Your content, especially (and mostly) on social media, should include sharing and mentioning other content and authors in your niche.
How can you successfully do this? How can you share others’ content – and most importantly, pick the right content to share, and stay away from what could hurt or deter your reader base?
Before actually getting familiar with the written and unwritten rules related to a perfectly healthy and legitimate content sharing strategy, you should focus on finding and assimilating original web content tailored to the real needs and expectations of your targeted audience. Here’s how you could narrow down your search.
A Guide to Content Sharing Done Right
A mini case study in great sharing is the TAGFEE code at Moz. It stands for Transparent & Authentic, Generous, Fun, Empathetic, and Exceptional. This “code” is what they stand by for everything they cultivate and create. It’s an awesome guide to live by and a wonderful route to great content.
How to Find the Right Type of Shareable Content That Works for You
Ask Questions. Social media platforms give you the opportunity to humanize your brand and let your fans and followers realize that they’re interacting with a living, breathing individual, not a money-hungry corporation that just wants to sell anything to anyone. Post questions related to potential upcoming topics that could be introduced on your blog. This way, your readers would be more inclined to talk about their most pressing questions and the answers that they expect from you and your company.
Read Comments. Feedback is a gift from above, allowing you to prevent or correct past mistakes and keep your content creation/sharing strategy on the right path. Read comments and assimilate the most important lessons that your readers can teach you.
Explore the Connection with the Pop Culture. Amazing content creators know how to educate, inform and entertain their public at the same time. They aren’t afraid to explore pop culture references and turn them into real life lessons that actually are relevant for their sector. This may give you a new reason to keep up with the Kardashians or watch Dancing with the Stars without feeling guilty.
Write about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Your Niche (and Skip the Unremarkable). In short, boost your appetence for the unconventional. Your readers definitely don’t want to waste time going through boring stuff. Maybe you’ve always wondered why Harper’s Bazaar starts almost every headline created for social media with this standard formula: “You won’t believe what X has done with her hair/wardrobe/makeup!” This is one of the oldest in the book, based on the idea that a little bit of suspense and the promise of a spectacular discovery will make readers bite their nails in anticipation and finally click on the link that you provide.
So now that you know what type of content you would like to share, how could you actually distribute it without stealing someone’s intellectual property? If this dilemma is stopping you from getting a good night’s rest, keep reading to spot 10 foolproof ways in which you can put X’s written thoughts to good use without getting in trouble.
10 Rules for Sharing Content Without Actually Stealing Other People’s Work
1. Conduct a Keyword Search and Pick Your Most Reliable Sources
According to Business2Community, keyword search represents the first step towards identifying great shareable content on the Internet. Using the keywords that make sense to you, conduct extensive searches in search engines, social networking websites (like Twitter, for instance) and Google alerts.
Afterwards, you could always turn to different RSS readers like Feedly for instance, store the most relevant content pieces in a bookmark tool such as Pocket or Readability and schedule posts revolving around the hottest web content that you can find using one of the many social media management tools, like Hootsuite or Buffer.
2. Subscribe to Different Content Aggregators to Stay in the Loop
SmartBrief aggregates great content on a daily basis and gives you the chance to check out at least 10 new articles related to topics that may interest you. According to Convince & Convert, by using content aggregators, you can save a lot of time otherwise invested in a more or less organized topic hunt.
3. Find the Best Collaborators in Your Niche and Start Building Mutually Beneficial Relationships
Talk to influencers in your industry. Refine your people skills and reach bloggers who share your interests. Mention their work in your posts and they will be inclined to return the favor. This could mark the beginning of a more than satisfactory collaboration leading to a whole bunch of premium, shareable co-authored content pieces that will allow you to expand your reader database.
4. Cite Content in Your Very Own Blog Posts & on Social Media While Complying with Internet Etiquette
As you were struggling to reinvent the wheel and come up with brand-new food for thought for your readers, someone introduced a fantastic new concept.
Instead of sweating even harder to rewrap your competitor’s ideas in a different manner and trying to convince your readers that the creative concept actually belongs to you, post the relevant quote in its original form and give credit to its author by mentioning the source and hyperlinking the blog/website in question.
Also, make sure you are familiar with the rules and guidelines related to content sharing, set in place by all sources that you plan to cite.
For instance, HubSpot lets you quote its web content, as long as the fragments that you choose do not exceed the 75-words limit (to prevent duplicate content issues that could impact their rankings- and yours as well!)
What happens when you stumble across really cool content on social media platforms? Do you rub your hands in anticipation and grab your favorite fragments when nobody’s looking?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this dubious strategy isn’t the best course of action. In most cases, you just have to mention the name of your source and include a link to the web content that you are citing in your newest update.
The procedure differs a bit from one social networking website to another, but generally speaking, proper content attribution is easy as pie. For instance, on Twitter, you would just have to add a “via @username” attribute in your tweet.
5. Give Credit to Ghost Writers and Guest Bloggers
Update your blogging policy if necessary, to give proper credit to guest bloggers and/or ghost writers who may influence your content creation efforts one way or another.
According to Hubspot, you should include a short bio of your contributors on your page, with inbound links to their sites. Also, you should mention their names and maybe even let them include one link to their page in your body copy.
6. Cite Visual Content Correctly
Basically, visual content (pictures, infographics) can be cited just like any other content piece: you mention the name of your source in the text and hyperlink to its website. However, if you are using infographics to inform and entertain your audience (and you should, because this is one of the trendiest, easiest to digest types of web content floating around the Internet these days), make sure you also name the source that you used to draw your points.
If you have utilized multiple sources, just provide the URLs and let your users dig deeper if the feel the need to.
For instance, you could extract the real substance from a blog series and turn it into a slide deck that could be uploaded to SlideShare; or you could turn a slideshow into a cool-looking, informative infographic and turn this latter type of web content into an interesting animated video that will definitely take your content creation/sharing strategy to a whole new level.
8. Write and Share Original Content Built Around Your Users’ Comments
Why hire a ghost writer when your readers are your most valuable sources of inspiration? Incorporate your user comments in new content pieces and make sure you contact the visitor who inspired you, say “thank you” and include a link to your newest masterpiece.
9. Learn the Basics of Content Syndication
According to Search Engine Journal, syndicating content basically means that you’re publishing a content piece that you’ve already rolled out on your website/blog on a different site.
Content syndication is a great way to earn links and enhance your online presence. A few words of advice:
If you want to share your own content like a pro, don’t choose to collaborate with more than a few syndication sites.
To avoid penalties from Google and trouble from the ferocious Penguin, you should let Google know that you are the author of your content via internal links in your body copy and canonical tags.
10. Step up Your Content Curating Efforts the Easy Way
Obviously, we’ve saved the best for last. Content curation is the best way to gather, sort and publish the most prominent written gems that you could ever find online. According to Social Media Examiner, content curation keeps you in the loop, lets you share the love, and enables you to do useful recaps by summarizing information more effectively.
By using some of the most popular content curating tools, you can find, filter and promote excellent ideas that belong to others.
Cadmus displays the most popular tweets within your network.
PostRank lets you check the engagement score displayed by your favorite sources.
Yahoo Pipes lets you organize RSS feeds based on your criteria.
Curata is the ultimate curation software enabling you to find, organize and promote web content that is essential for your business.
These tools can simplify your work, but which rules should you follow to avoid upsetting Google and your fellow content creators who own the pieces you’re most interested in? According to Content Curation Marketing, you should follow a few basic tips to stay in the safe zone when it comes to curating content:
Reproduce only small fragments of the body copy/headline that are relevant to your article
Rather than trying to reproduce all articles available under the sun, stick to the ones that make sense to your business/audience.
Identify and list the source of your shared material and link to the original source
Provide commentary and a new context for the written material that you’ve just extracted.
Content Sharing is Easy (and Ethical) with the Right Strategy
At the end of the day, by following all the 10 rules for sharing content listed above, you’ll manage to make the most of brilliant ideas that do not actually belong to you — without being accused of unethical practices or jeopardizing your relationship with Google and prominent players in your industry.
Bring out your Google notebook again; Google is making another major change and this time it is to Google AdWords. Just when we all start to get used to things, Google makes another a major game-changing announcement. This announcement is that the exact-match keywords you use are no longer going to rank for, well, exact-matches but for close variant keywords. Wait, what? What exactly does that mean? This blog is going to break everything down for you, to help you understand the changes that are happening as well as how these changes might impact your business.
What Is An Exact-Match And Close Variant Keyword?
First thing first, we need to define what these two phrases mean. Some of you might know, but a little refresher course never hurt anyone. An exact-match keyword is pretty straightforward. Its definition is simply that it is a keyword that someone searches for exactly and is given results that exactly match the keyword. For example, if you were searching for “bicycle repair tips” an exact-match keyword would bring up results with the exact keyword of “bicycle repair tips.” Simple, huh?
A close variant keyword is a keyword that is close to the search query, but not exactly what the searcher looked for. This can be helpful if someone is searching for “bicycle repair tips” but searches for either “bike repair tips” or “bycycle repair tips.” Yep, that’s right. If someone misspells their search query, the result will come up with what they are looking for. This is handy for those who aren’t strong spellers and for those of us who rely on our smartphones, which like to make strange spelling suggestions constantly.
Why Is Google Making A Change In Favor Of Close Variant Keywords?
As we mentioned earlier, Google is making a change that favors close variant keywords instead of exact-match. Their main reasons are straightforward and easy to understand. The biggest reason they are changing to favor close variant keywords is because about 7 percent of search queries are misspelled; yes 7 percent. While that might not seem very substantial, that is 7 percent of people using Google, who might not come to your site. This could actually be quite detrimental for you, so this change is a good thing for many PPC advertisers. This change did take place awhile back, yet marketers were allowed to opt out, and many did. Now, you will not be able to opt out, it will just be part of the Google algorithm.
Another reason Google is making this change is because exact-match keywords do not bring in as many clicks and views as a close variant keyword, which they know to be detrimental to you, your ranks, and revenue. Google AdWords wants to help you out by making this change, which is quite nice of them! You never know exactly how someone is going to search for “bicycle repair tips” no matter how straightforward it seems. All you have to do is go to Google Poetics to see the various, strange things people search for. People will come up with any variation of your specific keyword, which can actually keep them far away from your site, whereas a close variant keyword might just be what brings them to you.
What Does This Mean For Your Content?
According to Search Engine Watch, a great thing about this change is that your content isn’t going to see that drastic of an impact from this change. You will find that your content is hardly impacted, if at all. In fact, Google said that they believe only about 3 percent of advertisers on AdWords will see an impact, but even that will be small.
Also, this has really been happening for a while now. Variants of your keywords should be appearing naturally all throughout your content. It’s pretty hard NOT to do that. The rule of thumb is to be sure that you (or your writers) are writing naturally—not for the SERPs, and not around a keyword—but for the reader.
Are There Any Benefits For Close Variant Keywords?
The main benefit researchers are seeing is that your advertisements are more likely to come up for searchers now than before. When you were focusing on exact-match keywords, you actually were missing a huge chunk of searchers simply because, as mentioned earlier, they misspelled a word or did not type the exact keyword you used. With a close variant keyword, you have the higher likelihood of getting more clicks and results.
An example given in the article referenced above by Search Engine Watch shows just how this will positively impact your results. For instance, there could be about 10 million different matches for your chosen keyword. However, with the exact-match keyword, you were only able to reach about 1 million of those search terms, missing out on 9 million results. With a close variant keyword, you stand a higher chance of getting results for all 10 million variations. Now, not all keywords have that many variations, but you get the idea. Your chosen keyword will have a significant amount of possible variations, but with exact-match, you will always miss out.
Basically, with a close variant keyword, you are able to expand who all you reach, potentially expanding your client base to a more diverse one. This is something that you will greatly enjoy as time progresses!
Are There Any Cons With This Change?
The most significant change people are expecting is that you will see more clicks on your site than before. While this is a great thing, you need to know that this could also mean higher costs for your PPC budget. You will need to rethink that PPC budget and take some time to learn just how much more you are going to need to spend. This change is going to be implemented in September, which does not give anyone much time to prepare for it. This is troublesome for a lot of small businesses because you might need more time to figure out your budget and move things around a little bit. You might not be able to make any adjustments until the fiscal year is over, meaning you might not see the vast improvement Google is promising. Once you are able to restructure your budget, you might find that this change brings in more money, making your PPC budget worthwhile; however, it might take some time.
Another con that researchers are noticing is that we are slowly moving away from using keywords in posts, which leaves it up to Google as to whether or not they will show your ads. Hopefully marketers will get some information to help with these changes and implement some useful tools to not just rely on whether or not Google AdWords will show your ad.
What Should You Do To Prepare For The Change?
As with every change made by Google, many people wonder just what they can do to prepare for it. Advertisers and marketers are definitely running around in a tizzy trying to figure out what is happening and how to prepare.
Let’s look at a few ways to prepare for this change:
1. Focus On Content Curation. With this change, you should start considering focusing more on content creation than pay-per click ads, because your content is what will help keep people on your site once they click. Obviously PPC ads are going to be somewhat beneficial for you financially, but you cannot go wrong with a bigger content budget. Your content is going to help you get more natural clicks and can help you bring in long-lasting clients that PPCs might not bring in.
2. Start Gathering A List Of Negative Keywords. One thing many researchers are suggesting for people is to start focusing on negative keywords and implementing them into their marketing strategy. Let’s break this down a little more to help you out.
What Are Negative Keywords? Negative keywords are words or phrases that will keep your content from ranking in a particular search result. This doesn’t sound very appealing to many because, well, you want to show up in all search results, right? However, you might find that to be wrong. A negative keyword is something that can keep you from ranking on something that has nothing to do with your product. This was useful long before the latest change in Google AdWords, but it is becoming incredibly important now.
A great example of this is if you sell bicycles and someone searches for motorcycles, they might type in “bikes” and they will come across your bicycle shop site. You, obviously, happen to sell bikes, just not the type they are looking for. While you want people to search for you as a bike seller, it might be more beneficial to block out that phrase or something similar to keep motorcyclists from happening across your site. This will tailor it for the particular group you are aiming for, bicycle riders.
How Do You Come Up With Negative Keywords? The best way to come up with negative keywords is to take some time to sit down and look through your SEO analytics . You will be able to spot a lot of the keywords that have nothing to do with your site that are being used to bring people to your business. However, some negative keywords might be hard to find. This means you will need to get creative and find different words that you do not want to rank your site. It will take time and energy, but with the new AdWords change, it will be very beneficial for your PPC budget.
How Can You Use Them In AdWords? Google AdWords makes using negative keywords easy and strongly encourages people to use them. They give you a handy help guide telling you how to implement these keywords into your advertisements. Just like you might have learned how to implement exact-match keywords, you will need to learn how to implement negative keywords. You might not feel like spending the time and energy learning this new method, but it is beneficial and you will see better results once you do this.
In Closing
While Google updates can be annoying, many of these updates are things that will be very beneficial for marketers and websites. The great thing about this update is that it will only take a few changes and you will see great PPC results. Take some time to think about the upcoming changes you might need to make and start preparing for them. While it is happening soon, you still will have some time to come up with great new ways to use this update to your advantage.
Let’s face it; we all work on limited time. If we could selfishly dedicate even 50 percent of our time to only our online content, we’d all have a website, blog, and social media outreach to be proud of; one we’d smile about, do that chin nod at, and say, “Yeah, I did that!” But in reality, we don’t have the time. Running a business is a marathon that always results in the same conclusion, “There just aren’t enough hours in a day.” There’s got to be a solution, right?
The Solution to Limited Time: Repurposing Content
You’ve heard about repurposing content. If you haven’t done it, though, you probably don’t know what the big deal is. Content repurposing is the ultimate way of getting the most mileage out of your content. It’s a process that can, if done right, save you time and make populating your online presence with relevant and engaging content a bit easier. Did you know that, with a little preparation and planning, you can repurpose every piece of content you write? Actually, even if you haven’t done any planning, you can repurpose straight from your blog archive.
Revamping vs. Repurposing
Before we dive into just how to repurpose your content, let’s get something straight. There is a difference between revamping and repurposing content. These terms are not interchangeable. In one of our guest blogs on SiteProNews.com, we briefly touched on the differences.
Content revamping occurs when you:
Upgrade formatting and structure.
Return to your best ideas and reinvent them.
Re-introduce a previous idea by giving it new meaning.
Create content that serves the same purpose but responds to new needs or demands from your audience.
Content repurposing occurs when you:
Use your already written material to attract an entirely new type of reader.
According to Kevan Lee of Buffer Social, content repurposing is packed with benefits. It can boost your SEO, reach a new audience, reinforce your message, and even gain extra authority.
Resuscitate Your Content
All you need to resuscitate your content is to find what Lee calls your “evergreen content.” Evergreen content is timeless and high quality. It’s those blogs and articles that are always relevant no matter the date and have driven traffic to your website. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide for shocking life back into your content:
Step 1: Review your blog archive. Check your site analytics. See which posts, and even pages, are the most popular. Of these, choose the posts and pages that have timeless content.
Step 2:Review the topics. Once you’ve nailed down those head turning topics, re-read them. Can you expand on the topic further? Has something changed in the news since you published the piece? Is there some cutting edge innovation you could update your audience about? Have you learned something new that you can share?
Step 3:Brainstorm a fresh approach. Use your popular content to brainstorm a fresh approach. It can involve anything from publishing an update to putting a new spin on the content. Be creative, and think about how you can reach a new or broader audience.
How to Repurpose Every Piece of Content You Write
The key to tapping into your own content is to revisit your website, blog, or social media presence with a fresh perspective coupled with creativity. You have to think outside of the box, and here’s how you do it:
Try a new media type: You’ve already published this topic as a blog or webpage. You have some additional material, experience, or even a new perspective to write a fresher piece. But who says you have to write another blog or webpage? Nobody! One great way to repurpose content is to try a new media type. Instead of writing yet another blog, why not create a presentation, video, infographic, white paper, or some other type of media?
Reach every member of your audience: Who reads blogs and webpages? Usually it’s the audience who are either researching or have time to read. How effective has your content been at reaching the super active audience member who only has about five to fifteen minutes of commute time on the subway to revel in your content? Probably not very. Consider catering to these audience members by means of a podcast. It’s something they can listen to on the go, and it’s likely they’ll fall in love with you because they just don’t have time to sit and read. The lesson is to think about your audience and find ways to reach each member.
Reach a new audience: Expansion is the pulse of business. In order to continually generate leads, we simply must expand to new audiences. You can easily repurpose every piece of content you write simply by brainstorming ways to make is more appealing to that new audience or target consumer group you are attempting to reach.
Repost via social media: Knows the value of evergreen content. It’s like finding the sweet spot of content creation because you can always repost and re-promote your evergreen content via social media. It’s timeless and high quality. All it needs is a fresh repost here and there. The trick is to not overdue it. Recirculation works once or twice when spaced out, but it won’t work forever. You will still need to repurpose the original piece with a new spin in order to keep your content fresh and relevant.
Use Canva: This free image tool can do wonders with plain text content by transforming it into highly-appealing, engaging visual content such as inspirational quotes, Infographics, posters, flyers and so much more. This is a great way to create visuals out of re-purposed content.
Repurposing is a fantastic way to populate content without draining your time. Reworking a piece of content usually takes half the time when compared to the original creation process. And if you hire out repurposing a blog into an infographic or presentation, you’re making a wise investment. There are tons of repurposing tools at your disposal today.
Additional Awesome Ideas
Content repurposing doesn’t stop here! You can repurpose every piece you write simply by staying creative. A little outside help is never a bad idea either. Quick Sprout’s Complete Guide to Building Your Blog Audience has a chapter dedicated to repurposing content, and it’s bursting at its page borders with more awesome ideas you can apply.
Bioware sure is a force to be reckoned with in the gaming world. If you aren’t a gamer, you might not know about this company, but they are known for bringing us incredible games like Baulder’s Gate, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. This company became a strong name recently because of their incredible copywriting and content marketing skills. Let’s take a look at how Bioware utilizes certain skills to create a gaming company many have come to trust. (A quick side note, some of the resources used for this article quite possibly carry spoilers for Bioware games.)
Listening To The Crowds
The one thing Bioware does with their copywriting and content marketing is they listen to their customers, which is vital to having great copywriting. Of course, sometimes they fall flat when it comes to responding adequately, as is evident by the odd change made to the end of Mass Effect 3. They do have a pretty decent record of listening to their clients outside of the ending of ME3, and even asked for fan input for the upcoming Dragon Age: Inquisition. Actually, the Dragon Age request for fan input was a great move for Bioware to learn just what their clients wanted because there were obviously tensions over Mass Effect as well as their Star Wars RPG (roleplaying game), The Old Republic.
How can this inspire your copywriting? Simply that it is imperative you listen to your clients! Did you have a few posts that fell flat or that created some unhappy discussion within your client base? Then address it and ask clients what you should do differently. A great way to learn what your clientele wants is to use surveys and polls to hear what they have to say. Consider implementing at least a portion of the suggestions and addressing why you couldn’t make other changes. You can take a leaf out of Bioware’s book with Dragon Age: Inquisition by letting clients know that you will listen to their input, and to expect that not every suggestion will be implemented. People still gave their input, regardless of whether or not Bioware would make the changes. This helped Bioware to come up with some great ideas that we will all see soon in the new Dragon Age.
Creating Lasting Stories
Regardless of the trouble Bioware has seen with Mass Effect and The Old Republic, the one thing the majority of people can agree on is their ability to craft lasting stories. Bioware’s developers did a great job by immersing you in the world of Mass Effect and Commander Shepard; you felt the death of each team member, the awesomeness of being a renegade, or the thrill of fear at seeing the Reapers. They make this happen by turning their games into some powerful RPGs, making you decide what happens and knowing that your choices will hold lasting, and strong, effects in the rest of the game. It is quite cool to see just how the story progresses when you make different choices.
While they are, obviously, attempting to tell a story with their games, Bioware shows just how important it is to tell a story. It really brings a sense of community amongst other fans and prompts some incredible conversations. While you can’t really take your copywriting to the level of an RPG, telling a story might be one of the best ways for you to connect with your client base. Consider telling a story about how your company came into being or a story surrounding your products; it will help keep people engaged with your work.
Viral Marketing Skills, They Have Them!
Something else that Bioware gets is the importance of viral marketing. Anyone who is signed up for Bioware’s game newsletter got a recent teaser of an intriguing game and were told, “You are chosen.” They coupled it with a few interesting, short sentences, and punctuated the email with a teaser trailer called You’ve Been Chosen: Nightmare. Creepily, exciting! They’ve continued the campaign with several more mysterious trailers, one with a woman saying “It’s not my fault” repeatedly. Fast-forward to the recent Gamescon and everyone was waiting on the edge of his or her seat just to know what in the world this new game was. How’s that for intense and awesome viral marketing?
Viral marketing can help anyone, including a big company like Bioware. You should consider doing a few viral marketing campaigns in your copywriting to promote your website further. It can bring in quite the amount of new clients and it will certainly be entertaining for your existing ones! A few ways this can benefit your copywriting is that it can create more awareness about your site, get attention quickly, and give you the ability to see just what your client base will react to the most. Try it out!
In Closing
Bioware really does have some great ideas when it comes to writing copy and you should take this opportunity to research the various other ways Bioware can influence you. Try a few of the ideas listed above to help you come up with some powerful and incredible copy soon!
Engagement, shareability, and even going viral. It’s what we all want out of our blogging. But how exactly do you get there? How do you keep a reader engaged enough (to read past the first word)? How do you get to the level of going viral and getting excess shares? One way is to teach through your blogging. It’s simple—start teaching your clients and visitors with your blog. Let’s take a look at why you should teach your clients, the benefits, and few examples of how you can do this!
Why Should You Teach Your Clients?
One of the main reasons you want to teach your client base is to keep them engaged with your blogs. Sure, the few blogs about your company are entertaining, but they do not provide value for your readers. Your services landing pages are where you can tell people about your company, what you offer, and more, but your blog is your chance to give your customers something of high value. People love being able to learn from businesses because it feels like they are getting something for free. This encourages them to use your company in the future for whatever their particular needs are. Marketing Land points out that when anyone encounters a problem they can’t solve on their own, they head right on over to the nearest search engine. This gives you the amazing opportunity to rank quickly and bring in new customers!
What Are The Benefits of Teaching through Blogging?
Teaching is something that is perfect for every company with a blog to do. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits you will see when you teach your clients through your blog:
1. Keep Visitors Engaged In Your Writing. One of the key benefits of teaching is that you are able to keep your visitors engaged in your blogs. It is easy for people to just skim and skip your content if it doesn’t offer anything that they want or need. If you start teaching people, they will keep reading your blog. You may even see that people do more than just skim your blog because people can’t learn just by skimming (though some do try!).
2. Convert Visitors Into Customers. You know that it is important to convert those visitors to customers, but you might find that it is quite difficult to do. Teaching through your blog is a great way to do just this. You will show visitors that you offer something pretty awesome and they might consider using your company in the future, or even purchase something that day! Doesn’t it seem like a great idea to start teaching your clients? Offer them something of value to show your visitors that you really are the company to go with.
3. Create Longtime Customers. If you continually offer something that has value, you will find that your customers are more apt to stay with you for a long time. We all love receiving consistent information that can help us in our everyday problems and are more likely to stick with a company that offers something no one else does. Just think about it; are you more likely to stay with a company that never offers any helpful information on a certain task or problem? Or are you more likely to stay with a company that consistently offers you valuable information? We know that we’d prefer a company who gave us consistent useful information!
4. You Get A Competitive Edge When Teaching. Teaching is still something that seems relatively new, and as Mack Collier points out, if you teach, you get a strong competitive edge. This is a great way to start beating your competition and you might even bring over a few of your competition’s client base just by simply teaching people. Obviously, your competition might learn from you to teach others, but you will have the satisfaction of knowing you are worlds ahead of them already.
5. Content With Value Is More Apt To Be Shared. In the same article mentioned above, Mark Collier explains that content with value is more likely to be shared on social sites. The more your content is shared, the closer you will get to have something go viral. Viral content is something that most companies really want because it will get them noticed by more people and grow their client base significantly. There are several different ways that viral content can be achieved; teaching your customers is just one of many.
6. Your Brand Becomes More Trusted. Hubpsot points out thatyou will find clients are more likely to trust your brand if you teach them, than if your blog doesn’t offer anything valuable. They can give your brand excellent reviews and you will stand out amongst all of the others in your industry. Teaching can really help your reputation management and keep your reputation higher. As you well know, reputation is crucial in the online world and is what can make or break your business. Teaching will help you keep that reputation up.
7. Overall Happy Customers. According to the same Hubspot article mentioned above, you will find that clients will be generally happy when they are learning from your business. What you are doing is showing your client base that you appreciate them enough to give them help and information for free. As stated previously, customers will be more likely to share your business with others, and you will find that if a particular blog post really resonates with them, they will share it. Happy customers make for a happy business.
How Do You Teach Through Your Blog?
You are now probably thinking, “well, those benefits sure sound great! But how do I go about teaching through blogging?” We are going to give you a few tips on just how to teach through your blog and offer some excellent, valuable content for your clients.
1. Offer DIY Projects. People really enjoy DIY projects; just take a look at Pinterest! Offer your client base a project that is relatively easy to do that will not end up as a “Pinterest Fail.” This can give people the ability to try something on their own, which will help them trust your company. You can even follow it up with a statement that if a customer needs further help that your business can do just that.
2. Give People A Fun History Lesson. Sometimes, it can be fun to learn about the history of your products, services, or industry. Give a little history lesson in your next blog post to give people the backstory to your items. This will make your company seem more like humans run it and give people a feeling of connection with you. Make sure that you make the history fun and exciting. If you find that the written blog might be too overwhelming, make it into a handy infographic or turn it into a fun video.
3. Offer Free e-Books. Freebies are something we all love and you can utilize this perfectly when teaching customers, while giving them something for free. Places such as offer great free e-books for their clients and gives them the ability to learn about the latest, greatest ways to market their business. This makes their client base feel appreciated while also making sure that Moz is able to keep their base. Consider crafting an e-book to send out to your client base or maybe offer one when someone signs up to become a client. Either way, you are offering your clients an excellent resource for their business, making them more likely to stay with you and to share information about your business with their peers.
4. Hire Guest Bloggers To Offer Other Information. Another great way to teach people is to ask guest bloggers to write for your blog. This gives you access to more information and a different viewpoint on particular lessons that you might not have been able to give. You will find that a guest blogger can offer quite a bit in the way of useful information to your client base, and it also helps to keep your content fresh and ever-growing. Make sure your guest bloggers know what you expect from them and give them a set of guidelines to help them adhere to what you want in a guest blog.
5. Research What Your Customers Want To Learn About. While the above ideas are perfect ways to begin teaching your client base, make sure you also research what your clients want to learn about. You can do this by gathering questions to email your clients, setting up polls, or asking on your blog. You’ll be surprised at how many people are willing to give their input.
In Closing
You will start noticing that you bring in more revenue and that you maintain a client base when you start teaching your clients. Offer newsletters, blogs, emails, or whatever format you want to teach and your customers will keep coming back to you for more information! Now is your chance to sit down and start outlining a few excellent teaching pieces!
