed. If you do not have a strategy for your content and your content marketing campaigns, you will see it slipping. Once you have a strategy and a strong foundation, you can begin to publish great content and market it wonderfully. A good strategy will help you keep up with your marketing needs, but bad strategy will make you lose more customers and money. Never underestimate the power of great strategy! 2. Street Teams. These have proven to be pretty effective for a lot of groups and companies. Street teams rely on clients to give out information regarding a company or group. These can be done in numerous ways. For example, the International Geek Girl Pen Pal Club (IGGPPC) has several street teams throughout the world. Their teams give out postcards, pins, stickers, pencils, and other things that relate to letter writing. This is a great way for people outside of the IGGPPC friend circle to hear about this group. Because of the street teams, this group has approximately 45,000 site views a month. The street teams combined with social media get the information out there to a huge audience, creating a tremendous success for this year old group. Utilize your social networks and start creating a street team that will be appropriate for your business and content, you’ll be amazed at how much your name will get out there by getting clients to give out information around their towns! 3. Social Media. One of the biggest helps in marketing your own content is social media. It is so important that you have read it a thousand times over, but we keep saying it because a lot of people are ignoring this. Social media is a great marketing technique. A big help in social media is that share or retweet button. When you have an active social media marketing campaign, you will see more and more of your information being shared on the basic social media sites. It is really great when your info starts being shared a lot; it means you are one step closer to going viral, which is absolutely perfect in the world of the Internet and marketing! While Facebook and Twitter are great ways to market, there are some other social media sites and tools that will help you in your marketing campaign. It is time to start thinking outside of the generic social media box. (And do not worry; we will be discussing these awesome tools in this blog!) As we have said and will continue to say, social media is the greatest way to self-market and promote your content and product, as it gets to a wider audience and can be shared many times over. 4. StumbleUpon. This is a great resource for marketing. StumbleUpon users will “stumble upon” various webpages that have been added. They then rank the web page as being something they are interested in or not, which will help StumbleUpon streamline the web pages the user sees most. This is a great opportunity for your marketing campaigns. Firmology gives a few examples of how StumbleUpon can be used in your content marketing: Add a Page. This is an easy way to promote your page. Go to the drop down menu beneath your profile photo and locate the link that is appropriately titled, “add a page.” From there, you can add links to pages from all over your website. Be sure to add applicable tags so users can … Read more

9 Content Strategies to Get Unstuck from a Content Rut

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9 Content Strategies to Get Unstuck from a Content Rut

Are you a new business, a mid-size to large business, or any other size business with a stagnant online marketing campaign? Do you feel your online presence is not really going places yet? Let’s talk about how to get you on the road to success! Here are a few ways to stop stagnating and come up with new, fresh material that will make readers love you: 1. Don’t Stop Your Yapping We’ve all heard someone, somewhere say “stop your yapping” but when it comes to content marketing strategies, if you aren’t yapping you’ll start drowning. Talk about your content with other marketers within your company and start sharing ideas. Someone will have at least one idea, but are too scared to share. Opening up a sharing ground will be a great way to begin getting out of the stagnant content marshland and beginning to create new content strategies that will be the bee’s-knees, the cat’s pajamas, and the best darn content out on the Internet. 2. Spot Those Problem Areas Get your magnifying glass out and get ready to find those problem areas in your content. We know you really love what you have published and you just cannot understand why no one is reacting to your wonderfully crafted content. While it may be amazing and well written, if it is not bringing people in, there is a problem and you have to find it to move on. When you begin to correct the problem area and find a new, impactful way to create content, Moz suggests that you create a small list of goals you would like to accomplish. They urge writers and marketers not to spread themselves too thin when creating these goals. If you are trying to juggle twenty semi-important goals instead of, say, five important ones, you will find yourself burning out quickly and the content will continue to be stagnant and not have any sort of impact whatsoever. Once you have found the problem, it is time to make a strategy. 3. Ender Didn’t Beat the Buggers With Luck He beat them with strategy. If you do not know the story of Ender Wiggin, check out Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. In this story, Ender is chosen to be the leader of humanity in a war against an alien race referred to as “buggers.” Ender had to do a lot of strategizing and learning from his mistakes before he finally beat them at their game. This goes for your content. You can’t just whip something up and expect it to go viral in an instant. If you constantly just write or create stuff and throw it out there without a strategy, you will see your content marketing campaign going stagnant and you will watch as your viewers back away with looks of consternation. Do not let that happen! Start working on that strategy and learn from your mistakes. Your mistakes are your best teaching tool. You will learn what needs to change if you are willing to open up your mind to take those mistakes as learning aids and not failures. 4. Everyone’s a Critic The Internet is a lovely place of opportunity, but can turn into a stinking quagmire of criticism quickly. Many people say, “Avoid the comments!” because this is where most of the horrible criticism is but you should not let that bring you down and stop you from producing great content. Just because someone says it is awful does not mean it really is. Take a lesson from some famous, classic authors. One critic of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn said the book was, “No better in tone than the dime novels which flood the Blood-and-Thunder reading population.” Did that stop him from continuing to write his amazing novels? No! So, do not let those comments stop you from promoting your company and producing your content. However, by avoiding the comments section your content will become stale. Within those horrible comments are some real gems of information. You will be able to learn what people like or dislike and can implement that into your new content strategy. Many authors have used negative reviews as a way to grow their writing, hence becoming national bestsellers. 5. You Do Not Have a T.A.R.D.I.S. So stop acting as if you do. If you spend all day in meetings, chat with coworkers over lunch, and work through your mountain of emails every day, you will find your content is beginning to stink like a disgusting swampy pond. Swat those mosquitoes away and start managing your time. No time machine will be here to take you back and, according to the Doctor, you can’t cross your time stream anyway. Business2Community points out that humans tend to be more alert in the morning. Sure, we all may be groggy without our morning cup of coffee but we also do not have a whole days’ worth of worries and to-dos floating around in our brains. We can think much clearer in the morning and, in fact, many people come up with some of their best ideas in the morning. The first thing to do when you get to work is to carve out about 30 to 45 minutes to sit and think. Start brainstorming and you will see that you come up with some pretty epic ideas! 6. Become a Lurker Lurking is creepy when done in real life but it can be very beneficial on the Internet. We aren’t talking about Facebook stalking, rather going to the different social media sites and looking at what is trending or what articles Buzzfeed and Upworthy are currently posting. Apart from Buzzfeed and Upworthy, HubSpot also suggests listening to new TED talks. TED talks are really interesting and provide amazing inspiration on a variety of topics. Gaining web inspiration is an excellent way to learn new information and to begin to spruce up your content marketing. While you’re at it, how about looking for inspiration from your competitors? We know … Read more

From Boo to Woo: 10 Benefits of Publishing Compelling Content

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From Boo to Woo: 10 Benefits of Publishing Compelling Content

By now, you’ve probably read (skimmed, noticed, you-name-it, we know you saw it…*insert wink face*) all our articles about how to create compelling content and are well on your way to changing your 2014 content strategy. As you make your changes, you are probably wondering if content truly is that important and if you will see any changes within your company. Well, we can tell you that it really is important and you will begin to see amazing changes soon. This article will discuss a few of the benefits you can expect when you begin to publish quality content. First, Let’s Start with a Little Testimony From Our Books. At Express Writers, we truly know what good content means and the power of content that’s not just written for rankings. We upgraded our content campaign in 2013, invested some of our best writers in writing our content campaigns, utilized tools like editorial calendars, planned out seasonal topics, and switched from keyword focus to reader, tone, voice, structure and research. It was a big switch, and it has boosted our return by over 200%. Google ranks our posts better–even though they are NOT centered around keywords; we have received more connections, followers, and subscribers for our published content (from newsletter campaigns to guest blog RSS) than we ever have before; and people like what they read and are more quick to look to our team for their own quality content. It’s the truth: investing in your content–putting real elbow grease and investment–will bring you return. Now that you have read our little testimonial, it is time to look at changes you will see once you start publishing your quality and fascinating content: 1. You Will Make and Save Money Once you begin to write and publish your stellar content for the world to see, you will begin to see something amazing in your budget and bank account. How so? Well, by writing quality content, you will not have to spend an inordinate amount of money on marketing campaigns. This may not seem true at first, especially if you hire a copywriter; but look at it as a whole: Is what you are spending on the copywriter for a handful of pieces more or less, than how much you spent on other forms of continual advertising? You do not have to pay the copywriter continually in order to use their work; once they’ve finished it, it is yours for good. You will find that paying a copywriter to create great copy will save you money in the long run. You don’t have to keep paying a copywriter in order to use the content they created for you and, in fact, you are able to reuse and make your own changes to the material when you are ready for a change. Quality content will bring in more money from sales as your generic advertisement route will not cut it anymore; sales are relying heavily on content marketing. Once you have made the change, you will begin to reap the benefits financially, which is pretty exciting if you ask us! 2. It Saves Time Yes, it does! Once you have your content written, you are done with your content marketing campaign. You do not have to keep going back to make changes to fit with seasons or focus on advertisement campaigns that will not bring in the revenue your business needs. By creating great e-newsletter content, great PRs, web content, and blogs, you will find that you have more time to focus on getting to know your customers and working to keep them as part of your business for a long time. Compelling content saves you from having constantly to change a content strategy that isn’t working anymore. This is why we say quality is of the upmost importance. Don’t slack off. 3. Become the Authority in Your Field By publishing consistent, compelling content, you will be deemed an authority in your product or service area. People are more willing to trust someone who writes consistently and knowledgeably; Google will rank you higher the more you publish with their Google Authorship if your blogs are published frequently and with high quality. You will find more people trusting you as a source over your competitors and this will bring in more customers or more people looking to you for information. You may even find that competitors will come to you as a resource, trying to learn from the compelling content sensei you’ve become. 4. Traffic + Comments Simply put, quality content increases the traffic to your site. People are not going to share your site if it is drab and filled with uninteresting content. Do not spend all your time focusing on whether or not your keywords are perfect; spice up your content and make it readable. Intriguing, readable content will guarantee more shares on social media and this is how the traffic will increase to and around your site. The more traffic, the better ranked you will become. In addition, it will just feel great to look at your statistics and see the traffic numbers rocketing from minimal to viral in a snap! Comments on your blog postings are another great benefit of writing fascinating content. Readers and customers will be more willing to discuss information with a business that is open minded and knowledgeable. 5. Customer Interest and Support Quality, compelling content will help you create a great customer base of interested clientele. According to Social Media Today, customers are more willing to support the business if the business’s content is exciting and from the heart, they will share any information regarding the business with colleagues, family, and friends. People will even share it on their social media platform, helping to increase the audience your business wants to reach. There are many other ways in which gripping content helps with customers such as: Learning More About Your Customers. Customers who are truly interested in your product due to your content will give … Read more

4 Ways To Beat Anyone Else At Content Marketing

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4 Ways To Beat Anyone Else At Content Marketing

Have you read a bunch of fancy articles about how to setup your 2014 content marketing campaign and expertly implemented the lessons you have learned? Now, your problem could be that things seem to be going your way, but it also seems your competitors have read the same posts! Warning bells and flashing lights start going off in your head. If they read the same posts, that means they’ll be just as successful if not more than you. Let the Content Marketing Games Begin Let’s put the brakes on and address this problem! It’s time to get ahead and make some changes to spirit clients away from your competitor—and back to you. Here are four terrific ways you can beat any competitor at the intense game of content marketing. 1. Tell them a Story Humanity has always loved stories. We love to take basic war stories and turn them into fantasy tales, we love making stories out of everything. It may seem like our culture has slowly walked away from storytelling, but Neil Gaiman has proven that wrong by hosting well-attended and popular ghost story nights. Stories are what bind our society together, inspire us, break our hearts, mend those broken hearts, and tell us we are not alone, and we love it. Ryan Hanely says this is the most important way to win with your content marketing. Use this to your advantage. While your competitors have glitzy banners and trendy new webpages, bring it down a notch and connect with your clients on a more personal level. The fact that you are telling them stories will set you apart from everyone else and you will find more and more people becoming clients. 2. Reach those Millennials If you do not make a content marketing strategy that caters to the Millennials, you will lose to your competitors now and in the future. By creating a strategy for this generation, you are also preparing your business for the inevitability of marketing to the generation that is coming up after Millennials. Remember, this generation has only known a world with social media, iDevices, and other amazing forms of technology. According to WishPond’s top 10 content marketing predictions, in order to reach generations that will bring in more money for your business, set up mobile platforms for your site, use more visual marketing and create content in smaller quantities. 3. Create Consistent, Quality Content Search Engine Journal says that you need to have consistent quality content when it comes to content marketing. You already know by now (we hope!) that you need to have quality content in order to rank in search engines and to keep or gain customers. Excellence will help you win and lack of it will make you lose customers; it is as simple as that. Quality comes in the form of great titles, engaging topics, proper internal and external linking, and originality. Get these elements right, and you’ll find more people checking out your site. Now, what about consistency? What do we mean by this? You need to update your site regularly. Don’t update once a week and then suddenly change to updating once a month and then back to once a week. People will lose interest in your site, also those pesky bots will “feel” your site is flimsy and won’t help rank it in searches. Consistency in updates means better ranking in searches. 4. Don’t Be A Slacker and Pay Attention! You still might be thinking that content marketing is not important, but it is vital to every business in 2014. If you want to make it big, you have to have a content campaign, plain and simple. Don’t slack off and create content that is wimpy, don’t ignore the content for glitz and glam, this will only hurt your business and will eventually cause it to become extinct. Take a lesson from the dinosaurs; we are pretty sure they did not appreciate the whole extinction process. Content marketing is immensely popular in campaigns, seize this opportunity to generate more business and become a huge 2014 success. In fact, over 50 percent of marketers have said this is number one priority in 2014 as it brings in more revenue for their company. If you are feeling stuck in the quagmire of content marketing, focus on one aspect and work to perfect it. You’ll find yourself growing in the area of quality content and will soon be able to create an even wider variety. Growing in the area of content marketing will set you apart from you competitors and get you leagues ahead! In Closing We hope you have learned a little more about content marketing and how to stay ahead of your competitors. Using these quick tips will help you beat the competition and gain more leads for your business. You will find that 2014 will be a great year of success for your company and you will be ahead of the game!    

Should I Syndicate My Web Content? How & Why Syndicated Content Can Work For You

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Should I Syndicate My Web Content? How & Why Syndicated Content Can Work For You

If you “speak SEO” (for example, you already know what SERP means), then you’re familiar with on-page and off-page optimization strategies designed to bring you on page 1 in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Google-friendly link building tactics are always a safe bet, enabling engines to catalog you as a trustworthy, popular and relevant source of information that deserves to occupy a privileged position in SERPs. But if you’re really craving for a bigger piece of the pie, you may need to broaden your horizons and rely on different other useful tactics, like content syndication, for instance. Syndicated Content: An Effective Strategy One of the most effective strategies to build credibility and trust while boosting your SEO efforts is to let a third-party webpage publish your content. Yes, that’s right! Called content syndication, this can become your powerful ally in the long run. You have to count on site publishers who are constantly craving for flawless content to be able to pursue your boldest optimization goals. Make no mistake: this is not a classic “sharing is caring” situation. You don’t syndicate your content because you are an altruistic person, but because you know that this is the key to an enhanced online visibility and a better ranking. When Sharing Is Caring (About Yourself & Others) Let’s start with the very beginning: what is content syndication (or syndicated content), and why should you factor in this option? Syndicating content means that you are publishing it on a different website. Your content can be posted on a third-party website in different forms, including snippet, full article, thumbnail or link. Syndication can help you attain your most ambitious promotion goals, by allowing you to increase exposure for your line of products or brand. Web content syndication creates a win-win situation for the original author and for the publisher. What’s in it for the third-party website, you may ask? The source that decides to host your articles satisfies its hunger for premium content, attracts a larger segment of visitors, increases website traffic and manages to stay in the public eye, thanks to your quality web writing. In short, everybody gets what they want and they all live happily ever after in a universe in which they can make the most of search engine-friendly optimization techniques that do not upset Google. Does this mean that content syndication is always a safe bet? Unfortunately, this is not the case. However, as long as you get familiar with the not-so-secret dos and don’ts of syndication, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Discovering and Avoiding the Pitfalls of Content Syndication Let’s start by making one thing crystal clear: syndicated web content is only useful in guest blogs RSS feeds, and press releases. Other than that, syndication like article directories (1 article in 50 directories) is bad news with Google. Duplicate content is another major issue that could stop you from harvesting the fruits of your labor. If you post an article and you let a publisher publish the same exact content piece, you will most likely be forced to deal with a duplicate content problem. According to Search Engine Journal, there are 2 main SEO concerns associated with content syndication: duplicate content penalties and a negative impact on your ranking. a)      Duplicate Content. By now, you should be fully aware of the fact that Google has a zero tolerance for duplicate content. Your refusal to craft stellar, 100% original content can get you out of the game in no time. But when you syndicate your materials, you don’t do it to manipulate search engines. Content syndication lets you promote your content and ultimately your entire business at a higher level, in a cost and time-effective manner. So how do you syndicate your content without making Google’s entire zoo angry? When it comes to content syndication, less is more. Rely on fewer partner sites to distribute your content and choose only the ones that can actually bring your web writing in the attention of a large audience interested in finding products or services just like the ones that you are providing. Moreover, you should include internal links and canonical tags, to let Google know that your website is the original source of the syndicated content. These simple measures should stop you from getting into trouble. b)      An Inferior Ranking. Even if you manage to improve your visibility via content syndication, there is one more threat that you should take into consideration: your content syndication partner could outrank you in search engine results, and this is definitely a risk that you can’t afford to take. It may be a good idea to syndicate your web content and eliminate your RSS feed later on, after you manage to improve your visibility. How can you do it right? According to Search Engine Land, there are 4 main pain and risk-free tactics that could guarantee the success of syndicated content: 1)      Syndicate an Article Synopsis. This is a huge SEO opportunity explored by many respectable news sources, including Business Week, which can teach us how to syndicate content like a pro. A certain story that appeals to a broader audience can be picked up by various high-quality sources. Some of them will not replicate the entire content piece. Instead of copy pasting the original article, they will display only one snippet and also link back to the original source. Obviously, this is great advantage for content creators, because syndication gives them the chance to collect quality links by simply letting reputable websites publish synopses. 2)      Ask Your Publisher to Use the NoIndex Meta Tag. If your publisher agrees to place this meta tag on every single page that he “borrows” from you, this means that you no longer have to worry about duplicate content situations that could attract major penalties. NoIndex meta tag placed on a page is a valuable indicator that lets search engine know that they should not return that particular page in their results. 3)      Create Two Categories of … Read more

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