Tag: content marketing

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Content Marketing

How to Write Faster to Supercharge Your Content Marketing

Writing is a necessary part of content marketing, and even if you’ve got a team of writers working for you, you may find yourself writing some stuff on your own. And if not, feel free to share this advice with your team, to help them improve their productivity.

 

Create an Idea Capture System That Works for You

You never know when the inspiration for a new article will strike. It’s a good idea to create an idea capture system that works for you – whatever it may be. You could track everything in Evernote. You could simply open your WordPress blog and create a draft post for use later. You could add it to your editorial calendar with some sources (that’s what I do), and choose where to put it later. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s something that you can easily fit into your workflow. You may try a few ideas before you decide what actually works for you.

 

Organize Your Ideas Before Writing

Whether you’ve taken then time to research your topic or not, the writing process will go smoother and faster if you’ve taken the time to organize your ideas before you start writing. One of the best ways to do this is with an outline. If the idea of outlining something drives you nuts, you could also use a mind map to organize your ideas. FreeMind is a free tool you can use for mind mapping. I don’t use them often since I prefer the outline option, but it’s all about finding what works for you.

 

Find Your Most Productive Writing Time

Everyone has a certain type of the day where their energy is better for writing. Some of us are more productive in the morning, while others are more productive at night. I find I get more done when I work early in the morning – because most people I know who would want to talk to me are still sleeping. This way, I can work with as few potential distractions as possible. Generally, if I try to write later in the day or at night, the energy just isn’t there.

If you work from home and have children or a significant other to care for, or other things that deserve your attention, it’s important to make a firm commitment to creating time and space to write. The time needs to be sacred, and unless there’s an emergency, nothing else should get in the way. Get rid of distractions and just write.

If you don’t have the space to have a dedicated office, at least do something like put on headphones to signal to your family you’re “in the zone” and can’t be bothered unless someone is bleeding or dying.

 

Don’t Be Afraid to Walk Away and Reset Your Brain

When I sit down to write, and I feel like I’m forcing every single word, I know it’s time to take a break. I often feel pressure to get everything done by a certain time, which convinces me to remain in front of my computer. But if I’m churning out a whopping 50 words an hour, I’m not doing myself any favors. I’ve found that it’s better to get up and do something else – sometimes even going to take a nap – and then come back to the computer refreshed. When I come back, I can finish my article within an hour or two, whereas forcing it could easily have taken me three times as long before.

 

Make It a Choice – Not a Chore

When writing feels like a chore, you’re just not going to want to do it. Change the way you talk to yourself about it. Instead of saying, “I have to write two blog posts today.” Choose to say, “I want to write two blog posts today.” It helps keep you on track and makes it feel less like work.

 

Use Automation

Rewriting the same thing over and over, or relying on copy and paste becomes a time suck. If it only takes you two minutes to add your bio at the end of a guest post, you could have started a paragraph on a new blog post.

That’s where TextExpander comes in to save the day – and millions of keystrokes. Though it can take some time to setup your custom keyboard shortcuts for your most frequently used text, it’s worth it in the long run. You can use it for things like common words and phrases you use often in your writing, your biography, your email sign offs, and more. It’ll even keep stats to show you how much time you’ve saved! Other similar apps include Breevy and TypeIt4Me.

 

Turn off Automatic Spell and Grammar Checks

Seeing the red squiggly line is a pain because it tempts you to break your flow and correct it right away. If you turn off the “as you go” checks, you can focus on getting the words out, and then go back and check everything at the end.

 

Don’t Edit Yourself While Writing

Similar to how you would stop to correct a misspelled word or typo while you’re writing and it breaks your stride, you should worry about editing everything at the end. If you stop what you’re doing to add more detail, you’ll risk going into various rabbit holes, and ruin your productivity. When you’re finished with an article, edit by reading from the bottom up – as this will help you catch things you wouldn’t necessarily catch if you were reading from the beginning to the end.

 

Leave Flexibility in Your Editorial Calendar

Your editorial calendar is a valuable tool as it helps you know when you’re supposed to write what. But, if you stick to it exactly as it’s written, you could find yourself struggling to churn out the words. I recommend looking at the week as a whole, or even the month as whole, and writing the piece that you’re most interested in getting done.

This one, for instance, was fourth on my to-do list this week, but I chose to write it first, because when I sat down to write, it was the one that jumped out at me. As such, I have been able to move through it faster than I would have if I had chosen the first one on my editorial calendar for the week.

 

Play Games to Help You Learn to Type Faster

Many writers struggle with thinking faster than they type. When your brain is churning out ideas at lightning speed, but your fingers are moving at a snail’s pace, it can be hard to meet your timing goals. You’ll finish your 30-minute block with only a fraction of the page filled with words.

Learning to type isn’t as monotonous as it used to be. There are a number of sites online that have games, lessons, and tests to help you improve your speed. Take 15 minutes at the beginning of your day to work on these games and warm up before you sit down to write.

  • FreeTypingGame.net: This site is full of free games, lessons, and tests to help you improve your typing skills.
  • WordGames.com: This website is full of games that will challenge you to type as fast as you possibly can. If you’re one that has to look at the keyboard while typing, this can help you learn to type faster while looking at the screen, rather than at your fingers.

If you find that you do a lot of your writing while on the goal, you can find free apps that help you learn to type faster on your tablet or smartphone.

  • TapTyping: This app works on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch to help you learn to type faster on those devices. The app is free, but if you want to unlock everything, you can make a one-time payment.
  • Typing Master: This is a typing game that works on Android devices – smartphones and tablets. It not only improves your typing skills on the Android keyboard, but also lets you compete with other players.

Even if you already type fairly fast, there’s a chance you struggle with accuracy. What’s the point in typing 100 words per minute if there’s a bunch of typos you have to go back and correct? Using these games can also help you improve your accuracy rates, so there’s less to edit in the end.

And if you can’t seem to master the craft of typing on your mobile devices, you can always use Google Docs and the voice typing function on your phone. Sure, it’s not perfect and you’ll have to speak with a fairly uninterrupted flow, but you can always come back to it later for editing.

 

Challenge Yourself: Set Timers

If you notice it generally takes you two hours to produce 1,000 words, set a timer for an hour and challenge yourself to beat your normal word count. When you know you’re racing the clock, you’re more likely to stay focused on the task at hand.

 

Write Down Your Plan

Research shows you’re likely to do better if you take the time to write things down. At the end of your day, write down what you want to accomplish in terms of writing for the next day. See how well you met your goals and adjust accordingly for each day.

 

Break the Process Down into Smaller Chunks

If the idea of writing 1,000+ words for 4+ pieces a week terrifies you, break it into smaller chunks. Here’s my process:

At the end of the week when I’ve completed everything for my editorial calendar, I look to the next week.

I create the documents for the next four pieces. Then, I put in placeholder text for my intro, conclusion header, and conclusion.

When that’s done, I conduct a few minutes of research for each piece and copy and paste the links at the bottom of the document. I save them all and walk away for the weekend.

When it comes time to write again, I open the document I feel like working on the most, then open the sources I left in the bottom. I read through everything, create my outline, and then start writing.

At the end, I’ll find the places where I need more information, and go back and add things, then edit. It makes it easier for me, and I end up getting everything done faster by batching the creation and early research. That process may not work for you, but you’ll find something that does. For instance, you may want to focus on your headlines, then your intro paragraphs and so on.

Don’t Interrupt Writing to Find More Research

If you’re writing and find something that you feel could benefit from more research or material, don’t stop what you’re doing to go find it. You may find yourself on YouTube, three hours later watching videos that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. Instead, leave yourself a note. I like to bold the text and change the color to red, so I remember to go back in my editing phase and don’t accidentally publish something with my personal notes in it.

 

Create a Small Ritual

Getting in the habit of doing a few things before you sit down to write can help you be more productive. For instance, I always have a meal or a small snack. I pour myself a drink – whether it’s coffee, tea, or water. And I always go to the bathroom so I’m not racing my bladder, or getting interrupted when I’m in the middle of a killer session where I’m knocking out words super-fast.

 

Writing Is a Skill – Learned and Improved

While some people are naturally better at writing than others, the fact is it is a skill that can be learned. The more you do it and the more you work on it, the faster you can become. The faster you become, the more your quality has a chance of suffering, so the key is finding a balance. When you’ve mastered the art of speed and quality, you can use that newfound time to focus on other areas of your business, or expanding your content marketing efforts.

How long does it take you to write? Are there any other tips and tricks you could share? Tell me about them in the comments below.

 

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Content Marketing

How a Small Team Can Win Big in Content Marketing

If you’re looking to build an engaged audience and are more interested in long term marketing wins, content marketing can be one of the best strategies you can use. However, content marketing can be intimidating if you are working with a small team or small budget.

Even a one-person team who must handle content strategy, creation, and measuring success can be a rock star with content marketing if they know exactly what to do before they set out to do it.

That’s why thinking long term, reaching out for help when you need it, and testing ideas with your campaigns is essential. While this is true regardless of the size of your team and marketing budget, it is especially true for a small team.

Think Long Term

When it comes to content marketing, ultimately you cannot think about a short time. It’s definitely a game to be in only if you can stand it for the long haul. Though you can use content to build brand awareness and your audience, you won’t typically see these kinds of immediate results like you would with email marketing or pay per click advertising.

If you have a limited brand awareness or audience, you can spend as much as a year and a half working on content marketing before you start to see the results. In this case, creating big wins means you have to think months in advance and set realistic performance expectations as part of your strategy. I know it sounds discouraging, but considering content marketing leaders get 7.8 times more site traffic than non-leaders, it’s worth the investment of time, energy, and money.

Begin by looking closely at your current content marketing performance. Use this as your benchmark to measure the success of your ongoing efforts in the future. 

Turn to Google Analytics and any other analytics platforms you might be using to learn about what’s going on with your website and social media channels. Remember to take a look at the built-in analytics for Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms you’re using in your business. To dig a little deeper, use tools such as SEMRush, Moz, and Ahrefs to set benchmarks and monitor progress in terms of keywords, ranking, and overall visibility. Look closely at your email marketing provider data to see how well your email marketing is performing, and if you’re using any kind of marketing automation, check in there, too.

Once you’ve determined how well your current setup is performing, collect it all in a spreadsheet, so you can update it as you go online, for a quick and easy way to assess your performance. Include:

  • Web traffic statistics such as the time on site, bounce rate, unique visitors, and return visitors
  • Social traffic, shares, comments, mentions, and other engagement metrics of interest
  • Email subscriber numbers, open rate, unsubscribe rate, bounce rate, click through rate, and so on.
  • Keyword rank, organic traffic, and so on.

If you haven’t invested in any kind of analytics, marketing, or email software, you’ll be stuck spending time manually getting social information from each of the platforms, and WordPress or your other CMS. It can be time consuming, but setting the benchmarks is important to make sure you’re on the right track performance wise later.

Take the time to actually document a content strategy. Only 37% of B2B marketers and 40% of B2C marketers have a written content marketing plan. Clearly, you can operate without one and do just fine, but if you’ve gotten it on paper, it will increase the chance of success.

Once you have the strategy developed, create an editorial calendar. This ensures you won’t need to wonder what to post on your blog, and can work ahead to make sure you have the content you need over the next week, month, or even quarter. This also makes it easier to manage your workflow and collaborate with other people on your team, keeping everyone accountable and on the same page.

As you build that editorial calendar, think of ways you can repurpose your content. This way you can get your message in front of larger audience, while saving time and money on the content creation process. Plus, you’re not constantly having to rush for new ideas. Just be sure you take the time to actually repurpose it – don’t post the same status update on LinkedIn as a tweet you posted on Twitter. Don’t just copy and paste your blog posts and throw them up on other websites.

Don’t Be Afraid to Outsource When Needed

The reality is that no matter what, there are only 24 hours in a day, and only so much can be accomplished. Even if you’ve got a partner or a small group of people to help you, there’s a lot to get done over the course of the day. Content marketing can add mounds of work to that list, so instead of burning the candle at both ends and burning out well before you can see the results of your efforts, turn to freelancers to help you.

The key is to spend time finding freelancers who can directly help your team execute your strategy. Keep the team as lean as possible so you can stay within your budget constraints. If you find someone doesn’t produce the content you need, or just doesn’t work to help you reach your strategy goals, then move onto someone else.

To create a successful working relationship with freelancers or any outside agency, you must create an environment that fosters success. This means:

  • Providing clear performance expectations.
  • Sharing any brand style guides, contributor guidelines, and any other relevant marketing activities. If you’re worried about the freelancer abusing the information you share with them, you can ask that they sign a non-disclosure agreement.
  • Keeping communication as transparent as possible.

Spend some time thinking about exactly what it is you need and writing a clear and concise job description before you begin looking for freelancers or agencies to work with. When you’re ready, take a look at this list of freelance websites to help you connect with the right people.

Reaching out to freelancers gives you more people to get the job done and ensures you can maintain quality standards without having to spend extensive time onboarding and training. And, because you can eliminate the need to hire formal employees, there’s no need to deal with W2s, which can keep HR costs down.

Test and Experiment with Your Campaigns

Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. As such, you should continually experiment with a variety of content campaigns. The main focus should be on creating a stellar brand experience, as this ensures you can grow your community over time.

In 2016, 70% of B2B marketers said their content marketing strategy was more effective than in the previous year. Stick with it, even when things seem discouraging.

After you’ve developed your editorial calendar, set deadlines to keep your team on track. Your strategy can be as simple as requiring a single article every week, or scheduling social media posts every day. What matters is you set goals you can execute every day – because the consistent effort is what makes the difference.

With your editorial calendar in hand, plan a content distribution strategy, or a content distribution checklist. If you publish content but don’t take the time to promote it, then you won’t get results. Your distribution checklist should look something like this:

  • Share content on social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest (or whichever channels you’re using)
  • Start discussions on relevant forums – Quora, Reddit, GrowthHackers, Inbound
  • Add to social media scheduling tool, such as Buffer, Oktopost, Hootsuite, or PostPlanner
  • Tag and mention anyone mentioned in the content
  • Syndicate content on Medium and LinkedIn, if relevant
  • Share in relevant LinkedIn groups

Final Thoughts

Whether you’re a one-person team, or have a small group to work with, you can still make content marketing work for you. Even though you may not have the resources of a large corporate machine, it all comes down to planning, efficiency, and execution.

Have you ever let content marketing intimidate you because you didn’t think you had a big enough team? Are you a small team who’s making big wins in content marketing? Talk to me in the comments – I’d love to hear your story!

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Content Marketing

9 Content Marketing Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make

Content marketing is one of the most effective forms of online marketing today. In a world where 200 million people are using ad blocking software, traditional display ads just aren’t as effective as they used to be. When you consider that content marketing costs 62% les than outbound marketing, yet generates three times the leads, it’s easy to see why so many brands are turning to it today.

But, just because you can do something a certain way, doesn’t mean you should. And just because you’re doing it, doesn’t mean you’re doing it right. Even if you’ve done a fair amount of homework ahead of time, there are some missteps you’ll want to avoid from the start. If you’ve already made one or more of these common mistakes, don’t panic. There’s time to adjust your approach and see results.

1. Skipping a Documented Content Strategy

If you think you can get away with keeping tabs on your content marketing strategy mentally, I hate to tell you, but you’re wrong. You may be able to make it work, of course, but research shows companies with a documented strategy see better performance compared to companies that don’t have it written down.

How you choose to document that content strategy is up to you, but you should seek to answer the following questions, per the Content Marketing Institute:

  1. What specific challenges are you trying to solve?
  2. What is your dream outcome?
  3. What’s the risk if your content marketing fails?
  4. Who is involved? Do you need permission from managers, board members, or any other higher-ups to participate?
  5. What is your budget?
  6. What happens if something goes wrong? What’s the backup plan if you don’t reach your goals as quickly as you want to? What happens if customers complain or another issue comes up?
  7. How long do you have to demonstrate success?

After you have those broad questions answered, it’s time to get specific:

  1. What do you need to reach the objective? Do you want to create leads or get higher-quality leads? Make direct sales? Get better customers?
  2. How big of an opportunity is it? Is it large enough to warrant spending time, energy, and money on it?
  3. How will your content marketing align with the rest of your business objectives and existing marketing?
  4. What are the risks? What could prevent you from reaching your goals? What can you control to minimize the chance of those things happening?

Then, move on to detailing who your audience is, the kind of content they need, how it will help them, why the audience cares about it, and what your unique value proposition is.

From there, you can develop a list of the content you’ll create as part of the strategy, making sure it offers something different from the competition.

2. Misunderstanding Your Audience

If there’s one thing that you must learn to succeed in all facets of online marketing – it’s your target audience. The more you know about them and what they want, the better you can craft content that will serve their needs. If you’re not clear about who you’re trying to reach, then you’re not going to get the best possible ROI.

Start with a customer persona for each segment of your audience. Then, pay attention to your analytics to see how well your personas match your actual audience. Adjust the personas and content accordingly.

If you think you’ve got a handle on your audience, I want you to take a second to evaluate that and come up with proof to support your answer. Why? Research shows 63% of customers don’t feel the brands they love understand them. So, there’s a bigger chance that you think you’re connecting with your audience, but you’re really not. And if you’re not connecting with them, the content you’re creating isn’t really as helpful to them as you’d like it to be.

You want to create content that the audience wants to hear – not content centered around what you want to talk about.

3. Selling Rather Than Teaching

Your content should always be designed to educate your audience first, and sell second. Never mention your business or yourself until your call to action at the end of the content. You should be aiming to teach your audience how to solve a problem and then show them who they can reach out to if they need help.

If your readers want to know how to change a tire, they should know how to do it by the end of the article or video. You want people to share your content so you or your client looks like an expert who is paid to perform related services or sell related products. In the case of changing a tire, this content could be used to market a mechanic or a tire shop, because it helps them show their expertise, without overtly selling their tires or repair services.

4. Poor Time Management

A lot of marketers struggle to produce enough content, with data from Content Marketing Institute showing it’s the second biggest pain point for B2B marketers, coming in just behind budget. Since we can’t slow the earth’s rotation around the sun to add more time to our day, the only way we can be sure we’re producing enough content while staying within our budget is to make efficient use of our time.

I challenge you to really take a look at how you’re spending your time at work. How many times a day are you checking your phone? How much time are you spending on Facebook games? Use apps like Rescue Time to track what you’re doing for the day, then make a plan of attack to reduce and eliminate those time sucks that are killing your productivity. (I see you over there, Candy Crush.)

5. Obsessing with the Top of the Funnel

Of course the top of the funnel matters, because that’s where your leads are coming in. But if that’s the only place your content marketing efforts are focused, you’re alienating the rest of your funnel. Before they can become a paying customer, which is ultimately what you want, you’ll need to move them the rest of the way through the funnel, right? Try to develop your content marketing strategy so there’s content aimed at audiences in each stage of the funnel.

6. Ignoring SEO or Thinking Only About SEO

This one can go both ways, and I find it typically depends on the marketer’s experience with SEO before delving into content marketing. Generally, those who consider themselves SEO aficionados before getting into the content marketing side of things are the ones who think about it too much, but that’s not always the case.

The reality is there’s room for both because SEO helps to drive traffic and helps bring your customer acquisition costs down. But, SEO is more than using keywords and phrases to get a good rank in the search results.

Related: 10 Common SEO Mistakes that Cost You Customers

Beyond knowing what keywords, you need to use in your content, you’ll also need to use them in the title tags and in paragraph headings. You’ll also want to optimize your content for Twitter, Facebook, and other social platforms. Taking these steps helps increase the odds readers will find out about you and what you have to sell through finding your social media pages rather than an article or landing page you created.

If you’re thinking only about SEO, you’re focused too much on those keywords and phrases, and not necessarily producing content that the audience finds useful.

7. Foregoing Influencers

Influencers are an important piece of the content marketing puzzle, since amplification and promotion is just as important as the content itself. You can have the best content out there on a particular subject, but none of that will matter if no one knows about the content or can find it.

If you’re still relatively new to the industry and don’t have any connections with influencers, it can be especially tempting to skip connecting with them, but you have to start somewhere. 92% of consumers would rather make purchase decisions based on trusted recommendations and referrals than they would from other sources. If you’re able to connect with an influencer, and that influencer shares your content, you’ll be more likely to pick up customers than if the customer had found your content themselves. And just in case you need a bit more motivation to start building those relationships, businesses earn an average of $6.50 for every dollar they spend on influencer marketing.

 

8. Sticking to a Single Type of Content

Written content is the most common form of content used in content marketing, but treating it like it’s your only option could be hurting your strategy. It’s okay for it to be the core part of your strategy, but don’t be afraid to experiment with other types of content – especially if your data indicates your audience would be responsive to it. Your content is an asset, so writing a single post and archiving it once it’s had its moment in the sun is a waste. You can and should repurpose all your content in as many ways as possible to make the most of your assets.

 

9. Creating Content That’s Not Evergreen

And on a similar vein, any content you create today should have value to the reader years from now, too. You want that single piece of content to be out there working for you for a long time after you write it – even if you do have to come back and check on it from time to time. This means keeping things that are timely out of the picture – and writing about topics that will be as true today as they are 10 years from now. In other words, don’t write about how your favorite celebrities are getting married – because statistically, they won’t be married long. Evergreen content allows you to consistently add to your marketing assets and increase revenue without having to invest in new materials.

 

Keep Your Content Marketing Fluid and Flexible

Though I just preached the importance of a documented content strategy at the beginning of this post, I want to finish it with a reminder that you shouldn’t be rigid with that strategy. It’s all a guessing game based on what the data you have on hand indicates, and if you get a different result than you anticipated, there’s nothing wrong with making adjustments as needed and experimenting to see if your audience responds better to different types of content and promotional techniques.

What do you find the most frustrating about content marketing? Share your thoughts with me in the comments below.

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Content Marketing

7 Content Marketing Hacks to Help B2B Marketers

When it comes to B2B, content marketing is an entirely different beast than for the B2C market. Of course, the purpose remains the same – you want to create content that draws in a bigger audience for your business, content that strengthens your brand, and ultimately increases your leads and sales. The only thing that makes it different is it is content made by businesses, for businesses; it is not the typical consumer-facing content. As such, the content absolutely must be useful above all else. Can it be humorous and entertaining, too? Yes, of course, but without utility, it’s worthless. Does this mean B2C content doesn’t have to be useful? No, but there’s a bit more freedom with it.

 

1. Identify Your Audience

Before you’re able to provide the content your audience needs, you must first learn as much as you possibly can about said audience. You’ll segment your audience by the stage of the funnel they are in, but each audience is made up of various individuals. We’ve talked about buyer personas before, but in this case, we’ll talk about developing reader personas.

Use your Google Analytics data to determine more information about your audience. Of course you can see basic information like gender, age, and location, but there’s a bit more detail that can help you along. When you take a closer look, you can also see topics they’re interested in. If you notice these topics aren’t necessarily central to your business, it’s still important information to keep in mind. It gives you a way to expand your content into new areas that are still somehow relevant subjects, that will keep your readers interested.

When you see the summary of the interests data, you may be surprised by what you learn about your readers. At this point, you can safely begin to draw conclusions about who they are, allowing you to speak to them more clearly with your content.

It’s important to note that the percentages you see in the affinity categories is based on a samples of your overall traffic, therefore, it’s not necessarily exact data. This will be based on the amount of traffic your website receives.

When you’re identifying your audience, make sure you can answer these questions:

  • What do they expect from my content?
  • How should I interact with them?
  • How are they interacting with each other? Or are they?
  • What motivates their buying decisions?

 

2. Keep Ideation Fresh and Consistent

One of the challenges of content marketing, regardless of niche, is coming up with fresh content ideas consistently. When you’re just getting started, it’s easy to come up with all kinds of ideas. But once things are rolling, and you’ve covered everything you came up with in that initial wave of excitement, it becomes increasingly difficult to produce quality content. You’ll eventually reach a point where you feel like you’re running out of ideas. That’s a completely normal part of the process.

When it comes to beating writer’s block, you can of course look at your existing content for ways to repurpose and expand upon it. But, if you’re looking to find new topics in your niche, or want to know more about what people are sharing and talking about on social media, BuzzSumo is a quick and easy way to do this.

With it, you can see real-time data from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+. You can see which topics are trending in a niche, the most popular writers on a website, which topics are doing well on major publishing outlets, which topics are doing well on the competition’s site, and more.

With this information, you can create content that presents a new angle on a topic, or provides a counterpoint to a popular opinion about a topic that’s relevant to your business. But as you generate new content ideas, think about user intent. You already know more about your audience because of the demographic data from Google Analytics, but you must also anticipate not only what they what they want they read, but they want to accomplish by reading it.

Readers are only asking themselves one thing – “what’s in it for me?” And your job as a content marketer is to show them. You have to use your content to convince them you’re the better option than the competition… and one of the ways you can do this is by showing the benefits of using your product or service instead of the competitor.

As you come with ideas, always try to answer these questions:

  • Is this something my audience would like to read?
  • Is this a topic that would be useful in at least one stage of the purchase path?
  • What questions does the content need to answer?
  • Does this topic align with the overall marketing strategy?

 

3. Test Your Content Before You Create It

Testing your content before you go through the full creation process allows you to see which topics will do well in terms of engagement. This way, you’re only investing time in topics you know will resonate with your audience. I recommend using Twitter for testing purposes, since Facebook has made organic reach so difficult to obtain.

If there’s a topic you have in mind, you could find a similar piece, and tweet it, and then see what happens. You could find an infographic and share it. If it does well with your audience, consider writing a blog post based on it, and then publishing that. Chances are you’ll see much better engagement results than you would if you just used the old “publish, promote, and hope” approach.

 

4. Focus on the Lead Magnet

Your lead magnet – the thing you’re giving visitors in exchange for providing their contact information – needs to be a high value item. It should provide information you can’t find elsewhere on the internet, and information your target audience finds useful. Any number of things can be a lead magnet, from an eBook or free industry report, videos, audio, templates… the options are nearly limitless.

The lead magnet doesn’t have to be long, complex, or take you a long time to create. All that matters is that it solves a specific problem with a specific solution for a certain segment of your market. Your prospects must consume the magnet for it to have any kind of impact.

 

5. Promoting Your Content

If you’re relying solely on organic methods to get eyeballs on your content, you’re not going to get the best possible ROI. An advertising budget is essential to building traction on Facebook, especially since organic reach has been on the decline.

Social media is still a critical piece of the puzzle for the B2B sector, since you still have to build relationships and foster engagement. In the B2C world, we sing the praises of automation and scheduling updates with tools like Buffer and Hootsuite. While these tools are still an option, there’s another solution, specifically targeted at those in the B2B space – Oktopost.

With it, you can create and manage social media campaigns and editorial calendar with automation. You’ll also get analytics information to help you see what social activity translates to leads for your company – along with social engagement, audience and content analytics. It also includes content discovery and custom RSS feeds to make content curation easier, along with social listening so you can see who’s talking about you on social media and what they’re saying.

There are numerous ways to promote and amplify your content – including search engine optimization, email marketing, influencer marketing, paid advertising, and even having your employees promote the content. Regardless of which type of promotion you use, you’re helping your content reach a wider audience, that’s still relevant to your business. Each promotional tactic helps increase the chances of building engagement, brand awareness, and customer loyalty naturally.

 

6. Analyze Campaign Results

You should always be looking at metrics to see how well you were able to reach your KPIs and goals before you jump into additional campaigns with more content creation. Let’s say you created an eBook with the intention of increasing your email list subscribers and generating leads. While the eBook helped you get more social mentions, you find it didn’t help you get the leads you were hoping for. Because of this, the eBook campaign wasn’t successful, at least not at this stage. This could be because you were using the wrong goals, wrong distribution, or the wrong audience. At this point you’d need to re-evaluate your strategy to make sure your results expectations are in line with the rest of your content marketing efforts.

If you’re not already, consider using additional intelligence tools to get the most of your data. An average of only 2% of your site visitors will actually leave contact information and become a lead, but that doesn’t mean you have to lose out on the other 98%.

That’s where marketing technology like Leadfeeder comes in. It works with your Google Analytics account, and lets you see who’s visiting your site, whether they leave contact information or not. By matching the IP address of the visitor’s computer to companies on LinkedIn, Leadfeeder makes it possible for you to see the companies that are interested in your products and services. From there, you can see if you know anyone at the company, or reach out to someone in your network for an introduction.

 

7. Remain Consistent

No matter what you do, it’s important to produce a steady stream of content. Create a mixture of blog posts, infographics, eBooks, white papers, case studies, reports, and other types of content to educate and inform your audience. What matters isn’t the volume of content, but the consistency and quality. Though your strategy and approach may change, consistent content is key.

What is your experience with B2B content marketing? Share in the comments below.

Categories
Content Marketing

Complete Guide to Integrate PR with Content Marketing

For years, the PR industry has been changing. The increased use of the internet and social media lends itself to a decrease in traditional media readership. It also means more brands are taking control of their reputation online, which in some cases is great PR, and in others, creates a nightmare.

PR, according to the Public Relations Society of America, or PRSA, is “a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” Essentially, PR is the art and practice of building relationships. Relationships matter in personal and professional life – they can make or break you. It deals with the sector of earned media – or content that relies on external outlet – such as guest posts or bylined articles.

Content marketing is, according to the Content Marketing Institute, or CMI, “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” Basically, content marketing is the art and practice of telling stories about your brand in such a way that promotes conversions, without overtly pitching the sale all the time. It deals in owned media – or content that you have complete control over, with the exception of user-generated comments and the like. Your blog posts, email marketing, and website copy are all owned media.

In my experience, PR and content marketing affect one another – and while content marketing is certainly alive and well, it doesn’t mean PR is dead. Many digital marketing strategies can do well through integrating PR and content marketing. The two go hand-in-hand, and the best strategies include both. Your audience comes because of the earned media from PR, but stays for the owned media created for content marketing purposes.

Let’s take a closer look at how your brand can seamlessly integrate the two – to not only provide valuable content to your customers, but to maintain your online reputation and generate buzz for your company.

 

Brands are Publishers

Content marketing has turned well known brands into publishers. These days, we’re seeing popular brands like Red Bull, General Mills, and American Express become large content hubs, publishing content on their own platforms to draw in their audience.

Red Bull creates captivating content that focuses on adventure sports and gaming – things you need energy for. They’ve devoted their entire website to acting as the publication, whereas other brands have created a separate hub for the content. Rather than relying on their official website to sell the product – they’re allowing their official website to engage their customers with the published content – making selling the product less of a focus.

General Mills uses a slightly different approach, creating a separate web property to serve as their content hub. Tablespoon is a recipe hub, where you can register to keep track of your favorite recipes and get coupons and other special offers for their brands. Find recipes for appetizers and snacks, lunch, dinner, dessert, holidays and parties. Hone your skills in the kitchen with a number of how-tos, ranging from how to make Jell-O shots, to how to grind your own meat for burgers, sauces you can make in the blender, and more.

American Express follows a hybrid approach with the Open Forum community. It’s housed on their official website, but could easily be considered separately. It’s targeted at small business owners, who want to know more about financing their businesses, through growth, slow times, and more. But more than about the money side of running a business – it focuses on being a resource business owners can use when they need advice on anything related to it. You’ll find articles on productivity, keeping your employees happy, expanding into global markets, and reaching more customers.

YouMoz is an extension of the popular search engine and marketing focused website, Moz. This second of the site features only user-generated content, from industry experts. The Moz community ones of the most engaged digital marketing communities out there, so opening the platform to members just makes sense. Any member can publish content to the platform, but strict editorial guidelines mean that only the best content that adds real value makes the cut.

Williams Sonoma’s website features an extensive blog content hub. Branded “Taste“, the blog features a variety of content to help readers learn a number of cooking skills, and a vast array of recipes. These lessons and recipes all feature the high-end products from Williams Sonoma, and focus on fostering the luxury the brand stands for. There’s also advice for party planning, including guidance for entertaining your guests, and drinks to serve alongside your meals.

Makeup.com is a content hub for well known brand, L’Oreal.  Whether readers are casual makeup users or a die hard makeup lovers, there’s something for everyone. Keep up with the trends with a variety of the hottest looks. Learn about the products used on face, lips, hair, and nails. Get tips and tutorials for everything from how to contour, how to select the right drugstore foundation, when to use which blending sponges, how to take care of your fingernails, and more. Plus, there is of course a section of the site dedicated to product picks, so readers can know exactly how to achieve the look they’re going for.

You’re a brand – so you are a publisher. This strategy can be used in nearly any niche and industry. Think about how you’re going to make it work for you… you’re probably already publishing content on your blog, and for many brands, that’s enough. But, you can go further and create a library of content outside of that, if you want. Each piece of owned media can become a useful brand asset, that can be repurposed and adjusted in any number of ways to suit your marketing goals.

Even if you don’t own the generic domain for your product like L’Oreal does with Makeup.com, you can still mimic their strategy with your niche. If you’re selling pet products and services, create a library for owners with everything from how to choose the right breed for your lifestyle, to proper grooming.

 

Publishers are Marketers

This isn’t always the case, but today, we’re seeing more big name publications like Forbes in the marketing role, with the introduction of native advertisements and sponsored content. Forbes uses their BrandVoice platform to allow you to post content right within the same results as the Forbes editorial content. It allows the opportunity to work with a team of marketing experts to make the most of your content, and gives you the chance to even be published in the print version of Forbes magazine. It however, comes at a steep price, starting at $75,000 per month.

Even the Associated Press has gotten involved, creating their own content services (separate from their journalism) and native advertising network.

Native advertising isn’t the same thing as content marketing. To be featured, you’re paying the publisher to deliver your content in such as way that the user-experience isn’t disrupted – hence the term native. No matter the platform, the native ad looks and feels like the surrounding content. In 2016, native ad spend represented 56% of all US display ad revenue, and it is expected to represented 74% by 2021.

You, as a publisher, have the option to be a marketer, too. When your content hub gets large enough, like Tablespoon, it could stand on its own as a viable advertising vehicle, bringing in additional revenue for your brand.

 

Optimize Content for Customers and Journalists

You’re already segmenting your customer data to create profiles for each set of behaviors, so why not approach your content this way, too? Of course it’s written to show your customers something – but it can also be useful to the reporters, analysts and journalists who are researching. It’s no different than using search engine optimization (SEO) to catch your customers who are looking for a solution – except you’re targeting writers in need of a source.

Don’t be afraid to use platforms like Help a Reporter Out (HARO) to volunteer yourself, or your content as a source for a story you’re working on. It’s how many PR professionals connect with journalists in hope of getting some kind of coverage for their clients. Something to keep in mind though is, many journalists use this when they weren’t able to get all the quotes they thought they would, and are on a tight deadline a lot of the time. This means you must be ready to go quickly, if you want to increase your chances of being quoted.

 

Content Makes the World Go Round

Okay, maybethat’s a bit of a stretch. But, in marketing and PR, content is the core of the business. Everything from press releases to blog posts, white papers, newsletters, and even social media content plays a role in your business marketing strategy. PR professionals are skilled content planners, and know what it takes to promote said content. PR professionals use the relationships they’ve built to create and promote content, to position a brand positively among customers.

Content marketing fits right into that – you must plan your content, and know where to publish it to get the most benefit. It’s not just the content creation that matters – it’s much more than that. Yes, you must have stellar quality content that not only educates, but entertains and inspires the audience, but it’s getting that content in front of the eyes that need to see it – to position the brand positively among customers.

It means creating content in a variety of formats, repurposing content, and measuring the results and effectiveness on each piece. It means having a plan for each piece of content’s creation and distribution.

Think of your brand as a publisher and a marketer. When you create content both your customers and journalists will receive value from – you’ve integrated PR and content marketing. This approach helps you amplify your content, ensures brand message consistency, and could help in building relationships with influencers for influencer marketing campaigns.

When you look at your overall digital marketing approach, how integrated are your PR and content marketing efforts? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Categories
Content Marketing

Too Much Content Marketing?

Content marketing is an important part of online marketing these days with 88% of B2B marketers using it as part of their overall strategy. Content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing, but generates three times as many leads, and conversion rates that are nearly six times higher, making it a cost effective way to promote a business. The fact is, you can’t really have too much content marketing, if you’ve got the right strategy in place to support it.

 

But, without that strategy backing up your efforts, too much content can backfire. Churning out blog posts, articles, and social content for the sake of adding content to your archive may sound like a good idea, especially if you’re starting from scratch, but too much can be detrimental to your end goal.

One study showed that as brand generated content increased by 78%, interactions per post per 1,000 followers fell by 60%. The study looked at 8,000 brands across five major networks for a year between 2013 and 2014. The more content was there, the less engagement it received. The study also revealed that 43% of professionally marketed blog posts received fewer than 10 interactions. This tells us it’s important to strike a balance in your content load, spreading it across each network as your audience indicates they are ready and willing to consume it. Does your audience love Facebook, but they’re not really all that much into Twitter? Focus more of your content marketing efforts on Facebook, without completely neglecting to build a Twitter presence.

If you find your content archive is quite large, but your engagement is not consistently improving, it’s time to make some adjustments to your content marketing strategy. It doesn’t mean all the time and effort spent on existing content is a waste – it just means spending a bit more time getting it right.

 

Audit Your Existing Content

Look at what you already have on your website. Is it old and out of date? Either scrap it or edit it to make it more current and relevant. Is it low quality? Either scrap it or edit it to drastically improve quality and value.

It’s a good idea to review your content marketing strategy on a regular basis, to keep the content in line with your strategy and goals. Take time to review it at least annually, to ensure that all your efforts are worthwhile.

 

Consolidate Your Content

Look at all the content that serves a similar purpose, or covers similar topics. Consolidate that into a single piece, or more focused section on your website. Update the content as necessary. If you find that you have a significant amount of content dedicated toward one particular topic or issue, consider repurposing it into an eBook or downloadable report you could use for opt-ins.

So, that brings the question, how many times can you use the same topic? If you have a keyword you’re trying to rank on that you know you’re going to need to repeat in multiple posts to have a shot at achieving page one rankings, it’s easy to get repetitive.

To get around this, take a fresh approach to the topic each time. If you’re not providing a fresh perspective with value to your readers, then you’re going to start sounding like a broken record. If you’re marketing a brand of spaghetti sauce, you can only write so many general articles on tomatoes and sauce before people stop reading.

If you’re stuck with a generalized keyword and you want to avoid getting too repetitive, consider the five stages of the buying process:

  • Awareness: In this stage, people know they have an issue and they’re looking for answers. For the spaghetti sauce, these would be topics like what is in the spaghetti sauce, how it can be used beyond mixing it with noodles for lunch or dinner, where you can find the sauce in stores, the stores that carry the brand, and more.
  • Consideration: At this stage, customers are evaluating the various solutions on the market – all the spaghetti sauce brands available. They’re looking at things like the ingredients, the sugar content, the price points, the size of the product. For this stage, produce content that highlights the different features of your product.
  • Intent: Now’s the time to appeal to consumer logic, focusing on emotion to encourage them to choose your product compared to the competition. Here, write content about who benefits from your product – the busy mom who’s too tired to make a sauce from scratch, the grocery shopper on a budget who wants a gourmet taste without the price tag. You can also write about what your product can do and how it works.
  • Purchase: At this stage, you’re encouraging people to buy from you. Here’s where you can promote discounts and coupons for your spaghetti sauce, and provide a store locator so customers who don’t want to order online can go pick it up in store. It’s also a good idea to include a printable form people can take to their local grocery store to ask their manager to carry it. It helps expand your distribution, and helps the customer feel like they played a part in getting your brand into a location that is convenient for them.
  • Repurchase: At this stage, you want to encourage your customers to come back to you. You want them to stay in contecact with you and learn more about your niche. These posts are best suited to offer the client information about a keyword that they are unable to get anywhere else.

Even if your website is built around a single keyword, don’t overuse the same topic. These types of websites don’t look professional, and as such, rank lower. If you’re dealing with a specific brand of spaghetti sauce, you’ll need to expand your content to cover news stories, or latest developments – like issues with tomato crops, health benefits of tomatoes – in addition to your general usage articles.

If you’re in the B2B market, this changes slightly, as buying cycles are a bit longer, and involve multiple departments. It may also mean there’s a longer period before the company comes back to buy again. For instance, if they’re buying new computers for the entire company, it’s going to be a large purchase that takes a while to receive approval, and they won’t be doing that again for a while. But, the company could still come back to you again to make other related purchases like printers and other peripheral devices.

 

Analytics: Content and Audience Evaluation

Next, analyze the performance of each piece of content over time. Get rid of anything that doesn’t perform the way you need. If you don’t get rid of it all together, then make revisions to anything you consider “underperforming.”

Conduct an audience analysis to see where the audience is coming from, and what pages they are leaving on. Learn what they’re exploring while on your site. Adjust your content with that information so you can make it better meet their needs, but more importantly, consider adjusting the placements so you know it gets in front of the right eyes.

This analysis will also help you determine the ideal posting frequency for your audience. Certain industries will require content more frequently, while others will be turned off by posting too much. Targeting niche markets generally means posting less because there isn’t as much competition compared to generalized niches. The smaller the group you’re targeting, the easier is to get away with posting less.

If you want to get an insider’s idea of what the competition is doing, so you can do it better, subscribe to their email list. You can see what topics they’re covering, the types of content they’re using to do it, and how frequently they are reaching out to their audience.

 

Content Optimization and Reorganization

Once you know the content you’re left with, it’s time to optimize it and reorganize it on the website to make sure it hits the visitors in the right stage of the buying cycle. Each visitor will have different needs throughout the sales funnel, so the content needs to be optimized to meet these needs, and then it needs to be easy to find and in line with the buyer’s journey.

You’ll want to share your content across social media once it’s published, but sharing it once isn’t enough. There’s a chance it’s going to get lost in the shuffle, especially with networks like Twitter that move quickly.

That said, don’t spam your following with links to your content all the time, especially the same post. Share it once when it is published, and then one more time a few weeks later. If at any point it becomes relevant again, publish it again. After that, focus on those inbound links, reader shares, and the search engines to bring you that steady traffic stream.

 

The Lesson: Quality Over Quantity

It’s not about the volume of content you are producing. It’s about how well that content you’re producing is resonating with your audience – the value it is providing them. Your brand is far better served with a handful of content assets every week or month that are providing high value than it is with a ton of poorly written content. If you’re flooding your networks with repurposed content, and then not taking the time to analyze your audience, you’re not going to be successful, plain and simple. To hit those successful marks, you must know exactly what your audience wants, and how to construct the content appropriately for each social network. Content may be king, but the strategy behind it is what really matters.

Think about two restaurants – side by side. They serve the same kind of cuisine. They have the same kind of atmosphere. One restaurant has a small selection of 12 items, selected using customer feedback. The other has a random and overwhelming number of choices. Management never takes the time to ask the customers if they enjoy the food, and continues to keep the kitchen on their toes. Which one would you rather dine in? Not only are the customers not as happy as they could be, but restaurant B is hemorrhaging money on unnecessary ingredients that go bad because no one orders half the menu. Content assets that don’t help bring in and convert leads cost your business the same way.

After you’ve completed your content audit, craft a strategy to handle your new content. Only write when you have something of value to say – if there’s nothing new, skip it. You’ll just end up axing it in your next content audit anyway.

If you come up with something valuable to say – are there people out there who would want to hear it? Segment your target audience, and make sure you understand who they are, what they want, and what they need. Without this information, you’ll never be able to understand how to reach them to convert them into paying customers.

What kind of adjustments have you made to your content marketing strategy in the past? How did this affect your results? Tell me more in the comments below.

Photo credit: Adobe Stock

Categories
Content Marketing Outreach

Media Research and Your Content Marketing Strategy

If you want to be successful in your online marketing ventures, having a well-documented content strategy is critical. To create a winning strategy, however, you must not only know your audience, but you must also have a plan for content distribution to get the whole thing moving. According to the B2C Content Marketing 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America report, 44% of marketers have an undocumented strategy, and 37% have a documented one. The remaining 20% either don’t have one or unsure of its status. But, perhaps what’s even more surprising is that only 10% of B2C marketers consider their strategy “very effective.”

Creating Your Content Marketing Strategy

Begin with an audit of your current content

Check to see if it is outdated, redundant, or contains only trivial information. Take an inventory of everything – all pieces of content you have across all channels. List it all out in a spreadsheet, so it’s easier for you to see what to keep, what to scrap, and what to update. Look at your inventory to see what content is working, and what isn’t. This way, you can craft a strategy focusing on the kind of content you know is working for your audience.

For example, if you find that you’ve published 10 pieces of quality content on subject, it may be worthwhile to compile those into a single larger piece of content, and distribute it as a comprehensive guide. It could be a valuable lead magnet.

Next, move into content organization

Without proper organization, it’ll be harder for your audience to find what they’re looking for, and harder for you to keep up with what you’ve done compared to what you want to do. Think about blog categories and tags and make sure all current and future content are built with those in mind. You’ll end up with a catalog of content that’s easy for your audience to read through and get to right what they want.

Now, decide who on your team is responsible for what

Which team members are responsible for the various stages of content creation? Who’s going to produce the content? Who’s going to distribute it? Who’s going to maintain it? Who’s going to create, maintain, and communicate the standards you develop to everyone else on your team? This is important for the creation of new content, but is essential for any edits to existing content, so that everyone involved stays on the same page throughout the process.

Setup a plan for digital assessment management, or DAM

While there are standalone DAM systems that offer more than a cloud-based storage service like Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive, what matters here is you have a central place to store and retrieve all your digital assets, so that everyone on the team can work from the same point. Store your videos, images, text, and everything here.

Develop your brand guidelines

This will ensure all content is spoken in a consistent voice, and over time help your audience to identify the content as your own simply because of how it sounds. Work to create a brand style guide with style rules, image guidelines, and other details to help all content remain consistent regardless of who actually produces it. If you’ll have any print work, be sure this brand guide also includes layout specifications, rules for printers, including how to choose paper, and more.

Build a customer journey map

This helps you explore the various ways your customers will interact with your brand, on your website and across other channels. Plotting this journey ahead of time, to the best of your ability, will ensure you’re brainstorming content that works – in terms of what works, the formats to use, and what channels to use for distribution.

Create customer personas

These are detailed looks and who your ideal customers are – filled with things like demographic information, the problems they’re facing, why and how your products or services will help address those problems, and more. The more detail, the better. Once you have personas developed, all you have to do is craft the content as if you were speaking directly to one or more of those personas. This is the “who” of your content marketing strategy.

Where Media Research Fits In

Media research is an often overlooked part of content strategy. This essential steps helps you determine how and where to distribute and promote your content before it is created. This type of research tells you who you’re writing the content for, but also how you’ll end up getting earned and paid media from it. Media research gives you the “where”, while your content gives you the “what”.

Standing Out from the Competition

It’s also important to take a look at what your competition is doing, so you can do it differently, and better. The competitive analysis stage gives you the “why.” Why craft a piece of content this way as opposed to that way? When you see the competition offering valuable information that your audience needs hasn’t gained traction, think outside the box as to how to make your approach different from what’s already there.

If you have a content surplus, but you’ve not done your due diligence on media research beforehand, you could end up with content that just doesn’t go where you need it in order to create traction with your audience. Using the buyer personas you created as part of your marketing strategy can help, because you can see where they’re spending time online, and how you can infiltrate your way into those networks and publications. It’s through that step that you can build and nurture relationships with journalists, bloggers, and other influencers in your niche to spread your message, or create a paid media relationship.

When opting to go into paid media, choose your partners with care. Research partners who can amplify your content without exceeding your budget. If you’re not spending enough time exploring your options where paid and earned media are considered, you’re missing opportunity. If you research ahead of time and know exactly where you’re going to invest resources, you can get more from your key performance indicators (KPI).

Getting Influencers and Earned Media

There are a number of tools available to help you in identifying the most popular publishers and influences in your niche, including: Content Marketer, BuzzSumo, and Meltwater. Don’t discount the smaller more niche publications, because these have a chance of providing high conversions. Ignoring research and automatically going for the big dogs everyone knows about can cause you to miss golden nuggets.

Reaching out to influencers means showing an interest in their work and taking the time to see what has worked well for them. As you reach out, you can genuinely compliment them and provide a new angle for the hottest topic they’ve covered. Whatever you do, make the content easy to share on social networks – masterful social media development tactics like pre-writing social posts or creating embeddable graphics will make your content easier to share by others. The easier is is to share, the more likely influencers will do it for you.

Go beyond looking for the best influencers and media outlets for your audience. Take the time to learn what they’re doing and invest in developing a strategic relationship with them. Having this figured out before you invest a lot of time and effort in the content itself will ensure your best work doesn’t fade into the abyss.

Photo Credit: Adobe Stock

Do you have any good ideas about creating a content marketing strategy?  If so, please share ’em in the comment section below.

Categories
SMG News

CEO Eric Sachs Guest Lectures On Digital Marketing At CLU

Our CEO and Director of Business Development, Eric Sachs, had the pleasure of guest lecturing at California Lutheran University this week. A guest lecturer with the Marketing department at CLU, Eric regularly speaks about harnessing the power of SEO and social networking to grow businesses online. Beyond discussing the value of digital marketing during the lecture, Mr. Sachs enjoys taking time for Q&A with students.

Eric regularly guest lectures at California Lutheran University as well as various summits and trade shows.
Learn more about Eric here.

Categories
SMG News

Clutch Spotlights CEO Eric Sachs

Clutch, a leading reviewer of professional services firms, took the time to sit down with our CEO and Director of Business Development, Eric Sachs, to discuss how Sachs Marketing Group began, what differentiates us, and what is in store for the coming years. Five key questions that Eric answers in the dialogue include:

  • Can you describe the history and evolution of Sachs Marketing?
  • When you sit down with a potential client, how do you define goals in a reasonable way, without overpromising, but also establishing benchmarks?
  • Do you have any specific requirements for a potential client? Are you looking for any kind of time commitment, or minimum budget?
  • What makes Sachs Marketing stand out?
  • What will Sachs Marketing look like in 2020?

Interested in hearing the answers and learning more on what Sachs Marketing Group is all about? You can read the full interview here. We are grateful to the Clutch team for taking the time to spotlight Eric and what we do here at SMG. Thanks, Clutch!

Categories
SEO

SEO In 2016

The digital marketing and SEO landscapes are ones that constantly fluctuate, and it is for this reason that marketers and SEOs must keep up-to-date on the current trends and changes within the industry. As SEO has continued to evolve over the past few years, we’ve seen the algorithms move toward “white hat” methods and reward sites that do good work – work that is relevant for the search queries and that can provide the most pertinent and appropriate content to the person searching.

We have seen SEO move toward more content-driven strategies, focused upon providing the client or the customer with interactive and on-topic information. SEO has begun to rely much more on social signals, and social media has become a key part of any strong search-based strategy. Looking forward to the new year, what will 2016 bring for search engine optimization? Read on for a few predictions of what may come into play in 2016:

  • Content-driven, rather than keyword-driven strategy: It’s not all about keywords anymore when it comes to SEO. Content is still king, and users are most interested in blog content, video content, and infographic content that provides valuable information for them. We no longer have to focus solely on keywords to drive the most relevant traffic. As search algorithms have developed, relevant traffic will hit the site if the content is there and optimization is ideal.
  • User experience is key: Along with providing valuable and engaging content, we want to ensure that the experience is strong. Information should be share-worthy and quickly digested by the reader. Google and other search engines want to ensure that the person searching gets the right results within the first few pages. Providing relevant content will get your user the experience they are looking for.
  • Mobile and tablet optimization: Mobile and tablet-based search has been growing exponentially over the past few years. Ensuring your site is optimized for mobile is critical. Mobile traffic surpassed desktop traffic in 2015, indicating that mobile will be central to 2016’s optimal SEO strategy. Desktop-focused SEO will need to make some room for mobile-focused SEO.
  • Social media: While social media has begun helping SEO efforts and plays an indirect role, social signals will likely play a much larger part in 2016. Search engine algorithms are working to begin integrating social into the equation; for this reason, a strong social media presence will be more necessary than ever in the new year. Social media also provides consumers with information that affects how they make decisions.
  • Local SEO: For local businesses, local SEO will likely become an even bigger deal than it was in 2015. We expect to see more changes to local SEO – as we’ve already seen with the local pack at the top of Google searches and the consumers’ shift toward local purchasing.
  • Voice search: While this has not yet played a huge part in SEO strategy, the rise of voice search may begin to really shake up the best practices of search engine optimization. Voice search is usually based on the questions of “who, what, how, when, and where,” which may need to be taken into account as a part of SEO strategy if voice continues to grow.

What do you think of these predictions? Are there any trends that you are excited about?

 

Categories
SMG News

SMG Celebrates Five Years!

This October marks Sachs Marketing Group’s fifth birthday! We are thrilled to be celebrating such a significant milestone. So much has changed since we first began — and our team had a wonderful time reminiscing about SMG’s development over a birthday celebration dinner. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of the journey and helped us to grow over the past half decade. Cheers to five years, and many more!


 

 

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SMG News

Entrepreneur Names SMG To Best Entrepreneurial Companies Index

 

We are thrilled to announce that Sachs Marketing Group has been named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Entrepreneur360 – Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America for 2015. Through surveys and data, Entrepreneur took a look at hundreds of small and medium sized businesses, highlighting “six archetypal sets of practices and characteristics that [they] believe are representative of most growth companies operating today.” Entrepreneur calls one of these archetypes the “Best Practicers,” defining this category as the companies that seek to be industry leaders, implementing proven best practices in the workplace.

Sachs Marketing Group has been named to the Best Practicers list as part of the Entrepreneur360. We would like to congratulate the other companies named to the list and  thank Entrepreneur for this honor!

Check out the November issue of Entrepreneur or click here to read up on Entrepreneur’s E360 Index.

 

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SMG News

SMG Founder Eric Sachs Quoted by Forbes

Sachs Marketing Group founder Eric Sachs was recently featured in a Forbes article regarding the difference between legitimate marketing and subtle propaganda. Search Engine Watch dubbed 2015 as “Year of the Consumer,” suggesting that consumers drive marketing demand and will be quick to take business elsewhere if they see shoddy marketing techniques and sneaky propaganda.

To prove legitimacy in the marketing realm, transparency, influence, conscious advertising, and appropriate levels of innuendo are key – both for marketing firms and in-house marketers. Eric highlighted the poor technique of bad-mouthing competitors, explaining that this method only gives competitors free advertising while putting you on a slippery downward slope. Using innuendo to disparage a competitor is traditionally an unsustainable strategy that will not really prove any benefit in the long term.

Eric, who brings ten years of marketing experience to the table, founded Sachs Marketing Group in early 2010. He regularly speaks at SEO and marketing summits and guest lectures at California Lutheran University.

To read the full article from Forbes, click here.

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SMG News

SMG Meetups Continue to Garner Members

Last month, Sachs Marketing Group began hosting roundtable meetups to provide the opportunity for local business owners to get together and talk marketing strategy. Eric Sachs, our CEO and Director of Business Development, has so far discussed the techniques of SEO and social media development, as well as other digital tools for growing a business in the online sphere. The collaborative meetup group gathers in Westlake Village and is open to anyone who practices SEO or is interested in learning more. As our group continues to grow, we invite you to sign up and join us! Our next meetup will take place on Tuesday, June 16.

If you’re interested in attending the meetups (or just learning more), visit our event page. Sign up to become a member of the Sachs Marketing Group Local SEO Westlake Village Meetup to receive more information.

 

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SMG News

Sachs Marketing Group Named Leading SEO Firm

Sachs Marketing Group Named Leading SEO Firm. Sachs Marketing Group being named a leading SEO firm highlights its excellence in delivering effective SEO strategies. This recognition reflects their expertise in optimizing websites, creating high-quality content, and enhancing online visibility. Their success in improving client rankings and driving organic traffic likely contributed to this distinguished acknowledgment in the competitive SEO industry.

Research firm Clutch has identified Sachs Marketing Group as a leading digital marketing firm, specializing in SEO services. Clutch’s research utilizes a proprietary Leaders Matrix methodology, “mapping each firm’s focus on search engine optimization and local search against their proven ability to deliver measurable results for their clients.” SMG was evaluated and named, based on references, client experience, market presence, and focus.

“Both large corporations and mom-and-pops need a strong local search presence to generate leads and sales from surrounding areas and maintain a positive online reputation,” stated Tim Clarke, Research Manager at Clutch. “The firms listed in this report have all demonstrated success with local SEO and PPC campaigns, which have generated overwhelmingly positive returns on investment for clients.”

This is the second time that SMG has been recognized by the DC-based research firm. In February 2015, Clutch idenfied us as a Top SEO Consultant and leader in the national market for search engine optimization services. We offer our congratulations to the other listed agencies and thank Clutch for naming us as a top firm in the country!

Read the news report here.

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SMG News

SMG To Host Monthly Roundtable Meetups for Local Businesses

Are you looking to learn more about growing your business online? SEO and social media development are critical parts of any successful marketing campaign, and we’d love to tell you more about them! Our Director of Business, Eric Sachs, will be hosting a monthly meetup to bring together local small and medium-sized business owners; we’ll talk strategy, discuss new tips and changes in the marketing landscape, and collaborate to bring about new ideas.

The first meetup event will take place on May 15th in Westlake Village. Any local business owners or marketing managers are welcome to attend. Don’t miss out on this awesome chance to link up and learn!

Click here to visit the event page for more information.

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Digital Marketing

What Does The Mobile-Friendly Algorithm Mean For My Site?

You may have heard by now that Google is rolling out a new update to its algorithm on April 21st – one that will place more emphasis on what Google defines as “mobile-friendly” websites. A report released last year attributed up to 60% of overall search to mobile devices, and Google’s change will reflect this in the way it shifts focus toward mobile search. Websites that do not pass Google’s mobile-friendly test will show up farther down in the search results in comparison to sites that do meet the criteria to pass for mobile-friendly.

It is somewhat important to note that this new change will not affect searches conducted on computers – only searches that are conducted on mobile devices. However, given the high volume of searches that are now being made via mobile, it is certainly worth your time and effort to be mobile-friendly.

So what does this mean for your site?

Check your site for compatibility with mobile devices via Google’s mobile-friendly test (which can be found HERE). If your site is not set up for mobile, Google will highlight the changes that need to be made. Key focus lies upon quick loading for mobile devices, easy accessibility, and buttons that are of appropriate size and functionality for smaller, mobile screens.

Click here to read more about the change from Michael Liedtke for Huff Post Tech.

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Social Media

The Intersection of Social and Search

In our ever-connected and digitally-based society, it’s become increasingly clear just how important an online presence can be to the success of a business, an organization, or a movement. But if faced with limited resources, time, or budget, many question what the most important aspect of online marketing to focus on really is. We hear these questions all the time: What should I prioritize? What’s the most important thing to do online to help grow my business? If you had to pick SEO or social, which would you choose?

The truth is that it can be difficult to choose just one aspect of digital marketing to focus on. Social networking, SEO, and other aspects of digital marketing are closely linked. To choose one – and inherently have to disregard the others – would be a mistake. That being said, we will break down each of the facets of a digital marketing campaign to better illustrate why each is important and how they work together.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO consists of both on-page and off-page methods that help to best optimize a website for search engines to crawl. The primary purpose of this work is to help the site be found by individuals searching for relevant queries that the website (and the company) have to offer. Building a long-term SEO strategy will be critical to conversions and ROI for your business. SEO is affected not only by the various tactics it includes, but also by social media and web functionality.

Social Media Development: Social media development is key to building up your brand and creating name recognition with your fan base, and your organic search results will be impacted by your social accounts. Engaging with your fanbase and disseminating informative and interesting content will support your brand and reputation. Social signals influence your rankings for organic search results and we must factor in the growth of such mega-social networks as a source of information.

Web Design: Who could be better to build a website than a digital marketing firm? We know exactly what goes into a website to help you get conversions and engage with potential customers. No matter how beautiful a website may be, functionality is key. From purposeful navigation to logos to mobile-friendly site development, Sachs Marketing Group can support your web design needs. A strong website is central to SEO development and conversions.

It’s difficult to choose what aspect is most important to a successful marketing campaign, because all are closely integrated and working together. There is no straight answer as to which aspect will be best for your business, as they work hand-in-hand. It’s nearly impossible to create content and go without sharing it on social; just the same, you would not have anything to share on social without a strong website that can be found in search queries. We at Sachs are happy to help analyze your site and recommend what type of campaigns will most benefit your business.

If you are reading this on any blog other than SachsMarketingGroup.com, it is stolen content without credit.
You can find us on Twitter at @Sachs_Marketing and Facebook via Sachs Marketing Group.
Come and visit our blog at https://sachsmarketinggroup.com/blog/

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Digital Marketing

SEO and SEM: What’s the Difference?

You might be familiar with search engine optimization or search engine marketing, but are they one in the same? While SEO and SEM are often lumped together or referred to interchangeably, they are in fact different. Both methods work to improve online traffic and leverage brand awareness, but it is important to be able to differentiate the two.

So what’s what?

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

SEO, a component of the larger concept of SEM, is the process by which a website is optimized for keywords and web development to improve natural (or organic) search engine results. SEO evolves continuously in order to best respond to changes in search engine algorithms and includes both on-page and off-page components. These components range from keyword optimization and blogging to high quality back links and social sharing. Organic search results are often affected by social networking platforms and social media development as well.

What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?

SEM is the process by which websites increase their visibility and traffic through advertising and optimization. These strategies will include SEO tactics, as well as paid search, pay per click (PPC) advertising, reputation management, and boosted social media marketing.

To clarify, the two terms are very closely related, but SEO is more specifically a central component of SEM. Marketers often try to substantiate that one is better than the other, but it really depends on what your campaign is trying to accomplish. While organic SEO can be a sustainable, long-term approach, PPC or other paid SEM methods will show more immediate ROI. Whether you choose to utilize organic SEO tactics or paid SEM tactics, digital marketing campaigns will see substantial impact on traffic and brand awareness as a result.

Click here to read more from Social Media Today.

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SMG News

A Spooktacular Halloween for Sachs Marketing Group

Happy Halloween from the Sachs Marketing Group team! The SMG team enjoyed dressing up and celebrating the holiday together with a potluck lunch. Kaylee even created her own version of the Sachs Marketing Group mascot and dressed up as SMG Girl! From all of us here at Sachs Marketing Group, we want to wish you a happy and safe holiday!

Charlie, our company cat, also felt right at home with Samantha and Khoa dressed as cats!

If you are reading this on any other blog than Sachs Marketing Group or via my RSS Feed, it is stolen content without credit.
You can find me on Twitter via @SMGguy
Come and visit our blog at https://sachsmarketinggroup.com/blog/

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