2 Important Tips on Creating Content

Posted on by Chris Jenkin

No matter how good your article is, if it’s not getting the traffic it deserves, it might as well be buried on the Internet. But how do you make sure that your articles will be read by your target audience? After going through the different strategies online, it all boils down to how well you practice content marketing. The success of your content is not derived from your industry, your writing skill or the number of keywords you include in the article. Instead, it has more to do on how well you thought out the content, created the headline, and used the right meta description and tags for search engines to pick up your article.

If you run a content marketing agency, it’s important that you know how to provide content that people are searching for. The reason behind this is so you don’t waste time and energy preparing a post that will not be read by your targeted audience. After all, this costs you a lot of money to produce. Here are some tips to help you create content that your audience is looking for:

Tip #1: Make use of content ideation

According to studies, consumers spend up to 79 days to check out their options before they decide to make a purchase, especially if it is a big one. They do so by conducting their own research of their other options and what they can do to make this decision better. This is why you need to have your content available to them and offer valuable information. In doing so, your consumers can trust your brand. When it’s time for them to make their decision, they’ll remember your company right away.

The best way you can do this is to conduct a research of your own. This means you should take advantage of social sites and keyword tools to help you get the information you require. Apart from searching for ideas online, you can ask other people to give you ideas on what they would normally inquire about a particular product they are interested in purchasing. With this wealth of information, you can already come up with some topics to write. You can compile these ideas into your editorial calendar so you can keep producing content consistently.

Tip #2: Make the most out of your headline

Sure, you may be using the right keywords for your article, but if your headline is not interesting enough, it might not get the notice needed. When coming up with a title for your article, you have to remember to be clear with what you are presenting in your article. You don’t need to have a witty title as it does not always get people to click your article. Remember, you only have around 65 characters to work with so make each one count. Here are a few tips for a clickable headline:

  • Be descriptive. Include a bracket that summarizes your content, like [Infographic] or [Video].
  • Announce if you have added photos. Include “Photo(s)” in your headline as these perform better.
  • Use “How To” to solve a problem.
  • Create a list. This will give your readers an idea of how many items they are going to browse through in your article.

Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to producing quality content all the time.

How You Can Use Instagram Stories for Marketing

Posted on by Chris Jenkin

Just recently, Instagram introduced its newest feature called Instagram Stories. For everyone who’s been using their mobile device for the past few years, they can immediately connect this new feature as something similar to popular app, Snapchat. This is because Instagram Stories gives its users an avenue where they could share posts at a higher frequency. Instead of the typical Instagram photos being shared, Stories gives users the ability to share little moments that are not necessarily captured on a single photo. After all, there is only very little a photo can tell.

With Stories, Instagram hopes this would answer the common issue of overposting. Since these can be found on another space on the app, users can post as much as they want without worrying about taking over their friends’ feeds. As a marketer, however, how do you take advantage of Instagram’s newest feature? Find out below.

How Instagram Stories Benefits Marketers

Mostly speaking, Instagram Stories is greatly beneficial for marketers who have an active audience base on the app. If you already use Instagram to promote your products and services extensively, you’ll get the hang of using Stories. This is because this new feature allows you to create a light-hearted feed without necessarily starting all over again. You still get to relay your message to your followers but avoid oversaturating them with too many photos you shared.

Another advantage you have over using Stories is that you have more chance of being discovered by other users, particularly the ones you have not yet touched base with. Compared to Snapchat, you won’t have to continually promote your content regularly across other channels in order to be seen by people. With Stories, you have the help of hashtags, geotags, and even the Discover section on Instagram. These tools are specifically there to help increase your chances of being discovered by other users.

Will This New Feature Stick?

Looking at it from an overall perspective, Stories is an entirely different approach compared to Instagram’s photo sharing style. And considering there’s now a demand for transitory content (somewhat similar to Snapchat), Instagram Stories seems to be taking a shot on this new approach. Not to mention, there’s not much thought that needs to be put into Stories compared to a photo.

With this in mind, there’s no saying that ephemeral content would be going away anytime soon; especially since it’s an approach that has become such a success over the recent years. This gives each marketer a chance to take advantage of Instagram Stories as a new way to promote content.

What Type of Content Should You Publish?

As a marketer, you have to remember that the things you publish on your feed have a purpose—to sell your products and services. This is why you should remember to correlate this goal with the content you are sharing with your followers. Here are a few ideas on what type of content would be great to share on Instagram Stories:

  • Behind the scenes. Give your followers a look at what goes on in your office and how everyone works together to create a product. This lets your followers develop a deeper understanding of your brand.
  • Do a take over. You can partner with another establishment to document how you go about with their business and how they do with yours. This makes your audience interested in what goes on behind your business.
  • Poll on the next post. Include your audience in your decision-making process to make them feel more involved in your business.
  • Host a Q&A. Your followers love to hear what you have to say about a particular situation or topic. Indulge them.
  • Limited sales. If you are having a discount, you can highlight a particular product and let your followers know why they should purchase it.

There are plenty of other things you can post on Instagram Stories. You can try out new things and see whether or not they work for you. The important thing is that you determine your own brand and what works for your own business.

 

What Your Audience Wants to See on Your Social Media Pages

Posted on by Chris Jenkin

As they all say, content is king! But how do you continue to provide the best content when the demands for content marketing continually change over time? How do you make sure that your content marketing efforts don’t go to waste? One good thing to remember is to pay close attention to your audience. Do you still know who your audience is? Are you giving them content that’s useful to them?

HubSpot Research recently made a remark on how 2016 initiated a new phase of technology, one wherein consumer preferences and new innovations are important factors to consider for every marketer. If you are trying to improve your content marketing practices, the key to doing so is to identify if you are providing your readers the right content. So how do you determine this?

Here are some of the latest trends as told by industry experts:

 Videos

Video has largely become a vital part of content marketing. As projected by experts, 80% of web traffic will come from video by the year 2019. This will represent an impressive increase in video content and especially the amount of time people spend watching YouTube and Facebook videos.

How to make use of video content for your advantage?

  • Keep videos within two minutes in length to ensure viewers watch the entire clip.
  • Add captions and animations to your video so it’s easy for viewers to understand the message, even without listening to anything.
  • Cover breaking news, since this is something more users are interested in seeing.

 Social Media

Social media is never going to die, at least anytime soon. As a matter of fact, its audience is only growing bigger every day. To date, there are 1.7 billion daily active users on Facebook, 500 million on Instagram, 313 million on Twitter, and 150 million on Snapchat. These individuals are consuming more content compared in the past. Because of this, content creators have started to make use of these channels to connect with their target audience.

How do you maximize social media for your brand?

  • Use relevant hashtags sparingly. It’s not good to use multiple hashtags that aim to increase Twitter engagement. You can use a branded campaign hashtag for your audience to easily find content.
  • Use social media for your videos to gain more engagement through likes, shares, retweets or replies.

 News Articles

Nowadays, more and more people are using the internet to stay updated with the latest news. Based on the findings of experts, readers want to keep up with news articles; however, they don’t really read these articles thoroughly. Many readers tend to skim-read the articles or even get the gist of the content through the headline of the article.

How to boost engagement through news articles?

  • Provide an accompanying video to a long article so that those who don’t have time to thoroughly read the text can use the video.
  • Maintain your reader’s attention by using bullets, images, and by breaking up larger text paragraphs. 

Research Content

Readers are also looking for original research they can easily consume and understand. An evidence of this is proven by how successful infographics have become over the years. Your readers no longer want to spend long periods of time trying to decipher the information you provide them. Instead, they are more likely to appreciate it if you spent some of your resources providing a visual element that could prove to be useful for the content they are searching.

How does one make the most out of research data?

  • Make sure to provide effective data visualization through an infographic.
  • Remember to use color in providing the information you have collected as this improves your content’s readership and the attention span of your audience.
  • Break up text in easily digestible images. Remember, people tend to skim-read now instead of reading the entire text.
  • Provide actionable content so your readers know how they can apply what they just learned.

Information provided through an infographic can be more easily remembered by an individual compared to their reading text.

Knowing these things can help you with your content marketing strategy. You no longer have to second guess your tactics since you already know what it is your readers are searching for. In this way, you know that your efforts won’t go to waste.

Content Marketing Goals You Should Aspire to Accomplish

Posted on by Chris Jenkin

For years, the saying “content is king” has been used online to discuss how important content truly is. As a matter of fact, it has turned into a cliché that people try to use to justify their actions. But at the end of the day, no matter how good your content is, it’s just content unless it gets read by the right people. This is the big difference between those who have found success on content marketing. If you are a digital marketer and you wish to excel in your line of work, it’s time to know more about the secrets of content marketing and just what you really ought to be doing with your time.

In order to be successful with content marketing, you need to thoroughly understand your business goals and your marketing efforts. Having knowledge in this can be a big help for you to create content that serves these goals. It can be useful for you to know how you will be able to convey your message through blog posts, eBooks, email marketing, advertising, and podcasts. By knowing how to make your content work, you don’t waste any time with what you publish online.

Here are some content marketing goals you should be setting for yourself:

#1: Gain the trust of your audience

As someone who’s into content marketing, you should know that your ultimate goal is to gain the trust of your readers and build rapport with them. Whenever you post interesting and valuable content, your readers learn from it. And in the process, they start to trust in what you have to say. With continuous work, they’ll see that you know your topic and what it is all about. They start seeing your personality and what it would be like to work with you.

#2: Attract new visitors to your system

One way you can get new visitors to your website is to know how to stand out. You need to be able to publish compelling content that will attract your website visitors to share your content online and even start a conversation with you. Through this, new people start to discover you and your content. The reason why you need new customers to find you is so you can keep your business healthy. And with content that gets shared online, you’ll be able to start doing business with new people.

#3: Be open to prospect pain

As a content marketer, you have to realize that not everyone will be accepting of what you post. This is particularly true in a time when people can easily find a solution to all of their problems—health, parenting, money, technology, and even what to cook for dinner. The trick, therefore, is to understand how you can be of help to your readers. You have to understand what their problems are so you can target to answer these. It’s also possible that you can use this as a topic guide for future content.

#4: Talk about solutions

Going back to the previous point—you have to provide a solution to the problems brought up by your prospects. You have to identify the fixes you may know for those problems. If you are selling a business that can help them solve their problem, you don’t need to tell them that anymore. Instead, focus on showing them how they can get the help they need from the product you are offering.

By knowing how to set goals with your content marketing, you’ll be able to find success with it in no time.

 

 

 

Important Digital Marketing Tips Every Startup Company Needs to Remember

Posted on by Chris Jenkin

For anyone who’s ever launched a startup, you already know how difficult it can be to kickstart the business and let other people know about it. Even if you are alone in your line of field, you may be competing against other startups who are doing the same practices as you. This is why you need to know how to properly launch your business so that it will become a success. The best way to go about this without it costing you a lot of money is to invest heavily in digital marketing.

Considering you’re a startup business, you are most likely deciding to do as much as possible on your own. This is so you can save money by not hiring another individual to take over the tasks you need to accomplish for your brand. Thankfully, there are a number of tools you can use to help you kickstart your brand online. Here are a few of the important digital marketing tips you need to remember:

Invest in Social Media

Social media is every startup business’ best friend. As a matter of fact, it is one way you can create buzz about your brand and the products you intend to sell to your customers. Prior to setting up accounts on these websites, you have to know how best to make use of social media. This includes knowing which sites will work for your brand and which ones won’t. You also need to know how often you need to post in these websites so that you don’t end up putting off your audience. At the same time, you need to know how best to speak through your social media posts so that your personality will shine through. You will need to learn these things especially since you will be the only one to handle your social media accounts.

Take Time to Learn About SEO

If you already have a website, you have to make sure it has been optimized across all platforms. This way, it will be the first website to pop up on a search results list. On the other hand, if your website is being used for e-commerce, you have to make sure that it is secure. On both, you have to check that your headers, tags, and descriptions are used appropriately. Avoid stuffing your content with keywords just so you can get a higher ranking on your page.

Produce Quality Content

Whenever you’re posting content for your readers, you have to make sure that it contains the right information and is valuable to them too. The content you produce should have a conversational tone with a mix of some humor in it. Every time you post on social media, you can use the content to connect with your readers so you can invite them to engage in.

Consider Sending a Newsletter

A newsletter can help your business grow because it helps remind your followers about the products and services you are offering. You just have to remember that the newsletter you send should contain all the right information that is relevant for your industry. If you can, start out with a monthly newsletter so that your readers will not be bombarded with information all the time. If you see that the newsletter is working, you can increase it to every two weeks instead of just once a month.

Offer Rewards to Loyal Customers

While you’re still budding as an entrepreneur, you may have already come across some customers who swear by your brand and trust in what you bring to the table. These customers may have even recommended your business to their friends and family, which is why you should be ready to reward them with something they will enjoy. As a bonus, you can also offer them a discount whenever they sign up for your newsletter.

Don’t Forget to Network Offline

You should not limit your business practices to just online. Instead, see to it that you expand your network by meeting more people from different walks of life. This is a great way you can introduce your business to other people so they will be aware of it. By tapping on offline networks, you’ll be able to continue your business’ growth and not just solely rely on social media to do it for you.

These tips are a great way for you to let people know of your brand, especially if you’re working with a tight budget. When you are able to put money into your marketing efforts, you can upgrade your strategy to include other things that can help grow your brand more. But until then, these tips will do a great job on their own.

5 Ways to Use Emotional Intelligence in Your Marketing

Posted on by Chris Jenkin

As a marketer, you have to make sure that the campaigns you launch are hitting your audience. This is how you can measure how effective your campaigns are and whether or not you should be using these campaigns again in future projects. But in the case of making your marketing campaigns work, are you sure you are doing it right?

One of the best ways you can do a better job in your marketing campaign is by involving the use of Emotional Intelligence (or EI). But how do you measure EI? How do you know you are doing it right?

What is EI?

First things first– it’s important to dissect what Emotional Intelligence is and what it’s not. In a nutshell, EI refers to an individual’s ability to understand behaviors, impulses, moods, and control these to relate to a particular situation. By using EI with your marketing campaigns, you are able to target your customers at the right time and place as well as get to know them deeper.

In order to incorporate EI onto your marketing campaigns, you will need to establish a meaningful relationship with your customers. The best way you can do this is to understand what goes on in your customers’ minds when they think about buying your product. You will have to understand your customers’ experience with your product before they even reach out to buy it. Based on this, you can start carrying out a successful strategy to use to hit the right buttons when you market your product.

How to Use EI in Marketing

So how do you incorporate EI onto your marketing campaign? Here are 5 important things to remember when reaching out to your customers:

Listen Genuinely

Nowadays, there are a number of social listening tools that you can use to understand what your customers are passionate about. Before you invest time, money and effort in digital media, make sure that you use tools like Hootsuite or Social Mention to get to know your customers’ thoughts. Once you listen carefully to what people are saying about your business, you’ll be able to come up with a strategy on how best to go about with your digital marketing. And in using these tools properly, you’ll be able to have success in your marketing campaigns.

Before Anything, Add Value

Before you try to sell your product to people, you should remember to add value first. This is usually pretty natural for individuals who prefer to give instead of take. In such circumstances, they will feel a strong inclination to help other people by serving them with the products and services they offer.

When you add value to your product, you get to find ways to improve and boost your customers’ lives. This will help you identify who your brand is and what it represents. Using this data, you’ll be able to show your customers your identity as well as know why they should be investing in your brand. You can do this by letting your customers get to know you. Before asking for a sale, you can let them know who you are as a business.

Concentrate on Attraction

When you’re marketing to your customers, focus on how you can attract your customers in instead of interrupting or distracting them. Instead of giving the idea of selling, be a storyteller. Talk about the features and benefits of the product you are selling so they know what makes it a good option for them. Let them know what your brand and company stands for and how you are attributing to making the world a better place somehow. With this, your customers will feel enticed to buy from you since you have taken the time to tell them a story you love to share.

Avoid Being Creepy

As a marketing professional, you have to identify when you cross the line between being insightful and creepy. You may not know it, but you have already crossed the line (and maybe even broken some laws in the process). You have to look for ways you can be insightful and delight your customers instead of creeping them out by the amount of information you know about them and the habits they have. Even if you use social media tools to get information you need, you have to keep things at a general perspective.

Show Respect

Respect begets respect. This is why you have to remember when you should avoid going overboard when you are trying to sell your customers something. Not only will this let them know that you respect them, it will also avoid getting your customers annoyed with you. If you keep on hounding your customers to buy your products, they will most likely get turned off and will avoid you altogether.

Knowing these things, you can use EI to your advantage so you can effectively segment your customers. This will not only help you get the business you need but will also improve your customer relations.