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#ContentWritingChat Recap: Successful Content Creation and Marketing in 2017 with Don Purdum

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#ContentWritingChat Recap: Successful Content Creation and Marketing in 2017 with Don Purdum

Did you catch our latest #ContentWritingChat over on Twitter? If not, you missed one informative chat! We talked all about successful content creation to help you prepare for the year ahead. If you missed out or you need a refresher on all those amazing tips, this recap is for you! #ContentWritingChat Recap: Successful Content Creation and Marketing in 2017 with Don Purdum Join us for #ContentWritingChat on Tuesday, January 24th at 10 AM CST with @donpurdum! pic.twitter.com/0Rm2dGgGCT — Express Writers (@ExpWriters) January 17, 2017 For this week’s chat, our guest host was Don Purdum. Don is an award-winning blogger and a marketing consultant. He joined us to share his top content creation and marketing tips so you can put them to use for your brand this year. Q1: Why is it vital to have a relevant message for your audience, especially in 2017? It’s so important, now more than ever, to make sure you’re sharing a message that’s relevant to your audience. But do you know why? We’ve got the answer, courtesy of our chat participants! A1: #1 – Relevance determines how they experience you based on their problems, needs, wants or desires. #contentwritingchat — Don Purdum (@donpurdum) January 24, 2017 A1 – #2 If your content is all about you, what incentive does your audience have to read, comment, share or link? #contentwritingchat — Don Purdum (@donpurdum) January 24, 2017 Don said that relevance determines how your audience experiences you based on their problems, needs, wants, or desires. He also brought up a great point that your content shouldn’t be all about you. It needs to provide some sort of incentive to your audience to get them read, comment, share, and link to you. A1) How else will your audience resonate with your message? Connect w/ them & show you understand their needs. #Empathy #ContentWritingChat pic.twitter.com/IW451TXr6b — Jason Schemmel (@JasonSchemmel) January 24, 2017 As Jason said, without a relevant message, your audience won’t resonate with you. You have to develop a connection with them and understand their needs. A1 – Talking to everyone = talking to no one. Know thy audience (like you went to camp together) #ContentWritingChat — James Ellis (@thewarfortalent) January 24, 2017 Jason pointed out that talking to everyone is essentially talking to no one. You aren’t going to attract your ideal audience if you aren’t directly speaking to them and addressing their needs. @ExpWriters A1: Relevancy is the first step in standing out in an already crowded space. If it isn’t relevant, it won’t be read #ContentWritingChat pic.twitter.com/xWE0dEBxCN — Jacob Rouser (@J_Rouser) January 24, 2017 A relevant message is going to help you stand out in an otherwise crowded online space. Jacob said you need to produce a relevant message if you want your content to be read. A1 there’s so much noise & limited ⏰ to consume it all. A clear message helps us to decide if the content is worth our⏰ #contentwritingchat https://t.co/I5UWms6fgM — Savannah Shea Blake (@Vannasana) January 24, 2017 As Savannah said, there’s a lot of noise online today. We have to be wise about what we choose to consume. When you provide a clear message to your audience, it will help them easily decide if your content is right for them and worth their time. A1 Relevant content = winning content! Content that your readers/audience will LOVE, & shake their heads “YES” about! #ContentWritingChat pic.twitter.com/QtdzMkQ1HG — Julia McCoy ? (@JuliaEMcCoy) January 24, 2017 Our CEO, Julia, is spot on with her answer. Relevant content = winning content! You want to create the content your audience will love. Q2: Define giving value in content marketing. How do I know if my audience receives it? We know it’s important to give our audience tremendous value in the content we create, but what does that actually mean? And how can you tell if your audience has received value? Here’s what you need to know: A2 – I define value as solving one problem, meeting one need, or fulfilling one desire, for one person. #contentwritingchat — Don Purdum (@donpurdum) January 24, 2017 A2 – Audience receives it when you start seeing social indicators like large shares or links, comments… #contentwritingchat — Don Purdum (@donpurdum) January 24, 2017 For Don, he feels that providing value is when you can solve a problem your audience is facing or meeting one of their needs. He also said that you can tell your audience has received value when you notice things like social media shares, links to your content, and comments. Value in #contentmarketing means you are giving your audience information that is useful to them in one way or another. #ContentWritingChat — Christoph Trappe (@CTrappe) January 24, 2017 Christoph said that you provide value to your audience when you give them content that is useful in some way. A2 Content value = when you research, write, create the BEST answer to your audience’s questions. ?? You’ll see return. #ContentWritingChat — Julia McCoy ? (@JuliaEMcCoy) January 24, 2017 Julia knows that when you research, write, and create the best answer to your audience’s questions, you provide tremendous value. A2: You provide value by knowing your audience and what they need/want. You know they “got” it when actions happen!#ContentWritingChat https://t.co/7dJLxjhhwq — ThinkSEM (@ThinkSEM) January 24, 2017 Sarah from ThinkSEM said you can provide value to your audience by knowing what they need and want and delivering on it. When you see them taking action, that’s when you know they’ve received the value you aimed to provide. A2 Are you speaking to their needs? Are they giving you their attention? Reading, commenting, buying, coming back? #ContentWritingChat https://t.co/ZCzWVbCTml — Zala Bricelj (@ZalkaB) January 24, 2017 Zala brought up some great questions you can ask yourself to determine if you’re providing value. Are you speaking to the needs of your audience? Are they giving you their attention? Are they actually reading your content, leaving comments, buying what you’re offering, or coming back for more? A2 Engagement tells you. And ultimately conversions. … Read more

#ContentWritingChat Recap: How to Decide What to Write About & Create Great Content Online with Carrie Morgan

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#ContentWritingChat Recap: How to Decide What to Write About & Create Great Content Online with Carrie Morgan

Did you miss #ContentWritingChat this week? There’s no need to worry, friends! We have you covered with a recap of this Tuesday’s chat. If you want to learn how to create great content online, just keep reading! #ContentWritingChat Recap: How to Decide What to Write About & Create Great Content Online with Carrie Morgan Join us for #ContentWritingChat on Tuesday, September 13th at 10 AM CDT with @morgancarrie! pic.twitter.com/ihwkqon3FV — Express Writers (@ExpWriters) September 7, 2016 Our guest host this week was Carrie Morgan. Carrie is an author and an expert when it comes to public relations, content marketing, SEO, and social media. It’s her second time joining us as a guest host (her first #ContentWritingChat hosting session with us was back in February about rising above the noise), and we were thrilled to have her back sharing her expertise! Q1: Share a few qualities that make up outstanding online content. What makes a piece of online content amazing? There are a few specific qualities it needs to have! Check out some of these answers from Tuesday’s chat: A1. Great content doesn’t echo what everyone else is talking about, but dives deeper. THINKS harder. #contentwritingchat — Carrie Morgan (@morgancarrie) September 13, 2016 A1. It reflects a strong understanding of its customer and audience. It’s about them, not you. #contentwritingchat — Carrie Morgan (@morgancarrie) September 13, 2016 As Carrie said, great content doesn’t just echo what everyone else is saying. You need to dive deeper and think harder with the content you’re creating. It needs to be unique in order to stand out from the crowd. She also said it reflects a strong understanding of its customer and audience. The content you create is about them, not you! @writingchat A1: Quality and VALUE. Content that solves the readers problem and is easy to digest will always win out #ContentWritingChat — Keystone Click (@KeystoneClick) September 13, 2016 When creating content, it needs to be high quality and valuable for your audience. Top-notch content that solves a problem your audience is facing will always yield results. A1: Easily readable such as using headlines or lists. People want to be able to find things easily. Also, pictures! #contentwritingchat — Netvantage Marketing (@netvantage) September 13, 2016 Lexie from Netvantage Marketing knows readability is essential when it comes to creating great content online. To make your content readable to visitors of your website, use headlines and format text into lists when appropriate. It makes your content easy to scan. Pictures are great, too! a1: Trustworthy, accuracy, entertaining, intriguing, informative. It depends on your audience, always cater to them. #contentwritingchat — Jobs2Careers (@Jobs2Careers) September 13, 2016 You should always cater to your audience when writing content. You want to be trustworthy, accurate, entertaining, intriguing, and informative depending on what you’re writing. A1 The best online content makes use of visual and emotional storytelling hooks–and leads with value to the audience. #contentwritingchat — Bill Skowronski (@BillSkowronski) September 13, 2016 As Bill said, the best online content makes use of visual and emotional storytelling. It’s the best way to hook your audience and establish a connection with them. A1A: And for the love of all things language, please proofread your content or hire a skilled editor. (Why hello there!) #contentwritingchat — Tara M. Clapper (@irishtara) September 13, 2016 What’s one thing you should never forget when creating content? Proofreading! Make sure you proofread everything before you hit publish. Alternatively, Tara suggests hiring a skilled editor to do the job for you. A1 Don’t put out content that isn’t your best. A few qualities: incredibly useful. Audience-focused. You’re proud of it. #ContentWritingChat — Julia McCoy (@JuliaEMcCoy) September 13, 2016 As Julia said, you should never put out content that isn’t your best. Your audience deserves better than that and you want to make sure you’re proud of the work you’re publishing. When striving to create great online content, you want to be useful and focused on your audience. Q2: How do you figure out what topics to write about online? Considering there are so many things you can write about, it can be hard to choose which topics are right for you. Here are a few tips from the chat: A2. Don’t rely too heavily on online tools – get out and talk to your audience, customers, prospects. #contentwritingchat — Carrie Morgan (@morgancarrie) September 13, 2016 A2. The best bloggers keep an idea tickler file to remember great ideas when they sit down to write. #contentwritingchat — Carrie Morgan (@morgancarrie) September 13, 2016 Carrie feels you shouldn’t rely too heavily on online tools. Instead, the best way to figure out what you should write about is to ask your audience. Ask your current and prospective customers what they’d like to see. You can address their biggest concerns with your content. She also suggests keeping a specific file that holds all of your topic ideas. This makes it easy to refer to when you’re searching for ideas. A2: Use @answerthepublic & @semrush to find qs to answer, categories, competition, and evaluate keywords/topics. #contentwritingchat — Tara M. Clapper (@irishtara) September 13, 2016 Tara knows that online tools can still be handy when it comes to choosing topics to write about. She likes to use Answer the Public and SEMrush to find questions from her audience. She also searches categories and competition and evaluates keywords. A2 A good indicator is knowing what content your audience likes/responds to & then creating your own original pieces. #ContentWritingChat — Father. Food. Fun. (@FatherFoodFun) September 13, 2016 It’s a good idea to keep track of what your audience is responding to. Which of your blog posts have been the most popular so far? That’s good indication of what your audience is interested in. @writingchat A2: Learn what your customers and buyers are reading, what problems they have-use this as a starting place #contentwritingchat — Jacob Rouser (@J_Rouser) September 13, 2016 Jacob’s advice is to learn what your customers and buyers are reading. What problems are they dealing … Read more

How to Balance Automation with Creation The Right Way In Your Social Media

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How to Balance Automation with Creation The Right Way In Your Social Media

Today, one of the greatest challenges facing the content marketer is the balance between automation and creation. With all of the fantastic automated platforms available for use today, it can be tough to determine where, exactly, the line needs to be drawn. Too much automation kills conversation. But too little automation means a lot of monkey work, lost time and excess stress for the busy marketer. So, where’s the happy medium? Your Guide to Effectively Balancing Automation With Creation In A Social Media Strategy Let’s delve in. Why a Mix of Creation with Automation? Create: While automation may make life easier, creation makes life much more fun. Creating content for your social media platforms is a deeply creative, interactive experience; it’s here that brands and individuals alike get to exercise their voices and styles. It’s also here that relationships are built and authority is made. People who take an active role in the creation of their social media content often enjoy closer relationships with followers and fans as well as a more intimate grasp about the state of their social media presence overall. Unfortunately, full creation zaps your time and creates distractions. Push notifications, pings, comments, messages, and re-tweets all demand our attention… if we’re not careful, it’s easy to get pulled away from the important tasks at hand to go engage on Facebook or Twitter. While this may help strengthen relationships in the long run, it’s not ultimately awesome for productivity.  Automate: There are dozens of great reasons to automate your social media posting, like this Buffer resource. In addition to increased traffic and more consistent interaction, automating social media can also help you get more done with less stress. Because social media requires a large time and energy commitment, automating things like posts and promotions can give you a break from the Internet and free up some space for you to worry about other things, which is a huge draw for busy people that need social media-free space to focus. Additionally, automation is often a more efficient way to interact with social media. While it’s possible to lose some of the “human factor” behind social media when you begin to automate, it also makes all of your social media interactions much more deliberate and saves you from getting tied up with trolls or comment chains, which is yet another way to save your precious time. Striking a Balance: 5 Tips for Using Creation and Automation Together As is true with most things, the sweet spot between creation and automation is somewhere in the middle. To lean too much to either side is to sacrifice the benefits of one or both things, so it’s important to walk that middle line. Here are some tips to help you do that: 1. Keep a human eye involved Some marketers would love to turn all of their social media dealings over to automated platforms and never look at them again. Unfortunately, this will only spell trouble for your brand eventually. The reason for this is that, while a large portion of your social media interaction can be automated, it’s pivotal to keep the human touch intact. This keeps social media personal and helps you avoid automated disasters like the one the New England Patriots endured when their automated platform retweeted a racial slur. The takeaway? Feel free to automate, but keep the human oversight intact. 2. If you’re going to reach out, do it personally Some brands do things like send auto-generated messages to people who follow them. While this may seem like an efficient and personalized way to reach out to fans, it’s not. More often than not, this comes off as vacuous and more than a bit creepy, and it may actually turn fans off more than it helps to engage them. Instead of sending out auto-messages for the purpose of building relationships, dedicate some time each week to batch-checking and responding to social media messages. This can help keep your social relationships intact without derailing you on a daily basis. 3. Use automation to distribute content evenly If you don’t use an automation service, you’re limited to posting content only when you’re awake, working, and free. This often leads to “blasts” that overwhelm your followers’ feeds and lead to much of your content being skipped over. Avoid this by using automation to distribute your hard-won content evenly throughout the day and night. In addition to avoiding content traffic jams, this also increases the likelihood that your readers will fully engage with your content and keeps you from becoming a spammy social media presence. 4. Keep an eye on current events Social media moves quickly, and is one of the main news sources for people around the world. In light of this, I can promise you that you’re going to do your brand some serious damage if your automation platform is buzzing away while a national or global disaster unfolds. While it can be tough to stay on top of daily news and disasters all of the time, the best practice here is to cut off automation when there’s a known disaster at work. The exception is if you can use your automation to dispense content that is sensitive and directly related to the disaster in an intelligent and sophisticated way. 5. Keep testing your automation Automation is the way of the future, but you need to be sure it’s working well in order to keep using it. Test your automation times, days, headlines, and activity levels often in order to ensure that you’re still in that sweet spot between automation and creation. Adjust anything that’s not working and move forward. Conclusion Automation and creation. They’re like two peas in a pod when they’re used correctly: essential to each other, but not as effective or even as good-looking without each other. These five tips can help you ensure that your social media displays the best of both worlds, and that you’re using automation and creation to the full extent and advantage of … Read more

Merry Christmas From Express Writers! Bonus: How To Create Awesome Holiday Campaigns

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Merry Christmas From Express Writers! Bonus: How To Create Awesome Holiday Campaigns

We wish you a Merry Christmas, We wish you a Merry Christmas, …And a Happy New Year!    Merry Christmas From Express Writers! It’s already the end of 2015. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are upon us! I hope that you’re not spending too much time in front of the work screen, but if you are, you should read this one blog. (Insert brazen-faced winky emoticon.)  I hope it’ll inspire you and that you’ll leave with some content marketing tips you can start using right now – and bring into your New Year. First: Why Christmas Doesn’t Have To (Ever) Be Your “Slow” Season I’m even more excited to bring you this holiday post and hereby “blog,” or “work,” on the holidays, because, well, December is becoming our hottest month of the entire year!  I couldn’t believe it myself, but we broke records and had over 1,000 pages of content ordered in 48 hours, our first week of December. This is the most we’ve had ordered in 48 hours since I created the company, in 2011. Our financial graph for the entire year looks like this: (The lowest point, in January, looks lower than it was because we actually started our online Content Shop then and had all our clients begin placing orders online.) We still have one more half-week in December, and our team is in the office throughout this month still – so we expect the year to end with our busiest month yet! That’s my reason directly to you why December doesn’t need to be your slowest month. We actually saw it become our best month for 2015 – which means anyone can, too, provided they never let go of the hustle and effort it takes to get a best foot forward and put in some real work and passion. Copywriting Tips for the Holidays (and Beyond) Even as the holidays are quickly whizzing past us, there’s still plenty of time to hone your skills for your holiday campaigns and start converting readers into buyers. But before you do, let’s take a look at the top copywriting tips to get your writing into shape. 8 Top Copywriting Hacks 1. 90% Of Your Time Should Be Spent Crafting Killer Headlines There’s a lot to be said on the topic of headlines. Strong conversion copywriters spend at least 90 percent of their time crafting one, or two… or three for every piece. It’s important not to stuff your headlines with keywords. And while you’re at it, throw out everything you were taught by those old-school SEO dictators on how to craft those headers. Make them attention-grabbing, borrow from winning formulas, do what you got to, to reel readers in. Here’s an important tip to remember: great headlines are very often incarnations of the value proposition of the very thing you’re trying to sell. Here’s another tip: ask yourself this about the prospect you’re writing for: “what was going on in their life that brought them to you today?” 2. Write Amazing Headlines Using “Without”, “Even If” and “Data” There’s so much to be said about headlines and that’s because they really are THAT important. Here are a few things you could include to help make your headers stand out: Use an “even if” clause to overcome hesitation Add a little data about the outcome Replace “even with” with “without” – what don’t your readers have to do to get the result? 3. Stay Away From Positioning Statements – Use Value Propositions At its very core, a value proposition needs to express what’s desirable and unique about your offer. Never confuse it with a positioning statement. You should state something about that your product does. You can include an end benefit. But don’t make your value proposition a laundry list of benefits. 4. Get To Know Different Types of Awareness There are a couple of different kinds of awareness your readers will have during the sales process. Depending on the stage of awareness they’re at, they’re going to need different messaging and content: Pain Aware – in this stage people respond to seeing solutions to their pain, or even their own pain. Solution Aware – this is where people respond to high-level benefits, so avoid thinking of the problem and think of the solution. Problem Aware – during this phase, people realize they actually have a problem but don’t know how to solve it. Product/Brand Aware – here people want to know what best and biggest benefit your product has to offer before they’re introduced to the benefits. People love the phrase, “but wait! There’s more!” Completely Unaware – during this phrase, people are completely clueless about their problems. 5. Embracing Similarities Between Taglines and Value Propositions Sometimes the very best taglines are actually your value propositions (as discussed above), just whittled down smaller while being specific. 6. Keeping Swipe Files for Inspiration Never heard of a swipe file? It’s a collection of content that you can use for ideas – all that memorable stuff that’s resonated with you. Save everything you love so when the well runs dry, you have a file full of inspiration. 7. To Write Content That Shocks and Generates Shares, Go Ahead and Pick a Fight! Take a completely accepted way of doing things and go and turn it on its head. Don’t be insulting, though, just provocative. 8. Top X Lists Can Still Work These lists can work well, provided they add something meaningful to the conversation. Try to be better. Aim to be different. 5 Tips for Effective Holiday Content You Can Do Now Here are 5 bonus tips for crafting effective holiday content as you leave my blog today (and go eat chocolates, or open gifts, and enjoy your holiday – in short, get away from the computer :D). 1. What Are Your Customer’s Holiday Needs? One of the best things about the holiday rush is you get to offer your customers great value when you create content that will help them cross something off their to-do list, saves them time or makes the holidays more fun. Consider … Read more

Content Serialization: How to Turn One Idea into Months of Content Marketing

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Content Serialization: How to Turn One Idea into Months of Content Marketing

What if you could take one great idea and turn it into dozens of even better blogs? You actually can—with a process called serialization. Content serialization, once a tool in the belt of novel-writers worldwide, has become a popular blogging tactic today that can help writers dig deeper and provide an astounding amount of value to their readers. Content serialization is more than just drawing out an idea; it’s a particularly effective way to become an expert in your niche, draw more readers, promote your site and gain visibility. What is Content Serialization? Content serialization is essentially one large idea broken down into installments for easier readability and a higher level of mastery. “Content marketing”, for example, is a large topic. It would be impossible to cover everything that content marketing is and offers in one blog post and, as such, it’s an ideal topic for serialization. A serialized run of blog posts with a focus on content marketing might look something like “12 Weeks to Outstanding Content Marketing” and would offer periodic blog posts diving deeper into progressively more challenging areas of the topic.  Serialization offers bloggers a way to get out of the habit of thinking of their content marketing strategy in terms of individual posts, which can inhibit creativity and contribute to poor content and very little site cohesion. Good short-term serialization can help content marketers shake up their strategy and dig deeper into topics their audience wants to know more about. Why Serialize Content? In the days of olde, bibliophiles used to hang out on shipping docks, anxiously awaiting the next serialized installment of a favorite book to arrive. Things have modernized since then, but serialization still has the power to create anticipation and keep people coming back for more. By serializing content that is of interest to readers, content marketers can easily reap the following benefits: More Readers: Like we said, serialization promotes anticipation and people will soon be looking out for the next post in the series. Additionally, since each post builds off of the post before it, serialization is an amazingly effective internal linking strategy that drives users to other portions of the blog. More Creativity: Serializing your content forces you to dig into the cracks, so to speak, and can help your writing become much more creative. Additionally, since serialization requires you to plan each post ahead of time and come up with a considerable amount of content, it is likely that the process will also drive you to employ social media formats, such as video, podcasts or infographics, that you do not typically use. For this reason, serialization is a great way for bloggers that are “stuck” to get the creative juices flowing. Increased Productivity: Since you’ll have to come up with regular and substantial posts, you’ll be forced to make the best possible use of each day’s writing time. This, in turn, promotes better writing and more effective communication. Mastery of Knowledge: By far the most valuable benefit of serialization is that it allows bloggers to become niche experts. By digging into the nooks and crannies of a subject, writers can learn new things and disseminate information effectively without overloading their audience or saturating a single post with so much information that it’s virtually useless. Additionally, serialization allows you to build your online authority. More Conversions: Serialized content provides value for people interested in learning more about a topic. When you provide value to readers, they reward you with increased interaction, subscriptions and purchases. Because of this, serialized content often results in increased conversions for your site. Regardless of what your site’s goal is – be it subscriptions, purchases, or shares – serialized content can definitely help you get there. In addition to the above benefits, serialization can be a great option for bloggers who have not yet developed a content marketing strategy and are looking for ways to provide regular, high-quality content to their readers. Choosing Which Content to Serialize As a general rule, the content you serialized should be made up of your most high-potential topics. In other words, serialized topics should be those too broad, involved, detailed or important to be covered in a single post. The genesis topic for serialized posts should be of great interest to your readers and broad enough to explore for a number of weeks without writing duplicate content or creating filler. Before you choose to serialize a topic, ask yourself these questions: Will this information provide value to my readers? Can I explore this topic in a unique way? Could I write a book about this? If the answer is “yes” to all of those questions, it’s likely that you’ve got a good candidate for serialization. Keep in mind that it is not enough, however, to simply choose a topic that you find interesting. The topic also needs to serve a purpose and will be most successful if it meets an unmet need, offers a solution and is easy to structure. As with any type of marketing, finding a gap in the market is one of the most important factors for success. If you choose to serialize a topic that’s been serialized hundreds of times before, it’s going to be difficult to be truly competitive in that market. Therefore, it’s important to choose a topic that addresses old questions in a new way or approaches a question that many people have an nobody is answering. By meeting an unmet need and providing unique solutions, you can ensure your content will stand out from the crowd. How to Serialize Content By far the easiest way to serialize content is to create a series of blog posts that spans no more than 12 weeks. This is enough time to adequately explore a topic but not so much that your readers begin to get bored. Regardless of what your topic is, the general structure of your serialized content should resemble the following: Week 1 (First Post) Week 1 will be the touch-point for … Read more

How to Create an Endless Stream of Unforgettable Content

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How to Create an Endless Stream of Unforgettable Content

Sarah Shade is a Content Specialist at Express Writers. Regardless of niche, vision, profit margins and aspirations, you and all business owners have one thing in common. You give your best on different fronts to stand out from the crowd. Quite often, you might engage your efforts in a battle with competitors, and also with your own limitations. During this process, you might rely on premium content to highlight your uniqueness, make your products more desirable and form solid communities around your brands. However, achieving consistency in content creation is more difficult than you may think, especially when you are faced with multiple work-related challenges on a daily basis. Truth be told, every once in a while, we all get distracted. Sometimes, we are overwhelmed by all the tasks that require our full attention and prompt intervention. We run out of fresh, creative ideas and we lose our motivation for a second or two. Nonetheless, we shouldn’t let these temporary impediments stand in the way of our success.   Why Does Your Business Require a Steady Content Flow? Nowadays, content is still a powerful game-changer that could represent the perfect liaison between businesses and their clients. Robust, consistent, unique content is an invaluable asset that can separate you from your main competitors, boost your revenues, maximize your online visibility, tighten your bond with prospects and existing customers and give you hope for the future. According to Brad Friedman from Social Media Today, by posting content regularly and keeping your website updated you could improve your search engine rankings and implement more effective link building strategies. After all, it’s always easier to find and use links that are relevant to your pages when you’re running a blog that counts hundreds of quality posts reflecting your grand vision, mission and purpose in business. 8 Ways to Stay Consistent with Your Web Content at All Times A steady content flow can help you make a name for yourself in any field of activity, while managing to impress both human visitors and search engines with your commitment and consistency. But churning out dozens of first-hand articles and blog posts is no easy task, especially when you’re writing with your audience in mind. A stream of unforgettable content requires a mix of inspiration, creativity, talent, motivation and hours of research. If you want to be able to take pride in a flawless, uninterrupted content flow in the long term, here are a few key steps that you should follow to achieve your goal. 1. Stick to an Editorial Calendar That Makes Sense to You We will let you in on a well-kept secret: even the most experienced bloggers, journalists and business owners count on an editorial calendar to control content publication across a great variety of channels, such as newspapers, blogs, social media platforms and email newsletters. An article published by CrazyEgg reveals that a good editorial calendar adapted to your goals can improve your current content strategy. Using this handy little helper you can manage and schedule social media posts, gather new ideas for inspiring articles and posts, track events that could become your most generous sources of inspiration, and schedule your own blog posts, as well as the ones signed by guest authors. Now you can make the most of three great editor calendar plugins for WordPress (CoSchedule, Editorial Calendar and EditFlow) to plan your every move in advance and make sure that deadlines will no longer catch you by surprise. 2. Explore Key Themes That Could Never Get Boring Instead of creating dull, perishable content that essentially puts your products and services into the spotlight and praises the uniqueness of your brand, opt for a different approach. Tackle the real-world problems and concerns expressed by your audience. Humanize and personalize your brand. Be helpful. Be engaging. For once, put your skills, expert insight and experience to good use to explore a series of interesting themes and convey information-rich messages that will raise the interest of your audience. 3. Create, Publish and Distribute Evergreen Content No matter how active you are in your field of activity, you may get hit by a serious case of writer’s block at some point. Does this mean that you should lay down your weapons, while praying for the return of your inspiration? Of course not! Instead of opting for a passive approach towards content creation, you should explore a series of evergreen content ideas that are long-lasting and sustainable and can continue to stay relevant long after their materialization. How-to tutorials, videos, list posts and product reviews match this description and can help you satisfy your readers’ hunger for premium content even when you don’t really have anything new and groundbreaking to write about. Choose high-interest evergreen topics (romance, pet care, weight loss, finance, parenting and so on) that are fully compatible with your business and find the most creative methods to add new meanings to old stories. 4. When Your Content Ideas Are Drying Up, Improvise! At some point, you may get tired of crafting list posts and how-to articles. While these types of content will always return the desirable results as long as you keep your quality standards high, simply because they stress out the problems experienced by your readers and promise miraculously effective solutions to these issues, it is always recommended to play the diversity card to keep your readers engaged. By improvising every once in a while you could break the monotony and avoid dull topics that you may be tempted to use as a last resort. Here’s an idea worth exploring: talk to influent people in your industry and turn your dialogue into the essence of your new article or blog posts. Make a list of interview subjects and unleash your creativity. If everything goes according to plan, consider turning interviews into a prominent, regular feature of your content flow. 5. Unleash the Power of Multimedia Content Your content shouldn’t be limited to chunks of text, especially today, when multimedia elements … Read more

7 Ways to Show the World You’re Worth Listening To

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7 Ways to Show the World You’re Worth Listening To

You know that there is no business like show business, right? But who is to say exactly what is meant by “show business”? When you create content, you do so in an attempt to show readers that you know what you are talking about and that they should go to you if they want to learn more or use your service/product. So when it comes to the show business of content creation, how can you make sure your writing is a box office smash? (Or at least a cult hit or award favorite)? 7 Methods To Shout From the Rooftops (Or Get Your Content A Lot of Viewers) There are actually a lot of things you can do to make sure your content is seen by a whole lot of viewers, but here are seven good places to start. 1. The Preview Looked Good: Use Social Media to Attract Readers. Have you ever determined whether you would see a movie based off of its preview? There is a good chance that you have. Here are some things that my friends and I have been known to say after a preview: “I didn’t think I would want to see that, but the preview looked good.” “The preview looked funny, but they probably put all the funny parts in it. So it’s probably not going to be that good.” “I’m disappointed. I thought I was going to like it, but not if the preview is anything to go by.” You have probably said something similar at some point too. So what does that mean for content production? It’s not just the writing itself that counts, it is all the small, social media content you do along the way to advertise for your content. What you say in the Tweet, Facebook post, or summary can be just as important as the actual content. Because it is what viewers are most likely to see first, it is the main component in deciding whether they are going to read on. So you have to grab their attention there if you want to have any chance at grabbing their attention in the long-form post. Moral of this point: If you can’t catch them in the previews, then you are not likely to catch them at all. 2. Be the Headliner: Create Good Headlines. Just like it is the star headliner that is going to draw a lot of the crowd, it is your catchy headline that is going to get people interested in reading your content. So you know that you need to work hard on crafting a great title. Knowing you need a good headline and actually being able to come up with one, though, are two very different things. Not only do you have to get your creative juices flowing in order to write a good title, you also have stop trying so hard because people can always tell when you are trying too hard. Luckily for all of us, there are all sorts of tools to help us create amazing titles. Advanced Marketing Institute. The AMI has a headline tool that allows you to enter your headline and have its Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) ranked. It then walks you through how many EMV words a good headline should have and what type of EMV words you are using (e.g., intellectual EMV). Crazyegg Blog. This post walks you through several ways almost guaranteed to convert readers and tells you why they are successful. The Future of Ink. This post basically gives you some fill in the blank headlines that you can use with your own content. Moral of this point: If the headliner isn’t drawing in crowds, then everything else had better be a hundred times better to make up for it. 3. Open Strong: Create Catchy Intros. After the opening night of a movie or play, reviews are going to come in. That opening could just make or break the show because if it gets all bad reviews, people aren’t likely to come back for the rest of the performances. Think of your opening paragraph as the one that is going to get you the initial reviews. People are going to read it, and then they are going to determine whether they want to read more. If your intro paragraph is getting bad reviews, then no matter how good the rest of the content is, people likely aren’t going to be reading it. On the other hand, if you capture the attention of your readers from your opening lines, then you have a better chance of making it to the end of your run (i.e., getting people to read the entire article.) So don’t ignore that opening paragraph or rush through it to get to the meat of what you are trying to say. Moral of this point: If you want a long run, make sure you get good reviews from the opening. 4. You’re Gonna Be in the Pictures: Use Images. I’m making a long, drawn out analogy here comparing writing to show business, so you can see why images are going to be an important component to what I am saying. If you want to be a success in show business, then you need to actually show something. People like pictures. It’s just a fact of life. That’s why they say a picture is worth a thousand words. A good image will draw the eye so that the potential reader can see that great headline you created, which will cause them to read that opening line that is going to get you great reviews, which will make them read whatever it is you have to say. And all because you caught their eyes with a good image. Images could even help your SEO ranking because Google loves images as much as us mortals. You can find free images on places such as Wikimedia Commons or by searching Flickr’s creative commons images. You can also set up accounts on platforms such … Read more

How Curation Can Empower Your Content Creation

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How Curation Can Empower Your Content Creation

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

50 Shades of Content

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50 Shades of Content

As you well know, 50 Shades of Grey was recently released in theaters amid a bunch of excitement and scandal. It made $93 million in just four days, and its sequels have already been approved. Whether you’re a fan of this (I admit, risqué) story or not, you have to admit it does have some amazing content marketing power. Taking some inspiration from the famous book title that has now premiered in worldwide theaters, I’m taking an original, descriptive look at 50 Shades of Content. Do you actually know just how many shades content has? From bold to macabre to natural, there are so many shades out there among the millions of web pages that exist. Use these content shades to help you identify and create awesome blogs, product descriptions, and more. A Descriptive List: 50 Shades of Content Authentic content. When writing content, you always want to make sure it is authentic. This will help make your content powerful, and help engage your reader base. Just write from your heart and what you know, and you will be creating excellent, authentic content. All your content should have a shade of authenticity. Exceptions could be sales targeted/landing pages, where you are trying to sell rather than simply offer authentic advice or wording. Bold content. Bold content is a great way to catch people’s attention. You can be bold by writing opinion pieces on things within your industry or the latest trends. This is a good content type for emails, home pages, and other busy, targeted areas of text. Creative content. When you write your content, you need to make sure you are being creative. A great way to gain creative inspiration is to write on the latest trends. For example, I took the opportunity to use 50 Shades of Grey as inspiration for a post that helps you learn about the different aspects of content. Use whatever you want and you can have some incredible, creative content. Blogs are a great outlet for content creativity. Direct content. If you are telling your readers something important, you always need to make sure you are being as direct as possible. This will help show people that confident, know what you’re talking about, and also help convert them from simple readers to clients. Email content is one of the best “direct” content shade examples. Engaging content. Engaging content is something that everyone needs. It helps to get your readers and clients involved, which really helps your business be successful. All your content should have a shade of engaging. Fun content. You want to provide your readers with something of value, but you don’t always have to be super professional. When you write your content, you should always make sure you include something fun to add more life to your blogs. This could be something trendy, like how many businesses brought up “The Dress” on their social media sites. Social media should always have a shade of fun to avoid being boring.  Good content. This is a given when it comes to content – it always needs to be good, or what we refer to as high-quality. Focus on crafting great content pieces all the time. It might seem like it takes too much time to focus on good content, but when you do, you get some great results. Let’s be honest: all your content should be this shade.  Horrible content. Now, this is a shade you absolutely want to avoid. Horrible content is a surefire way to make sure your content fails, losing you many clients and revenue. You need to stay away from horrible content at whatever cost. You don’t want to face the terrible consequences of it. Unfortunately, a lot of it exists on the web. NO content of yours should be this shade. Inquiring content. This is great when it comes to creating engaging content, especially for social media. Ask your clients and readers questions, and have them provide their answers. You can give silly polls or ask serious questions that can help you tweak your content to be more powerful for your readers. Emails and blogs are good outlets for this content shade. Joyful content. When you write your content, you should always make sure you have a happy tone to it. It doesn’t always have to be puppy and rainbows, but make things more upbeat for your readers. We get enough negativity with the latest news reports, so give your readers some great, positive content. It can be pretty powerful being one of the bright spots on the Internet. Seasonal blogs and emails are a good way to present this shade. Knowledgeable Content. You can write content on almost anything, especially with the Internet at your fingertips. However, this can sometimes lead to you writing content that isn’t very knowledgeable. When you write your content, make sure it is on a topic you know or one that you have done a lot of research on. Lackluster Content. This is yet another form of content you want to avoid. Lackluster content is boring, and many times, unreadable. Make sure you craft fun, engaging content all the time to get the best results from it. Macabre Content. Now, this could be good or bad, depending on your macabre sense of humor, and your industry. You can write macabre content, just always make sure to stay tasteful, and keep it on the lighter end of macabre humor (Tim Burton is a good example). Natural Content. Natural content is a great way to rank on the SERP and also helps keep people on your site, reading. You can write natural content by not focusing on keywords and writing about something you have a passion for. Original Content. Your content not only needs to be knowledgeable, natural, and good, it also needs to be original. Write your own content, on your own ideas and you will easily have great, original content. Of course, you can always gain inspiration from others, just always make sure … Read more

The 10 Worst Content Marketing Mistakes We’ve Ever Seen

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The 10 Worst Content Marketing Mistakes We’ve Ever Seen

We’re human: we all make mistakes. But, the bright side of making mistakes is that we learn how to correct them and in doing so become slightly better at avoiding those mistakes in the future (usually). In content creation, there are a lot of mistakes that inundate the Internet, unfortunately. My mind and soul cringes as I discover them. From the simplistic ones regarding spelling and grammar to the more complicated ones that impact our SEO validity, mistakes are a pain in the side of any content creator. And it’s not just one person. Content creators the world over suffer from the same problems that you do regarding content creation. 10 of the Worst, Eye-Digging, Bad-Bad-Bad Content Mistakes Let’s take a look at ten of the worst content mistakes I’ve ever come across. (Beware: it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard.) 1: Duplicate Content. Ah, this evil beast. From an SEO perspective, this is a capital sin and one that many content creators and blog owners fall victim to all too often. Duplicate content hurts your search ranking and can lead to erroneous search results. Redirection tags and multiple hosted copies of a home page can lead to terrible problems when a search engine is trying to reference your actual home page. It can be something as simple as a double-posted blog entry that could lead to the dreaded duplicate content error in your site. From a marketer’s point of view, you’re probably going to need to have a handful of home pages in order to gauge the effectiveness of any particular one. The problem arises when you forget to state these pages as non-indexed one to the search engine robots. The result is that you can have multiple copies of your home page being referenced and one may be a draft or incomplete one. Leaving the decision to the robots on the search engine means that they could be sending users to your unfinished landing page, leaving them with a horrible impression of your site. In the blogger’s case, multiple posts can easily be detected and removed, but only if you know your post was double-posted. Keeping an eye on your site helps you to avoid these issues. 2: Too Much & Bad Backlinking. Backlinks are very important in determining the usefulness of a site and how well it shows up on search engine rankings. The trustworthiness of a site comes down to how well it backlinks to other sites. Creating backlinks that incorporate spammy sites, link directories or ad-heavy sites drives a site down the search rankings. When you’re creating backlinks, you should really examine where your backlinks are coming from to ensure you don’t get flagged as an untrustworthy site. Creating a backlink history that is on the up-and-up requires some research into where you’re linking to. Always try to keep authority sites at the top of your link data. For content that already exists, you should ensure that the links that exist in these content pieces are viable and do not link to any shady sites. Using utilities such as SEMRush aids in creating a backlink report that can help you to weed out these bad backlinks. It’s a time consuming process, but in order to keep your ranking intact, it’s a necessary one. 3: Over-Optimization of Keywords. This one makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out. Seriously. There’s nothing much worse (except maybe my first two points). Creating a page that has a plethora of good information does require you to use keywords to aid in finding the information when a search engine user requests it. But in the past, throwing together a handful of keywords and using them inside the text of the landing page was usually what you needed in order to place high up on the search rankings. Eventually, the focus moved away from keywords and into a combination of factors. This came about because of the abuse of keyword stuffing in the early days of search engine optimization. Over-optimization of keywords occurs when you have more than one page with the same targeted keyword. The search engine doesn’t know which one of your pages is the main site and so you are left with pot luck as to what the search engine decides is the more relevant site, which may not be the one you want to appear there. Proper SEO practice requires you to use different targeted keywords for different pages in order to ensure a situation like this does not arise. Over-optimizing your site for your keywords can have a massively detrimental impact on your search engine results and your overall SEO strategy. As a technical content error it can be a lot harder to spot, requiring constant vigilance over your SEO results and targeted keyword seeding. 4: Too Many Links Off The Home Page. This might seem counter intuitive after having described how important backlinks are, but having too many links from your home page makes your page hard to navigate. Links serve as incoming traffic points and outgoing traffic locales. The more there are, the more areas that you send traffic out to. However, by limiting your links, you are able to direct a larger amount of traffic to the pertinent sites instead of trying to create a link storm that doesn’t really send significant traffic anywhere. Building links is important, but too many links results in a page that is difficult for your reader to navigate and even harder for a search engine to rank. Link building, therefore, should be done in moderation and the locations to your links chosen carefully to align with your overall SEO strategy. You can easily determine if you’ve over-linked on your homepage by using the Moz Tool Diagnostics Summary. It will also inform you if you have too few links on the page. Maintaining a healthy balance of links on your home page is very important to making your page successful, so doing too much or too little does … Read more

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