Content Strategy - Express Writers

Cracking the Strategy Code: What is a Content Calendar?

June 6, 2023 by Adam Oakley

Whether you are a small business just getting started or have been dabbling in SEO for a while, one term you might have come across is “content strategy.” Still, the content calendar is the more important and often unspoken strategy you need to know. What is a content calendar, and what makes it the key to unlocking your best strategy results? Is it just adding blog titles to a calendar on Google and remembering to post them on time? Well, yes, but also no. A content calendar is a key that unlocks that door to limitless possibilities for your content. From boosting social media interaction to improving your blog’s readability and call-to-action performance, you need to know how to build a content calendar that takes you to the top. Top of your industry, niche, and most importantly, the SERPs. Yes, a content calendar can help you get there – if you are creating the right type of content calendar. How to Create a Content Calendar No No’s – Hint, You Don’t Add Titles to Google Calendar While titles and a strategic plan for posting your content are part of the secret sauce that goes into a content calendar, it is far from the final ingredient. A content calendar builds out a title, but also sprinkles in focus keywords, information to include, links to use, and photo ideas, and then picks strategic dates to post. Most importantly, a content calendar is not limited to blogs. More companies are using content calendars for social media too – after all, aren’t social media posts essential pieces of content? A content calendar can also help you plan out your website content. You don’t have to write it all at once, and you can strategically release web page content while you release blogs or corresponding social media posts to help bring it all together. According to one survey, 64% of successful companies have a content strategy with a content calendar. That’s a big piece of the pie that you’re missing out on if you are not also utilizing similar tools in your strategy. What are the Benefits of a Content Calendar? Content calendars make planning your content and writing content more manageable. You can improve team collaboration, boost productivity, and organize yourself for a more competitive edge. Calendars Help You Visualize the Strategy as a Whole It does not matter how big your content creation team is, whether it is just you or you have a few members helping, it is easy to get lost in the creation process if you don’t know what a priority is and have an accurate bird’s eye view of your content coming up. With a content calendar, you can plan out your blog posts, social media posts, and even YouTube community posts, all ahead of time – whether monthly or weekly, depending on the demands of your niche. For example, you run a YouTube channel with a blog. You typically post a single video per week, then a corresponding blog post with it to summarize for the audience. Producing a single YouTube video with a blog, then promoting both, requires a few steps. You not only need to write a script for your video, but line up editing (or secure time in your calendar to edit), create a thumbnail, prepare the description, write up the blog post, capture still images for your blog from the video recording, and publish social media posts to promote your latest video and blog release. Those are a lot of steps to get done, and nothing you want to rush. By knowing what content is coming up for the next week, you can work on outsourcing what you need while staying ahead of the calendar. You Become More Predictable for Your Readers and Consistent in Quality When organized, your content no longer appears scrambled or haphazardly put together. You are posting regularly, on schedule, which also gives your readers, followers, or viewers more predictability. If they know that you release a new podcast every Friday or a new blog upload on Mondays, they will wait for an alert to catch it. Saves You Time and Energy When your content creation is moving along like a well-oiled machine, you save time and energy that you can spend elsewhere on your business. Think about it – if you are working a week ahead, having next week’s blog already in production and a team working on next month’s social media posts, you can focus your time on growth, look for new opportunities, and not worry about finding time to squeeze in your content creation. Even if you are trying to do the creation yourself, you now have a plan laid out. You know when the final product is due, and what steps you need to complete to finish it, and you can plan ahead. How to Create a Content Calendar A content calendar or editorial calendar is unique to each business or brand. However, there are some elements you can use to create a content calendar regardless of your niche. Keyword Research – You should always center your ideas around keyword opportunities. Today, the SERPs are incredibly competitive, so you need to look for high-volume keywords, but low-competition and still worthwhile to use in your content to grab the attention of potential searchers. Doing keyword research around your niche will help you generate ideas for your content calendar. Research What’s Trending – Following trends in your niche is critical. It doesn’t matter if you are a local dog groomer or big SaaS corporation, you need to know what is trending in your industry and follow along. Tools such as BuzzSumo can help you see what is trending in your niche. Come Up with Content Titles/Topics/Ideas – After creating a list of keyword opportunities for your business, now comes the time to generate your ideas. Whether it is creating a web page to fulfill a keyword opportunity, adding some blogs, or even creating videos that will rank … Read more

Steps for Creating Content that Connects with Your Audience

May 16, 2023 by Korilynn V.

Content that connects with your audience is worth every penny. Having a single piece of content that speaks to your desired audience, and connecting to your audiences meaningfully, often results in a higher ROI. It is essential, whether you are a small business or large corporation, that you know how to connect with your audience emotionally, and often that requires a special type of writer to do so. Not just anyone can connect; simply putting words onto virtual paper will not do the job. Instead, you need to know what your audience needs, their pain points, their reasons for seeking out your business, and when to offer help – timing is crucial here. Today, we will review a few ways to create content that makes a genuine connection and how to implement it into your content strategy for blogs, web pages, and even social media posts. Is Written Content Relevant for Today’s Audience? The age of YouTube has certainly changed how we all interact with search engines, and often we opt for a video over a blog to learn about something, but that is not the majority. Written content, specifically blogs, is still in high demand. 77% of internet users read blogs, according to Social Media Today – so obviously, there’s a market. 7 Steps Every Company Needs to Use to Create Content that Connects with the Right Audience Creating and maintaining a connection with your audience is crucial. Whether your target audience is B2B or B2C, you have a target audience, and you need content that speaks to them. So, how do you do that when your “audience pool” masses in the thousands? Easy…by following these key steps. 1. Embrace Empathy The pandemic has certainly taught us a lot and restructured the way a lot of us communicate or even work today. However, one of the biggest lessons from the pandemic was empathy. Thinking about your audience using compassion and your emotional intelligence is critical in your content. 2. Write As You Talk You want to connect to the person reading your content. What is a better way to connect than conversation? For some reason, being conversational in blogs and even landing page content got a bad rap somewhere but shouldn’t have. Being conversational is precisely what a reader needs to feel as though you are speaking to them. The robotic, encyclopedic text has its uses but rarely is that content that is designed to create a connection. Instead, that is created to educate. Social media posts, blogs, and sales pages need to connect to the reader, or the conversions will not happen. So, as you write out your text, think of how you would talk to a friend, explain something to a colleague, and use that as your muse when crafting your “voice” within the text. 3. Use Media Words are powerful, but so too is imagery. You want to use different media types to help you connect with your reader. While the personal tone is equally important, include a picture of yourself in your bio on each blog, that way, the reader can picture who they are talking to. 4. Picture the Ideal Reader Just like you want your reader to picture you, you need to picture them. You know your target audience – if you don’t, that’s an entirely different topic – so now you can picture one member from your target audience as you create your content. Pick them from the crowd, and pretend you are conversing with them. When you picture yourself talking to a real person, rather than them reading what you have written, it helps you be more conversational. You aren’t lecturing a group of students at the university – just an intimate conversation between two individuals. 5. Put Yourself in the Reader’s Shoes – Address their Needs You can’t truly connect if you aren’t in your reader’s shoes. What are their dreams? Fears? You need to know their pain points to bring them up in the copy and almost catch them off guard. You want the reader to sit there thinking, “Yes! That is me!” and not just going through the motions. The more connected they are to the writing, the more likely they are to take action you request at the end of the page – whether it is a contact, submitting email addresses, etc. You need to show that you can relate to their problem, then strike with the solution. If you don’t build up a relationship on mutual understanding first, you cannot offer a mutually acceptable solution. Often, copywriters will come out of the gates swinging. They don’t hit that pain point and instead just start talking about the solution while touching here and there on the issue it solves. That doesn’t grab a reader and keep them hanging on for the ride. Instead, they see that you have a solution, make up their assumptions, and bounce. So, instead, build up the rapport first, then offer your solution. Take the reader through your journey, showing your understanding and relativeness, then add your solution and call to action. If you offer the goods right from the start, you will lose the chance to build a relationship with your reader first. 6. Work with the Emotions You Want to Pique in Your Reader Picture your reader’s emotions as they go through your text. If you aren’t getting a reader to laugh at a joke, ask yourself if you would have laughed. Would you cry at the same instance of emotion? Would you yearn for the same solution as profoundly as they? Allow yourself to feel something, express it, and create that connection. You may be surprised at how willing people are to reach out to you when you occasionally open yourself up in your content, whether it is sharing a personal experience, a humbling moment, etc. 7. Avoid Third Person The third-person POV does not connect with the reader. After all, if you read something in a third-person point-of-view, … Read more

How Creating a Holiday Content Marketing Strategy Helps Your Business

November 1, 2022 by Alicia Oakley

Holiday Content Marketing Strategy Header

The holiday season is a special time of year. Many of us spend time with friends and family, give thanks for the things we have, and share gifts with our loved ones. But when you run a business, the holiday season is likely the busiest time of the year for you. Planning in advance and creating a holiday content marketing strategy can help take some of the stress out of the holiday season for your business. Quality holiday content marketing can help you connect with your audience, appeal to new customers, and increase your brand awareness. If you are unsure where to begin with your holiday content, this guide can help you get started. What Are the Benefits of Having a Holiday Content Marketing Strategy? If you’ve never put together a holiday content strategy or tracked the analytics of your holiday content, you might not realize that there are a number of benefits for your business. Here are a few: 1. Increases Demand for Your Products and Services Consumers spend more during the holiday season than any other time of year. This naturally leads to an increased demand for products and services. With consumers in an active buying stage, this is an ideal time to roll out time-sensitive offers. These deals also work well with Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions and give customers an increased sense of urgency or a fear of missing out (FOMO). With the right holiday content marketing strategy, you can showcase high-value products and cater to customers who are ready to buy or could be ready more quickly. 2. Improves Brand Awareness With clever, memorable content during the holidays, you can give your brand awareness a boost. By creating customer-focused, engaging content for each holiday between Halloween and New Year’s Day, you can find a new target audience and build your loyal following. 3. Unleashes Your Creativity Customers respond best to creative, relatable content. The holiday season is the perfect time of year to show off the more personable side of your business. This type of content presents the chance to add some fun to your brand image. While you might not use this relaxed type of content any other time of year, the holidays give you more freedom to try new strategies and new content types. The addition of personality may earn you new customers and brand fans. So, don’t be afraid to take some risks. With so much holiday content out there, you don’t want to get lost in uninspired content. 4. Grows Your Business With a creative holiday content marketing strategy, you can potentially attract and retain new customers. This makes the holiday season the ideal time for business growth. In addition, keep an eye on the performance of your content during the holiday season and then implement some of the strategies that perform well in other parts of the year. This will be especially important if you discover a new strategy for your content. 5. Offers Opportunities for New Product Launches The holiday season gives many businesses the unique opportunity to release new products and services. That’s why you’ll often see big tech innovations come out near the holidays. Plus, many consumers enjoy holiday-themed products. If this is something your business can offer, consider releasing some limited-time products. Promote these new products on social media and through your other holiday content. Customers who are drawn in by your fresh products might be enticed to stay and buy other non-holiday products. You’ll find this is true if the new product performs well for them. 12 Content Marketing Strategies to Try During the Holiday Season Since most folks celebrate something during the winter holiday season, not having a content strategy for the holidays really isn’t an option. Take advantage of the buzz and popularity with a few different strategies. Here are 12 specific actions you can take to improve your holiday-themed content. 1. Start Early You might still feel the lingering heat of the summer, even if the leaves have already started changing color. No matter what season it is, you can never start planning too early for your holiday content. Do some market research to see what people are interested in this year, check out your competition’s content, you can even start planting hints of your upcoming content months in advance. It’s important to carve out plenty of time to craft creative, engaging content that will help you stand out from your competition, especially if your sales pick up in Q4. 2. Capitalize on Black Friday and Cyber Monday Consumers and businesses have long been conditioned to expect great deals and compelling offers during the holiday season. If it’s difficult for you to give customers a significant discount, think of a way to add value to your products or services. For example, if you are a B2B business, you could offer a free consultation with the purchase of a corresponding service. Use the first tip and start teasing your Black Friday/Cyber Monday offers in advance through email marketing. This will build anticipation. Then make your deal even more enticing by offering it for a limited time. It’s a great idea to include a countdown timer on the offer page to increase the FOMO. You could even take the opposite route like outdoor brand REI did with its #OptOutside campaign. It closed all its stores on Black Friday and encouraged people to head outside. Even though it was a controversial choice, it got people talking about the brand and made them a little more human. 3. Be Inclusive While the holiday season is packed full of traditions, you should consider moving beyond the norm to be more inclusive with your content. Many customers will quickly turn away from a brand if they feel its messaging excludes certain groups. Target did a great job of creating inclusive content with its 2021 holiday ad. To be more inclusive with your holiday content, consider: Staying neutral: Instead of focusing on and naming specific holidays, focus your … Read more

How to Build a Strong Digital Content Strategy in 2022 & Beyond

January 18, 2024January 19, 2021 by Alicia Oakley

How to Build a Strong Digital Content Strategy in 2019 & Beyond

Content alone will do nothing to improve your marketing results. (But you know that.) Pushing out content with no direction, no strategy, no purpose, no goals, and no targeted audience will just end up wasting time and money – even if your content is beyond incredible! So, that begs the question – What does your content need behind it to truly have an impact on your audience, bottom line, and web presence? What does your content need behind it to work well in a post-pandemic world? You guessed it: a digital content strategy. ? I repeat: To work, your content needs some kind of digital content strategy in place. Without that solid foundation, your blog posts, articles, ebooks, web pages, guest blogs, and more will go to waste. Yes, it’s a lot of extra effort. You’ll need to put in time and money to get a strategy crafted and set up. But… it’s worth it. Why? As you’ll soon see, the numbers don’t lie. A digital content strategy is essential to any content marketing endeavor. It’s what differentiates the successful from the unsuccessful. Plus, you can bet your bottom dollar your competitor has a strategy, especially that brand with the content you’re constantly jealous over. ? Now that you understand that a digital content strategy is 1000% necessary, let’s dig into a clear definition of what it entails. Then we’ll jump straight to a master plan for building your own profitable digital content strategy. Ready? The 6-Step Master Plan to Building a Profitable Digital Content Strategy 1. Understand the Key Fundamentals and Foundations of Digital Content Strategy Know Your Content Goals Know Your Content Differentiation Factor (CDF) Know Your Topic Area(s) 2. Understand Your Audience Do Audience Research Create Audience Personas for Your Content Strategy 3. Know How SEO Fits into a Digital Content Strategy Research Targeted Keywords Your Ideal Buyer Is Searching 4. Build and Solidify Your Online Authority on Your Website 5. Create Content the Right Way Optimize Your Content with Keywords Find a Workflow that Works Map Your Audience Persona to the Marketing Lifecycle Map Content Topics to Your Content Goals Guest Blog Strategically 6. Set Up Processes to Manage & Maintain Your Content Budget for Your Major Content Activities Promote Your Content Maintain Your Digital Content Strategy What Is a Digital Content Strategy? & What Is It Worth? The simplest way to think of a digital content strategy is to imagine it as the engine of a car. The car represents your content marketing. The engine that drives your content marketing is the digital content strategy. It moves your content marketing forward, pushing it in the right direction. It gives your content its power and impact. ? Last but certainly not least, the digital strategy gives your content a purpose – and gives YOU a way to reach ROI. Without a strategy, your content will remain stuck in the mud. And you’ll end up with a ton of unwanted facepalm moments. Source: GIPHY The digital content strategy is also a lot like a map. It tells you the direction to take your content to best appeal to your ideal audience, so you always know how to get to ROI. This includes: Where to publish content How often to publish Where to share/promote/distribute it The style/voice to use in your content The audience niche you’re writing to Your content budget Your topic areas and target keywords And more! Marketers who forge ahead without a strategy are literally traveling without a map. It’s no wonder they end up lost more often than not. This is what the numbers say about using a digital content strategy for your content marketing: Without a strategy, you’re paddling upstream. According to CMI’s 2021 B2B Content Marketing Report, 63% of marketers blamed “content creation challenges” for their organization’s lack of success in the past 12 months. (Conversely, with a strategy in place, you take the guesswork out of content creation.) Another 51% said they had general “strategy issues.” (Correctly done, a digital strategy should work seamlessly, on repeat.) 79% of content marketers have a digital content strategy in place, either documented or undocumented. 17% don’t have one, but plan to create one within the year. Only 4% have no strategy with zero plans to create one in the future. (That says a lot about the importance marketers place on strategy, even if their grasp on strategy is shaky.) Some of the benefits of a documented digital content strategy: It aligns your team around your mission/goals. It helps you figure out which types of content to develop. It keeps your team focused on priorities. It helps you allocate resources for better results. It clarifies your target audience(s). And of course… it helps you actually measure and see PROFITS and growth. Time and again, when marketers implement a strategy (or tweak the one they have for the better), their content improves. And, when their content improves, their marketing improves as a whole. ♥ Source: CMI The 6 Essential Steps to Build a Digital Content Strategy How do you build a digital content strategy that gets results? There are 6 steps to putting all the pieces of this framework in place. Let’s take a look at how it all comes together. 1. Understand the Key Fundamentals and Foundations of Digital Content Strategy You can’t build your digital content strategy without these key fundamentals. Start here and get these solid before you move forward. A. Know Your Content Goals What do you hope to gain from content marketing? These are your content goals, and they should drive your entire content strategy. Identify goals first before you do anything else. B. Know Your Content Differentiation Factor (CDF) Before you can assemble the other pieces of your strategy, you have to have one key fundamental in hand. I call this your Content Differentiation Factor, or CDF for short. This factor is what separates you or your client’s brand from the billions of others out there on the internet. It answers … Read more

Winning Online, Consistently: Your 6-Point Brand Ecosystem for Today & Tomorrow

June 18, 2024November 23, 2020 by Julia McCoy

Your brand is a beanstalk. ? If you want it to reach the clouds, you must prepare your garden wisely. There’s a lot of chatter out there in marketing when it comes to branding. It seems that branding is essential in business. Without it, you have no hope of standing out. Good branding is a key to success, but “build your brand” is bad advice. Why? Take a moment to make a list of what it takes to “build a brand.” If you’re like most people, you’ll probably include things like: Tagline and logo Colors Content topic clusters Your USP Maybe even market positioning Figure all that out and you’ve got a brand, which equals success. Right? Wrong. Brands fail all the time – even good ones. Hammering out the details of your brand is only one part of the equation, but it’s one that entrepreneurs often focus on at the expense of the other part. What is that part? The brand ecosystem. It’s comprised of everything your brand needs to grow once you’ve nailed down exactly what your brand is. It looks like this: Let’s explore exactly what it all means. The 6 Key Ingredients Every Brand Ecosystem Needs If your brand is a flower, then the ecosystem is the flower bed. You must take care of that, too, if you want your brand to grow. Here are six things I’ve identified that all successful brands must have in their brand ecosystem. With them, you’ll have a beautiful flower that brightens the days of many. ? 1. Relentless Quality & Authentic Value There’s a reason Google’s evaluator guidelines spend 175 pages discussing what quality and value mean when it comes to content. It’s because quality and value should be the first thing that all content producers strive to deliver – and content is how you build your brand. Consumers overwhelmingly want high-quality, authentic, valuable content that enriches their lives. If you’re not delivering this, they’ll go elsewhere to get it and your brand will wither into obscurity. 2. Solid Maintenance Habits Imagine wearing the same wardrobe for a decade. After a while, you’d start to look a little dated, right? Content is the same way. It’ll start to look a little stale – and Google will notice. To keep your brand fresh, you need to keep your content fresh. That means revisiting and updating it periodically to replace those statistics that are a few years old or those facts that used to be true. I do it every few months with my brands, but once a year is a happy medium that will keep your customers and Google happy. 3. A Commitment Consistency According to HubSpot, content creators that publish 16 or more times each month see their traffic tripled. Consistently creating and publishing content is the key to growing a strong, sturdy trunk. Producing content three times in one week and not again for a month doesn’t cut it. At best, it reflects a lack of commitment. At worst, it damages the trust your readers have in you because they know they can’t rely on you to keep delivering. Don’t be afraid to outsource to expert writers who know their way around a Word doc. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 80 percent of B2C brands do. At this frequency, it’s almost like you’re running a business. Hmmm… Source: HubSpot 4. Rooted Reach If you nail the top three, the next three will flow easily. It happens over time as your vine grows. But your plant must remain rooted in order to thrive. Otherwise, one strong gust of wind could blow it over. Then, you’re starting over from scratch. How do we measure reach? Beyond customers and sales, you’ll know you’ve got the brand ecosystem down when: You’re finding more and better products or services to offer your customers New markets are becoming visible that you’d never considered People are actively seeking out your advice or thought leadership You’ve become more engaged with your community or industry than ever before 5. Decisive Scaling Freelancers wear hard work like a badge of honor, and many of us will take that attitude into business. It’s a good attitude to have, but it’s even better to know when to bring others on board to help you continue to grow. There are a few ways you can do this. Sometimes, handing off parts of a project to a third party is better than trying to DIY something in which you’re not an expert. Bringing on employees can lighten your workload and keep the business running. Contracting and subcontracting. Keeping freelancers in your back pocket is a good way to ensure that you have the firepower and expertise to take on large projects at a moment’s notice. 6. Established Authority Once you’re known in your sphere – via brand reach and content quality – you’ll develop authority. That means people will listen to you when you speak up, you’ll have a better chance to nab the top spots in the SERPs, and you’ll inspire stronger loyalty from your customers. Authority is the foundation of your success, as it’s what will help you sustain your success over time. It’s also what you develop only after you’ve built the other five elements of your brand ecosystem. G.R.O.W. Your Brand Ecosystem with Us! Building a brand? You need a solid brand ecosystem. I’ve shared the six things that every successful brand has in common. But while you’re creating your brand ecosystem, don’t neglect your own. Surround yourself with motivated, likeminded entrepreneurs to share encouragement and real-life experience that works.

Content Is Key: Why Businesses Should Buy Blog Content to Boost Marketing Strategy

January 1, 2021October 20, 2020 by Julia McCoy

So, you want to drive traffic to your business website, generate new leads, and build solid relationships with prospects. Great! Have you tried writing a blog or two? According to the 2020 CMI benchmark findings, 89% of B2B marketers use blog posts in their marketing strategy. But what if you’re not a solid writer? Or you’re not an expert on the topic at hand? What if you simply don’t have time to focus your efforts on writing fresh content? How can you be expected to create current blog posts while maintaining a position of authority and overseeing all the other responsibilities for your business? ? Simple. Invest in and buy blog content. Purchasing content is a great way to keep your website fresh and current while providing meaningful information to your readers. As someone who has written several books, created more than 1,000 blogs, and has pioneered a writing agency in the completion of 30,000 projects in under a decade, I know all about the game of investing in consistent blog content for success. Not all content is created equal, so it’s good to know when and how to buy blog content for your business. Let’s dive in. [bctt tweet=”Purchasing content is a great way to keep your website fresh and current ? while providing meaningful information to your readers. ? Learn when and how to buy blog content for your biz from @JuliaEMcCoy, a veteran expert.” username=””] Why is Blog Content Even Necessary? This year, more than 6 billion daily searches have taken place on Google, with 1.74 billion global websites vying for prospects’ attention. To bring your business to the top of search results, you should optimize your website with information that meets their needs and alleviates their pain points. The best way to do this is through content. And the most effective content is blog posts. ✏ Search engine optimization is extremely important to your marketing success. It’s all about realizing what people are searching for online. By understanding the keywords they’re using to find that information, you can develop content for your website that search engines will recognize. Relevant, meaningful information attracts people who are interested in your offerings. This drives traffic and increases ROI. Blog posts are a great way to generate leads and drive sales for the following reasons: Allow you to target specific keywords: You can develop content based on topics your company specifically wants to address. Or you can research trending phrases. Either way, you’re able to customize your content to meet the particular needs of your audience. Keep your website active: Fresh content lets people know your business is current. This helps build trust and confidence among your prospects. Provide more valuable material: Search engines have more information to analyze when ranking search results. The more content you provide, the more keywords you can use, and the more useful your site can be. This leads to higher rankings. Enable you to link to other pages: By sharing information with other valuable resources, you expand reach, solidify your credibility, and secure a higher position in search results. Blogging is obviously an important aspect of content marketing. It needs to be done well, and it needs to be done right. Which is why you should consider outsourcing this valuable piece of your marketing strategy. Need more guidance on profitable content marketing practices? Check out The Profitable Content Marketer Skills Cheat Sheet to learn 11 skills and 30+ tools every successful marketer should know. 5 Benefits of Buying Blog Content Content is key to the success of your marketing plan. Unfortunately, it takes time and resources to create high quality articles that benefit your SEO. When you buy blog content from a reputable service, you’re sure to amplify your efforts. Here are five reasons you should buy blog content for your website. 1. Saves Time We can all agree that blog content must consist of quality articles. However, it takes time to write content that will generate leads and drive sales. Source The average blog article takes about three hours to complete. Articles involve research, identifying keywords, and following SEO best practices. Then, once they’re written, their impact should be tracked and analyzed. If you’re not able to commit that kind of time to a quality piece, you may wind up with sloppy articles. Poorly written blog posts can actually do more harm than good. Information that offers no value can result in disgruntled readers. This can yield negative results, like blocked emails or poor reviews. To ensure success, buy blog content and leave the writing to the professionals. 2. Saves Money Not only does it take a lot of time to create a blog article. The time it takes for topic research, keyword research, strategizing, analysis, and writing all equates to cost. Someone has to get paid for all that work! ? The average salary for an in-house content writer is nearly $82,000. This doesn’t include taxes, equipment, software, or office space. Source By outsourcing content writing, companies can save significant money. Additionally, when you buy blog content, you’re less likely to need edits or rewrites, which also saves you time and money. Plus, you ensure you’re getting quality articles written by SEO experts who will create effective content that yields results. 3. Increases Productivity There’s only so much a person can do in a day. As we’ve noted, a single blog article takes time. You’ll only be able to produce as much content as your schedule allows. To create the amount of content that would be optimal for marketing success, as they said in Jaws: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” ? When you buy blog content, you’re accessing a large team of writers who can all be working simultaneously to bring you quality blog articles. As a result, you’ll receive more articles more quickly, allowing you to generate leads and satisfy your readers more efficiently and effectively. 4. Improves Online Authority Maybe you’re not the best writer. Perhaps your expertise … Read more

Vanity Metrics Definition: Understanding the Real KPIs to Track Growth Through Content vs. Vanity Metrics

February 7, 2024September 11, 2020 by Adam Oakley

Ah, metrics. Marketers love them – especially when they’re making a project or campaign look good on paper. After all, who doesn’t want glowing numbers to present to their client at the end of the week? But savvy marketers know a secret: not all metrics equal growth. Some of them are even pure vanity. Yep, I’m talking about vanity metrics. What’s the definition of vanity metrics? Well, imagine this: you’re an Instagram influencer with over two million followers – a success any way you measure it. You decide to launch a clothing line to capitalize on your audience of millions. You spend months planning, preparing, networking with photographers, and making everything perfect. At long last, the day comes to launch your line! You’re full of zeal and excitement – your promo posts get thousands of likes! Surely you’ll have hundreds of sales. But two weeks later, you’ve sold a grand total of twenty (20) units, falling way below your goal of 500+. Ouch! What happened? You were tracking numbers that looked good — but told you nothing about what was actually going on. You couldn’t equate it to real growth. That’s the textbook definition of vanity metrics. Learn more about the truth behind vanity metrics — with a real story based on what I just described above — in today’s blog. [bctt tweet=”Learn the truth about vanity metrics – numbers that look good but tell you nothing about what’s going on in terms of real business growth – plus a real ‘reader beware’ story, now on the Write Blog via @juliaemccoy” username=”ExpWriters”] The Definition of Vanity Metrics According to HubSpot, vanity metrics are: “Data … and analytics that are satisfying on paper, but don’t move the needle for your business goals. They offer positive reporting, but no context for future marketing decisions.” We could break that down if we wanted. A simpler definition of vanity metrics from Tim Ferris: “Good for feeling awesome; bad for action.” Vanity metrics are data and numbers that might be interesting, fun, or look good, but they don’t actually help you accomplish anything in your business. [bctt tweet=”Vanity metrics are data and numbers that might be interesting, fun, or look good, but they don’t actually help you accomplish anything in your business. They’re the fool’s gold at the end of the rainbow. ” username=”ExpWriters”] They are fool’s gold – if you’re chasing them, you’re going to get a pile of dirt at the end of the rainbow. Why? At the end of the day, they’re not telling you the whole story. In fact, as we see in the case above with Instagram, vanity metrics don’t tell you anything at all. (It’s a real story, by the way.) Can you spot the vanity metrics she used to make her decisions? Sadly, many Instagram influencers fall victim. Source: Flawless and Brown How to Identify Whether You’re Using Vanity Metrics Vanity metrics are all over the place. They’re the marketing equivalent of those factoid listicles. Neat, possibly inspiring. Utterly useless in most cases. But still wickedly irresistible. Don’t get me wrong: tracking vanity metrics alone isn’t a bad thing. At the end of the day, knowledge is power. However, tracking vanity metrics at the exclusion of actionable metrics can lead you to disaster. The glowing halo they can create around your idea or plans can blind you to the very real red flags or problems that exist – as our Instagram influencer discovered. So, how do we identify which KPI is a vanity metric in the many that we’re tracking? Simple… Ask Yourself: What Business Decisions Can You Make With This Metric? Metrics are meant to do more than tell you about your business. They’re supposed to give you insights on what actions you can take next. By definition, vanity metrics don’t because they don’t tell you anything really useful. Let’s circle back to the Instagram influencer above to illustrate that. On what metrics did the influencer base her business decisions? She used several vanity metrics: Followers Likes Feedback from friends Lots of followers and lots of likes seem like a good thing, right? Sure! And her friends were super jazzed about her new clothing line! But what those metrics didn’t tell us? On closer inspection, a lot. For example, she probably never learned: Who her audience was. Some suggested that her clothing line was off-market for her mostly male audience. (She needed demographics instead of likes and followers.) Her true level of follower engagement. Some marketers commented that her engagement ratio was low for the number of followers she had. (That’s looking at likes per thousand followers.) Anything about the product itself. According to her post, people she sent out promos to didn’t even share her or promote her new line. (The promos to share ratio alone tell us something was wrong with the product.) Anything about the campaign itself. More than a few marketers pointed out that it was badly composed and executed. (Three posts don’t provide enough market data at all.) There were other red flags with the product and campaign that got missed because she was focused on vanity metrics. Source: Jack Appleby. 5 Vanity Metrics in Content and How to Use Them to Your Advantage The Instagram influencer’s experience provides a salient warning against the dangers of vanity KPIs and metrics. Marketers of all stripes can take a lesson or three from it – especially those of us in content creation and marketing. However, figuring out which KPI is a vanity metric is arguably easier when it comes to social media than other forms of content creation or marketing. Part of that is because social media is much more straightforward in many ways. Here are five metrics that are most likely to be a vanity metric when it comes to content, and what you can do instead to capture the most accurate view of your brand’s growth. 1. Page/Post Views Ah, views. We like knowing when something we’ve published is landing in … Read more

How a Content House Sets a Foundation for Consistent ROI (Plus, How to Get Your Own House Started)

June 19, 2024February 19, 2020 by Julia McCoy

You’ve heard it countless times: Content is king. But what if I told you this isn’t true? To explain that further, what if I told you royalty-level content simply isn’t enough to make you win online? No matter how great your content is, it’ll get you nowhere unless you know where to focus when you publish it. Content might be king, but your audience and your place of publishing is what rules the kingdom. And wouldn’t you rather own a castle in a kingdom, rather than wear an empty crown? I call this concept a content house. (I teach this original concept in my book, Practical Content Strategy and Marketing, and in my 6-week educational Content Strategy & Marketing course.) In today’s blog, I’ll give you a sneak peek into my original concept and answer questions including: Why is a content house important? How do I build my own profitable content house? Is there anything to avoid when building my content house? Ready to dive in? Let’s go. ⬇️ [bctt tweet=”@JuliaEMcCoy has a sneak peek on the Write Blog at an original concept from her content strategy course: the content house. Why is a content house important? How do you build your own content house? Learn more ” username=”ExpWriters”] How to Build an ROI Foundation with a Content House (Plus, How to Get Your Own House Started) – Table of Contents What to Avoid When Building Your Content House What Exactly is a Content House? How to Create a Solid Content House in Three Steps 1. The Foundation of Your Content House: Knowing Your Audience and Creating a List of Long-Tail Keywords 2. The Walls of Your Content House: Quality, Consistent Content and Optimized Web Pages 3. The Roof of Your Content House: Measuring Success (And Failure) What to Avoid When Building Your Content House What you shouldn’t do when creating a content house is build it on someone else’s property. Facts here, family. Think of it like real estate. You get a lease on a piece of land and lay the foundation for a house. Slowly, you work on the house until it’s strong and beautiful. You furnish the house to make it unique. But what happens when the landowner decides to end your lease? You guessed it. Your house comes crashing down. All those years of persistent effort to build it boil down to nothing. Today, it’s tempting to focus effort on building a content house on someone else’s property. For instance, there’s social media. Since there are 3.8 billion social media users, why not create a ton of content for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter? Source: We Are Social Or why not focus on guest blogging to gain credibility, leads, and higher ROI for your brand? The answer is the same for all: These platforms don’t belong to you. And since they don’t, you never can be sure they won’t change in the future, leaving you to scramble for another platform to start from scratch. [bctt tweet=”What you shouldn’t do when creating a content house is build it on someone else’s property. #contentstrategy ” username=”ExpWriters”] As an example, consider what happened with HuffPost. In January of 2018, HuffPost announced it would close its contributors’ platform. This came as a shock to the 100,000 writers who owned accounts on HuffPost. As a contributor myself, I lost my HuffPost login overnight. Did I panic? Weep because I lost years of hard work building content on the platform? No. Far from it! My hard work was safe. In fact, Express Writers lost no traffic with the close of my HuffPost contributor account. Why? Because I had a solid content house built on the right platform: my own website. What Exactly is a Content House? Your content house is your presence online. It’s filled with consistent, quality content created to fulfill, enrich, and educate your audience. Of course, your content house needs real estate to rest on. This real estate is your website. You need to have your own domain first, and then to focus on building it up like a house with content your audience can use to improve their lives. When you start with this and treat social media marketing and guest blogging as secondary, you’re on your way to achieving huge ROI for your brand. [bctt tweet=”What is a #contenthouse? It’s your presence online. It’s filled with consistent, quality content created to fulfill, enrich, and educate your audience. #contentstrategy” username=”ExpWriters”] How to Create a Solid Content House in 3 Steps To build a content house, you need to start with your foundation: knowing your audience and researching long-tail keywords. Then, you need build upwards from there, crafting quality content and optimizing your pages with keywords. Finally, attach metrics to your house to track how well it’s doing and find out which elements need to change and what content needs to be updated. Let’s get into each of these steps one by one. 1. The Foundation of Your Content House: Knowing Your Audience and Creating a List of Long-Tail Keywords Before you start writing anything, you need to know who you’re addressing and what you’ll write. Without these two key elements, your content will be flat, generic, and useless. A. Who to Address When Crafting Content The main goal of your content is to enrich people’s lives. Your readers should see you as an authority in your industry, and trust that you have what it takes to solve their problems and help them reach their dreams. The problem is, what are these people’s problems and dreams? If you don’t know your audience on a personal level, it’s impossible to reach out and help them better their lives. So, the first step you should take when building your content house is to find out exactly who your audience is. You can start with a tool like Google Analytics. This tool helps you track your site visitors and gain information such as their age, gender, and location. Next, you want to … Read more

6 Steps to Building a Successful, Profitable, Results-Focused Content Marketing Strategy

June 19, 2024July 3, 2019 by Adam Oakley

I’m often asked the same question – how did Express Writers get where we are today? The journey to becoming a leading content creation and writing agency wasn’t easy. It came with all the sacrifices you’d expect – long hours, lack of sleep, and learning from every ups and downs I encountered. But if I were to point to one thing that made our approach to content marketing so successful, I could sum it up in a single word – strategy. I’d been in the business of creating content for years. However, great content wasn’t enough to get us to a seven-figure status. For that, it required a strategic approach to researching, building, and promoting content that audiences can benefit from. I’ve got an entire book and a comprehensive course about content marketing strategy – but today, I’ll give you a preview in the form of a six-step process you can start implementing right away. 6 Steps to Build Your Winning Content Marketing Strategy 1. Define Strategy and How it Relates to Content Marketing 2. Understand Your Audience and How to Reach Them 3. SEO: Learn It, Master It, Implement It 4. Build Brand Authority (and Use It) 5. Combine Strategy with Content Creation 6. Keep the Momentum with Smart Content Management [bctt tweet=”@JuliaEMcCoy shares the 6 best steps to build your winning #contentmarketingstrategy ” username=”ExpWriters”] 1. Defining Content Marketing Strategy: Framework for Success Content marketing is undoubtedly a must-have in the modern marketer’s toolkit. The numbers don’t lie. Over 90% of B2B marketers use content marketing, and over 85% of B2C marketers call it a key strategy. But in terms of content marketing strategy, also called content strategy for short, we’re talking about a process that begins with planning and extends all the way through management. Content strategy could be thought of as your knowledge base for creating and promoting great content. It involves knowing the following: What is your area of expertise where you can offer the most valuable information? What is your differentiating factor that makes you stand out from other content marketers? Who is the audience you’re trying to reach and what are they looking for? Strategy will help your content get discovered easier, stand out better, and deliver results more efficiently. I’m talking real results – traffic, leads, subscribers, and of course, ROI. [bctt tweet=”Over 90% of B2B marketers use #contentmarketingstrategy, and over 85% of B2C marketers call it a key strategy. – @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”] 2. Who Is Your Audience? How Can You Reach Them? One of the main struggles many content marketers face is something I went through, too. Pumping out blogs every day and sending out emails to everyone on my list – trust me, I’ve been there. It’s a content rat race. Roughly 60% of people find consistency to be one of the hardest parts of content creation. If you want to see more results from each piece of content you publish, make sure you know your audience. The key to knowing others is to know yourself. That isn’t just a philosophical-sounding word salad. It’s the foundation behind building a successful content marketing strategy framework. How does your current audience view you? Where in the marketing lifecycle do most of your audience members land? Remember, today’s “buyer journey” looks a lot different than the funnel of yesteryear. You can’t always predict what stage your buyer will be at. Their footsteps could lead backward, forward, up, down, and all around before they make a final decision. A content marketing strategy is about making sure your content gets to the people who could benefit most from it. They’re out there. They want to learn your knowledge, buy your products, and become ambassadors of your brand. The seven-figure question is, how do you reach them? [bctt tweet=”Roughly 60% of people find consistency to be one of the hardest parts of content creation. If you want more out of each piece of content, make sure you know your audience. – @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”] 3. Understanding SEO: A Cornerstone of Content Marketing and Strategy Content marketing and content strategy are forever intertwined – and search engine optimization (SEO) plays a major role in both. From a strategic perspective, knowing what your target audience is inputting into search engines is a great way to help them find your content. With the right keyword strategy, you can climb search rankings and get more traffic to your content. Good SEO practices involve having the right keywords – plus having them in the right frequency and the right places. There’s an added benefit to understanding SEO. Not only will your content get more views, it will get quality views. People won’t just find it by accident and think “what the heck is this?” They’ll find it and think, “this is just what I was looking for.” [bctt tweet=”With the right keyword strategy, you can climb search rankings and get more traffic. Good SEO practices involve having the right keywords – in the right frequency and the right place. – @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”] 4. Build Authority for Your Content, Brand, and Website The benefit of having good strategy is that people who are looking for your content can find it – and luckily for us content marketers, search engines pick up on that sort of thing. When your content consistently gets good views, repeated engagement, and positive feedback, it gains authority. What does this mean? Your content will be viewed as more trustworthy, and therefore able to rank higher. Authority also means search engines could give you priority in some cases – we don’t fully understand the inner-workings of Google, we do know they prioritize older sites with a lot of credible links. The more great content (backed by strategy) you have, the better you’ll do. I like to explain the concept of building online authority like a content house. The stronger your website is (and remember, you need to build on your house – not someone else’s platform), the better and stronger your presence and house is. With … Read more

Content Strategy Training: What You Need to Know to Succeed In the Industry

June 19, 2024August 14, 2018 by Adam Oakley

Content marketing is exploding as an industry. With 91% of B2Bs using content marketing, the industry itself is set to be worth $412 billion by 2021. This means, of course, that there are no shortage of jobs available in our beautiful industry. Searching “content marketing jobs” near me in Austin Texas alone, I find there are hundreds of jobs available: If you’re in marketing at all, your job will probably cross over in content marketing, heavily. Content marketing is marketing’s future. If you run an agency, ensuring you or your staff know how to implement content marketing for your clients will seriously boost your bottom line. So, how does content strategy fit into this content marketing of today? (In today’s guide, we’re talking all about content strategy training.) Content strategy drives the planning, development, and management of content marketing. Content strategy is, in fact, critical to the underlying success of your content marketing. When you’re lining up what you need to know to serve your clients best in content marketing skillsets, think content strategy. What base knowledge should you have a grasp on, and which topics do you need to dive deeply inside of to get ahead in the industry? If you don’t know what kind of content strategy training you need to succeed, you’re in the right place. You can teach yourself everything you need to know to implement successful content marketing – or have your staff members take this course, and with this knowledge empower them to better serve your client base. How much is that worth? Possibly thousands of dollars. But first things first. Let’s find out what today’s necessary content strategy training topics are. Ready? 13 Content Strategy Training Topics You Need to Succeed According to the Content Marketing Institute (one of the major industry leaders in our beautiful industry), you need a documented strategy for your content and marketing. Why? Because it makes the entire process easier. And what’s more important – more successful. You’ll be more effective, feel more confident in your efforts, and will have zero problems justifying why a specific chunk of your marketing budget (or your company/client’s marketing budget) should go to content marketing. Why is a strategy so vital to the process? Why does strategy = success? It provides a framework to follow – a roadmap to ROI. It leaves out any guesswork. Instead of guessing, it tells you exactly what you need to do to power your content marketing. CMI defines the underlying framework for successful content marketing as 5 principles that are essential for this sturdy foundation: Purpose and goals Audience Story Process Measurement CMI goes into further detail about these principles in their Content Marketing Framework for 2017: These principles are at the heart of every facet of a content strategy. Helpfully, we can map them to the content strategy training topics you should know and understand. They branch out into 13 different areas: Foundations of Content Strategy (purpose and goals) Audience Personas (purpose and goals, audience) Sales Funnel Content Mapping (purpose and goals, audience) Brand Content Style Guidelines (story) Understanding Keywords (audience, story, process) Researching SEO Opportunities (audience, story, process) Creating Keyword Reports (story, process, measurement) Building Authority Online with Content (purpose and goals, audience, story, process) Content Creation and Guest Blogging (audience, story) Content Promotion (audience, process, measurement) Budgeting (process) Creating and Preparing an Editorial Calendar (process) Maintaining Your Content Strategy (process, measurement) Naturally, each and every one of these topics is covered in the Content Strategy & Marketing Course, over 6 modules (check out the course syllabus to see how this shakes out). To give you a general overview of what each module entails, we’ve outlined them below. This book is a useful resource both on its own and as a reference while you’re moving through the course modules. 6 Modules in The Content Strategy & Marketing Course Explained Each module in the course covers the major topics involved in content strategy creation, execution, and maintenance. Here are how the topics divvy up (and what you’ll learn in the process): 1. Module 1 – “Core Foundations of a Practical, ROI-Focused Content Strategy” The course begins with making sure your content strategy is based on core foundations: Your expertise, including content topic areas you can cover with authority Your content differentiation factor (CDF) – What sets you apart from other brands, and how your content can tie in Your content goals – what you hope to achieve with your content marketing You’ll find out why these matter, as well as how to define them for your own content strategy. 2. Module 2 – “A Beginner’s Guide to Audience Persona, Sales Funnel Content Mapping, & Brand Content Style Guidelines” The second module is all about how your audience informs major pieces of your content strategy. That includes: Why and how you should create audience personas as reference tools How to do audience persona creation for existing and new audiences Low-budget ways to research your audience How to map your buyer persona to sales lifecycle stages (and create sales awareness content) How to create a brand content style guidebook that will direct future, audience-based content creation for all your team members 3. Module 3 – “Understanding Keywords, Researching SEO Opportunities, & Creating Keyword Reports” The third module explains in detail how SEO and keywords should tie into your content strategy for higher organic ROI. You’ll learn: Why your overarching content goals need to inform keyword research Why organic search brings in higher ROI than paid search How to discover profitable keywords to target in your content Recommended keyword tools and a comparison of top options How to find long tail keywords for local SEO and geotargeting How to create a keyword report 4. Module 4 – “How to Build Content Cores for an Authority Presence Online” Module 4 dives into why and how you should build your core content – the main assets that will work as authority and trust-builders for your brand. This section covers: How to create a content focus Why you should focus on doing a few things … Read more