content marketing 101 - Express Writers

#ContentWritingChat Recap: Your Best Content Marketing Tips with Barry Feldman

December 31, 2020September 23, 2016 by Rachel Moffett

Did you miss #ContentWritingChat this week? You can get caught up with our recap of the chat! If you want to step up your game when it comes to your content marketing, this is one recap you’ll want to read through! #ContentWritingChat Recap: Your Best Content Marketing Tips with Barry Feldman Join us for #ContentWritingChat on Tuesday, September 20th at 10 AM CDT with @FeldmanCreative! pic.twitter.com/u7wq3e4jn7 — Express Writers (@ExpWriters) September 13, 2016 Our guest host this week was Barry Feldman. Barry is a content marketing consultant, copywriter, creative director, social media advisor, and an author. We were thrilled to have him joining us this week to talk about content marketing. Q1: Define “content marketing.” To kick off the chat, we asked participants to define content marketing. While it’s a pretty common phrase, it’s not one everyone is familiar with, so don’t feel bad if you don’t fully understand it yet. This recap will help! Here are some of the answers we received: A1: CM def = Publishing content to pull prospects closer to your brand. #contentwritingchat — Barry Feldman (@FeldmanCreative) September 20, 2016 Barry defined content marketing as publishing content to pull prospects closer to your brand. When creating a content marketing strategy for your brand, you want to make sure what you publish online serves a purpose and helps you achieve your goals. A1: Content marketing: a strategic plan to create and deliver valuable content (written, visual, etc.) to your audience. #contentwritingchat — Netvantage Marketing (@netvantage) September 20, 2016 Having a strategic plan for your content will help you see major results within your business. A1: Content marketing is providing quality content that is valuable to your audience to achieve your business goals #ContentWritingChat — Zola Creative (@ZolaCreative) September 20, 2016 It’s all about creating quality, valuable content that will help you reach your goals. .@writingchat A1: providing content that meets your audience’s needs and answers questions. should be shareable #ContentWritingChat — Tracy Willis (@tracywillis_) September 20, 2016 Tracy said it’s about providing content that meets the needs of your audience. Your content should add value and answer their questions. A1: *Effective* content marketing: getting the right type of helpful content to the people who want it. #ContentWritingChat — Tara M. Clapper (@irishtara) September 20, 2016 As Tara said, content marketing is about getting the right content to the right people. That’s a must! A1 Literally on my cabinet every day. #ContentWritingChat pic.twitter.com/b5U8bf0vFk — Bill Skowronski (@BillSkowronski) September 20, 2016 Bill has a pretty handy reminder of the definition of content marketing. Q2: Could content marketing be a more powerful strategy than any other form of online marketing? What are your thoughts? Is content marketing more powerful than other forms of marketing? Here’s what some of the participants in Tuesday’s chat had to say: Q2: Definitely, but most companies don’t commit to the degree necessary to make it work. #contentwritingchat — Barry Feldman (@FeldmanCreative) September 20, 2016 Q2: Commonly, strategy is the missing element. Content in and of itself isn’t enough #contentwritingchat — Barry Feldman (@FeldmanCreative) September 20, 2016 Barry definitely feels content marketing is powerful, but you have to commit to it. @ExpWriters A2: Content marketing changed the convo to understanding your buyers problems, which is why it’s so powerful #ContentWritingChat — Jacob Rouser (@J_Rouser) September 20, 2016 Jacob feels the reason content marketing is so powerful is because it’s changed the conversation to understanding your buyers’ problems. A2) Yes, Helps your brand connect and engage with your audience at every stage of the buying cycle. #contentwritingchat — Scott Johnson (@iScottJohnson) September 20, 2016 As Scott said, content marketing is important because it helps your brand connect and engage with your audience. A2)Content Marketing is the heart of any strategy, without content is literally impossible to acquire/nurture audiences. #contentwritingchat https://t.co/vlZlh3vLx0 — Liliana GH (@Liliholl) September 20, 2016 Liliana said that it’s impossible to acquire and nurture audiences without content. A2: Absolutely! If done right. It’s all about CONNECTING with the audience. #ContentWritingChat pic.twitter.com/0HDocwUhIH — Keystone Click (@KeystoneClick) September 20, 2016 Connecting with your audience is key! A2 YES. https://t.co/SDEsxZC7RL We’ve seen HUGE benefits, personally. (Almost done writing a case study on @ExpWriters!) #ContentWritingChat pic.twitter.com/5DDSX62Uvm — Julia McCoy (@JuliaEMcCoy) September 20, 2016 Julia knows firsthand how powerful content marketing can be since she’s seen the results in growing Express Writers. Q3: Define “content strategy.” What does “content strategy” mean? Check out these responses: Q3: Documenting a plan that answers the “who, what, where and why.” #contentwritingchat — Barry Feldman (@FeldmanCreative) September 20, 2016 Barry said content strategy is about creating a plan that answers the who, what, where, and why. A3: The planning/execution of useful, relevant & shareable content for your audience. #ContentWritingChat https://t.co/FQpb0GseWb — ThinkSEM (@ThinkSEM) September 20, 2016 Sarah said content strategy is the planning/execution of useful, relevant, and shareable content for your audience. Great answer! A3 Content strategy is playing matchmaker, finding the perfect audiences for your stories. #contentwritingchat — Bill Skowronski (@BillSkowronski) September 20, 2016 It’s all about finding the perfect audience for your stories, just like playing matchmaker. We like the way you look at this, Bill! A3: Planning of the strategy that is going to ensure your content gets seen by your desired audience #contentwritingchat — Andy Drinkwater (@iqseo) September 20, 2016 Andy said planning your content is about making sure the right audience sees your content. A3: Content strategy- create unique content per audience/topic, focus to engage/teach audience, successfully distribute #ContentWritingChat — Tyler Brown (@__tylerbrown) September 20, 2016 You want to create unique content with your audience in mind. Focus on engaging them and teaching, then distribute it. A3: A content strategy is more about the development & collaboration process that goes into the creation of content #ContentWritingChat — Zola Creative (@ZolaCreative) September 20, 2016 Content strategy is also about the development and collaboration process that comes along with content creation. A3: A specific plan that answers how you’ll provide value, and how you plan to distribute that content to … Read more

7 Ways To Create Content Marketing For Buying Intent

December 31, 2020October 17, 2014 by Adam Oakley

Have you made a great content campaign, but struggle with making it successful? One of the main reasons a great content marketing setup isn’t working is simply that you might not be directly marketing for your customer’s intent and needs. You need to change this up, and tweak your campaign, but how? You can understand what your client wants by simply researching and getting to know them. I am going to walk with you to help you figure out just how to achieve this and make that incredible campaign a successful one! How Can You Get To Know Your Customers? Getting to know your customers isn’t as daunting as it sounds. You’ll find that it can actually be quite easy if you take a few simple steps and apply them to your content campaign. Here are a few excellent ways I’ve found that you can get to know your client base: 1. Send Out Email Surveys For Clients To Complete. According to an infographic from QuickSprout, a great way to get to know your client base is to ask them questions. You can always do this via social media or blogs, but you might not get the response you want or need. Instead, you should consider doing email campaigns with a complete survey. Allow your clients to answer both multiple choice and opinion questions. This will help you get several participants, as some people might prefer multiple-choice answers, and others might want to make sure their voices are heard through comment boxes. A few questions you can ask are: Do they like what your company has to offer? What do they want to see from your company? Why do they want these changes? Is there anything that makes them unhappy? What about happy? Find out if there is anything they’d suggest to make your content more effective. Ask them their favorite websites (outside of social media) to gather information from.These websites can help you tailor your content to suit your audience, especially if multiple people in your client base visit similar pages. 2. Be Part Of The Buying Process As Soon As Possible. There are several times where you might feel that things could’ve gone a lot smoother for you and the customer if they had only brought you in sooner. This is something several businesses miss the mark on, but by becoming involved in the buying process as soon as possible, you are able to learn more about your customers. This can help you see any problem areas in the buying process, and how you can make things easier for future clients. A few ways to do this are to always allow your clients the ability to contact you throughout the buying process or have them talk to a sales associate for larger products or services. This will help both of you out while also helping you learn about your customer base. 3. Pretend You Are The Customer. This is vital because it can show you areas in your business that need to be improved. When you are starting to gather information about your customers, you should take the opportunity to stand in their shoes and pretend you are interested in your product. Ask yourself the questions a customer would ask and look to see if you have the answers readily available. If you are having a difficult time with this, head over to a site you’d be interested in buying something from and think about what questions you want to ask that company. You can see from their layout whether or not they’ll have the answers, showing you any holes in your own content marketing or what you are actually doing right. Just be willing to notice when you’re doing something wrong. This is one of the best ways to learn, even if it does hurt your pride a bit. A great strategy big businesses take is creating a buyer or client persona. A buyer or client persona is a fictional “character” that you create to help you figure out what your customers want, and tweak your content for them. While this isn’t always exact, it can help direct you in the way you should go with your company. It can help you better craft surveys, getting the best information possible, and it can help you create new marketing campaigns that you can tweak as you learn more about your live client base. How Can You Market For Your Customer’s Intent And Needs? Now that you know a few ways to gather information about your clients, just how can you market to them with this information? I am going to look at a few great ways to incorporate your knowledge to better market for your customer’s intent and needs. 4. Publically Answer Frequently Asked Questions. Don’t just leave this up to your FAQ page, but actively answer them. First of all, this can offer excellent blog content. Secondly, you have the opportunity to give clients a more in-depth answer to certain questions. This might not be the case with all of your FAQs, but you might find that the more you answer frequently asked questions, the more likely you are to receive other questions from your clients. You can even consider hosting a blog series of “ask us anything” where you answer questions sent in by clients. This is not only a great way to answer questions people have, but also might help with improving blog engagement. This also offers you the ability to teach your clients through your blog, which is something that is vital for engagement and keeping a strong client base. 5. Use Your Social Media Accounts To Answer Questions. Another great way to market to your customer’s needs is to utilize social media. It offers you a great opportunity to answer questions, but it also helps you learn more about your clients through how they interact with you and what they feel is more important. While surveys can give you concrete data, you can … Read more