Tag Archives: content development

4 Reasons You Need to Implement Content Marketing into Your Business Plan

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Though many believe content marketing to be a fairly new phenomenon, in actuality, the concept has been around for hundreds of years starting with the first bag of chocolate chips that gave its consumers a great recipe for baking chocolate chip cookies.

According to Susan Gunelius, author of Content Marketing for Dummies, content marketing is “the practice of developing awareness, recall, purchases and loyalty through the use of content published on or offline.”

Okay, that’s nice but how is this going to help my business to increase sales and awareness?

The fact of the matter is that content marketing is a KEY component to increasing your sales and your brand’s awareness.

Content Marketing is Key to Successful Business Plans

Here’s how:

1.Content Marketing shows your clients and potential clients that you are an authority for your subject matter. Giving unique and valuable information to your following, asking for nothing in return, is a great way to build trust and gain loyal brand ambassadors.

2.Content Marketing helps to drive traffic to your website. In creating more content in connection to your brand, you will increase your chances of showing up in a Google/Yahoo search. Well-written content also gets shared and linked to, and backlinks are one of the best ways with which to climb up the search rank ladder.

3.Content Marketing helps to build your marketing lists—a great technique in content marketing is to create fabulous content (which should always be your intent), and to ask your readers to enter their email addresses to receive your content for free. Both sides will mutually benefit from this scenario; your brand will have more email addresses to send sales collateral, newsletters and promotions, and your following will obtain valuable information free of charge.

Use opt-in feature to get email addresses from customers/potential customers

4.Content Marketing strengthens your relationships with existing and potential clients and helps you to become a greater influence within your target market.

In the last few years, big brands like Coca-Cola and Amazon have spent nearly 26% of their marketing budget on content marketing—will you hop on the content marketing train, or are you already a frequent user? Leave your thoughts in the comment box below!

The 5 W’s of Competitive Intelligence

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Who:

Who are your Competitors? – discovering who your competitors are (as if you didn’t already know) is very important to ensure that you are offering the best product in your industry. Being able to identify your competitors can help you to find out more about what they are doing better or worse than your brand, and also can help you to listen to what their customers are saying about them.

Who are the Customers of Your Competition? – again this is important so that you can listen to their conversation about your competitor’s brand and see what they do/do not like about that company, and rework your product/service accordingly.

What:

What are the Customers of Your Competition Unhappy About? – are you repeating the same mistake that your competitor is doing? Well by monitoring what your competitor’s clients are complaining about can help your brand to not mimic whatever made these consumers unhappy. You can also take that one step further by advertising the anti-“whatever they didn’t like about competitor’s product/service.” For example if they are complaining about the slow and poor customer service, advertise your GREAT customer service and provide incentives to these people to switch over to your brand.

What Has Your Competition Been Successful With and What Have They Failed At? – as illustrated above, the opposite can also occur. Your competitor is has just created a great product that is very user-friendly and reliable. Your consumers have been complaining about the complicity of your product, and for that reason, your clients are switching over. In monitoring what your competition is doing well, you can do your best to replicate (in a lawful manner), and perhaps even surpass the user-experience of your product/service.

When:

When Did Your Competition Start Gaining/Losing Followers/Customers? (spotting trends) – this is a very important aspect of competitive intelligence to consider especially because in looking at time periods, you can then track it back to an event or experience that could have caused the gain or loss. For example, your competition started losing customers/followers around the same time that its well-respected and mature CEO retired—people may have lost faith and trust in the company enough so that they felt they didn’t want to give them the business anymore (this is your chance to swoop in, and ensure them that your brand will take care of them in the way that your competitor’s brand used to).

When and How Often Does Your Competition Engage With Customers? – engaging is such an important aspect in gaining a loyal and faithful brand following. If your clients know that you value their input, and respond to their questions/concerns/comments quickly and effectively, they will be more apt to return again for further product purchases/services.

Where:

Where Does Your Competition Put Most of Their Marketing Efforts? (what media types) – knowing this information is helpful when gathering competitive intelligence because we can start to understand their business strategies and plans. If we know they are putting most of their marketing efforts into their website, then we know that perhaps they are lacking in the social media marketing area, and we can zero in and capitalize on this hole. It’s also good to know where the unsaturated areas of your market lie in the online marketplace, so that you can take advantage of the lack of usage in this area and be one of the first to set up stake with little to no competition.

Where Do Most Customers Share Their Opinions About Your Competition? (what media types) – this is a great place to camp out because obviously if the majority of the competition’s clients are gathering and sharing thoughts in one specific area, then you will get the most insight in that specific area. Gaining customer insight is crucial to the success of your company for your own brand and for your competitor’s brand because there is always room for improvement, and customers will tell you which areas are lacking.

Why:

Why Are Customers Choosing Your Competition Over Your Brand? (what do customers value) – again listening to what customers are looking for in a product or service will help you to mold into the company that your customers dream of. Look to see what your competitor’s customers like about their brand and cross-reference it to that of your own…do you have similar programs, or are they lacking in comparison to your competition?

Why is Your Competition Making Certain Business Decisions? – Predictive Analytics allow you to be better prepared for future changes in the competitive landscape .

10 Signs You Should Hire A Professional Web Designer

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1. Your Site Looks Unprofessional

Your Website visitors are going to decide whether or not your brand is reputable and trustworthy within seconds of viewing your home page. Web designers have the experience and the understanding of what your customers will be looking for upon arrival. Aesthetics and creating a user-friendly interface are issues that they are experts in, so if your site isn’t getting the traffic that you’d hoped, consider rethinking the look and feel of your site and consulting with a professional for their opinion.

2. Your Site Isn’t Interactive and Engaging

It is important to spell out everything for your viewers. Web designers will work to simplify information so that your clients can find the “about us” section or the “contact us” section as quickly and easily as possible. Is there an appropriate ratio of visuals to words? People want to know the quick background and major concepts of your work—if they want to read a book, they will go to the bookstore.

3. Your Navigation Links are Long and Complicated

Navigation links should be short, descriptive, and specific. Where the link directs you when you click on it should be completely in sync with the navigation link verbage. Web designers will be able to show you the standard practices of building a functional website, with effective inbound/outbound navigation links.

4. The Information on Your Site is Dated

If your website is still promoting events that happened last month, how are your viewers supposed to trust the rest of the information displayed on your site? Web designers can create a website that can be easily updated by you or themselves. Creating a fairly uncomplicated interface for their client is something that designers are very good at—a lot of people don’t want to spend the extra money to have their site maintained by an outside source (which is fine), so it is important to get an experienced designer to walk you through the steps to maintain the backside of your site.

5. The Pictures on Your Site Aren’t Optimized

If your website is full of large pictures that take forever to download looking pixelated and/or warped once they do, don’t expect your viewers to stick around. Web designers know exactly how to optimize images on your website, helping it to operate smoother and faster.

6. Your Text is Hard to Read

Computer screen reading is hard enough on the eyes; don’t make it any harder by writing large amounts of text. You should always keep your writing short and sweet for maximum readability and blocks of text should never be more than 12-15 words long, and 3 to 5 lines long. Web designers will help you to get the most out of your text, finding the most effective balance between content and design.

7. If Your Site is Hosted on a Free Site

Free hosting puts other businesses’ ad banners on top of your site…do you really want to be advertising for another company on your own site? Hosting on a free site also dramatically slows the loading time on your site, frustrating your readers and discouraging them from staying.

8. If Your Site Can’t be Found Through Search Engines

No site, no business. Web designers will work with the web coder to make sure your site is search engine optimized and has the appropriate keywords to ensure that you will be as close to the top of a Google, or other search engine search, as possible.

9. If You Don’t Have Navigation Links at the Top and Bottom of Your Site

People don’t like to be bothered to scroll down to the bottom of your home page to find the “about us” or the “contact us” links. It is the web designer’s job to make it easier for your viewers to get to the desired area of your site.

10. Your Text Goes On…and On…and On…

The body text on your site should be easy for your users to read. A web designer can create balance between space, text and images, so that your viewer will see and read only the most important information to give them a basis for conversation when they call in for your product or services.

SEO 101 Part 2 – The Benefits of Social Media

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Social Media is beneficial in a variety of ways, not the least of which being its ability to increase your site’s search engine rankings. You might wonder how something like a Facebook profile or a Twitter account can have an effect on your site. The answer lies in the fact that search engines such as Google and Yahoo! take into consideration the amount of traffic your site already gets in addition to how many other sites link to yours.

Incoming Links

We’ll discuss the benefits of a good linking strategy in the next SEO blog (it’s second in importance only to keywords and copy), but for the purposes of a Social Media discussion, it’s vital to understand the core concept that Google, Yahoo! and all the rest of the search engines look for; links FROM reputable sites TO your site. While these search engines do most of the heavy lifting themselves, they leave a certain amount of it to the community at large. What this means to your Web site is that if you have several links coming into your site from reputable sources – as which Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn certainly count – then Google sees those links as “votes of confidence” in the content and relevancy of your site, and will raise your ranking accordingly. This can be reinforced by reciprocating those links.

Traffic

Another factor that the search engines will take into account is how much traffic you’re already getting, via word-of-mouth or other means. In other words, while having a properly-optimized site is of paramount importance, if you somehow manage to drive hundreds of hits to your site daily, Google will raise your ranking. This is instance number 2 where having social media profiles are invaluable – if you’ve got a Facebook account, Twitter handle, LinkedIn profile and all the others which are consistently pumping out interesting, relevant information, people are going to follow the links contained therein to your site, thus boosting you rankings even further.

$ocial Media

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There has been a lot of chatter about the efficiency of social media, and how it can effectively be incorporated into a profitable marketing plan. Business-owners want to know what the return on investment will be before they dish out large sums of money to enter the social media realm. The thing is, measuring the efficacy of social media in dollars is really hard to do, and really, isn’t the correct way to measure its profitability within your company.

It’s important, when thinking about starting or broadening a social media sector of your company, to create a strategy that will bring in MEASUREABLE results. An increase in followers or fans for example is a great way to measure your success in social media. You may wonder the importance of people “following” you, but if you dissect your findings in terms of exposure and bringing awareness to your business, an increase in fans may bring you a more favorable response.

Another way to measure the effectiveness of social media is through customer engagement. The more content you pump out to your following, the greater chance you have at engaging with them to create more meaningful relationships with your potential clients, and to make sure that all of their questions and comments are addressed. In making sure to respond to your fans/followers, you are sure to gain a loyal following of brand ambassadors, who will be quick to spread the good word about your company.

The most important thing to remember is that your consumers don’t buy products from a logo, they buy a product from YOU, a PERSON. Remember that when interacting with a potential client, even if the conversation happens through the internet.

SEO 101 Part 1 – Keywords

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When making your site SEO-friendly, it’s important to understand the hierarchy of importance in terms of the steps you need to take. There are a multitude of granular tweaks that should be made, but best practices dictate that you should take care of the broader issues first before drilling down into the fine-tuning. In other words, you should always start at the top and work your way down; with site optimization, “the top” means “keywords.”

Along with one other step that we’ll discuss in a later blog, the most important factor that search engines such as Google and Yahoo! take into account when ranking your site is the site’s content – what does it say, how often does it say it, and is what it says relevant to the site’s purpose? The search engines answer these questions by scanning your site and “reading” every word on the site that can be read and instantly analyzing how often each word is used. As a very simple example, let’s assume that we have a single-page Web site about Golden Retrievers with only one paragraph of text. If that paragraph read:

The Golden Retriever is a medium-sized breed of dog. They were historically developed as gundogs to retrieve shot waterfowl such as ducks and upland game birds during hunting and shooting parties. As such, they were bred to have a soft mouth to retrieve game undamaged and have an instinctive love of water. The golden retriever has a dense inner coat that provides it with adequate warmth. The outer coat is sleek and water repellent, and lies flat against the body. The official colour of the breed is the varying shades of gold that are most often seen. These dogs are well suited to suburban or country environments. They need lots of outdoor exercise but should be kept fenced in because of their instincts as hunting dogs.**

…Google would then return the following TOP-TEN results (word, # of times used on page, percentage of usage):

DOGS – 2 – 2.2%
GAME – 2 – 2.2%
RETRIEVE – 2 – 2.2%
WATER – 2 – 2.2%
HUNTING – 2 – 2.2%
GOLDEN – 2 – 2.2%
COAT – 2 – 2.2%
RETRIEVER – 2 – 2.2%
BREED – 2 – 2.2%
AN – 2 – 2.2%

From these results, we can see that our page is going to be recognized for the words “dogs,” “game” and “retrieve” more than anything else. Not a bad start, but we want our page to show up on searches for “golden retrievers” specifically. Best practices tell us that the ideal percentage of use for a word is between 3 and 9%, so let’s adjust our paragraph a little bit:

Golden Retrievers are a medium-sized breed of dog. Golden Retrievers were historically developed as gundogs to retrieve shot waterfowl such as ducks and upland game birds during hunting and shooting parties. As such, Retrievers were bred to have a soft mouth to retrieve game undamaged and have an instinctive love of water. Golden Retrievers have dense inner coats that provides them with adequate warmth. The outer coat is sleek and water repellent, and lies flat against the body. The official colour of the Golden Retriever breed is the varying shades of gold that are most often seen. These dogs are well suited to suburban or country environments. Golden Retrievers need lots of outdoor exercise but should be kept fenced in because of their instincts as hunting dogs.

As you can see, we have altered the wording slightly to use the words “golden” and “retrievers” more frequently. If we re-analyze this paragraph, we now get the following results:

GOLDEN – 5 – 4.42%
RETRIEVERS – 5 – 4.42%
DOGS – 2 – 2.1%
GAME – 2 – 2.1%
RETRIEVE – 2 – 2.1%
WATER – 2 – 2.1%
HUNTING – 2 – 2.1%
BREED – 2 – 2.1%
AN – 1 – 1.32%
BRED – 1 – 1.32%

We have now moved the words “golden” and “retrievers” into first and second place, respectively – the ideal setup for optimizing a site about Golden Retrievers. This means that Google is now going to identify our page as a site that is 100% relevant to any searches for “golden retrievers.” Additionally, those words are followed closely by other relevant terms such as “dogs,” “retrieve,” “hunting” and “breed,” and we have removed some weight from the useless word “an.” Further tweaking of the text could improve these results even more, although you always want to be careful to ensure that your copy sounds natural and is not overly padded with keywords; search engines will penalize a site’s rankings for keyword “stuffing.”
Of course, we know that ours is certainly not the only Web site out there on the subject of Golden Retrievers so we’ll need to do a considerable amount of further optimization in other areas if we want to be top of the search engine rankings, but this first, fundamental step is the foundation upon which all of our other efforts will be built.

**”Golden Retrievers.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 20 Mar. 2012. Web. 26 Mar. 2012.

Relevancy Rules in Social Media Advertising

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In recent years, social media has become more than just an arena for reconnecting or engaging with friends—it has become a platform for strategic and targeted advertising. In order to reap the most benefits of social media advertising, relevancy is essential. Facebook has a great system for online advertising that allows you to seek out the demographic of people that will be most likely to be interested in your advertised product.

A case study by famous blogger, Jason Falls in his new book, No Bullshit Social Media illustrates the power of Facebook advertising, and how it translates into dollars earned. In 2010, Jim Olenbush, owner of Cantera Real Estate in Austin, TX, utilized multiple relevancy factors in order to target a very specific group of people who may be interested in buying homes.

At the time that Olenbush first decided to use Facebook advertising, there had been so many drug-related murders and shootings in Mexico that many affluent Mexican families were looking to move to the United States. He realized that, due to Texas’ close proximity to Mexico, it could be extremely profitable to target these affluent areas (Mexico City and Monterrey) using Facebook’s advanced filtering tools.

Olenbush said that not many people were targeting this demographic so when he spent only about $400.00 over a period of 3-4 months, he received a good amount of impressions. Although Olenbush admitted that the click-through rates were on the lower side, one person did end up using his services, and buying a $1.1 million dollar house. For an investment of $400.00, this was an extremely high return.

As I mentioned before, people don’t care about things that don’t pertain to them (as bad as that may sound). In order to catch the attention of the consumer, you need to target the right products to the right people. With Facebook’s filtered advertisements you can choose exactly who will see your advertisement, all the way down to interests located in the info area of their profiles.

How have you used Facebook filtering to target a very specific demographic for an ad campaign? Let us know!

If you need assistance implementing your Facebook campaign, or simply need help to maintain or create content on your social platforms, contact Viral Technologies and we will provide you with a FREE social media consultation. 1-855-718-4725 or email info@viraltechnologies.com

Conquering Writer’s Block With Yoga Principles

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So there I was. Setting up camp in down dog, arms quivering and hamstrings burning, when I realized…I didn’t have a blog—or even an idea for a blog–prepared for the next day. Panic started to set in somewhere between my third eye and my actual eyes, and I started sweating profusely—okay it probably had something to do with the 100+ degree room I was in—not to mention my chakra had gotten all out of line.

Okay I thought, gathering my stomach from off the floor as we finally were instructed to rest in child’s pose. How would my yogi master solve this dilemma?
Have you ever tried doing the writing exercise where you are instructed to write without lifting your pen, keeping your hand moving for a designated amount of time? Vinyasa yoga is kind of like this. Stay with me now.

Vinyasa yoga is the combining of breath and movement, and the creation of a universal flow of energy and power. It keeps your mind off the things that may hinder you from meeting your intention or goal by encouraging the perpetual movement of your body and syncing it with your breath.

Many deep postures create resistance or discomfort—much like not having a blog topic, or suffering from the dreaded writer’s block. Don’t force it…that’s when we injure ourselves or create a piece that—for lack of a better word—bites. Creating peace of mind through continued rhythmical breath is a great way to better arrive at the solution to a problem. Once these deep, rejuvenating breaths become second nature, your movements start becoming fluid and organic—not forced.

Whether you’re creating a flow in yoga class, or creating a flow of words on a screen, remember to take a second and enjoy these moments where your mind is blank—even if that may seem daunting when trying to write on a deadline. Use these moments to take a few deep luxurious breaths, and enjoy them. Let them energize you, so that they can lead you into your next task.

Just keep breathing, keep your thoughts rhythmic and relaxed like your movements, and you will always find your flow.

And that my friends, is how yoga class helped me to write this blog.