content marketing Archives - Page 6 of 17

In News

Why Content Marketing Matters For Brands (And Yes, This Includes Yours)

November 23, 2020 No Comments

When you hear the term “content marketing,” it’s easy to think of big brands with six-figure advertising budgets and a team of bloggers and infographic designers on their sides. The thing is, it doesn’t matter how “big” your brand is. Even if you’re a freelancer or solopreneur, content marketing can make a significant difference for your ability to attract high-quality clients.

Yes, creating quality content marketing requires a fair amount of time — but what doesn’t? This is an important investment into your brand that will keep on giving.

It’s Essential For (Long-Term) Lead Generation

People no longer make a knee-jerk purchase because of an ad they happened to see on TV or online. Instead, they consider various options and do their research before making a decision.

When done right, your content will help you distance your brand from the competition. It will engage potential clients and provide the information they need to make their decision. It will present you in the best light possible.

Creating content is always worth it! The biggest reason? Because unlike ad campaigns, content is forever. It continues to exist on your website and other channels long after you publish it.

High-value content could eventually rank in Google search results itself, serving as a lasting form of lead generation. Valuable, insightful content has the potential to keep delivering value for your brand long after you’ve written it and forgotten about it.

If Google Cares About Content, You Should, Too

There’s no two ways around it: Google always attempts to put the best, most relevant content in front of people. These results are based on what they type into a Google search bar, as well as the quality of the content itself. The more “white hat” SEO-driven content you can produce, the easier it will be for potential clients to discover your brand.

Remember, there are no tricks or shortcuts anymore. Anyone trying to sell you the SEO equivalent of a “get rich quick” scheme shouldn’t be trusted. The way to get good SEO is by creating good content — not by tossing in a bazillion keywords or stuffing your content with backlinks.

This was especially clear during a recent email conversation with Maria Khramtsova, CEO of FortuneZ, a markets and iGaming media publication. She explained, “While keywords are important, your first priority should always be to provide real value to your target audience.”

Continued Khramtsova, “Always ask yourself if your content is truly informing them and helping them gain new insights about the topic. You can worry about working in keywords afterwards. When you write for the audience first, you’ll be able to work in keywords naturally, without detracting from the value of the content as a whole.”

Content Is Key For Better Understanding Your Customers

Wouldn’t it be nice to pry back the lid and get an inside look inside your prospects’ brains to know what they’re thinking — and what they want? Content marketing lets you do just that, through a trial-and-error approach — though one that doesn’t have the high costs of a traditional ad campaign attached.

Because they are housed on your website, the value of each content marketing piece can be easily quantified based on things like number of views, leads and so on.

With this in mind, you can then use your content to test audience-specific ideas like tone, target needs, branding messages and product or service ideas. The more content you create, the more you can learn about what your target audience likes or doesn’t like.

Over time, this allows you to fine-tune your voice and subject matter until you’ve got your content marketing running like a well-oiled machine. And with more quality, relevant content to help prospects discover you, it’ll be that much easier to connect.

Content Marketing Demonstrates Credibility (Instead Of Just Talking About It)

Far too many “experts” simply share a list of their services and an about page that acts like a virtual mini-resume. They assume that this is all they need to do to demonstrate their expertise and gain the trust of potential clients.

Yes, these website features can be helpful starting points, but your content marketing is how you can really prove your credibility — and not just say that you are.

Sure, you can talk about your industry experience and say that you did some big-time stuff at your old job before diving into your new career as a solopreneur, but the average prospect is going to need a lot more than that before they can trust you. Even testimonials from current and former clients can sometimes fall short, because a prospect may feel like they have different needs or concerns than your satisfied customers.

Your content marketing offers a chance for you to share your real opinions and insights about your industry. This isn’t where you have to try to be diplomatic. Strong opinions on relevant industry topics is how your potential clients can truly come to know you and your approach. Most importantly, it’s how they learn what makes you different or special.

Start Your Content Marketing Journey Now

Whether you’re planning to produce your own content or partner with a trusted freelancer, the most important thing is to start content marketing now. When you provide worthwhile, valuable content, you give potential clients a compelling reason to do business with you.

Feature Image Credit: STEVE WASTERVAL

By Pia Silva

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

I am a partner and brand strategist at Worstofall Design where we build brands that turn expertise into profit. Unlike most branding firms, we build entire brands in days instead of months, and only work for 1-3 person service businesses. Our unique process and niche positioning has helped us to overcome the hurdles we struggled with when we were starting our business, reliably attracting a steady flow of high paying clients and allowing us to enjoy the freedom that inspired us to become entrepreneurs in the first place. At Forbes, my goal is to clarify and simplify the elusive idea of “branding,” and share practical tips and tangible steps to help businesses find their unique brand voice that leads to profit

Sourced from Forbes

In News

The Structure of Persuasive Copy

November 2, 2020 No Comments

By Brian Clark

We’re aware each element of copy is designed to get the first sentence read, and from there keep the reader engaged step by step to the conclusion.

We know to keep things clear, concise, and simple so that our writing communicates with ease.

And we definitely understand the make-or-break importance of an attention-grabbing headline.

So, how do we then structure our content to be persuasive?

Good content structure is never written in stone, but persuasive copy will do certain things and contain certain elements time and time again.

Whether you’re writing a sales page, blog post, or promotional ebook, the flow will determine effectiveness.

Here are some guidelines:

First of all, focus on the reader — make an important promise early on (with your headline and opening paragraphs) that tells the reader what’s in it for her. Never allow readers to question why they’re bothering to pay attention.

Each separate part of your narrative should have a main idea (something compelling) and a main purpose (to rile up the reader, to counter an opposing view, etc.) that supports your bigger point and promise. Don’t digress, and don’t ramble. Stay laser-focused.

Be ultra-specific in your assertions, and always give “reasons why.” General statements that are unsupported by specific facts cause a reader’s BS detector to go on high alert.

Demonstrate large amounts of credibility, using statistics, expert references, and testimonials as appropriate. You must be authoritative — if you’re not an existing expert on a subject, you had better have done your research.

After building your credibility and authority, get back to the most important person around — the reader. What’s still in it for him? Restate the hook and the promise that got readers engaged in the first place.

Make an offer. Whether you’re selling a product or selling an idea, you’ve got to explicitly present it for acceptance by the reader. Be bold and firm when you present your offer, and relieve the reader’s risk of acceptance by standing behind what you say.

Sum up everything, returning full circle to your original promise and demonstrate how you’ve fulfilled it.

These are some of the key elements of persuasive copy. Use them to provide a “roadmap” for your writing, and you’ll achieve better results.

Looking for more foundational copywriting tips?

Continue with our Copywriting 101 ebook.

By Brian Clark

Brian Clark is the founder of Copyblogger, host of 7-Figure Small, and curator of the Gen X lifestyle newsletter Further.

Sourced from Copyblogger

In News

How to Improve Social Influence with Content Marketing

October 9, 2020 No Comments

By Chris Christoff.

Your social influence, if used properly, is one of the most effective marketing tools you have at your disposal.

Internet shopping has fundamentally changed the way consumers interact with businesses across all industries. Until this time, people were primarily influenced by what friends and family said about a company or their personal experiences.

Now, social influence is on the rise, and business owners are finding more unique ways to engage and build trust with their audience with the power of the internet. Another name for social influence is social proof. It all boils down to taking actions to show users that you’re reputable, trustworthy, and offer top-notch products and services.

There are plenty of exciting ways to show consumers that your brand is worth their time by creating unique content.

In an effort to help online businesses thrive, we want to examine several low-cost ways you can build social influence and grow your business.

Create a testimonials page

Testimonials are effective tools you can use to grow your business. If a high-profile client or reputable news source makes a statement about your products, ask if you can use their feedback on your testimonials page.

As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to make sure that the testimonial is honest and represents a typical experience with your brand. Create a page dedicated to showing prospects why you’re the best in the business.

You can break down your testimonials based on the product, customer case use, and more. If someone leaves you positive feedback and say that shopping with your business helped them accomplish a specific goal, or addressed a common pain point, don’t forget to highlight that feature on your sales page.

Congruency between what you’re selling and what the testimonials say is vital for building trust and helping prospects come to the right conclusion about your brand.

Allow on-site product reviews

The next way you can use content to build social influence with your audience is through individual reviews on each product. Believe it or not, 70% of consumers look for reviews before making a purchase. This statistic means that people don’t just rely on friends and family for feedback. Instead, the opinions of people with real experiences play a dominant role in purchasing behaviour.

You’re likely familiar with the effectiveness of this strategy if you’ve ever used Amazon. Under every single product on Amazon is a list of reviews for the product on display — providing users have left feedback.

Consumers are free to browse through the good and bad reviews and make a decision for themselves. There’s evidence that shows the effectiveness of product reviews. Specific products with a list of real reviews see a 270% boost in sales compared to pages without reviews.

Mention company milestones

Company milestones are often mentioned during internal meetings, but are you using this information to improve social influence? Consumers want to hear about how your company is performing in a way that makes sense to them.

For example, a SaaS company might include the number of downloads on their homepage. When someone stumbles across the brand website for the first time and sees that thousands of people have invested in this product or service, they are experiencing social proof.

Here’s a quick example to show you what we mean.

If you had to choose between two companies that offer a similar product, but one states that they have over 1,000,000 installs and features awards from reputable news organizations, and the other is a basic landing page, who would you trust more? It’s a safe bet that you would go with the company with awards and over one million customers.

A little transparency goes a long way. The next time you’re thinking about updating your homepage, start thinking about ways you can display these tidbits clearly for new visitors.

Customer feedback is useful on your website, but it can provide more value when you share it on social media. You’re going to see people mentioning your brand and telling you how much they enjoyed their experience with your company. Use this as an opportunity to share their thoughts with the rest of your audience so people who are not committed can see how other people feel about your business.

Let’s say you’re interested in a new coffee company. You’ve browsed their website, checked out on-site reviews, but you’re still not ready to make a purchase. One day, you’re browsing Twitter and find the company, so you decide to give them a follow.

Weeks go by, and you start seeing more and more posts from real users complimenting the coffee company for their exceptional product and service. You would probably feel justified to go back to the site and have another look. This situation we just described is social influence in practice.

If you’re not getting much feedback on your social media page, you can create a feedback form and use it on your website and email. Reach out to current customers and ask them to leave their thoughts. Make a note saying that their opinions may be shared on social media. If the user agrees and fills out their form, you can create the perfect piece of social proof content.

Compile the best reviews and make a collage that shows off your company’s strengths. Sharing this image on social media is a sure-fire way to get more people engaged in your brand. What makes this tip more compelling is the fact that 43% of consumers check social media when they’re thinking about buying a product.

Work with partner brands and influencers

It’s possible to create content that builds social influence by working with partner brands and influencers. Regardless of your industry, plenty of other companies would happily promote your brand on their website if you’re willing to return the favour.

Partner brands are especially helpful at building social influence because it’s a safe bet that the brand you’re writing for has a similar target audience— the difference pivots on the type of product, and the pain point it solves. Look for companies that operate in your industry with an audience that could also benefit from the products or services you offer.

The reason this qualifies as social influence is because the brands promoting your product have a dedicated audience. So the opinion of this company can have a significant impact on how consumers perceive your brand. Think about your favorite company. Now imagine that the company promoted a product from a different brand. You would go in assuming that the other company is a good fit because you value the opinion of the brand sharing their content.

A whopping 60% of bloggers write between one and five guest posts every month for other publications. Their goal, in this case, is to spread brand awareness while bolstering social proof.

On the same note, social media influencers are an excellent choice for building influence. The same rule to other businesses applies here. Consumers trust influencers on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram to promote helpful products with actual value. If someone’s favourite influencer is sharing your product, the person seeing the ad will instantly trust you more than if they found your company elsewhere.

There’s no doubt that adding a social influence strategy to your business can help you dramatically improve consumer confidence and sales. You have to take the time to gather valuable feedback from customers, which can include sending feedback forms via email, making it easy for users to leave product reviews, and by forging partnerships with other companies.

All of these steps lead to a more transparent and trustworthy business. At the end of the day, your goal is to provide a great product to your customers. But for people to see the value of your brand, you have to find ways to put your company on display.

By Chris Christoff

See Chris Christoff’s Profile

Co-Founder of MonsterInsights, the leading WordPress plugin for Google Analytics.

Sourced from business.com

In News

5 Effective management tools to boost your online writing business

October 8, 2020 No Comments

By Ralf Llanasas.

Given the growth of social media and content marketing, there has been a visible growth in online writing businesses. The demand for writers in today’s information age will keep on rising. The success that awaits is exciting, but admittedly, it can be challenging to deal with the day-to-day pressures of managing tasks and the business-side itself.

So here’s a good question to ask: What can you do to maximize your writing opportunities? How do you improve your writing business management? Here are five tools that you should incorporate into your activities to streamline your workflow.

Simul

In a writing business, you don’t handle things on your own. Your success is dependent on other writers and editors. Having different people checking out write-ups would also entail having revisions and a little back-and-forth until the client is satisfied with your output

This is where Simul comes in. This software will allow you to compare Word documents and track the changes in the document. It also allows multiple people to collaborate in real-time, showing the changes made by each party, and allowing you to choose which one was better. With Simul, preparing documents and writing articles will be so much easier.

Whitesmoke

No human writer is ever error-proof. Whether you are a native speaker or well-studied in the English language, you are bound to make mistakes, so you need software to do some checking for you. Whitesmoke provides these solutions, with features like spelling, grammar, punctuation, and style checks to help you correct and enhance all your written works.

BPlans

In building a business, advice from experts can help you achieve the goals yourself and boost the growth of your brand. Bplans is a resource filled with various business know-how that can help you set up and get ahead. They offer business plan templates, guides, marketing reports, pitch templates, and other tools you never knew you needed. From coming up with a business idea to learning how to be a business manager, Bplans has a wide selection of videos, blogs, and other pieces that will serve as your digital mentor and guide.

Xmind

Developing ideas is essential in gaining a competitive edge in your business. More than that, your creativity must be at its best for you to be able to write better and offer something new to your clients. Xmind is an amazing software that will help you keep track of your ideas and opening you to the possibilities that can grow from them.

Xmind offers mind mapping features, with a version that offers a more modern design and another going with the traditional route. This is perfect for people who require more organization in their projects and for those who want to retain more information in the things they are trying to learn. You can create non-linear documents, organization charts, matrix, timelines, and other

Daily Grammar

As a writer, improving your grammar skills is a vital part of the job. Expanding your vocabulary and learning about the different rules can help you produce topnotch work and set you apart from your competitors. Aside from reading books and watching video lessons, you can also explore the available resources from Daily Grammar.

Daily Grammar is a teaching tool for people of all ages and English proficiency levels. You can explore 440 grammar lessons and 88 quizzes to test your knowledge. They also have a daily newsletter that will give you tips and lesson reminders to keep you on the road towards the best writer you can be.

These five tools are just a few among the thousands of apps and programs out there, but they can be a good way to start. The key to succeeding in your writing business is to do this important thing: write. By continuously practicing this skill, you’ll learn more and you will be amazed at how far you can go!

By Ralf Llanasas

Ralf Llanasas is a content marketer at Simul docs specializing topics in business technology, SaaS, and automation. His writings can be read across different online publications. He love’s taking photographs when free. Follow him on Twitter at @IamRalf12.

In News

The story of content marketing

September 4, 2020 No Comments

BY: AILEEN LAMB

Content marketing has its roots in custom publications, specifically John Deere’s The Furrow, which launched in 1895. Still in production today, the original brand magazine was ahead of its time, teaching farmers ways to be more profitable. Fast forward 125 years and value creation is still at the centre of what content marketers do. Only now, we’re operating in a world of rapid tech evolution and growing economic uncertainty.

Custom publishing started evolving into the platform-agnostic content marketing in the mid-2000s. New Media, which began operating as a custom publisher for brands in 1998, dropped the “Publishing” from its name in 2011 to signal its transition to a digital-first content agency.

Digital enabled the shift from assuming what customers wanted or needed to know – now they can tell us directly. Today, brands that listen to and engage in honest conversation with their customers are the ones excelling in the marketing game.

Over the past decade, the volume of content consumed on digital devices has increased at an incredible rate. And Covid-19 accelerated this even more, with much of the world confined to homes sometime during the 2020 global pandemic.

South African statistics showed a rapid increase in online traffic when lockdown started in March 2020. While this is slowly decreasing as the economy opens up, it remains high. As Covid-19 fatigue has set in, users have migrated from news channels to more localised content on what they can do and how during the adjusted lockdown regulations.

This has certainly been picked up on food brands. Food24 (owned by New Media) and Woolworths Taste saw a 78% and a 181% increase in unique users respectively when lockdown level 5 was in effect. This follows local and global trends, where isolation and social distancing have both necessitated far more home cooking and given people time to learn and experiment. Many South Africans were also seeking to recreate the magic of eating out at home.

SimilarWeb shows that visits to the top 100 cooking and recipes websites worldwide increased by 33% from February 2020 to April 2020. In terms of the South African audience, total visits for this category increased by a massive 86%, understandably, given the lack of food delivery options under Level 5 lockdown.

Chapter 2: from vanity metrics to true ROI

To connect with a customer, it’s clear that you have to offer them content that’s relevant to them on their preferred platform. There is a tendency to stop there though, to focus on views, shares, likes and comments. But content marketing, when measured correctly, should be linked to specific business outcomes and data collected from customer engagement through to point of sale and beyond.

When Taste adapted its content strategy in response to lockdown, it was not to increase sales, which might have been seen as profiteering off a crisis, it was to make the lives of the Woolworths shopper easier, supporting them with affordable, pantry-friendly recipes. We worked with keyword research, data from social media and data on top-selling products to predict and respond to trends.

This was so successful that Woolworths decided to continue posting Taste content to its own channels and, despite lockdown regulations easing, to continue featuring “lo-fi” made-at-home videos. Another result was that click-through rates on strategic content on Woolworths’ direct mailers peaked, with one content piece receiving a 66% CTR and another receiving 59.7% CTR in March.

An example of concrete ROI that directly ties to the bottom line is Vodacom. Calls to Vodacom’s customer care line have dropped by many thousands as a direct result of SEO-optimised how-to content on the Vodacom now! blog. Using a formula developed by the client, we’ve been able to determine that these posts save Vodacom around a quarter of a million rand a month. Vodacom customers – and, as a bonus, its competitors’ customers – are finding this content via Google.

How do you determine what’s of value to your client’s customers though? And how do you strategically plan your content to make sure it aligns with what they’re looking for, ultimately leading to ROI? Market research and consumer insights are key, and the digital revolution has allowed us to read people in a way print never could. Layering these insights into marketing calendars ensures a balance between what clients want and what their audiences need.

The data-driven digital journey we’ve taken has allowed us to continue adding value to our clients. Years ago, we began to work with them to purposively ramp up their digital migration. This has kept them relevant to consumers, diversified our portfolio and further reduced our dependency on print ad revenues.

The next chapter: from digital-first to interactive experience

New Media completed its acquisition of established tech solutions agency Swipe iX in June 2020. This brought the full-stack app and web development, and UX and interaction design into the stable.

Swipe iX also specialises in emerging technologies such as machine learning systems that target the most relevant content to those who would most benefit from it, and big data-powered gamification techniques that can help motivate interactions with content. Augmented and virtual reality platforms, as they continue to mature, will also play a much bigger part in creating immersive content experiences, as will the use of conversational agents in crafting interactive storytelling experiences.

If you provide customers with what they want and tailor it according to your business objectives, it’s a win-win. As the story of content marketing unfolds further, the ethical usage of data and emerging technologies will increasingly come into play, deepening the connection between brands and their customers.

Machine learning, AR, VR and the like are not just “cool”, they pack a real punch in terms of telling engaging brand stories, ultimately improving customer affinity and retention, even in the midst of a global crisis.

BY: AILEEN LAMB

Sourced from BIZCOMMUNITY

In News

Content and Content Marketing Are Not the Same. Here’s How to Frame the Top 11 Content Formats.

September 4, 2020 No Comments

By Julia McCoy.

The term ‘content marketing’ is getting thrown around a lot, but discerning marketers know what’s going on: A lot of things getting labelled as content marketing are anything but.

On the internet, content is anything that expresses thoughts, information or experiences through written, visual, or audio form.

This article is content. The 95 million photos uploaded to Instagram today are content. The 500 hours’ worth of videos uploaded to YouTube in the last 60 seconds are all content.

The internet is built with content and always has been. It also means everyone has content, and everyone creates it all the time.

That creates some confusion when it comes to content versus content marketing. A lot of content is intended to market a brand … but that doesn’t mean the brand does content marketing.

Here’s why.

What does content marketing really look like?

Content marketing is a strategic approach to marketing that emphasizes the creation and delivery of valuable content to attract, retain and convert a clearly defined audience.

In other words, it’s using content strategically to provide solutions to problems that either your business or your readers have. Great examples abound:

The fitness brand that creates a community and encourages its subscribers to share knowledge.
The home décor retailer that distributes a monthly magazine on minimalism and good housekeeping practices.
The SaaS platform that uses gamification to encourage users to discover and get to know its features.
The travel company that uses a thrilling interactive website to hint at the experiences it offers.
The health supplement site that publishes a vegan recipe blog.

Do you see a difference? All of these efforts position you as an authority in your industry, demonstrate your expertise in your topic over the long run and cultivate trust in your audience by putting their needs and interests first.

How to tell if you’re doing it right

You’re doing content marketing (and not just content creation or digital marketing) if your content:

Puts your audience first. Be customer-focused, not company-focused. You’re delivering helpful, valuable content and letting the customer decide when they trust you enough to buy from you.
Links back to a business goal or solution to a problem. You’ve laid out how your content works together to further your business goals.
Rarely, if ever, actively promotes your brand outright. CTAs are great, but you aren’t trying to push your readers to your solutions.
Attracts readers to your turf. You’re building authority by providing readers with a destination to which they can keep returning.
Gets published consistently and continuously. You’re building trust by proving you’re an expert in the matter over time rather than publishing one-offs.
Uses metrics to measure and optimize. You can identify what’s performing well, and where you need to improve based on data.

To master content marketing, you must master these 11 content types.

High-performing content is central to your content marketing, but the way you craft it can make or break your strategy. It’s not enough to simply create eBooks, blogs and catchy social media that provide helpful information … that’s still biased toward your brand.

People are catching on to even that now.

Yet, with all the content creation that you will still do, it can be easy to lose your focus. Here’s an overview of how to use the eleven main types of content in content marketing:

Blogs. Make sure they’re optimized for SEO because they’re one of the best ways to boost your page ranks. Include a CTA and consider opening up comments for further engagement.
Case studies. Illustrate your expertise by taking your readers on a journey that showcases solutions to their pain points.
eBooks. They make great lead magnets, especially when you craft a magnetizing title and supply information people can’t find elsewhere.
Emails. Write direct, powerful, concise copy that contains information that can change your readers’ lives. They’re a direct line to your audience and can build long-lasting relationships when done well.
Headlines. Powerful, compelling headlines (that don’t sound spammy!) let your readers know exactly what they’re getting. They’re also a great way to convey brand with language.
Meta titles and descriptions. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes and let them know you have the answers they’re searching for right now.
Product descriptions. Optimize with keywords and describe products in terms of benefits rather than features.
Social media posts. Create an experience that puts them at the center and encourages engagement. This helps your audience connect with your brand emotionally and can help you find their pain points.
Video scripts. Tell your brand’s story engagingly. You can also include the script text on the page to make your content more accessible, and boost SEO.
Web content. Make important or helpful information prominent, include a clear CTA, and use high-quality images to craft a powerful message.
White papers. Explore relevant topics in-depth and give your target audience ideas that they can apply to their own problems or daily life.

Content making content marketing work: an example

By now, I hope I’ve demonstrated how content creation is intrinsic to content marketing. However, just because you’re creating content, it doesn’t mean you’re doing content marketing.

I want to drive things home with an example.

Let’s say that we’re growing an athletic clothing brand and looking for ways to attract more customers to our e-commerce site. We’ve decided to turn to content marketing for help. It might look like this:

1. You want to increase your brand’s presence on Google and social media, but you don’t want to constantly annoy your readers with ads. How else can you get your brand in front of your readers?

You decide that the best way forward is to start a blog full of topics that interest your readers. A few things that come to mind include clean eating, exercising at home, and personal empowerment. You can also talk about clothes, of course, but your models can all wear your brand, which eliminates the need for more direct advertising.

2. You start your blog, set up your social media and let your following know about it.

Engagement metrics indicate that readers are most excited about exercising at home. Looking through their comments, you notice that things like staying focused, finding the right space, and keeping a schedule are all major pain points that they have.

3. You respond by creating an online guide to exercising at home.

You use a combination of eBooks chock-full of challenges that are available as lead magnets, and video tutorials for exercises hosted on your site. To demonstrate how popular your guides are, you create a way for users to record their progress and encourage each other.

4. To maintain engagement, you start up an email newsletter with the latest challenges, shoutouts for people who have achieved their goals and occasionally a promo here or there.

Throughout this, you continue to grow your online community, adding more content to your blog that addresses questions or pain points. You even start a hashtag that your followers can use to highlight their fitness efforts so that they can spread the word about you.

5. At some point, you realize that you can enrich your readers’ experience with case studies and white papers.

You begin to include “white papers” about health and fitness that are relevant to your target audience. You also start to create case studies of “success stories” from your community.

6. As fitness centers start to notice what you’re doing, you start getting offers for sponsored classes and requests to sell your brand in their shops.

Your content marketing is now extending your brand’s reach into the offline world. You’ll continue all of the efforts above, as the results are feeding further content production.

Can you spot all eleven content types above? Look carefully. They’re here.

(Bonus: Do you know what brand I just described? Spoiler: This is Athleta’s content marketing strategy. Check it out at https://events.athleta.com/)

Now you know the difference between content and content marketing in 2020.

The main difference between content versus content marketing? Content marketing involves a lot more than just content creation. In fact, the emphasis isn’t content creation at all, but crafting an experience that improves the lives of your readers. If you’re putting your readers first, addressing pain points and producing exceptional quality content consistently, then you’ll grow your brand while you cultivate authority and trust. That’s content marketing.

Hopefully, I’ve left you with an idea or two about your content marketing strategy. Now, go forth and convert that target audience into passionate fans.

Feature Image Credit: sunanman | Getty Images

By Julia McCoy

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

Blockchain Marketing: The 4 Most Effective Ways to Get One Project Known

August 4, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from yahoo finance.

Technology and new ideas often go hand in hand. The challenge is often to express new concepts clearly and eloquently. This is where effective marketing comes into play.

PR and Content Marketing

Getting professionally written editorial content for your brand is a key factor in your path to success.

PR is an ongoing effort throughout the lifecycle of a company. Before the launch, you need a strong, concerted PR and outreach effort to reach all the major crypto sites. But even after, you need to keep the community informed and engaged with interesting new developments, partnership announcements, background stories, and news.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is essential in blockchain. There is no better way to get to new users, investors and clients where you have the most of their attention: in their inbox.

Always track and measure your email marketing. Many companies claim to have hundreds of thousands of subscribers in their list, but if you look at their email open rates, they are often below 1%. On CryptoCoin.News, we have an average open rate of over 25% because our readers did sign up to receive interesting crypto news.

Video Marketing

In the digital age, content is king. Video content is particularly adept at building credibility and authority for your token sale.

Successful companies have typically two types of video:

Explainer animation to give some background of your industry and your solution.
Interviews with the founders and company presentations by third parties.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a hybrid of old and new marketing tools. It takes the idea of celebrity endorsement and places it into a modern-day content-driven marketing campaign. Influencer Marketing works because of the high amount of trust that influencers have built up with their following and recommendations from them serve as a form of social proof to your brand’s potential customers.

In blockchain marketing, trust and authority building is a key component. That’s why Influencer Marketing is an important option in the marketing mix. Getting endorsed by the top YouTube crypto influencers can strongly influence buying and investing decisions.

Trust the Leading Crypto Marketing Agency

The team behind CryptoCoin.News has been active in online marketing for over 10 years, with experience in blockchain marketing since 2016. Trusted by over 150 clients, they know exactly which channels work for blockchain marketing. Paired with efficient, reliable and fast execution, CryptoCoin.News can be your partner for all blockchain marketing needs. Get in touch to schedule a free consultation at https://cryptocoin.news/advertise-with-us/.

Sourced from yahoo finance

In News

Content Ideation: The Methods and Tools Necessary for Content Marketing Success

July 8, 2020 No Comments

By Kaya Ismail

As companies continue to produce more and more content, it’s becoming harder to stand out. Most alarming to marketers, Ahrefs found that over 90% of content gets zero organic traffic from Google. That means coming up with unique and relevant content ideas that rank well and garner click-throughs is a crucial task for digital marketers now more than ever.

With this in mind, we’ve asked content marketers which methods work best for generating content ideas, whether there are any tools they recommend, and who they think should be involved in the process.

Which Methods Work Best?

Maryna Burushkina, Head of SaaS at Hamburg, Germany-based Neuro Flash starts every content journey with topic discovery. “First, we need to identify what topics we want to write about, which at the same time, reflect upon our brand values and meet our marketing goals,” Burushkina explained. She evaluates 25-50 topic ideas based on search volume, keyword competition, consumer sentiment, brand consistency, and a variety of other factors. “After topic discovery,” she added, “we dive deeper into long-tail keyword research.”

“Our industries are highly competitive with limited brand loyalty,” revealed Adam Lumb, EN Site Manager at Malta-based Cashcow, “so we need to produce articles that users are specifically searching for.” That’s why his content ideation process is based heavily around keyword research and competitor analysis for each region and market they’re involved in. “This process is particularly effective,” Lumb explained, “as we can immediately gauge the potential ROI based on the search volume of a keyword, how valuable it is, how likely it will lead to a conversion.”

“Our content ideation process consists of researching and staying on top of the news trends and stories that pertain to our client base,” stated Anne Szustek Talbot, VP of Content at New York, N.Y.-based BX3. Once they have a running tally of story ideas, they agree on which topics best fit the brand’s voice. “Importantly, we try to cite external sources when developing content,” Talbot added, “so that our posts read more like news articles than paid ads.” Keeping a journalistic approach to content can lead to better stories and projects more authority for the brand. For Talbot, their content marketing success lies in employing “a journalistic approach in researching and executing story ideas so that we present the most professional voice on behalf of the brands we represent.”

The Tools That Marketers Use

“We use a variety of tools for different reasons,” Burushkina said. In particular, she uses Google Analytics and the brand’s own website data to find content opportunities related to things they’re already ranking for. “We then conduct further long-tail keyword research using Google Keyword Planner, and research competition in SEM Rush,” she said. When determining the scope of the content, Burushkina and her team checks Buzzsumo to see what other related content has been performing well.

“We use Google Analytics, Google News, and Meltwater to keep on top of trending news stories,” Talbot said. These tools work best for their journalistic-based approach to content creation because they feature the latest news and can be filtered for the brand’s target audience. “Regularly keeping up with and reading content from top-tier news services is key to ensuring we are telling the right stories for our target audiences,” she added.

“The main service we use to do keyword research and competitor analysis is Ahrefs,” revealed Lumb. Ahrefs is a comprehensive tool that offers insight into backlinks, content shares, keyword traffic, and other SEO information. Using the tool, Lumb is able to start with very generic keywords and drill down into a few target keywords that were recently discovered, have low competition, or their competitors aren’t ranking for at all. “However, we supplement keyword research with a few other tools too,” he said. For example, Google Trends is useful for determining if keywords that are more popular during certain times of the year and AnswerThePublic provides autocomplete data from search engines that reveals how users construct their search terms.

Who’s Involved in Generating Ideas?

“Everyone in the team is involved in generating content ideas, from [the] Machine Learning expert to [the] Marketing Manager and [the] CEO,” Burushkina said. That way, the brand’s content strategy includes a variety of perspectives and ensures ideas are vetted by all areas of the business.

It’s great to get everyone involved in generating ideas, but ultimately it’s up to marketing leaders to determine which content will resonate with their audience. “While contributing thoughts to the idea box is a team activity,” continued Burushkina, “the Marketing Manager will be the one taking it a step further and actually conducting a thorough analysis, and finally crafting the content.”

Feature Image Credit: SHUTTERSTOCK

By Kaya Ismail

Sourced from CMS WiRE

In News

What is Audience Segmentation and Why is it Important for Content Marketing?

April 9, 2020 No Comments

By Brody Dorland

Getting the right content in front of the right buyer is the heart of well-deployed content marketing. When you know your customers and what’s important to them, the content you develop will be more relevant and boost your conversions.

To do this efficiently and at scale, using audience segmentation to better target customers is critical. Once you can segment your audience, the ability to focus, personalize, and connect will be more easily achieved.

What Is Audience Segmentation?

Audience segmentation is a strategic marketing exercise that involves creating subgroups within your customer profiles based on like characteristics. These segments can be defined by several different aspects, including:

Demographics: location, age, title, industry, income, education, etc.
Behaviors: any interactions with your brand across all channels
Psychographics: beliefs, values, and attitudes
Firmographics: business characteristics like company size, B2B vs. B2C, industry vertical, etc.

We’ll develop these ideas further in a bit, but for now, simply think of audience segmentation as using parameters to organize and sort individuals.

Do You Know Your Audience?

Before you begin to develop audience segments, your first move should be to create or update buyer personas. Your buyer personas represent fictional target customers and include general information, such as demographics, motivations, preferences, and more.

Beyond just having customer outlines, your buyer personas should be integrated with your content strategy. These elements need to be connected to ensure your content themes and plans align with what your buyers expect and need in relation to content.

Knowing your customers requires market research, as well as looking at your own data. By reviewing your content analytics, you can learn which subjects, formats, and phrasing resonated the most with customers.

Why Bother with Audience Segmentation?

Many brands, especially B2B, tend to create content for all (a.k.a one-size-fits-all content). They develop a wide range of blogs, videos, eBooks, and more, without focusing on personalizing the content experience for specific segments or personas.

But content marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all initiative—not if you want to use it to accelerate growth. If you fail to personalize your initiatives and content assets down to specific audiences, your brand will come off as generic and mediocre. Buyers will quickly recognize that a content piece is irrelevant to them, bounce, and seek out brands that seem to be talking just to them. Segmentation is the most important starting point for introducing personalization into your efforts. Without it, you’ll have no consistent way to ensure the right content reaches the right audience.

Segmenting In-Depth

Looking back at the four different ways in which to segment your customers, let’s go more in-depth and look at some examples.

Demographics

Using demographics is the most common method of segmentation as it’s usually the easiest. A lot of demographic data is readily available to you based on your current customer base. It’s also the most used method because it’s highly effective.

For example, if you sell lawn equipment across the country, segmenting by location makes sense because those in the desert won’t need the same items as those living in areas of lush greenery.

Behaviors

Segmenting by behaviors requires data analysis and a way to track interactions. You’ll be analyzing what they buy, when they buy it, what products they click on, as well as other types of actions like engaging on social media, opening emails, or downloading content. There are hundreds of different interactions, so you’ll need to define which ones matter the most.

Filtering groups based on actions allows you to personalize the content they’ll receive. For example, if you add a tag to your customer list to identify those that requested a quote but haven’t responded. You can then draft a drip campaign that offers incentives or stresses urgency with messages that the quote will expire. Because you know where they are in the customer journey, the content will speak to them more precisely.

Psychographics

Psychographics is the most challenging way to segment, but it’s certainly not impossible. You just have to dig deeper into your data to find patterns that would indicate certain emotional responses. Ultimately, you’ll be trying to align content with your customer segment’s value set so they feel connected to your brand.

For example, if you can determine that a segment of your audience prioritizes corporate responsibility as a differentiator, you can create content that illustrates your brand’s stance. If this is really important to some of your buyers, they’ll be attracted to this type of content and your company.

Firmographics

Segmentation based on firmographics is normally only used within the B2B marketing context. Firmographic data often lives within a company’s CRM and can be easy to aggregate and analyze, provided it’s being captured and stored within the prospect or customer database.

For example at DivvyHQ, part of the registration process for starting a 14-day trial of our software requires prospects to provide the following:

Company Name
Company Size (number of employees)
Company Type (corporation, non-profit, etc.)
Job Title
Their role in their content process (I manage a team, I’m a content producer, etc.)

Later on when engaging with these prospects, we can capture additional information, like industry vertical and whether they are a B2B or B2C company.

Capturing and analyzing this information with regard to your existing customers can provide a wealth of knowledge and contribute significantly to your audience segmentation process.

Audience Segmenting Can Advance Your Content Marketing

Audience segmentation can add fuel to your content marketing tactics and deliver a greater return on investment (ROI) for your efforts in a few specific ways.

Precision Personalization

Relevance is one of the most influential elements when it comes to making a buying decision. Personalized content drives connections and performs much better than content that is not. Now it’s time to look for opportunities for personalization in your content plan. You can direct specific content to buyers via email or use technology to display dynamic content on your website. This level of personalization is sure to accelerate the sales process.

Pipeline-Specific Content

Nurturing your audience is imperative to get them to convert, especially if you have a longer sales cycle. Most buyers want to consume multiple pieces of content before they are ready to buy, so you need to ensure that you have assets available for every step of the funnel. You’ll determine where they are in the funnel based on their behaviors; then, you can launch drip campaigns to move them further down the path to yes.

Expand Your Content’s Reach

Developing highly targeted content delivers additional benefits to help you expand your reach. First, it improves your search rankings for keywords that are specific to how an audience segment would search (i.e., marketing tips for insurance companies). Second, it can also amplify your content on social media with very specific hashtags. Those searching the hashtag may find your content and become a new prospect for your brand.

Audience segmentation is essential to an effective content marketing plan. By defining your audience and what’s important to them, your content marketing will be more relevant, engaging, and consumable.

For more tips, ideas, and inspiration like this on content marketing, subscribe to our blog.

By Brody Dorland

Brody leads the DivvyHQ team with nearly 20 years of experience in the trenches of corporate marketing, advertising agencies, entrepreneurship and establishing himself as one of country’s top digital marketing strategists. Brody’s primary focus is helping companies and marketing agencies shift their mindset, structures and processes so that they will think, act and consistently deliver like publishers.

Sourced from DIVVY HQ

In News

Content Marketing Trends for 2020: Are we ready?

February 26, 2020 No Comments

By Chaaya Baradhwaaj.

With every click on the keyboard, there is content being added to this virtual infinite universe that is being created, trillions of pieces of content get created every day

There are over 4.4 billion Internet users worldwide. If you look at them collectively as a country, it would indeed be the largest in the world. With every click on the keyboard, there is content being added to this virtual infinite universe that is being created, trillions of pieces of content get created every day. It is being created in terms of updates, likes, comments, and of course the larger pieces—websites, videos and blogs, among others.

This is a borderless country, so this content is actually accessible to anyone online, and we are no longer competing with ‘India-specific’ content. Consumers are also easily shopping across borders today. No wonder there is a switch to the digital content piece as you can swipe across this vast network and choose what you want to.

Today, digital content is an integral part of the consumer’s journey, regardless of whether she’s looking for entertainment, information or exchange (EIE). As marketers, the amount of mindspace we are able to occupy is what matters to us. And the best way to do so is through creating different forms of content, such as:

User Generated Content

It is no secret that consumers trust genuine reviews by real users when making a decision to shop for a product or service. They want to know what influencers or experts have to say about the product. Additionally, they care to know what others like them are saying about the product. Let’s face it, the consumer is also smart enough to know what is influenced and what is genuine content. There is a big leap that marketers need to take in capturing this genuine feedback and presenting it at the right places in the omnichannel consumer journey where digital touch points have become integral at almost every step.

Video format

Storytelling or insight-led messaging? Are we touching the hearts of the consumer? And are we answering the key questions they have? There is and will be an increasing need to address search-optimized video content that addresses the consumer in whatever stage of the consumer journey they are in, when they need to see it the most. Brands that are addressing this are creating not just DVCs (the new age TVC that can say more, can be long format), but are also getting their products reviewed, creating explainer videos and making their brand visible in content that is relevant to the viewer, making the product play a key role in the story as opposed to building content around the product.

Marketers need to do a complete 360 degree shift in the way they plan their marketing spends. A TVC-led campaign with a multi-crore marketing spend will not give return on investment considering the changing dynamics of the audience. A digital content plan with a similar budget would do a lot more for the brand by driving organic reach, increasing brand love, and loyalty, while sparking a two-way conversation between the consumer and the brand.

Data Driven Content

Considering the omnichannel digital play, the ‘what, when and where’ is becoming increasingly important. Starting with something as simple as ‘find a store near me’ when the consumer is browsing from just about anywhere to ‘price of the product’ or ‘is this a good product’ right in front of the shelves at a store. Data on when your consumer is most likely to be looking for you and what at that time do they want to know can and will shape the future of how much and where you invest in content.

Voice-content

Let’s face it—we would rather Google than stop for directions. Digitally mooted abbreviations such as ‘LOL’ have now become part of our vocabulary. And yes, now we just tell Siri or Google to dial a number for us. And thanks to Alexa and voice-enabled Google, we can manage our music playlists, find online recipes, exercise routines or listen to the latest news. Creating content that Gen Z can consume is the big game changer, thanks to the rapidly growing adoption of digital technologies and option for the easiest and laziest way to get things done.

So are we ready? Maybe not. But it’s time to make the big shift in thinking digital, content-first and omnichannel all through the way.

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock

By Chaaya Baradhwaaj

Founder, BC Web Wise

Sourced from Entrepreneur India