As the creator of Express Writers, I have learned that we are successful because we have embraced our individuality and refuse to focus on what our competitors are doing.
Along with dancing to the beat of our own drum, from the beginning, we focus on building the best services for our clients and original thoughts that build elite and unique levels of service.
From my own life experience, I know how hard it is to find out what makes you different in an industry everyone seems to be in.
I’ve always enjoyed writing, and building a content marketing and writing agency was a natural next step for me. But it hasn’t come easy. Through the ups and downs, I discovered my greatest successes on the heels of failures.
(It’s a longer story than this, and you can read it all here.) In short, my failures helped me ask a ton of questions and ultimately embrace my flaws and stand out from the rest of the content-marketing industry.
So, how do you find out what makes you different from your industry?
Here is a number of questions to help you and your business know just how well you’re standing out — and making a real difference online.
[bctt tweet=”Answer these 5 questions to know if you’re standing out and making a real difference online, vs. adding to the noise. @JuliaEMcCoy #ContentDifferentiationFactor” username=”ExpWriters”]
How to Stand Out Online: 5 Questions to Ask to Know What Makes You Different from the Rest of the Pack
Let’s dive into the five questions every entrepreneur and business owner should be asking.
1. What is Your Content Differentiation Factor in Your Industry?
I teach this concept in my Content Strategy & Marketing course and have written extensively on it in my book. To summarize, your content differentiation factor (CDF) is what separates you from the billions of other content on the web.
Ask this question:
“Does my business communicate topics with people that the rest of the web doesn’t?”
Maybe it’s exclusive content you provide that no one else does, a positive digital experience clients can’t get anywhere else, etc.
Your CDF is how you present your brand/business, and how you communicate industry topics to your audience.
So, understand what separates you from the rest of your industry and go from there.
2. What Makes Your Selling Technique Different from Everyone Else?
Everyone in your industry is selling something similar, right?
For example, if you’re in the marketing industry, you’re probably doing some content marketing.
If you understand that, a number of other people in your industry know that too — so, how do your content marketing services stand out from everyone else? Or any of your other services for that matter?
Your USP is the factor that makes your services and products different than competitors. (Different in terms of by choosing your services and products, they are receiving a higher value.)
Your CDF is how your business/brand is presented. (When you acknowledge industry topics you don’t just give a generic response. You provide an individual and valuable experience that will educate and benefit your customers.)
Make sure you’re asking this strategic question:
“How do I present my services/products differently?”
Remember though, don’t focus only on your competitors.
By focusing on what your competitors are doing, you’re losing focus on your own ideas.
Understand what your competitors are doing and how you’re different from them, but don’t focus too much on them.
Look inside you, your team, and your own environment for your best ideas. Make sure you have a valid reason to give when your customers ask why they should invest in you and your services/products.
3. What Does Your Business Do for Your Customers?
This is part of your USP: understanding what your business/brand provides your customers.
If you’re having a hard time pinpointing what your USP is — don’t worry. You can start narrowing it down by asking yourself what your business does for your customers.
For example, Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon, said that he sold hope, not makeup.
Revson’s promise to his customer was that he was going to provide a product that gave women hope to receive the look they wanted.
So, when you’re thinking about what your businesses do for your customers, don’t just think about the products/services you sell. Think of the feelings and solutions it provides.
4. Are You Comparing Yourself to Your Competitors Too Much?
I mentioned earlier when I talked about asking yourself what your USP is how you should understand what your competitors are doing.
But, don’t focus on them too much.
Once you start focusing on your competitors more than you start focusing on your own ideas, you lose your own sense of creativity.
Trust me.
I used to use templates for my emails, and veered too close to copying and pasting while going off “best practices.”
Then, one day, I sat down without distractions, only armed with inner inspiration.
It turned into one of my most high-converting emails to date:
If you think you’re losing the original “you”, simply ask yourself, “Do I compare myself to my competitors too much?”
If the answer is yes, then I have a few tips to get you to stop analyzing your competitors and start going more internal for bigger and better results:
Remember, it’s important to study what your competitors are doing, without fixating on them. After all, there are millions of people in the world and a lot of them are studying what you’re studying. They’ve made mistakes and have crossed roadblocks you haven’t gotten to yet.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, you just need to recreate it.
[bctt tweet=”1. What is your content differentiation factor? 2. What makes your selling technique different from everyone else? Ask yourself these five questions to see if you’re standing out in your industry. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
5. What Brands Do You Love?
What are a few examples of well-known brands that resonate with you and your business? Make a list of your favorite businesses and look into their business models.
They don’t have to be in your industry.
In fact, if they’re not in your industry, then it’s not as easy to compare yourself to your competitors — which, remember, you don’t want to do.
Well-known businesses haven’t always been well known — they had a starting point, just like you.
[bctt tweet=” Well-known businesses haven’t always been well known — they had a starting point, just like you. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
Here are three examples of well-known businesses that are prime examples of not fitting in.
They can be used as an example for just about any business.
Not only were they one of the first ones in the streaming video industry, they started using all kinds of data to give the people what they want.
[bctt tweet=”.@netflix @dove @airbnb are examples of brands busting through next levels by NOT fitting with typical competitors. ” username=”ExpWriters”]
Netflix understands their audience better than any other video-streaming business — and some could argue businesses outside of the video streaming industry.
People want more options of movies/TV shows to binge watch, Netflix started making their own original videos and people are definitely not complaining.
Your business might not be a video-streaming business, but you can use Netflix as a leader — study your audience and go after them.
2. Dove
In the early days of fashion, the only models that were good enough were super tall and super skinny.
Until recently.
Dove introduced a “Real Beauty Pledge” that uses real, everyday women as their models and help women build self-esteem confidence.
Dove shows us that businesses can become the voice of the unrepresented — even if it hasn’t been done before.
Can you just imagine the conversation in the boardroom about this?
“Hey Bill – I want to do a campaign with eleven every-day women that look just like the moms I hang out with at my school PTA meetings.”
“Uh, Sarah, I had supermodels on the Cayman Islands at the top of my list.”
“But every woman will relate to mine and we’ll grow by at least $1 or even 2 billion.”
…SILENCE…
“Hmm…yeah, you’ve got a point about our audience there. Okay, Sarah, you win this one.”
The campaign idea may have sounded crazy at first, but with a campaign most women can relate with, it was a huge success.
3. Airbnb
If you enjoy traveling, you’ve heard of Airbnb, and even if you don’t like traveling, you’ve probably heard of Airbnb.
Airbnb is a travel company that is revolutionizing the hotel industry by giving people a home anywhere around the world while also giving them a local and unique experience without breaking their bank.
Airbnb’s business model is targeted to get people to list their real-life home for a few days, weeks, or months, so more people have reasonably priced places to stay while also experiencing local culture. They advertise a great message: customers can become business owners just by renting out their homes, or, if they don’t want to rent out their personal home, they can be renters where they can experience a unique place that is theirs for the time that they’re visiting.
After seeing the most popular locations and types of homes users wanted to rent, they introduced AirBnb Plus. Airbnb Plus is their way of presenting specific areas and homes that are “extra special.” The Airbnb team even studied real data to showcase the best cities and homes around the world for amazing customer experiences.
Although Airbnb studies their data thoroughly, ultimately, they treat their customers as business partners.
If you as an Airbnb customer book an apartment for a week, you deal with the person that owns that apartment/house — not Airbnb. Airbnb only steps in if the home does not meet the listing standards or you (as the customer) do not feel like you belong. Plus, Airbnb promises to reimburse customers for homes that do not live up to listing standards, or on the flip side, they’ll help the homeowner if customers damage the home. That’s a pretty amazing guarantee level.
A good goal that Airbnb has uniquely captured, that you could also work towards: treat both your first-time and returning customers so well, they want to start referring your service freely to others. But the way you do this must be unique, like Airbnb’s above-and-beyond guarantee.
Start Asking These 5 Questions and Stop Same-Old Syndrome
It’s hard to stand out, especially in a world where everyone is doing what seems the same thing.
I mean, just look around the Facebook ad-o-sphere. Or the marketing universe in general.
Everyone’s quoting “best practices” and then looking over the shoulder of their competitor just to end up doing same old, same old.
What if we authentically focused on creating a truthful message, connecting with our audience and solving problems instead of just selling things?
Need some help creating content that reaches your audience in a powerful, impactful way? We’re just an email away.
In today’s video, I’m covering a critical content type — the email!
In this guide, complete with a demo of how I craft emails in ConvertKit, I’ll cover how you can construct emails that will nurture and build real trust with your audience, as well as elicit action and encourage them to take next steps.
As I was preparing the topic and material for today’s video, I thought what better way to actually show you emails that work than to go into my email campaigns and talk about the ones that have really done well. So, that’s what we’re going to do! Ready? Let’s get into it.
[bctt tweet=”Watch as @JuliaEMcCoy demonstrates high-converting #emailmarketing campaigns using @ConvertKit ” username=”ExpWriters”]
How to Write Awesome Emails that Get Opened and Nurture Trust (Video)
Video Transcription: How to Write Awesome Emails that Get Opened and Nurture Trust
In today’s video, I’m really excited to cover a critical content type – the email!
I use ConvertKit. It starts around $29 a month for 1,000 subscribers and I highly recommend it if you’re considering email marketing, and you want a software that’s super easy to use. Now there are other alternatives like Active Campaign, Campaign Monitor, MailChimp. Full disclosure: this is an affiliate link to ConvertKit. But, if you use that link you’re helping support me so I can continue to create free information like this. This is a tool I personally use, so I can tell you it works!
There are two main types of emails I like to send:
The blog and video share (Useful Email)
The promotion share (Sales Email)
80% of the time I’m sending useful content to my list, and 20% or less of the time I’m sending promotional sales emails that have an offer attached.
Now I find that promotional emails work best when they’re sent to a segmented audience and in sequential order. That means a one-off offer that you send to your list while that can drive results, doesn’t work as well as if you segment your list and target the right offer to them at the right time. Much of this is just learning as I go. So what you’re looking at here are all the emails I sent, you can see that I send them on a regular basis. They’re spread apart by a few days.
My rule is at least one useful email a week and I usually send more than that, so whenever I send videos this is what an informational or useful email looks like, I keep it really short and I’ll include an image to the video and then a link. Now for my blog content I don’t include images, it seems to work better whenever I keep my content super light and that just means not a ton of links, not a ton of images. Over time emails have grown to masses. There are so many emails that are sent out by marketers on a regular basis, so you really don’t have a lot of time to get and hold the attention of your audience.
Experts like Brian Dean, Joanna Wiebe, I see them sending shorter and shorter emails. It seems like our shorter emails are doing well as well, so this is what a useful email looks like and what I do to keep these super simple, I’ll give you a little secret, I actually pull the intro of my blog, the first six or seven sentences. Seriously, that’s my email. So it takes no time at all to plug it in, add a link, add a little footer and then this little P.S. which I like to add to relevant blogs, I keep it out if it’s really not relevant, but I’ll add a P.S. to our services or one of the courses I teach as long as it relates to the topic right here in my useful piece of content. So something like this out of 5,400 subscribers it got 75 clicks and the open rate was almost 14%, that’s pretty good for an email to get 75 people clicking on our link for us.
All lists are different, if you’re building yours organically from the start you’re probably going to see better results. Over time you want to clean up your email, you want to just delete people that aren’t even reading it. We did that a few months ago and our open rate skyrocketed, it was as bad as 5%, now it’s as high as like 14% and here 21%. What you’re seeing here, I’ll just walk you through some more techniques that we use, this is resending something to people that do not click and you can actually do that in ConvertKit by resending to the people that haven’t opened it, so here’s what you can do. You click on the broadcast, resend to un-opens, you can edit the content and then just hit schedule and it’ll actually send your email to everyone that didn’t open it the first time.
When it comes to a sales email I’ve noticed that Saturday and Sunday nights do really well for open rates on offers. We try to be really straightforward with our offers. So a link to it, here’s another link and here’s a third link, and we add this little thing if you don’t want to hear from us anymore you can actually click here and what this does is as soon as they click, this is just a really simple page we set up on our site, as soon as they click on that there is a little trigger in the automation section that unenrolled or that adds everyone that clicks on this to a tag.
[bctt tweet=”When it comes to a sales email, I’ve noticed that Saturday and Sunday nights do really well for open rates on offers. We try to be straightforward with our offers. @JuliaEMcCoy on #emailmarketing” username=”ExpWriters”]
Remember, short and sweet for informative videos, keep it super light, if you do use an image try to only use one and with offers definitely experiment, experiment on times to send, try to segment your list, try to tag people in your email software and only send your offers to people that are actually interested.
Sales emails should be sent 20% of the time, send your useful emails a lot more often. Remember consistency is key. When you’re sending content you really want to send something to your list at least once a week and continue to build it over time. You need to know how to write a useful email that all comes down to keeping things short, sweet and simple, because people don’t really have a lot of time to go through a long email anymore. They have a very short amount of time, so you want to get them interested and then give them whatever you want to give them right away. And remember lead magnets are such a great way to build your list, we have consistent growth organically now every single day from our lead magnets.
I hope that you’ll subscribe, leave me a comment, tell me what you thought! I love hearing from you. Let me know what you thought in the comments, and I hope to see you around!
Need help creating great email content and building your list?
Our team of writing experts at Express Writers is here to support your content creation!
A few weeks ago, on February 11, I gave a talk for SEMrush on one of my favorite topics – writing and publishing authority-building blogs and SEO content.
We had hundreds of viewers live, and lots of great questions!
To help out those of you who couldn’t attend, and for those who were just too busy for the almost two-hour talk I gave (!!), we’re recapping the entire webinar here on the Write Blog. ??
I cover everything you need to know, including why inbound content ROCKS, and how to create strong content that gets results, step-by-step.
Ready to learn? Let’s get into the nitty-gritty, including why ads are dying and why inbound marketing/blogging is the way forward in 2019.
[bctt tweet=”Read the recap of the live talk @JuliaEMcCoy gave for @semrush in February, on #authority building #SEO content ?” username=”ExpWriters”]
The Talk: Secrets to Writing Authority-Building SEO Blogs in 2019
Like video content better? Watch a replay of the 1.49 hour session on YouTube:
The Recap: Secrets to Writing Authority-Building SEO Blogs in 2019
As promised, here’s our written recap of the top takeaways from my talk!
Why Blog? The State of Advertising is Dismal
The state of advertising is pretty bad when you look at the conversion numbers.
Compared to 3 years ago, conversion rates on advertising have dipped ridiculously low. In 2016, the average return on ad spend (ROAS) was 11.88x. Today, that number has dropped to 0.66x.
(Read all about the dreary state of advertising in this recap of The Ad Strategist’s report.)
By comparison, blogging and content marketing look awesome.
Seriously: Inbound is THE future of marketing.
For instance, did you know Google is the most-visited website in the world? YouTube and Facebook hold the next two top spots, but they still aren’t anywhere close to Google’s traffic numbers (nearly 3.5 billion searches per day!).
When you build authority SEO content on your website, you build your Google authority simultaneously. That’s because Google will crawl your blogs and rank them, giving them a position in the search engine results. Since Google grabs so much traffic, that could be beyond powerful for growing your web presence.
BUT –
To build authority, your content has to be amazing, strategic, researched, and well-crafted. Your content platform (your website) must be user-friendly and well-designed.
You have to do it all (or, if you’re a smart delegator, make sure it all gets done).
Don’t worry, though – where there’s a way, there’s a will. And there IS a way. Follow me!
[bctt tweet=”To build authority, your content has to be amazing, strategic, researched, and well-crafted. Your content platform, your site, must be user-friendly and well-designed. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
How to Write and Publish Authoritative, GOOD Content: 6 Strategic Steps
It’s time to dive into authority-building content creation. Get ready for greatness!
1. Make Sure Your Website is Right
A useful, user-friendly website needs to be the bottom layer of your online presence cake. Without this crucial piece in place, you won’t see any real results from your content.
A strong website is what makes your content eligible to rank in the first place. Our site at Express Writers gets nearly 4,000 organic visitors daily from our blog and content rankings (we currently rank for over 16,000 keywords). Those numbers wouldn’t be possible without a strong website serving as the foundation.
What does a strong website look like? Using our site as an example, the top 5 elements are illustrated below.
Strong sites are built on trusted platforms, like WordPress, which is one of the most robust SEO out there.
They load quickly – under 2 seconds is ideal. According to Google, as page load time increases from one second to 10 seconds, a site visitor is 123% more likely to bounce.
The page copy is simple, clear, and easy to read. CTAs are also clear, strategically placed, and stand out.
Sites should have cohesive branding and design that don’t mess with site speed and page load times (no heavy images or videos!).
Communication apps, pop-ups, and chatbots are minimized so they don’t annoy your visitors.
2. Map Your Blog Topic to Your Goals
Before you even start writing or outlining, your goals should mark your content trajectory.
[bctt tweet=”Before you even start writing or outlining, your goals should mark your content trajectory. @JuliaEMcCoy #blogging” username=”ExpWriters”]
How will your blog help you advance to your goals? Will it increase your brand awareness? Build trust and loyalty with readers? Capture leads and grow your following?
Whatever you hope to achieve, make sure each blog you put out aligns with either an overarching goal or a smaller goal that paves the way to bigger successes.
Answering the following questions can help further nail down your goals for each blog you write:
Who are you writing this blog to? What questions can you answer for them on this topic?
What format will this content take? Is it suited for a long-form, in-depth blog post, or does it lend itself better to a visually stunning infographic? Remember, blogs aren’t your only option for content creation.
When will you publish the blog? Can you strategically tie it to a season or holiday?
Where will you publish? To build authority, you should focus on publishing most blogs to your website. However, posting to guest blogs from time to time can give your brand more exposure.
3. Do Strategic Research
After mapping your blog content to goals, the next step is to dive into strategic research.
First up, that means keyword research.
Don’t start with any random industry keyword, though – begin with your audience’s pain points and research keywords that hit on their problems. You want to find keywords that tie to the questions they’re asking in Google so you can position your content as a solution they’ll find in search results.
Using a tool like SEMrush during keyword research is immensely helpful. It will give you vital data about your keyword including keyword difficulty (KD) and related keywords you can use in your blog.
Some tips:
For the KD metric, you want to make sure you’re avoiding a number that’s too competitive. Keywords rated at 50 and above are generally super-hard to rank for unless you already have mountains of domain authority built up.
When we initially went after the “blogging statistics” keyword, the KD was right around 30-40, or still “possible” to rank for. Now, the KD has shot up to around 65!
With that in mind, don’t do keyword research once and call it done. Metrics like KD and search volume are constantly changing. Do continual, ongoing research and keep yourself up-to-date.
Next, after you find the right keyword, it’s time to do some competitive analysis. This just means typing your potential keyword into Google and studying the top search results.
For example, at EW, we wanted to rank for the keyword “blogging statistics”. When we looked at the competition in Google, we saw some opportunities:
Every single blog was comprehensive, with word counts averaging 2,000. One blog even had 5,200 words. That meant our blog needed to be long-form and in-depth, too. Creating a blog that sat right around 2,500 words was a good idea.
None of the blogs were current, or were messily formatted. These represented chances to create something better.
[bctt tweet=”Don’t start with any random industry keyword when researching your #keywords – begin with your audience’s pain points and research keywords that hit on their problems. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
4. Invest in Blog Quality
To create a better blog than the competition, you need to invest in quality during the content creation phase.
[bctt tweet=”To create a better blog than the competition, you need to invest in quality during the content creation phase. @JuliaEMcCoy on #powerful #blogging” username=”ExpWriters”]
For our piece targeting the keyword “blogging statistics”, we particularly focused on a couple major keys to ensure we ended up with a killer blog, one that would outrank the top 5 position-holders on Google:
Well-written
Well-formatted
2,500 words, comprehensive
A minimum of 50 statistics, pulled from research, so marketing readers would have an incredible list to use to get buy-in from their bosses or clients
Custom images to break up the text, including shareable quote cards
The quote cards gathered together into a free, downloadable PowerPoint presentation so we could build our list from the traffic coming in from a desirable Google search position
Once we planned on these must-haves for quality, all that was left to do was invest in the creation itself:
Enlisting the help of one of my writers at Express Writers
Having my designer do the quote cards
Getting the piece proofread by my editors
Doing my own read-throughs and edits
All told, the timeline for a high-quality blog like this is approximately 2 weeks from start to finish.
Why is blog quality such a big deal?
Besides the fact that you’re trying to outrank the competition, quality is one of the major ways Google evaluates your website. It’s not just about great design – it’s about depth and breadth of content.
As Eric Enge said recently in an SEO trends roundup on Search Engine Journal,
“The sites that provided exceptional depth in quality content coverage literally soared in rankings throughout the year. Sites that were weaker in their content depth suffered in comparison.”
5. Leverage Authority Content in Multiple Ways
When you finish up a high-quality, high-authority, investment-worthy blog, you will probably have a lot of different “items” that go with the text itself.
For example, for our “blogging statistics” piece, we ended up with:
The 2,500-word blog
Supporting images to break up the text and share on social media
The free downloadable (all the quote cards gathered together in a PowerPoint)
The landing page we created for it to capture leads
Each of these items is valuable on their own AND when put together in the finished blog. Once the initial creation is over, we can repurpose these pieces to maximize our ROI.
That said, don’t be fooled. It takes TONS of work to produce a blog that’s accurately researched, expertly written, and designed with extras. For busy marketers and entrepreneurs, delegating tasks is essential to getting it all done in a timely manner. (To do it all alone, you would need about 8 sets of hands. Nobody is an octopus, we’re human and we all need help. ?)
To reiterate, here are all the steps broken down for your review. This is truly what it takes to create a high-ranking SEO blog in 2019:
Know your SEO content goals.
Publish on your site consistently. Make sure your site is awesome.
Research your audience’s pain points.
Look for low-competition keywords to target.
Study the competition in Google to see what you need to do better to edge into the rankings.
Invest in blog quality – think long-form and comprehensive.
Add different formats to your blog to make it go the extra mile.
Set a strategic time to publish the blog.
Delegate blog creation or write it up yourself.
Round up the finished pieces and schedule to publish inside your WordPress site.
Want to Build Your Blogging Authority? Put in the Work!
Yes, to really and truly build your online authority, you need to put in the planning, strategizing, research, and work to get it done.
Here’s the thing: It’s all worth it in the end.
Once you have those authority-building steps down, you can repeat them for every blog you create. They will become your second nature, and it will get easier to get that work done. You’ll learn as you go, getting better and better at putting out incredible, ROI-building, authoritative blogs.
Pretty soon, the expert will be you! We now do slide presentation and design at Express Writers. See our rates!
In today’s video, I’m covering a popular how-to topic in the world of online content.
Specifically: what is content writing, and how to write the seven types of timeless online content that apply directly to the online growth of a business.
Let’s get into it!
Video Notes: What is Content Writing? How to Write 7 Timeless Types of Online Content (Video)
These still apply today, and in the next few minutes, I’m going to explain what these content types are and how they apply specifically to an online business presence today, as well as writers looking to grow their experience and offerings by learning these content formats.
1. Web content
Think of content writing like building a house. In this analogy, web content is the foundation. Web content, which includes the content on your home page, landing page, about us page, contact page, and more is the foundational content that every company needs to build an online presence. Without this, readers can’t find the information they’re seeking about your company, and the rest of your content strategy has nothing to build on. These pages are critical to develop.
The skills a writer needs to write solid web page copy are SEO writing knowledge, to use those important keywords well in the copy, as well as engaging and conversion-friendly writing skills. Good web page copy should be about the customer, never just about the brand or product.
2. Blogs
If web content is the foundation, blogging is the structure and rooms of the house.
Blogging is a primary category of content that provides context for an audience, helps build SEO presence, and gives businesses a way to nurture their leads with a source of fresh, consistent content.
Did you know… Companies that blog 11 or more times per month gain more than 4X as many leads than those that blog only four-five times a month (Source: Hubspot)
Not only do blogs showcase your brand personality, but it also helps readers get a sense of who you are, what you care about, which topics to cover, and how much value you can provide for them, or not.
Blogging is an essential type of online content writing, and when it’s done correctly, it can dramatically increase your views, your return on investment, and your overall success. There is no one-size-fits-all format for a blog. Instead, there are multiple styles of blogs including list blogs, “how to” blogs, “what to avoid” blogs, and more. By mixing and matching your blog goals and formats, you can build brand awareness as well as achieve SEO ranking goals. Read more about content goals here.
3. Social Media
Think of social media as a supporting content player: it’s not enough for a company to only have a social media presence, but companies without any social media presence whatsoever typically do not make it very far in today’s social dominated culture.
A lot of people finding brands online for the first time are going to go click on their Twitter icon, their Facebook page, to see what that company is ‘really’ like on social media. And that can really play into their purchasing decisions.
My Twitter presence, my personal brand profile at @JuliaEMcCoy, brings in leads that have bought my courses and books.
Need to learn real #SEO writing skills? My short one-week course, The Expert SEO Content Writer, might be perfect for you. Learn more & see what 100+ students are saying: https://t.co/6bDtiKHurz
— Julia McCoy | CEO, Author, #WomeninBusiness (@JuliaEMcCoy) February 22, 2019
Our brand’s Twitter profile at @ExpWriters has brought in agency leads.
Social media works! A good social media writer will blend fun, engaging copy, emojis, and short sentences to promote a brand’s blog posts, events, or message.
Some social media managers can even be paid to write captions. There is software that exists to discover trending hashtags.
The world of content in social media alone is so much! Finding the right platform and staying on a consistent schedule with copy and visuals is key.
4. Advertising & Sales Copy
Ad and sales copy bring the curb appeal to your products and services. This kind of copy is created to showcase the unique attributes of your brand “home” to people on the outside. Advertising and sales copy applies to companies in all industries, and takes many forms, from a long-form Facebook ad to a promoted tweet on Twitter or a paid campaign on LinkedIn.
One of my sales pages that has brought in thousands of dollars in sales is this one. However, when it comes to sales copy, remember that building an audience and trust comes first. Today’s advertising and sales copy that brings in real revenue is also written in less of a ‘pushy’ sales tone. Instead, it should read like an approachable message for a friend. Good ads are segmented to the right audience at the right time; they are not manipulative, and they’re not misleading.
A writer learning to write good sales copy should study the best. Joanna Wiebe and Copyhackers.com is a great resource for learning more about sales copywriting.
5. Expert Copy
Think of expert copy like the fine art collection inside the home. At some point or another, all companies need expert writing. This is the higher level writing you encounter on the web. Specific industries, for example, may need a high-level ghostwriter that knows the nuances of their niche. Authorities in marketing need a writer that can ghostwrite for them, in their voice, for their blog. Without expert writing, companies place their authority and relevance at risk, and may even be walking out onto thin ice with Google, which now looks for expert quality in content as a ranking standard.
Writers looking to get hired as expert writers can absolutely charge higher rates than a generalist, and should have a specific industry they can speak with knowledge in–example, a former attorney writing legal blogs, or a former chiropractor writing holistic blogs about chiropractor care.
6. Journalism & PR Writing
Critical for any company that wants to get the word out about newsworthy events, brand new products, or company changes, journalism and PR writing serves the essential purpose of sharing company news.
Think about building a new house: if you never invited anybody over, nobody would be able to see the hard work you put into the home. Your artwork, furnishings, paint job, construction would go unnoticed by everybody but you. This is where journalism and PR writing comes in. Through press releases, for example, companies of all sizes and shapes can “invite people in.”
Some say that press releases are dead. They are, if you’re using them for SEO. Just trying to get a PR to rank for a keyword doesn’t work anymore. If you’re trying to spread the news of something newsworthy, they do work, and so they really aren’t dead or dying. See the description for a link to a press release we published just last year that did really well.
7. Creative Writing
Creative writing is a genre that encompasses the super creative projects companies do, and it serves to enhance and support virtually every other type of content on this list. Marketing copy, for example, can be creative. Social media, blogs, web content, and even advertisements can be creative, as well. There’s no limit here. From a tweet to a blog, creative writing can be woven in anywhere.
Creative writing is blending the best of a writers’ talents such as writing stories, humorous and appropriate jokes, puns, etc. and using that in one of the other formats. For example, here’s a creative pun our social media copywriter, Krystal, wrote for our social media content. This is creative content, but it was used for social media.
In my agency, at Express Writers, we’ve seen a growing need for creativity among all the projects we take on. While clear and customer-focused copy beats trying to be too clever without a purpose, there is a real demand for writers that can tastefully create colorful, creative content.
Early this February, I wrote a blog telling the story of my LinkedIn post that went viral.
The short, organic post that went viral was a rant about cold sales pitches. Too many people were connecting with me on LinkedIn only to flood my inbox with these money-grubbing pitches. Fed up, I posted a rant that ended up garnering over 1,000 likes, 287 comments, and over 85,000 views.
Naturally, that visibility made a lot of haters crawl out of the woodwork, but the post was also flooded with positive comments and genuine questions.
One question, in particular, caught my eye. It went something like, “So, you don’t pitch EVER, or sell EVER?”
My answer? No, not really.
And this question made me think deeper about it all.
Our focus at Express Writers truly is on serving our customers first.
That rings true from our blogs and content, down to our sales team (which are not actually made up of salespeople, but content specialists and managers who focus on helping, instead of selling).
Even our live on-site conversations with ‘hot leads’ are focused on helping and serving, rather than selling.
This value-first, serve-first mentality goes hand-in-hand with content marketing. Content marketing is value-focused marketing. A content-focused marketing approach is our #1 way of driving qualified traffic to our site, earning leads, and making sales. I have leaned into content marketing because I love it, and because it WORKS — we have seen amazing things happen because of our audience-first content focus in marketing.
This content marketing mindset has trickled down into almost every aspect of what we do at Express Writers — and that’s what I wanted to write about today on the blog. How a serve-first mindset really, truly can equal brand growth.
Delighting your customers AND growing your bottom line? It’s possible. Read on.
[bctt tweet=”Our focus is on serving our customers first. That rings true from our blogs and content, down to our sales team. More on #valuefirstmarketing via @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
The Growth of a Value-First, Serve-First Content Marketing Approach: Your Consumer Wants You To Care About Them
Content marketing as a whole has been growing rapidly.
A Technavio market research analyst forecasted the content marketing market to grow globally at a CAGR of more than 16% from 2017-2021, according to their latest report. By 2021, content marketing is set to be worth over $412 billion!
According to Ujjwal Doshi, a lead analyst at Technavio for media and entertainment services research, content marketing’s effectiveness is because of the lack of effectiveness in traditional marketing. What do you know — today’s consumer is savvy, and can’t be fooled into buying something!
“The effectiveness of traditional marketing is decreasing by the day. Companies must adopt the latest marketing trends to enhance their business and increase their consumer base. Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach that is focused on creating and sharing valuable, consistent, and relevant content to attract and retain the audience.”
Source: technavio.com
As a whole, content marketing is first and foremost about the customer, NOT about the brand. And this is why it’s growing at such an incredible rate and being adopted by upwards of 90% of B2Bs. According to Content Marketing Institute’s definition, the whole point of content marketing is actually to “attract and retain a clearly defined audience.”
They go on to say:
“Instead of pitching your products or services, you are providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.”
This is a big shift from traditional marketing and advertising, where it’s all about the brand pushing their message out to consumers. Instead, with content marketing, the consumer has the power to discover and connect with brands and content that suit their needs.
And that’s what today’s smart consumer is looking for in a brand or marketer. Someone that cares about them.
[bctt tweet=”Content marketing is first and foremost about the customer, NOT about the brand. And that’s what today’s smart consumer is looking for in a brand or marketer. Someone that cares about them. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
Unsurprisingly, the rise of content marketing has happened alongside changing buyer preferences. Shoppers don’t like pushy sales pitches, ads, or impersonal marketing according to studies by Accenture, BigCommerce, and SnapApp & Heinz Marketing. The latter study even found that most B2B Millennial buyers are sales avoiders, and will avoid talking to sales until at least the middle of their buying journeys.
Modern buyers have the internet and social media at their beck and call to help them find information and make purchase decisions, so their buying journeys are more independent, self-directed, and unpredictable than ever.
This quote from the BigCommerce study showcases how buyer expectations have changed:
“Millennials have grown accustomed to speed, convenience, and a personalized online shopping experience. However, Gen Z has never known shopping without these. They’re more brand agnostic and very wary of brand promises.” – Erik Christiansen
In other words, trust and loyalty are harder to win than ever, but today they matter more than ever.
Consumers today are more discerning, smarter, savvier, and more resourceful. They have the internet to help them make informed purchases. They can smell a sneaky sales pitch from miles away, and they know when brands are being inauthentic.
That’s why we need to serve our customers value before we do anything else. We need to focus on building trust and loyalty rather than selling. It’s what they want!
How do we do it? With a content marketing strategy built on the right framework.
Lifecycle Marketing: A Framework for Targeted Content Marketing
Luckily, the concept of lifecycle marketing fits in perfectly with a content marketing mindset.
When you think of the buyer’s journey in terms of a lifecycle versus a sales funnel, you can more accurately predict what they need/want at each stage, including after you’ve won their loyalty.
A traditional sales funnel doesn’t show that part of the journey, let alone what you’re supposed to do to keep delighting loyal customers. The only way to go is down and out, and once customers purchase (and thus leave the funnel), they’re often forgotten.
In contrast, tracking leads and customers in a marketing lifecycle also helps you track their journey to loyalty and beyond. The goal is to nurture leads and encourage them to keep trusting you — not just get their money. And, of course, you build loyalty and trust with value and service, which content marketing is all about.
For proof of how well a value-first, serve-first mentality works, we’re going to look at 5 brands that champion it — and probably owe their success to it. Let’s go.
5 Examples of Value-Driven, Service-Oriented Brands Getting It Done
1. The Honest Company
The Honest Company, Jessica Alba’s eco-friendly company, is a great example of a value-first, serve-first brand. It all starts with their products, which are universally loved for their quality, gentleness, and natural/sustainable ingredients.
Their content on the Honestly Blog is also value-forward, offering useful and helpful guidance for moms, parents, and women of all ages.
Their activity in the comments on their Facebook posts also attests to their dedication to their customers (and their customers’ trust in their brand):
2. Trader Joe’s
Another brand putting customers and value first: Trader Joe’s.
The message featured in the tweet below appeared in one of their Fearless Flyers (a mailed newsletter that describes all the new and fun seasonal products coming to your local TJ’s in mouth-watering detail – A.K.A. content marketing!).
It not only plainly states “We love our customers” – it also shows how Trader Joe’s listens to their feedback seriously.
Kudos to Trader Joe’s! Reponding to customer concerns about plastic packaging, they are replacing plastic packaging in their produce department with #biodegradeable alternatives, eliminating one million pounds of plastic from their stores annually. #PlasticFree#BeTheChangepic.twitter.com/RiEKmDEKsH
Known and beloved by bookworms all over the world for their vast selection and free delivery on ANY order, Book Depository is another brand prioritizing the customer.
For starters, their homepage is like browsing a well-organized bookstore, which is nice if you don’t know exactly what you want:
Plus, in every order, they slip in a free, custom-designed bookmark. Since most readers I know always need something to hold their place, this is a nice little perk.
On their Twitter account, Book Depository keeps the bookishness going with regular fun polls, discounts, literary quotes, and lots and LOTS of giveaways.
Bookshelves are any book-lover’s pride and joy, but what is the best way to organise your collection? Vote below! ?? pic.twitter.com/IDKl3gPP0i
?? Taiwan, we’ll be at the amazing Taipei Book Fair all this week! Don’t forget to come say hi! To mark this we’re offering 10% off with code TW10 > https://t.co/bG8xYlyGucpic.twitter.com/Z3P7UYbz1J
As a result, Book Depository as a brand feels very personal and approachable – much like the clerks at your favorite bookstore. That’s because, from free shipping to free bookmarks, book lists, recommendations, and bookish conversations, the emphasis is always on the book-loving customer.
4. Magnolia
Another brand with a serve-first, value-first approach embedded into its name is Magnolia, the umbrella name for Chip and Joanna Gaines’ sprawling empire.
If you’ve never heard of Magnolia, maybe Fixer Upper might ring a bell. The hit show appeared for 5 seasons on HGTV. During that time, the Gaines family established Magnolia as a brand with a heart, values, and a customer-first approach while showcasing timeless design.
After the show ended, the Magnolia engine didn’t stop. It has since expanded to include a quarterly magazine, a line of home goods for Target, and collections of furniture, rugs, wallpaper, paint, and more sold online and in various home stores across the U.S.
You’ll find evidence of Magnolia’s value-driven approach in their Manifesto. Lines from this mission statement grace their websites as well as their magazine:
The focus on customers is also really obvious. In the Magnolia Home brand guidelines for retailers, there’s even a section about how to serve them:
“Show kindness and exceed their expectations”. “Go the extra mile”. “Show respect for the customer’s time”. “Make a positive impact”.
All of Magnolia’s content reflects value (and strong values), from their blog to the Magnolia Journal, to Joanna Gaines’s various books.
On Magnolia’s Facebook page, you’ll find much of the same. If you scroll through any of the post comments, you’ll find devoted fans and followers expressing their admiration, or even spontaneously sharing the recipes they made from Joanna’s cookbook:
When customers express their love like this, you know the brand is doing something right.
5. Express Writers
Last of all, we’re throwing our company into the hat because we strongly believe in putting value first. We lean into the content marketing mindset and focus on serving value before selling.
A great example of that in action comes from our team leader, Korilynn. Even during sales-oriented Drift chats, she cares about having real conversations with our leads.
In 2016, I ditched the commissioned sales model altogether because I found it brought in salespeople to our team who were wallet-first, not customer-first. In contrast, when we focus on serving the customer, everyone benefits.
That’s also why we work so hard to create the best content we can. It’s a major part of serving our audience and providing value.
As a whole, it’s about building relationships, retaining customers, and growing their lifetime value. Happy, delighted, loyal customers are worth it – they give back as much as you put in!
A Value-First, Serve-First Mentality is the Way to Grow Your Brand in 2019 and Beyond
Today, customers are actively looking for brands they can trust.
Trust is a big deal because the internet is full of shady deals, slimy salespeople, false information, fake news, and scams.
When you’re a beacon of trust in that dark forest, people will flock to you. Online buyers want to invest their money in smart purchases. They want to use their resources to find brands that give them the best experience of value and service.
Value first. Serve first. Start here, and your brand foundation will be stronger for it.
