SIX STEPS TO SUCCESS IN CONTENT MARKETING

"Content Marketing" encompasses both the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant content.  Depending upon your job title or area of focus, it certainly would mean a different approach to multiple efforts for many different people.  For the sake of this article, let’s start with the destination of your marketing efforts: your website content.  We’ll outline 6 steps to get you on the road to successful content marketing through the development, quality and control of your web content.

Start with the Basics

Stand back and take a look at your existing content before you start trying to make any big changes or spend time developing assets that may not be needed.

• Weight of content across pages:  Take a look at all of your pages on your site and compare them side by side.  Do they look balanced?  Is there an even amount of copy on each page that tells a good story?  Do you use images or videos in a balanced way from page to page?  If one page is too long, maybe you are trying to focus on too many things on that page.  Split it up.  Likewise, if a page doesn’t have any copy or is lacking other assets, this page should be combined with another page or removed entirely.
• Label navigation and Calls to Action (CTA) clearly:  The site navigation and CTAs on your pages or marketing allow your audience to explore what interests them. You want to make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site or learn more about a product or service, or even leave a rating or review. If they grow frustrated, they will leave, and/or be hesitant to return through future marketing campaigns.  Tell them exactly where each link is taking them and make sure the information on the backend is relevant and engaging.

 

Understand the Content Your Audience Wants

Try to understand where your audience is in their online journey.  Discover – Explore – Buy – Engage.  Offer content for each step of this journey, whenever possible.  Be a resource for information during the Discovery phase. Offer options and comparative data when they are exploring the best product or service on the market. Make it easy for them to purchase or share your content and/or product and provide feedback or reviews.

Also offer a variety of content to keep visitors engaged through videos, images, Infographics and charts.  Don’t forget to make it easy to share this content with others.  Allow access to share via email, social channels, and add comments, ratings or reviews. This will create a visitor-friendly experience that will help your content get shared and viewed to create more traffic and business for you.  And that’s the objective, right? 

Be Realistic With Keyword Focus

Although you will want to be everything to everyone – it just isn’t feasible – and could hurt your content in the long run. Keeping your content focused and on-point is the main objective.

• Start by reviewing your competition.  Do a search query as if you are looking for a product or service you offer or are doing research on this topic. Look at the organic page rankings. What page(s) are ranking in the top 10 and what search terms/queries are they ranking for?
• Then analyze each of your pages.  If you are not ranking in the top ten, does one of your pages answer the same search query?  Could you build one to answer it?  The search query and page content should align very seamlessly and immediately answer the question or offer the product/service they are searching for.

Be Engaging

Tell a story, give them facts, make them want to read more.  If you just focus on using a specific keyword or phrase, that will not hold the readers interest or answer their question. Be a storyteller – don’t just answer their question, tell them how, why, where and when. Use synonymous terms to continue to build the story, along with building the strength of the page.  Fresh, updated topics via blog or news feeds are a great way to keep fresh content and topics engaging visitors.

• Improve the flow of your text through formatting with use of color, bold, italics, underline, etc.
• Use images, graphics and videos to help illustrate your story. A picture is worth a thousand words, so allow those images to help support your story and hold the visitor’s interest.

Get Technical

You don’t have to have to specialize in IT to understand and fix some basic “technical” aspects of your site or with Google. Just understanding what is important and easy to update is the key.  Here are a few things to get started on “technical” updates that are quick and easy. These will help organize your site content and build traffic.

• Page Titles should be unique.  You would be surprised at the number of sites that have the exact same page title on every page of their site.  That is like walking into an auto parts store and having every aisle marked “Car Parts.”  It’s confusing and not at all helpful.  So be very specific – use keywords and keep the title to under 55 characters.
• Alt Text for Image. Make sure each image has alt text available for all images on your site.  Be as descriptive (but not long) as possible. 
• Fix Broken links and Server Errors: Fix all broken links on your site. There is nothing worse than seeing a 404 page when trying to link to a page on your site.  Use Screaming Frog to get a full list of broken links and server errors.
• Optimize videos: To ensure your hard work producing all of those videos pays off, make sure to include text in your video titles and descriptions.  Stream videos from the YouTube channel when using them on your site and allow ratings and comments.

Align Marketing, Social & Business Channels

Talk to Marketing. Make sure all content on the site is aligned to the marketing messages / campaigns sending people to your site. All too often, campaigns are completed and launched without a thought as to the destination page of the site.  Most revert to the homepage and then let the visitor figure out where they want to go.

• Be seen in social. Most companies have the core social channels, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  (If you don’t, get to it!)  But you should also make sure to setup a YouTube Channel (it’s the second largest search engine with 3 billion searches a month!) and include all social channel links on your site. 
• Register your business.  if you have a physical business location, you should add your business to Google My Business to help provide the best, locally relevant results via desktop or mobile.

DIRECT MAIL ISN’T DEAD: 3 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

In today’s age, digital rules. The Internet is a powerful and essential tool for professionals, marketers especially, and it may seem like something as archaic as direct mail doesn’t have a purpose anymore.  However, you may have a large gap in your marketing strategy if you’re not using direct mail as a tool. Here are seven reasons direct mail is alive and well in a world dominated by digital:

1. Direct Mail Response Rates are High

Direct mail response rates have increased by 14% in the last 10 years, while email marketing  response rates have decreased by 57% in the same amount of time.  If this trend continues, direct mail will become a major avenue for delivering marketing materials in the near future. 

2. You (Literally) Can’t Afford Not to Use Direct Mail

Direct mail is responsible for more than $700 billion of growth in U.S. companies in the past 3 years alone. With an ROI of 1,300% (yes, you read that right), direct mail is an essential asset to your overall marketing strategy. (Where is the proof of this number? I feel like we need a link here to lend credibility.) 

3. People Love Getting Mail - Real Mail

According to recent studies, nearly 60% of  all U.S. respondents prefer receiving physical advertisements in the mail to getting a templated, impersonal email in their inbox. These studies also showed that 40% of consumers will visit a store, either physical or online, after they’ve received the brand’s attractive promotional collateral in the mail.  

Conclusion - Find Your Balance  

Those studies showed that nearly 76% of small businesses utilize a combination of digital marketing and direct mail to reach their audiences. The key is finding the balance that will work best for your business, your budget, and your customer.

Is Your Small Business Ready for Social Media?

Social Media has revolutionized the online marketing world. Though many marketers predicted that the popularity of social media would fade over time, its presence has only grown and it’s now an essential part of any content marketing strategy. Social media is a great way to vastly widen your company’s reach, but it can take a lot of work in order to be effective. Is your small business ready to take on the responsibility of a full-fledged social media strategy?

Picking the Right Channels

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, Periscope: The list of social media sites goes on and on. It’s easy to create a presence for your business on all of these sites, but it may not be wise to. Small businesses don’t have the advantage of dedicating an entire team to growing their social media presence. It’s best to pick the sites that will give you the most bang for your buck; the most leads for your time. 

Before you jump into social media, evaluate which channels cater most to the audiences you hope to reach. For example, a B2B company may find more of a qualified audience on LinkedIn than on Facebook, but a retail boutique will have more success finding customers through Pinterest. Researching which social channels will give you the highest ROI will pay off tenfold.

Posting Regularly

One of the most important factors in growing your social audience and keeping them engaged is posting often and consistently. When you are breaking into social media, make sure you set a posting schedule that you can stick to. This schedule should go hand in hand with your overarching content strategy to make sure your blog posts, offers, and updates are being shared.

Engaging Your Fans

If you want your social media strategy to be successful, you can’t just post and walk away. It’s imperative to interact with your fans by replying to their comments and messages on a regular basis. As you build your audience, you can leverage them to create user-generated content to help fuel your content marketing strategy.

This is Just the Beginning

Once you’ve launched your small business’s social media strategy, you’re opening the door to a world of potential. As your business grows, you’ll be able to take advantage of all of the benefits these sites offer.

The Increasing Importance of Head Shots

Thanks to Leif Jensen, CPA, for contributing this story about why professional imagery is so important to business today.

I remember when I was in High School each year when we got our yearbooks there was one coach who used his H.S. Graduation photo for his picture for the yearbooks.  It was ridiculous and we all laughed at the idea that this was how he represented himself, even back then.
 
We have all seen people who use photos on their business cards as well.   Where it seems that their picture was taken long time ago, almost to the point they are barely recognizable when compared to their photo. 
 
That is why I try to keep the photos on our website as current as possible.  When I flip though the pictures and my hair gets whiter and my son gets taller.  Everyone else pretty much looks the same for the most part. 
 
But, I want those pictures to reflect what I actually look like.  Especially when I am meeting a new contact in a restaurant, we have to be able to identify each other.  I want them to be able to recognize me.  Just in case they are using a photo from the 1980’s or no photo on their LinkedIn profile for me to recognize them.
 
So take the time to examine how you and your business is being portrayed via imagery online, and then ask yourself the question, "How often am I updating our photos?"

Leif Jensen is a CPA in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. You can contact him via his website: www.leifjensenassoc.com

Is Your Brand Meaningful?

Strong brands incite feelings of trustworthiness and quality; does yours?

If you’re out of town and need to buy groceries, chances are you’ll opt to go into a store that you recognize over one that’s less well known. The power of a well-known, recognized brand is undeniable. Having a widespread reputation directly affects the success or failure of a company, so it’s important to build a positive, meaningful brand. Strong brands incite feelings of trustworthiness and quality in their customers. However, creating a meaningful brand involves much more than producing a quality, reliable product. 

What is a Meaningful Brand?
To create a meaningful brand, it’s important that your company not only satisfies your customers’ needs, but appeals to issues that are important to them. These days, meaningful brands are environmentally aware,  cruelty-free, and pursue some kind of mission that’s bigger than the brand itself. 

For instance, Coca-Cola is a well-known brand renowned for the quality of their product. However, the creativity of their ad campaigns coupled with their generosity in giving back to the community through the Coca-Cola Foundation are what really warms customers to their brand. 

Is Your Brand Meaningful?
It’s important to humanize your brand and communicate to customers that your brand cares about them, their needs, and their passions. Making that unique connection with each customer is extremely important. When customers know they can rely on your brand to make their lives better, you’ll start to see sustainable growth in your business.