content strategy - Express Writers

Strategy Success for Content in 2016: Reach Out to Millennials

December 31, 2020December 1, 2015 by Adam Oakley

It’s that time of year… December 1, and it’s time to think about how to truly nail your content in 2016. I’m not touting a lose-weight-fast or get-rich-quick New Year resolution (those are usually broken by the next week). I’m talking about long term, dedicated strategy–and a vantage point that will get you winning content this upcoming New Year. Right now, there are about 80 million millennials living in the US. That translates to about ¼ of the total population and since this group wields a buying power of about $200 billion dollars, they’re currently the single most lucrative market in all of advertising. That said, you probably want to reach out to them with your content in 2016, right? They will be a bigger demographic than ever next year – they are the big, smart, and buying crowd YOU need to attract. Just how do you go about it? We have some tips to help. 10 Tips to Effectively Market to Millennials with Your Content in 2016 1) Get authentic Millennials spend about 25 hours each week online and they want authentic content. Buttoned-up ‘50s style marketing tactics don’t work on this crowd and they’re scouring blogs, social media, and websites for content they can truly connect with. In fact, 43% of millennials rank authenticity as more important than content when they consume news and, as a result, they’re on the search for content that mimics their feelings, opinions, and passions while also offering unique value and a distinct voice. Take Taco Bell, for example, which recently began a program to reach out to millennials with its “Millennial Word of the Week” program. This program makes the brand appealing, approachable, interesting, and relatable. Plus, since the whole program is curated by Taco Bell employees the same age as millennials, it’s authentic, which is what millennials have been looking for this whole time. 2) Focus on inbound Have you ever been curious how many millennials will gladly navigate away from your page due to an unwelcome or intrusive ad? The grand majority of them, that’s how many. In fact, according to Wired, millennials alone have killed off several outbound marketing tactics that are inauthentic, invasive, or not valuable. What’s more, 84% of millennials just plain don’t trust traditional advertising, which creates a sticky situation for advertisers. This is true because millennials know what they want, they’re tech-savvy enough to find it online, and they’re not willing to suffer websites that make them sit through unwanted or intrusive ads. When millennials spend time online, they’re doing research via social media, blogs, websites, and YouTube, which means that inbound marketing tactics are the best and the only way to reach them. By focusing harder than ever before on creating and distributing high-quality, relevant content that actually meets the needs of millennials and helps to answer their questions, you can ensure that your site doesn’t earn a swift “back” click. 3) Strive to be informative Possibly more so than any generation before them, millennials are hungry for information, and this means that they’ll support businesses that are dedicated to offering informative content. Millennials are drawn to eBooks, videos, tutorials, blog posts, how-to’s, and customer reviews more than they are product listings, and this means that if you can create content in 2016 that offers an expert’s perspective on an everyday challenge, millennials are going to bite. This is because millennials are 247% more likely than their older counterparts to be influenced in sales decisions by blogs and social media. With that in mind, consider offering tutorials and videos for your millennial customer base. Keep in mind that considering their tech-savvy nature and their propensity for sharing, they’re much more likely to share your video than they are to pull your flier off of a bulletin board and pass it around to their friends. 4) Focus on tailor-made Millennials are plentiful, powerful, wealthy, and what else – oh yeah! They’re smart too. This means that millennials have a stronger-than-usual B.S. detector and they’ll be onto you in an instant if you create content in 2016 that’s meant solely to get into their pocketbooks. Instead, focus on creating educational content that caters to their interests. One great way to do this is to focus on selling a lifestyle rather than a product. This means that you should be showcasing the ways in which your product, good, or service can help enhance their lives, produce unforgettable experiences, and equip them with great stories. Trust us, these things are far more valuable to millennials than product descriptions on some stagnant web page. 5) Get collaborative 42% of millennials want to help companies develop products and services and that’s why it pays to use them as a resource when creating products for consumption. Consider, as an example, Lays’ “Do us a Flavor” campaign in which they encourage consumers to come up with the next potato chip flavor to be marketed in stores. Campaigns like this make millennials the co-creators of a company and increase the likelihood that they’ll buy your product once it hits the market. It also engages their sense of self-expression and personal branding, helping to fuel the values of individuality and uniqueness in marketing, sales, and beyond. 6) Consider the difference between usage and ownership According to HubSpot, millennials prefer to use things rather than own them. Rather than owning housefuls of things they only seldom need, millennials would rather pay full price to rent items when they need them. Consider examples of this like Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, and Rent the Runway, a popular rental clothing site. To apply this to your content, consider creating forms of content like classes, webinars, and eBooks that millennials can rent rather than buy. 7) Offer a full-spectrum experience Unlike their Baby Boomer parents, millennials may actually enjoy the act of shopping more than actually purchasing items. This explains the popularity of sites like Pinterest and Etsy and provides a definite edge for any content creator that can master the … Read more

Turkey Day Content Tips: How to Create Great Content from the Thanksgiving Holiday

December 31, 2020November 26, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Express Writers! This Thanksgiving season, we hope you’re enjoying some well-earned time off! That being said, in our industry, we don’t really see it as time off from content creation. That’s because Thanksgiving is a great time to create some seriously fun content. The festiveness of the season and the air of celebration in the air mean that Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to create and distribute content your readers will love. Just how do you go about this? 5 Thanksgiving Content Tips Readers Will Love Don’t be a turkey, make holiday content work for you this Thanksgiving Day! Here are five of our top holiday content tips for creating memorable Thanksgiving-themed content. 1. Snap and Share Photos of Your Holiday Celebration 40% of people respond better to visual content than they do text, so don’t hesitate to take some photos this holiday season. Don’t be shy to share your personal festivities! #DispatchFrom @madhungrylsq mad prepping for this #Thanksgiving. Wherever you are in the world, we want to see your #MoveableFeast moments because tomorrow we’ll be regramming our favorites! Hashtag #MoveableFeast for a regram! A photo posted by Condé Nast Traveler (@cntraveler) on Nov 25, 2015 at 7:52pm PST Snap pictures of your movements throughout the Thanksgiving holiday, whether you volunteer, spend time with family and friends, eat a turkey or a ham, or spend it away from the snow in someplace tropical. Consider dedicating a blog entirely to photos and then encourage your readers to submit their own photos in the comments. Visual content is a big deal right now and creating some of your own can help people connect to your content and feel the Thanksgiving cheer! 2. Share Traditions You look forward to it every Thanksgiving: Grandma’s creamy, gooey, delicious pumpkin pie – the recipe for which she got from her grandmother. Why not share the love this Thanksgiving and share the recipe with your fans? Doing this provides value on a few different levels: first of all, you’re giving your readers something actionable that they can apply to their lives and, secondly, you’re giving them pie and who doesn’t love pie? If you don’t have a coveted family recipe to share with your readers, consider telling them about the traditions you do have over the holidays and then encourage them to share their traditions as well. This engages readers in your content and helps them feel seen, respected, and cared for by your brand. 3. Give Back Do you have something that can benefit someone else? Why not use the Thanksgiving holiday as an opportunity to give it away? Whether you run a class that can help fans learn something new or you sell a product that can enhance people’s lives, Thanksgiving is the ideal time to run a promotion that allows your customers to enter for a chance to win. Holiday promotions give people something to get excited about and, in advance of the Christmas holiday, promotions may even help your customers get that special someone a gift they’ve always wanted. No matter how you choose to structure your promotion, Thanksgiving is shouldered by two of the biggest shopping days of the year (Black Friday and Cyber Monday) so this is a great time to give some gifts and share the joy! 4. Share What You’re Thankful About What is Thanksgiving all about, after all? One of the best ways to create great content this Thanksgiving is simply to be thankful! Be thankful for your readers and your business partners and all of the people who have helped you get where you are today and then tell them so. Consider sending your readers a heartfelt “thank-you” email or offering small incentives as a showing of your gratitude. No matter what you choose to do, Thanksgiving is a fantastic time to let the people near you know exactly how much you appreciate them. 5. Try New Things If you’ve never done a podcast before but Crazy Aunt Lisa is coming to Thanksgiving dinner and she’s got some serious stories, right now might be a great time to dip your foot into a new content form. Whether you’ve been meaning to move from short-form to long-form or textual to visual, the Thanksgiving holiday is a great time to take advantage of the abundance of your surroundings to step into uncharted content waters. In addition to keeping you on your creative toes, this can also help you keep your site fresh and keep readers interested. Take These Content Tips and Go Forth! There you have it – our top 5 content tips for creating great marketing this Thanksgiving season. While we hope that your Thanksgiving holiday inspires you to crank out some exciting new content, we also hope that your Thanksgiving holiday is filled with all the things that are really important: friends, family, and happiness for one and for all! Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours from the Express Writers team.

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

December 31, 2020October 14, 2015 by Adam Oakley

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 A Strategy for Deploying Content to Improve Your Site’s Ranking & Visibility

December 31, 2020August 6, 2015 by Josh McCoy

Annie is a Content Manager at Express Writers. Developing a content strategy can easily seem like it can be a futile exercise. Many people don’t have a clue about where to start when it comes to putting together a detailed plan for what their content should do and what sort of demographic it should be aimed at. The truth of the matter is that overthinking content marketing can be dangerous. Instead of focusing on the minor details, what you should be aiming for is to see the big picture. It’s only through that you will actually be able to experience the true power of content marketing the way it was meant to be used. The Blank Slate Theory & Your Content Strategy As artist Joe Madureira says, a blank slate is as exciting as it is daunting. What we propose to do through a blank slate comparison is to see how a company starting from no website or content marketing strategy can utilize the tools of developing a content strategy to be successful. In this fictionalized case study we will be utilizing a two-phase plan for the creation of a detailed content strategy that can be used to improve a website’s ranking and visibility. Methodology Behind Our Experiment Utilizing a free tool like Google Analytics allows us to easily track the key performance indicators (KPI’s) that we’re interested in. Indicators such as number of visitors and unique visitors over time allow us to gauge the success of our content marketing strategy. If we want to be more specific we can set up funnels in Google Analytics in order to track clicks from what content leads to which page to determine the most popular content for attracting users. The numbers from Google Analytics will be our guide to how well our content strategy is doing, just like in real life. Content Strategy Phase One: The Basics There are a handful of things that a basic content strategy should have in place as a jumping off point. These form the framework for your future content production and also aids in your SEO compatibility and your search rank score. These things are the very basics but even though they seem to be unnecessary at the start, they are a powerful means of attracting traffic and formulating leads. The basic start for a website’s content strategy comes from incorporating these key elements: 1. META tags: META tags aid in helping to describe a page’s content to a search engine. Including META tags in your site setup ensures that you are able to include the most important elements that you would expect to get your page noticed. The more relevant information you include in your META data the better your search relevancy will be. This translates into increased traffic from search engines, as relevancy is extremely important to users. No one wants to click a page and end up somewhere they didn’t expect to be. 2. Keywords: These are words that describe the content on your page and allow a user to be aware of what the site they are visiting is about. Used in combination with META description tags, your keywords form the backbone of your content strategy in the realm of SEO. You don’t want too much of your keywords cluttering up your page since search engines are usually wary of too high a keyword density. Ideally, your keyword density should lie between 3% and 5% for any particular keyword set. 3. Product Descriptions: These give your site the look and feel of a professional company and also gives Google something to reference. Your product descriptions should also have keywords considered and should conform to the limit of 3% to 5% as well. Keeping this figure is enough to satisfy the search engine that you’re not keyword stuffing just to make your content more popular. The descriptions should be meaningful as far as possible and written for the user. It’s a true test of balancing your content writing in order to appeal to both search engine robots and the average user. 4. Basic Content: Basic content gives your site a barebones for further development of content as time goes by. Through your basic content you are trying to attract users and at the same time get them to do something. Whether it’s subscribing to an email list or clicking over to a product page, your basic content should be original and should appeal to the customer. It should bring value to the customer’s life in some way. That is the hallmark of good content. Content Strategy Phase Two: Advanced Operations After setting up the initial barebones on the blank slate website, we can now proceed to monitor it for a period of time to see how it evolves and develops in terms of traffic. This sets a benchmark from where we can go on to the advanced part of the exploration and the key motivator for developing a content strategy. Does content really make a difference in generating leads and increasing visits? Let’s find out by utilizing the major vehicles of content marketing: 1. Blogs: Blogging has long been accepted as one of the ways to generate traffic and to keep your website fresh to attract new visitors. Search engines enjoy blogs because they tend to deal with a particular niche and once the search engine determines the niche the blog is in it’s easy to direct relevant traffic to the site. Blogs allow for a company or website to focus on creating high-quality content that appeals to their target demographic. Through this content the company can generate new leads or conversions, or develop customer loyalty by focusing on providing useful content to their users. Blogs need to be updated regularly in order to remain relevant. Updating too much can cause useful information to be lost. There’s a fine balance to walk here, but doing it well is worth the effort. 2. Social Media: The newest way for websites to interact with customers directly … Read more

How a Poorly Executed Content Strategy Can Eliminate Your Full Potential

March 24, 2022July 29, 2015 by Sarah Shade

Sarah Shade is one of our Content Specialists at Express Writers. Content strategy. You and I both (as good Internet marketers) know all about these by now. Without one, it’s like trying to find a black cat in a dark room without a light bulb. But did you know that a poorly executed content strategy can be even more harmful than not having one at all? Even Harvard Business Review notes that most management professionals agree that a mediocre strategy that is executed well trumps a great strategy that is executed poorly. In the realm of content strategy this is usually the case, although some exceptions to the rule do stand out. The How-To’s of Content Strategy Development In order for a content strategy to be successful, it must first be properly defined. Far too often, marketing professionals underestimate how important it is to undertake the basic steps of content strategy development. Like any good plan, a well-developed content strategy takes time and effort and no small amount of consideration. Even Forbes notes that even though content marketing can be complicated, it’s not in your best interests to put it on the back burner or ignore it altogether. Getting to Success – When Your Content Strategy Comes Together It’s a wonderful feeling to realize that your content strategy is coming together. All your key performance indicators are pointing towards a steady increase in traffic and your company’s name is on the public’s tongue. They know who you are and what you stand for. You’ve even managed to convince users to evangelize for you and things could not be better. In a perfect world, this would be what you’d come to expect from content marketing strategies. The truth of the matter is that this is the exception, rather than the rule. There are so many things that could possibly go wrong with a content strategy that ends up with it performing far worse than it set out to do, or even doing the opposite and driving consumers away from your site. How Content Strategies Fail If a content strategy is not delivering to its fullest potential the fault may lie in one of two places. Firstly, in the initial setup of the content marketing strategy there could have been a number of problems with how you approached the problem. On the other side of the coin are the problems that occur with the strategy that happen after its implementation. Both planning-level snafus and implementation level mistakes can lead to a content strategy failing. Let’s take a closer look at where the process seems to break down in these two key areas. 4 Major Planning Level Failures In planning level failure, a content strategy is doomed from the time it’s conceptualized. Although this seems like a bleak prospect, it is usually the case when an unskilled content strategy team tries to develop a strategy plan without having a proper grasp of planning principles. There are a number of key areas where this problem can persist and lead to failure for the strategy, such as: 1. Wrong Target Demographic While you would expect companies to know their own target demographic, you would be shocked to see how many of them aim their content strategy at a demographic that it doesn’t work for, while ignoring the demographic that it would appeal to best. 2. Not Budgeting Enough Having a budget is a good thing in a corporate setting because it gives you a figure to work with regarding what you’re allowed for purchasing new content. However, budgeting too little can make you sacrifice quality in order to meet your quota. 3. No Clear Distribution Channels Defining your distribution channels enables your content strategy to perform the way it was designed to. The distribution channels you choose should be the ones where your target demographic exists in large numbers. 4. Being Out Touch with your Audience Content marketing has a marked focus on the audience you are creating content for. If you don’t know what drives your audience, what motivates them and what makes them take action, then you need to find out before embarking on a content marketing campaign. Planning level failure isn’t the end of the world for a content strategy, however. Even though these things can limit the success (or even reverse it) for a content strategy, it is likely that the content management team will realize what’s going on and correct themselves before they get too far into content production. Four Implementation Level Failures This is where things get kind of complicated. At planning level failure it is a simple matter of fixing the behind-the-scenes work and redirecting resources where they have to go. When it comes to implementation level failure, things that go wrong here can severely damage the business image in the public eye. Depending on what goes wrong the impact could range from minor to catastrophic. Implementation level failure can include problems such as: 1. Failure to Streamline Content Although not a capital sin, failing to streamline your already produced content can lead to users leaving your site as they get there. Things such as consistent typography, working external links and relevant topics of discussion all fall under this broad heading. Properly vetting your content through an audit is a great way to deal with this problem, although it can be time consuming. 2. Not Engaging your Audience Properly The aim of content when developed in tandem with a strategy is to engage the audience so that they build a bond of loyalty with your brand or company. In order to engage your audience properly, you need to develop content that highlights hot-button topics and then discuss these over your comment section or on social media. Remember when discussing these things with your audience, it is recommended that you have a non-aggressive tone, even if members of the audience disagrees with your point of view. 3. Poor Quality Content Probably the number one problem that strategists have when … Read more

7 Content Marketing Lessons Your Business Can Learn from Marvel’s Superhero Movies

January 1, 2021May 18, 2015 by Josh McCoy

Marvel is one of the biggest, and hottest, production companies right now. It is an incredible place to seek and gain content marketing inspiration from, too! This company has an excellent approach to content marketing, as we can all see with their ad campaigns for their films, including the latest The Avengers: Age of Ultron. (If you have yet to see that film, take the chance to go and have a fun, summer movie experience, all while learning from some of the top marketers and writers in the comic industry.) Just what can you learn from Marvel for your small business and content marketing? This blog is going to look at that and how it can help you create an excellent, effective content marketing strategy that will bring in tremendous success. 7 Tips from a Giant in the Content Marketing World: Marvel What are the lessons you can expect to learn from Marvel? There are many different ones, but I take a look at a few of the top ones that can really help to impact your business. Get ready to take some notes and learn just how to improve your content strategy, and bring in new clients with a superhero-sized plan! Marvel Builds Their Brand Through Content, Constantly. When it comes to the content marketing world, Marvel can’t be beat with their epic content strategy. Their main way of survival is to, obviously, create excellent content, and they make sure that they are always doing so while building their brand through it. The Marvel brand isn’t exactly as it was ten or twenty years ago and this is because they’ve taken the chance to build and grow their brand over the decades. Their superheroes have taken on different elements and have had mega life changes throughout the comic books, and when it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we see even more changes to characters and their stories. Marvel has multiple universes with multiple hero and villain story variations, making their content very strong, which helps to make their brand incredibly powerful.How can you apply this to your content strategy? You can easily use your content whether for web, blogs, social media, or any other type to help build your brand and make it better. You can create an incredibly, strong company that people trust just through content, which is what Marvel has been and is doing with their client base. Start working on your content to help create and improve your brand to bring in more clients, as well as helping you keep your existing ones for many years. Marvel Provides Multiple Content Formats for Fans. I’ve mentioned this multiple times when it comes to creating content; multiple formats are vital to your content marketing, and Marvel understands this. If you aren’t a big fan of reading comic books, you don’t have to worry because you can easily go to many different Marvel films to watch superheroes battle it out with villains. In addition, if you prefer comic books to movies, then you are perfectly fine there. You can also watch various Marvel television shows ranging from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to Daredevil, and soon there will be even more Marvel television taking over the TV world. Marvel doesn’t just limit themselves to story-based content, however. They provide access to a variety of things including conventions for their fans and are constantly growing and evolving to meet the demands of the comic fan world.Providing different formats for your clients is a great way to not only give existing customers easier ways to consume content, but also to bring in newer clients. You will be able to reach a wider customer base by doing so, and you will see a significant increase in your views, clicks, and revenue just by providing different formats to your clients. The formats can be anything ranging from YouTube videos to social media content and infographics. Don’t limit yourself; be like Marvel and allow your content to develop in order to grow your client base and business. They Approach the Entirety of Their Universe. Marvel doesn’t just pick and choose which aspect of their universe they will promote and provide content for – they approach it all. They take a holistic type of approach, which helps make their various universes feel consistent. When you approach the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you will see an overlap of heroes and villains throughout several movies, bringing stories from different films together to create a larger, more impressive story. No matter which Marvel film you see, you will see reference to another and another. This is mighty impressive as they have a huge cinematic universe, but it helps make it an incredible experience for fans. This is a great example of what a holistic approach can provide to your content marketing strategy. You aren’t necessarily keeping stories together to create an impressive universe, but if you approach your marketing holistically, you will notice that you have a higher chance of being incredibly successful with your content. A great way to start approaching the entirety of it is to sit down with people in your business to brainstorm ideas across all content formats and fields, helping create a consistent strategy. Once you do that, you can then implement it and watch as the success starts increasing. Vision Isn’t Just an Awesome Avenger. The Avengers: Age of Ultron was an epic film that introduced a few new characters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including Vision. Vision is a pretty cool character, but his name is also a great example of what Marvel has. When it comes to making films for their cinematic universe, Marvel has an incredible vision and is planning all the way to 2020 and beyond for their releases. If you aren’t sure of just all that Marvel will be releasing, you can take a look at the full calendar. Remember, Marvel does keep releasing news about upcoming films in various phases, and we might just hear of more … Read more

A Story Of Brand Marketing: Why GE Is An Awesome Content Creator

December 31, 2020April 30, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Brand recognition in the twenty-first century is an uphill battle, but with a bit of forethought, any brand can position itself where the users are. The hardest part is engaging the users and getting their feedback. This is something that GE has managed to do successfully. Using Reddit (one of the most difficult social media platforms for brand recognition) as its base, GE has managed to woo users to their side by providing high quality content consistently, so much so that their e-zine GE Reports is now considered as relevant and important as older publications in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) field. But how exactly did GE manage to do this? How did they place themselves in such a great position compared to their peers? Their strategy is both admirable and inspiring, doing all the things content producers should be doing right. A Big Secret: Knowing the Audience When GE set off on the task of making its brand known for something, they first had to figure out the audience they were creating content for. GE is an engineering company at heart and the obvious audience for them would be engineers and other professionals in STEM fields. The things that interest these types of readers are not what you would consider mainstream content. GE, being a leader in innovation, realized that their audience was made up of people who wanted to know what was going on in science and technology around them. And so GE’s brand marketing strategy was born. GE started producing a series of articles that recapped and encapsulated new discoveries in the field of science and technology in a way that was accessible, not only to STEM professionals, but to anyone who had an interest in new discoveries. What they discovered was that although a large percentage of their core audience were STEM professionals, there were as many readers that were laymen tuning into their content since it was so approachable. The key behind this easy entry was the type of writing that was involved to build these articles. Human Interest Factor: 3 Methods GE Won At Doing GE Reports doesn’t go the traditional route of science reporting. Rather, they focus on the individuals behind the discoveries. What motivated them? What made them decide to explore this particular field of interest? Dry science writing went out with the 80’s and more science and technology magazines were focusing on a different style of science writing: one that sees the inventors and researchers as people first. Human interest stories always get mileage, but combining it with technological breakthroughs was a master stroke of genius. Channels of Interaction: Success With Email? Marketing a brand is about marketing its message and for a brand to become recognized, it needs to get its name out there. Paid channels of marketing isn’t usually a major factor for GE Reports. Most of its users know about it from Reddit or from Twitter, thanks to the massive following on the social media sites. Facebook also figures into its equation, but the surprise factor in GE Reports marketing strategy is its use of email subscriptions.GE knows email is old school, but they also know that their impact comes from personal interaction and bringing out the human side of a story. Email allows for far more interaction with an individual on a personal level and goes hand in hand with their article style. Email gives GE Reports personality and that is something a lot of brand marketing seems to lack these days. Loyalty is a Major Seller. Recently, the thinking behind social media for large marketing companies is to sink a lot of money into a targeted ad campaign. This doesn’t win over an audience, but simply “rents” them. At the end of the campaign it’s unlikely that that same audience would care to purchase from that brand again. It relies heavily on gimmicks and the ability to go for a quick sell. GE’s strategy is the complete opposite. GE Reports focuses on building a community as opposed to simply renting an audience, something that can be very useful to GE in the long run. Why Are Loyal Users Important? Going back to the idea of understanding an audience, the more you interact with an audience is the more likely you are to understand them and the more able you are to spot content that would sit well with them. In addition to that, GE serves as a hub for the latest news and opinions on the cutting edge of science. By cultivating a community, they ensure that not only readers are able to get the information they want to read, but that media outlets are clued in to what is the “next big thing”. This makes them as much of an authority site as any other science and technology outlet that has been in existence for years, all because of their dedicated community that shares and adds to the rich tapestry that is their user base. It’s not about Quantity, It’s About Quality. The thing that sets GE’s brand marketing strategy apart from those of their competitors (and indeed, anyone else in the field of brand marketing) is their dedication to the delivery of quality content. Good content is any entry that enriches the user in some way, either by teaching them something new, informing them of a development or giving them an opinion on something that is worth talking about. GE fulfils this demand admirably, consistently delivering content that appeals to its user base without compromising the usefulness of the content. Isn’t Brand Marketing about Marketing? Brand marketing isn’t simply about marketing, and that’s where a lot of brand marketers fall woefully short. GE goes about brand marketing via another more traditional route. They include their marketing into their content, but their content comes first and the marketing aspect comes after. The idea of a marketing blog should be to inform and enrich your readers before you start working on them as … Read more

How to Utilize Your Content Distribution Channels Correctly

December 31, 2020April 24, 2015 by Josh McCoy

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

Ecommerce Web Copy: A Few Words Could Mean Thousands of Dollars

January 1, 2021June 3, 2014 by Adam Oakley

There’s an incredible truth when it comes to the written word and ecommerce – a simple piece of content can mean thousands of dollars for your company. That’s right, just a handful of expertly crafted ecommerce web copy pieces will benefit your company with more revenue than you thought possible. You keep reading the 10 Reasons Why Content Is Important blog postings, but now it is time to look at a few case studies showing just how important content is. Nothing can beat a real time example or two. Introduction to Brafton Maybe you’ve heard about Brafton; they are a great content marketing resource that we use for many of our blogs. They provide great information and expert tips on how to get your brand out there effectively and awesomely. Their long slogan is, “Brafton fuels your brand with smart strategies and excellent content” and their shorter, easier to remember slogan is simply, “Fuel your brand.” Gives a decent image of what they do, doesn’t it? The workers at Brafton started out crafting content for major businesses a decade ago and once the Internet search market began to grow, so did their business. Why? Because the sites they wrote for ended up listing high in the results. This made everyone want to use them and made them become a leader in the content marketing realm. They are a priceless resource that can teach you many useful marketing tricks. Let’s Take A Look At One of Brafton’s Clients Brafton works with an ecommerce company that sells trendy footwear in New York City. They started crafting short blogs for the company and publishing large images to connect with the company’s client base. Eventually, this company decided to make different landing pages for their most popular shoes: Nike and Jordan shoes. Unfortunately, the landing pages lacked keywords and other written content, meaning the company lacked site visits and orders. When Colin, a Brafton employee, ran an organic search utilizing the keyword “Jordan Shoes” he realized that the company’s competitors were ranking 3rd and 4th on the SERP, which led to 11 percent and 8 percent total clicks (respectively). That is a lot of clicks and revenue for those companies and Brafton’s client was missing out. Colin pointed this out to his client and showed that even if they ranked 5th, the company would have approximately 15 clicks per month at a conversion rate of .0122. The average order value of $117.52 was calculated showing that the company was missing out on $21,506 a month in revenue. At first, the numbers seemed small, but it totaled up into a significant sum! This company was losing approximately a quarter million a year because of their lack of written content. After implementing a few keywords, the Jordan shoes landing page is now generating 172 visits from organic search results and moved from ranking at 114th on the Google SERP to 25th. Are you starting to see just how important content is? Now, Let’s Take A Look At One Of Our Own Clients One of our clients is another great example of how content will help bring in more revenue amounting to thousands of dollars. Our client has a very niche ecommerce shop that only focuses on one product, getting rid of grey hair. This is definitely a market many people are interested in and there are many different shops out there, making it top priority to get our client noticed. Our client began by requesting three to five posted blogs from us with a wide selection of keywords to use (over 200). We focused on SEO for each blog, attempting to make each one stand out and make our client a leader in their field. Our client reported to us how much success they had seen since requesting our services in mid-2013 towards late 2013 and the results are incredible. The report helped us to pinpoint the hot button topics for this client’s site, which helped us begin narrowing down the keywords for future blog postings. We also learned that we should adapt one specific voice style for all postings. We are using this information and are now posting weekly blogs using hot button keywords with that specific, consistent voice. The report also showed that just one of our blogs, just one, brought in over $800 in revenue for our client! Other blogs brought in anywhere from $70 to $200. While those numbers might seem small, over the course of a year that number will be very significant, especially when you combine it with the $800 revenue. When writing these successful posts, we made sure to write on hot topics within the community and wrote in a manner that spoke to our client’s customers. We always make sure that all of our blog posts end with a very clear call to action. This really helped bring in that revenue for the client. Our client is very happy with the results and is continuing to see amazing growth in their niche market. The next step we are taking with them to help promote their store further is by having them set up a Google+ account to establish authorship. We are excited to see what the future holds for this company and how much more revenue they will begin to bring in once they switch to utilizing Google authorship. See, Content Really Is Important Now you can see that the power of one blog can really impact your revenue and can create a successful business. You no longer have to rely on what you read in blogs – you have actual proof of how content will bring about success. You need to start taking content creation, including ecommerce web copy, seriously and begin crafting content that is both high quality and optimized for the search engines. Once you have done this, you will begin to see your business become incredibly successful and you will be grateful you decided to dedicate time and money into your content marketing. … Read more

How The New Facebook Paper Could Help (Or Hinder) On Curating News Content

January 1, 2021March 8, 2014 by Adam Oakley

Image credit: Facebook Paper website You might have heard of Facebook’s newest attempt at revamping the newsfeed, or maybe you saw it in the app store on iTunes and wondered exactly what it is. Paper is a standalone app launched by Facebook, their first app with Creative Labs, alongside the tenth anniversary for Facebook itself (according to Informationweek.com). It’s a new way of reading the news, as well as a new way of looking at your Facebook newsfeed. The Content of the Future As content writers and marketers, we find all kinds of (both weird and normal) tools online to help us create content—and Facebook’s Paper app may just be a new avenue for pulling great content ideas, if you can use news-based and centered topics as ideas in your content strategy. Let’s delve into how Facebook’s Paper works a bit further. Just What Is It? When you download this app, you’ll have your Facebook newsfeed on a new interface. You scroll side to side to go through items instead of up and down and each item is on its own screen. There’s a ton of new ways to look at things, including new multigestures you have to learn as with any new app you download. You can then add other news streams, like you would with other news aggregator apps. The only difference between them and Paper is that this app includes your personal Facebook newsfeed. You then add new streams by category (which looks like tiles). Each stream shows up as you scroll through it in your “queue.” It looks a little bit like the Windows 8 interface—if you’re a PC geek. And the idea of adding things by category will probably remind you a little bit of Pinterest. Facebook’s preview and information page at Facebook.com/paper can give you a better idea of the look and feel of the app, or you can download it and see for yourself. Why Should I Download Paper? According to Forbes.com, the Facebook Paper app is no different from any other newsreader. It looks nice, it gives you what you want, and it adds your Facebook newsfeed where you can also post updates, pictures, and links to Facebook. Forbes makes a good point though, “It turns out your friends are not terribly good photographers, headline writers or even spellers when forced to compete with the professionals.” When you look through your regular Facebook newsfeed on the computer, these things don’t seem to make a difference. The meme reposts and funny e-cards have always been a good distraction during your coffee breaks before, but in this new app these things can look “jarringly out of place.” The Positives of Creating News Content Using Facebook’s Tool If you’re a content marketer or involved in any way knee-deep in content strategizing, you might find Facebook’s Paper useful because of a personalized feel. Your Facebook newsfeed is right there in the queue with your other news. The interface is beautiful. Tilting the screen to pan photos, better view for reading articles and blogs, all easily utilized to make sure that your content is what readers want to see. You choose what you want to see. As a content marketer, you can streamline your own newsfeed and take this opportunity to gain more followers and put your page at the top of the list for Paper readers. An opportunity to better learn what your readers want. Find out what posts are best liked with this new interface and create more content like it. Learn what your readers want to see when they use this app and you can come up with a killer content strategy. And the Negatives But could this be distracting, or a good thing, for your news-based content ideas? You might find another app that DOESN’T feature your friends’ activities for the day to be a little, well, less distracting. Pointless content that looks bad and is just annoying. The constant posts from games, the quizzes, and various lists and cartoons could flood out your news-based content. Pages for small business. You can utilize this app by posting coupons and other promotions but there is the chance your Facebook page could get lost in the other content floating around. Your content may not work for this app. Perhaps the news-based content that you post relies on lists, surveys, and other text content besides articles and it won’t look right on its own screen the way that Papers shows it. Limitations of Facebook’s Paper The biggest limitation is that this app is only available on iPhone. The screen size is small and the market is limited since Android users are missing out. If you have a site or business that is mostly made up of Android users, this app will be of no use to you. Informationweek.com talks about five wishes they have for this app and some of them are definitely needed. One of these wishes is a content search for the entire app. Paper’s search function only searches your Facebook content, the same way as the Facebook app does when you type something in the search bar. InformationWeek makes a good point that this limitation can be very frustrating. They also talk about Pinterest integration and customizable subtopics. These limitations are not as annoying as the search function only searching Facebook, but they could add a lot more to the app for future updates. The categories that are included work well for a news aggregator, so it’s not so bad, but for an app that says it wants to personalize – it could use some work. So What Does The Bottom Line & Future Look Like for Paper? Facebook’s Paper just came out. It might have some similar features to other apps, but it is something new. The interface looks really cool, and when you scroll through each item from side to side the way that it does, you feel much more like you’re … Read more