Content Marketing Archives

How Just Creating Content Could Damage Your Online Marketing

December 31, 2020April 17, 2015 by Adam Oakley

In a world where the answer to every unanswerable question is “Google it,” it is easy to see why marketing people really want to be friends with the almighty search engine. In other terms, Google is the stereotypical popular girl in every high school or frat movie, and companies are the minions hanging on to her every word. If Google says SEO matters, then Company A is going to use SEO as much as possible hoping against hope that Google looks over and finally notices them. The Story Says: Lose All Your Followers Trying For A Quick Success, Or Gain Steady & Sure Results And for a while, Google just might. However, if you ever watch all the way to the end of one of those movies, you know there are only two possible endings. The first is that the popular girl turns out to be the bad guy and nobody should have been trying to impress her in the first place. The second is that the popular girl turns out to be a regular girl who doesn’t just want a lot of yes men. She wants a real friend who truly cares about her. In today’s writing market, we are at the part of the movie where we see Google is really looking for quality friendships (i.e., good writing), not just someone spewing out whatever it is they think Google wants to hear (i.e., bad marketing). (See, Google, I made you the protagonist, not the villain—your turn to rank me higher.) Why Getting Ranked Is NOT the Same as Making a Sale When you want to get ranked highly for a term such as dentists in Detroit, you don’t want to sound like you are trying to get ranked for the term dentists in Detroit. Because if you oversell the fact that you are advertising dentists in Detroit, people might find you when they search dentists in Detroit, but they will think you are the dumbest of all the dentists in Detroit – and who wants a dumb dentist, in Detroit or elsewhere? When you care more about getting in your keywords and less about writing quality copy people care about, you get writing as seen in the above paragraph, which was probably as annoying to read as it was to write. Nobody is going to trust you or use you if that is how you sound. Good writing trumps bad marketing. There is an old sales trick that even people who have never worked a day in sales might know: when you are trying to sell someone something, repeat their name a lot so that you remember it because no one wants to buy something from someone who can’t be bothered to learn who they are. Really good salespeople can weave a name in and out of conversation, and you don’t even realize what is happening. You think, ‘Wow! This guy/gal is great. They get me.’ And before you know it, you’ve got way more wrapping paper or Girl Scout cookies (or whatever else they happen to be pedaling) than you could ever need or want. Then you’ve got those salespeople who learned this lesson on the first day of class and ran with it. That’s when you get conversations like this: “Hi, Ethel. It’s nice to meet you, Ethel. How are you doing today, Ethel?” “Oh. Um. I’m, great. Thanks. And you?” “That’s great, Ethel. I’m great, too, Ethel. We should get lunch and talk business, Ethel.” It’s these salespeople that, while certainly never forgotten, make you more likely to believe they are a serial killer or otherwise mentally deranged than make you want to buy their product. Writing content for content’s sake is analogous to being the crazy, serial killer-type salesperson. Yes, you might get noticed, but who really cares if you scare away all your potential victims, err, I mean clients? Getting noticed is not the same thing as making a sale. If you really want to sell your content, you have to be like that salesperson who knows how to artfully weave in a customer’s name – or keyword as the case may be – into a conversation in a natural and pleasing manner. You have to take the time to get to know the person (or people) you are selling to and talk to them as if they are actually human beings, because they are, instead of just shouting out a lot of marketing tactics you’ve heard might somehow work and hoping someone hears them. In other words, you have to connect with your audience or you’ll end up sounding like a lunatic. The Quandary of Quantity Vs. Quality Content If you have ever looked at an advertisement for a writing position, you tend to notice that terms such as ‘SEO experience’ and ‘quick turnaround’ often find themselves placed higher than the less important qualifications such as ‘good writing.’ Companies that are looking for anybody who happens to have a working computer and is willing to write for practically nothing are relying on the infinite monkey theorem. You’ve probably heard of it. Apparently, if you give a monkey a typewriter and let him hit keys at random for long enough, he’ll eventually type a Shakespearean piece. However, instead of hiring a hundred monkeys and hoping they’ll eventually get you something great, there is a better solution. Just hire Shakespeare (well, a good writer. I don’t think you’ll be able to get a hold of Shakespeare.) Putting the time and effort into getting a real writer capable of great writing in lesser quantities, is going to pay off a lot more than hiring a bunch of sub-par, pseudo-writers who only offer a lot of content fast. After all, we are still reading Shakespeare today, but I’ve yet to hear of a real monkey who has successfully proven the infinite monkey theorem. Three Steps to Avoid Creating a Blogs ‘R Us What you have hopefully gotten from everything I have said is that you … Read more

The Great Content Roundup: Week 9, How Much Is Too Much Promotion?

June 19, 2024April 15, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Welcome to my Great Content Roundup, folks! Today, I’m looking at a big question that applies to businesses of all sizes. When do you start promoting yourself (your content, your business) too much? The only exception I could think of is local ice-cream shops – I probably wouldn’t ever get tired of seeing their posts, but maybe that’s just me. Recently, I’ve encountered some businesses that over-promoted the “heck outta themselves,” excuse the grammar. I’m talking every HOUR on Twitter they were tweeting about their app. Every other day the rep was messaging me, either on LinkedIn or on my personal email. Granted, the company had a nice Twitter community going and what looked like some actual real interested followers who were devoted fans—but as a prospective client of theirs, I was turned completely off and decided to tell them to “stop spamming me” a few days ago. Now this experience was so fresh and real in my mind, as I read content this week I couldn’t help but place it next to what I was reading about. So, let’s delve into: The Great Content Roundup, Week 9: How Much Is Too Much Promotion? Social Triggers has a great rule on how to build a blog audience: the 80/20 rule. Spend 80% of your time promoting OTHERS’ content; and 20% of the time promoting your own. This is exactly what we do at Express Writers (view our Twitter as proof); and we connect with new followers and great industry friends all the time. 80/20, folks. Those that flip this for 80% self-promotion will soon be labeled a spammer. Neil Patel mentions somewhere in his very useful post How To Inspire Your First Time Blog Visitors To Trust You that you absolutely have the right to share your own content on your profiles. I agree. Um, hello: you own the profile—and you should use it for your advantage! But, he also says this: Blogging is not a one-way street. It’s an exchange between you and your readers. I think this applies to all content you publish. He says you should listen more, and answer questions. (Brian Dean at Backlinko is a very successful example. He emails his new signups with this question: “Reply to this email and tell me one thing you’re struggling with. Even if it’s teeny tiny.”) Patel’s post here is golden. Buffer’s Guide on Content Promotion: How Content Promotion Works for Blogs Big and Small: Our 11 Favorite Content Distribution Strategies. This is an amazing piece, I highly recommend reading it through. The part where the author follows up and emails the person he mentions in his blog for a kudos, thank-you, and new loyal fan—GENIUS! Might I say. And I’m always saying you should mention your influencers. Also, #6 – the top content community is Inbound – I’m on Inbound and can attest to it as a wonderful community gaining us new fans, followers, and engagement overall. The only downside to all this is time. It’s going to take a LOT of time for one person or one marketer to follow all the steps. I recommend involving a team in this process.

What’s The Real Difference Between Marketing and Branding Content?

December 31, 2020April 9, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Marketing and branding are two of the major buzzwords that we use in the industry. The confusing part is that non-industry professionals often mix up branding and marketing and use the terms interchangeably. There is a distinct difference between marketing and branding that can be easily explained. Before we jump into the differences we need to understand what each term means on its own. Both of them are powerful means of spreading information, but both have their own specific uses. Let’s clear up some misconceptions about the terms before we delve any further into their inherent differences. What is Branding? Branding is the process by which you reduce a company’s reputation to a single word. A brand is an easily recognizable representation of the particular company. Something that resonates with the user so that at a glance they know what they’re dealing with. Branding gives personality to a company and attaches an attribute to the company that appeals to the demographic of its core audience. Thus, companies such as Toyota are known for their reliability or Volvo is known for their safety records. Each of these brands have built their brands into easily recognizable traits that allow them to appeal to their customers in a unique way. It makes their business into more than just another faceless entity. What is Marketing? Marketing is a blanket statement that covers all forms of interaction with the customer as well as utilizing models in order to develop targeted advertising to reach out to a specific type of consumer. Marketing incorporates all forms of advertisement. In addition to this, marketing also deals with understanding the consumer or the audience and developing ways to utilize this deeper understanding. Where do Branding and Marketing Meet? Because these two disciplines are concerned with getting information out to the customer, they must meet at some level. Marketing and branding are both different facets of the overall content development strategy for a company. Your marketing should incorporate branding into it in order for you to cultivate customer loyalty. Branding allows you to represent your company in a certain light and build off the information that is gained by marketing. On the other side of the coin, marketing allows you to build a rapport with your audience and introduce them to your branded theme. These concepts go hand in hand, but they are not interchangeable. What is the Major Difference between Marketing and Branding Then? In a word, marketing is tactical whereas branding is strategic. I know what you’re thinking. “Isn’t tactical and strategic the same thing?” No, they aren’t, as Kissmetrics points out. Marketing is where the brand is presented and it contributes to overall branding. However, long after the marketing campaign has been exhausted the brand loyalty will remain. This is where branding and marketing part ways. When we say that marketing is tactical, we mean that it deals with getting its payload of information delivered. It doesn’t try to shape the user’s long-term feelings towards the product, it simply gets in and convinces the customer of the benefits. Branding, on the other hand, seeks to embrace a more long-term view of the customer. By strategic leverage of the brand, we can eventually call upon the customer’s loyalty to the brand in order to close a sale. But this is something that requires you to give back to the customer. You need to cultivate your brand image in such a way that the customer associates an idea with your brand. How Marketing Works Alongside Branding To Build Business Do you remember those old TV shows where there would be a sleeper agent that needs a secret code to “activate” them? Marketing is a little like that. It discovers and “activates” buyers, encouraging them to close sales. Branding goes one step further by making those buyers into loyal customers. One of the most common examples of this is the market for Apple products. Apple has made an art out of branding and this has carried over into products in many different branches of the electronics industry. Taking a look at the Apple target demographic, we see that their aim was to produce a product that was sold solely for its importance as a status symbol. Thus, their marketing spread the message that apple products are available, but the branded apple product was joined by its numerous sister products that fall under the brand. When the consumer sees Apple now, then it’s understood that they are paying for Apple’s reputation as something that the cool, the chic and the hip use. Building brand loyalty is what branding does and by making loyal customers out of your one-time buyers, you develop a ready market and audience that are willing and eager to receive your content. Which One is a Better Investment? Both marketing and branding are good investments and have their own type of returns. Marketing can easily be done wrong and if so, it can become a money sink into which a lot of cash if poured but the returns are mediocre. Well-researched marketing gives great returns on investment but the success of the campaign depends as much on the amount of effort put into it as the amount of money. The returns are, of course, seen in conversions and sales. Branding, because of its status as a long-term investment, is usually easier to adjust as time goes by. Catastrophic failures in branding do occur, but these are usually due to bad planning as opposed a lack of funding. The return you get from branding is customer loyalty, something that can be leveraged over and over again. Marketing is necessary to make branding work, but your real benefit comes from having a loyal customer base to call on when releasing new products. Development of a User Base Not so far back, probably less than five years ago, a large volume of the marketing community was involved in “renting” their target demographic. They worked from the start of their campaign … Read more

17 Content Curation Tools to Boost Your Blog Traffic in 2017

June 19, 2024April 3, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Be honest. Don’t you wish creating fresh, hot new content every week was easier than it is? I know I do. No matter how many cool copywriting tricks you’ve got up your sleeve, when deadlines start breathing down your neck, no one is 100% immune from the dreaded blank page blues. Looking for a way ease the pressure of having to constantly produce stellar content, in early 2012 a bunch of smart Internet folks came up with the idea of content curation. The basic idea of content curation is that, no matter who your audience is, there is already so much good, relevant content being produced daily. These days, content curation is common practice now, and forms part of any professional content marketing plan. The problem is, there is most definitely a right way and a wrong way to do content creation. The wrong way can end up making you look like a spambot, scraping random junk from the Internet and slapping it up for your audience. Not only is this a no-no according to Google, but you’ll trash the hard-earned trust you’ve built up with your readers. So what should you do instead? Glad you asked… How to Do Content Creation the Right Way In the grand scheme of marketing, content curation is vital to any content campaign because it can help you get incredible content pieces to share with your audience, as well as helping you figure out new topic ideas. Remember, when you curate content, you are only looking for content to gain inspiration from, not to copy. Use content curation as a way to inspire yourself and enhance your own individual content strategy for your clients. Content Creation vs Curation: The Ideal Mix A few years ago, the accepted wisdom was that the ideal ratio between created and curated content was 80/20, that is, 80% created content, and 20% curated content. According to more up-to-date research, and depending on the industry, a mix of 65/35 (with original, created content still forming the larger proportion) seems to be a more acceptable ratio in 2017. Convince&Convert even go further to show what it looks like to be a “curator,” “balanced” on social media, or the danger line of a “self-promoter,” very useful information for the content curator: Keep in mind that, within this balance, your curation should be focused more on your social platforms than on your own blog, which is where only your original content should be featured. Your blog is your online real estate – why put someone else’s content there? To produce that ideal mix, though, you’ll need some smart tools to help you. The Top 17 Content Curation Tools for Smart Marketers Here are some of the top content curation tools you can use to help boost your content starting today. 1. Trap.It Trap.it pulls in relevant third-party content from all over the web, including industry research, insights and trends, which can be organized into topic-specific libraries for instant reference. Trap.It is also an “intelligent” curation tool, which means the more content you curate the smarter it gets, so you’re never lost for inspiration. Best of all, you can distribute the curated content you’ve “trapped” across all social platforms to engage your audience without spending hours on the web. 2. Feedly Feedly helps you to curate blog content that can be used as resources for future posts or give you great ideas for upcoming content. Feedly is also great for following authorities and influencers in your industry, so you can stay on top of the hottest conversations and create content based on the latest trending topics. It doesn’t pull images, but the lack of visuals doesn’t diminish the importance of this tool. 3. Pinterest Like Feedly, Pinterest is great for keeping up with celebrities, pop culture icons and leaders in your industry. Depending on your niche, Pinterest is also fantastic for collecting useful “hacks”, tricks and tips you can build your content around. Save these ideas to boards on your account, and work with them to curate excellent content for you and your clients. 4. Quora Quora is fast becoming the go-to platform for finding out what people want to know. You get expert, authoritative opinions and answers to questions ranging from what it feels like to be a CEO to how to apply to the best colleges, and almost everything in between. Quora is a gold mine for insightful perspectives on hot topics you can use as the basis for a wide range of content. Just set up an account, and then search your keywords to find excellent content to store away for future use. You can also set up your account to be notified about articles relevant to your field, so you can get more articles and interesting ideas in your inbox. 5. Scoop.it Used by more than 2.5 million marketers, Scoop.it just might be a content marketer’s dream come true. This powerful curation platform allows you to search for content according to keyword, share curated content directly to your social channels, and embed everything you find on your page. What’s more, the platform also offers predictive insights and an accurate ROI measuring tool that helps you get the most from your curated content. At Express Writers, we love the CEO of Scoop.it, Guillaume Decugis! I’ve recorded a podcast on the Write Podcast with him talking how to fit curation into your content marketing strategy, and we even had him as a guest on our Twitter Chat #ContentWritingChat talking content curation principles. 6. BuzzSumo BuzzSumo is a smart marketer’s “pro tool” when it comes to content curation. BuzzSumo keeps you up to date with the latest trending topics in your industry by sending automated alerts every time new content in your industry is published. Use BuzzSumo to search for content by topic, and share it directly from a simple dashboard. I absolutely love the “Content Research” tab, to research and interact with the people sharing our content, and to hunt down hot topics. Ideal … Read more

Why We Aren’t Fooling You About Good Content! Happy April Fools’ Day!

August 25, 2022April 1, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Happy April Fools’ Day! Depending on how much your friends or family like to prank, we’ll be considerate and avoid all pranks away this morning with this blog (you’re most welcome). We’re here to talk about having great content—which isn’t a joke developed by copywriters and Google, it is actually incredibly important. We promise we aren’t fooling you, and you will be incredibly happy if you focus on having great content. However, you might be wondering just how you can get excellent content all the time, especially if you are a very busy business owner. I am going to look at different content tips as well as services to help you create or receive excellent content you will be proud to share with your clients. Let’s take a look! 11 Awesome Ideas and Services to Help You Improve Your Content There are several ways to improve your content and make it the best, and I am going to look at a few of these. Expert Landing Pages are a Must. When you create your website, you always want to make sure that you have expertly crafted landing pages and web content. Having great web pages means that you have a higher chance of converting visitors into leads, and building your customer base. This is something that you obviously want because more customers means more revenue, and those customers might just tell others about your company and so on. Having these great, crafted landing pages is vital, and you need to find people who can expertly create them for you if you have any trouble whatsoever. Blogs Are Vital to Any Online Presence. When you want good content, you need to have an ongoing blog for your business. Blogs currently run the content world, and these are what will help bring people into your business’s website and convince those people to search the rest of your site. You can use your blogs as new, individual landing pages, which gives customers several places to choose and learn more about your company and services. Blogs provide a unique opportunity to help your clients out while encouraging them to choose your company for their needs. If you want to get the most out of your blogs, hire our expertly trained blog writers who will know just what to do for your blog and business. Get a Content Audit for the Best Content. Content audits are oftentimes overlooked because they can be time consuming. However, a content audit is a great way to make sure your content is still quality and fits with any new Google algorithms. A content audit is something I regularly encourage people to get because it really does help you learn more about the behind-the-scenes aspect of your site, and lets you know what you should change. You can take a DIY approach to content auditing, but it does take quite a bit of time, so the most efficient step is to hire our trained content auditors. Trained content auditors can help find everything you need to know to improve your website, making it the best it can be. Content Curation is the Way of the Content Future. Are you looking for excellent resources to share with your clients or to generate blog topics and titles? Then you should be actively engaging in our (recently launched service), content curation. This is a perfect way to find high quality resources that will help you create consistently great content. In addition, content curation will help you stand out as a leader in your field, and if you curate top quality material, you are more likely to be trusted by your customers. Trust is a great way to bring in more customers and keep your existing ones. Optimization is Still Important. While I have discussed all the different methods you need to use when creating content, optimization isn’t over just yet. It is still vital to content because those keywords can help with the big picture. Optimization implements your chosen or needed keywords into your blogs and web pages to help them rank on the search engine results page. Your website, with its multiple landing pages gives you many opportunities for optimization, which will greatly benefit your business. Keyword Research Helps You Find the Right Keywords to Use. When you use the above optimization, you will need to make sure you’ve researched the best, most impactful keywords for your site to get the best results. You can do this on your own through Google Analytics to see which words are bringing in more clients. One of the best ways, however, is to have our SEO experts do keyword research for you in your industry to find the ones that will have low competition while also being able to drive a lot of traffic and engagement. Depending on your business, there are a variety of keyword types that can work for you. There are the basic keywords that incorporate your services, but another form of excellent keywords is the long tail or local keyword for local based companies. This will help you come up on local searches easily, helping people in your area find your business. Hiring Niche Copywriters Helps Significantly. When it comes to your business, it is one of a kind and might have a very specific audience. Because of this, you are considered a niche industry, and you need writers who can write specifically for it. This oftentimes holds niche companies back from developing blogs because the owners and workers don’t have the time to dedicate to writing blogs every week, but they don’t want just a generic copywriter. This is where a niche, industry copywriter comes in. You can find one that can write for your industry to help make the biggest impact and bring in more clicks and leads. Have an Epic Social Media Presence. One of the best ways to have great content is to make sure you have an epic social media presence. This can help you … Read more

How Curation Can Empower Your Content Creation

December 31, 2020March 24, 2015 by Adam Oakley

A constant content flow that has the power to keep you and your brand in the public eye is an invaluable asset. Nonetheless, the process of creating fresh, reader-oriented, 100% original content for different platforms demands a lot of time and money. Successful content and social media marketing require the highest level of commitment and consistency, whereas you, as a budget-conscious small business owner, have the responsibility to manage your resources wisely and limit your spending without making any quality compromises. This is where content curation comes into play, allowing you to increase your online visibility without breaking the bank. What Is Content Curation and How Could It Help Me Grow My Business? Content curation represents the act of identifying, collecting, organizing and displaying content that is relevant to a certain area of interest and a particular audience. According to an article published by Search Engine Journal, this concept refers to the process of discovering and using quality content pieces with a real substance, elaborated and published by high-authority sources. You may be wondering: how could this strategy benefit my business? Truth be told, there are several benefits associated with content curation. First of all, this technique enables you to save time, money and energy that you would otherwise have to invest in content creation. Secondly, the almost overwhelming abundance of premium content launched by reputable sources allows you to select the best pieces based on the interests and expectations of your audience, and also according to your own mission, vision and goals. Thirdly, content curation is a social act by definition; therefore, it could represent a viable and extremely effective method to establish new partnerships with prominent players operating in your industry, make new contacts and rely on the type of writing that can give you the chance to reach a larger segment of public. An example of curation is what we’ve been doing. The Great Content Roundup accrued over 200 shares in just a few days. Content Creation vs. Content Curation: Which Tactic Works Best for Your Business? An article published by Social Media Today reveals that content curation and content creation are two excellent methods that any company can use to fill its content pipeline. Both processes have their pros and cons and should be seen as the two halves of the same whole; not as two disparate strategies implemented to achieve a steady content flow. 4 Benefits of Content Curation Cost-Efficiency. When you have sharable, world-class content at your fingertips, you can choose to curate your favorite pieces instead of crafting new ones from scratch. Time-Efficiency. When you don’t have much time to create your own content, you can promote the most brilliant ideas introduced by reputable industry experts to give your readers the food for thought that they’re expecting to see on your blog/website/social media account. The Chance to Build and Maintain New Connections. By consuming other people’s web content, you encourage the development of new potentially fruitful partnerships that could support your boldest marketing goals in the future. The Opportunity to Help Your Readers Explore Various Perspectives on a Certain Topic. Content curation lets you introduce newsworthy facts from multiple perspectives, enabling your readers to form an educated opinion on a particular subject. On the other hand, content creation also has its fair share of benefits, including the following ones. 4 Benefits of Content Creation The Opportunity to Make Your Voice Heard Through Original Content. Your tone of voice, the originality of your ideas and the way in which you bond with your readers and encourage their feedback are the main elements that reflect your uniqueness. Through content creation you can celebrate your individuality and make sure that you’re not at risk of drowning in a sea of copycats. The Ability to Demonstrate Your Skills and Knowledge, While Consolidating Your Position on Your Niche. Unique, highly researched content helps you talk like an expert and be identified as one by your audience. The Chance to Craft, Publish and Promote Quality Content That Is Exclusively Yours. Words. By creating quality content you can boost your level of exposure. First of all, world-class writing encourages visitors to land on your page over and over again; secondly, the superior quality of your content pieces may stimulate other curators to showcase your masterpieces, implicitly spreading the word about your business. A Deeper Connection with More Loyal Readers. Last but not least, generally speaking a constant content flow based on original pieces could improve your relationship with your readers and boost their loyalty, who will see you as an inspired creator, as opposed to a mere curator with no voice of his own. [Tweet “Creation without #Curation is like Cake without Icing. #Content”] 5 Tips on How to Simplify and Optimize Your Content Curation Ritual Both curation and creation can support your everyday marketing goals, allowing you to support the growth of your small business. The key is to maintain a solid balance between the percentage of curated content and original content that you publish on your website. In our article published on SiteProNews, we have listed the main steps that one should take to guide a healthy content curation strategy in the right direction. Here are five tips that you should apply to curate content like a pro. Discover the Particularities of Your Audience (Including Its Area of Interest). What kind of subjects would make your readers tick? What type of content pieces should you actually curate to stay on the same page with your readers? Make Sure Content Creation Is Just a Piece of Your Content Marketing Puzzle. These days, in order to maintain your competitiveness in any industry, you have to be more than an enthusiastic curator. Perfect your content crafting skills and let the whole world hear your unique story. Add Value to Each Content Piece That You Curate. Make sure every single content piece that lands on your website/social media channel bares your creative imprint. Instead of copy pasting info coming from … Read more

5 Rules to Create an Awesome Ebook to Market Your Business

August 3, 2023March 16, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Want to create buzz around your brand, build trust with your audience, and add tons of fresh names to your email list – all at the same time? Create an ebook. This type of content is a winner for marketing your business. The trick, however, is to keep the content inside the ebook totally free of sales pitches and chock-full of value. It needs to reach must-read status for your audience to want to pull the trigger and trade their details in exchange for a download. Sounds good? If so, let’s get into why ebooks are so awesome for business marketing, plus five rules to follow when creating your ultimate lead magnet. Why Create an Ebook for Your Business Marketing? Ebooks are valuable for your marketing because they don’t look like marketing at all. If you do it right, your ebooks should provide nothing but relentless value in the form of expert, informative, useful content – without selling or pitching anything. That, right there, is their draw for your audience. They get tons of value in exchange for nothing more than their name and email address. It’s not a hard trade, and it will pay off for you in spades because your list will grow by leaps and bounds. (And, as we all know, your email list is a powerful tool.) Another huge plus: Ebooks are relatively inexpensive to produce. All you need is some well-written content and basic design to pull it all together. Here’s an example of an ebook from Jeff Goins on growing your blogging audience: It’s a 55-page PDF that includes a table of contents, 3 parts, an introduction, and a conclusion. Pretty cool, right? Yours doesn’t have to be nearly this long, either. You can create an ebook as short as 3-5 pages, as long as the information inside is super valuable. Feeling excited yet? Follow these 5 rules to create an ebook, and walk away with an awesome lead magnet that will draw in tons of interest and new subscribers to your list. How to Create an Ebook: 5 Basic Rules 1. Find the Right Topic, Tone, and Style If you want to create a desirable ebook, you have to begin the process with the right topic in hand. After that’s accomplished, you need to write the ebook with a tone and style that’s consistent with your brand voice. How to Find the Right Ebook Topic When I say the right topic, I mean one that your readers will eagerly look forward to reading. It’s one they want to know about, have questions about, and one for which you can provide concrete, valuable answers. That’s why, before you start on your ebook, topic research is essential. Here are a few tips to begin: Search for industry hashtags on social media and look to see what people are talking about. Follow conversations and find the questions people are asking. Could you answer topically related ones in your ebook? Search for industry keywords on BuzzSumo and see what major topics come up over and over in top-shared posts. Look for knowledge gaps you can fill with your ebook content. Look at your own blog posts for inspiration. Which topics are most-shared? Which ones get the most follow-up questions and comments? You could potentially create an ebook that dives deeper into these subjects. Consider common customer problems you hear about regularly and write an ebook that helps solve them. [bctt tweet=”Before you start on your ebook, the first step you should do is topic research. Here are a few tips in finding the right topic for your next ebook. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”] How to Ensure Your Ebook Tone and Style Are Consistent with Your Brand AND Non-Salesy When creating ebooks, consistency is key. If the writing style and tone of your ebook content differs from your brand style and tone, it will be glaring to readers. That disconnect makes for a disjointed experience with your brand, which you never want. To keep the writing style and tone on-brand, ensure you/your writers are familiar with: Your brand style guide (Don’t have one? This how-to from 99designs is a good primer) Your blog posts Any other materials that effectively showcase your communication style For a good example of a brand with a consistent style across their content and communications, check out our post on Panera Bread’s content marketing. Image: Mitre Agency After you (or your writer) have a clear idea on your brand tone and style for writing your ebook, you need to turn your attention to non-salesy writing. The purpose of your ebook is NOT to sell your brand, products, or services. Its only purpose should be to hand your reader tangible value in the form of useful information. That’s it. To avoid salesy language: Keep your focus on the reader, not on your brand. Think about what the reader wants/needs to know to fully understand the topic you’re covering. Answer questions you encountered in your topic research. Provide your unique expertise on the topic. 2. Include Premium Content To create a must-have ebook, it needs to include premium content. That means: You haven’t written about the topic elsewhere, like on your blog, where readers can easily access it. If you have written about it before, you haven’t covered the topic in a deep way. The topic requires research to provide a full picture. In other words, premium content needs to be exclusive, exhaustive, and the highest quality possible. It needs research and your best writing. The main reason premium content in your ebook is necessary, though, is because it builds trust with your readers. When you offer such a valuable resource for free (in exchange for their name and email address), your reputation and authority will grow by extension. That’s why an ebook is so valuable to you as a marketing tool. Great example: Brian Dean of Backlinko started offering “content upgrades” (A.K.A. premium content) to his blog readers in exchange for their email. In this way, … Read more

Is The Dress Blue and Black or White and Gold? How It Went Viral

December 31, 2020March 11, 2015 by Adam Oakley

If you are less interested in the way in which your brain perceives colors and more determined to find out how a picture of a dress had the power to break the Internet and fuel one of the hottest debates of the year, chances are that you are also wondering why #TheDress made history this month. The dress that managed to go viral online is a chameleonic product in its own right: some think it’s blue and black; others swear it’s actually white and gold (while more than a few debaters label it as an eye sore regardless of its color and end this discussion without any further ado). #TheDress Debate: What’s The Real Science Here? The science behind this controversy provides a logical explanation for this weird phenomenon: the human brain has been trained to focus on the actual relationship created between colors, and not just the hues themselves. This hypothesis, introduced by Beau Lotto, a reputable professor of neuroscience from the University College London and cited by BBC in a recent article, allows us to reach the conclusion that people interpret the chromatics of the dress differently simply because they focus on different aspects; some pay more attention to the actual colors of the dress, while others “decode” the hues based on the background light or the shade of their very own computer monitor. Defining the Color or Virality Long story short, #TheDress debate made you laugh, made you raise an eyebrow or made you schedule an appointment with a local ophthalmologist. Science may be able to explain why people see this dress in different color combos, but how could one justify the virality of the picture that started and fueled the most ample social media conversation at an incredible speed, becoming the number one trending topic in the United States overnight? 3 Reasons Why #TheDress Became America’s Favorite Conversation Starter How did this controversial (and in reality, awfully plain) dress manage to simultaneously gather more than 670,000 people on Buzzfeed, convince 900,000 visitors to take a poll and give no less than 10 million people at least one good reason to read the entire post? Here are a few plausible reasons why the blue and black/white and gold dress has succeeded in creating quite a stir worldwide. We All Like to Paint a Pretty Picture in the Colors of Controversy. We all love mysteries and strange phenomena that defy our logic. Moreover, we appreciate one-of-a-kind topics with a peculiar novelty factor that feeds our curiosity. Undoubtedly, the dress debate has stayed in the public eye for quite some time now due to its ability to bring people together and make them question an otherwise insignificant aspect of their mundane existence. People Tend to Share Positive Stories. A recent article published by CNN highlights another important reason that somewhat justifies the ever-growing popularity of the chameleonic dress. Readers are always fond of positive stories that make them giggle, laugh or shed a tear (of joy). Tired of shocking “hard news” and the drama associated with their own daily lives, they turn to the simplest forms of entertainment that evoke constructive emotions for a change. Pictures of “the dress” may have made you frown or experience frustration for a few seconds, but at the end of the day they have also given you the opportunity to start a relaxing conversation with your loved ones and get your daily worries off your mind. All in all, this is what viral content actually does: it sits people down, helps them unwind and gives them something to talk about. The Dress Debate Has All the Main Attributes of a Grand Viral Hit. Unique, unplanned and unpolished, the pictures of the black and blue (or white and gold) dress still have all the elements of a major viral hit. According to Neetzan Zimmerman, the well-known viral content expert, #TheDress defines the concept of Viral Singularity. In other words, it is divisive, dumb and extremely sharable. It responds to the readers’ need for fun, uncomplicated yet somewhat challenging content that would undoubtedly make a great party conversation starter. During the dullest event, instead of chatting about the weather, you could always try to find out how your new interlocutor perceives the colors of this iconic dress. As Long As It’s Viral, It Doesn’t Really Matter If It’s Black or White Aside from giving us the impression that we may be colorblind, #TheDress debate has also inspired another moment of revelation: the one in which you realize that crafting viral content is not as difficult as people say it is. Here are the main ingredients that you should combine to take your story to a whole new level: a fun, uncomplicated piece of information generating positive emotions, a little bit of controversy created around your story and a new perspective that will make your readers question everything they have ever read, heard or spoken. When you craft content that encourages people to quarrel, take sides and share their (unsolicited) opinion via social networks you are automatically prepping yourself for success, while getting ready to step into the spotlight. Image source: yibada.com

50 Shades of Content

January 1, 2021March 10, 2015 by Adam Oakley

As you well know, 50 Shades of Grey was recently released in theaters amid a bunch of excitement and scandal. It made $93 million in just four days, and its sequels have already been approved. Whether you’re a fan of this (I admit, risqué) story or not, you have to admit it does have some amazing content marketing power. Taking some inspiration from the famous book title that has now premiered in worldwide theaters, I’m taking an original, descriptive look at 50 Shades of Content. Do you actually know just how many shades content has? From bold to macabre to natural, there are so many shades out there among the millions of web pages that exist. Use these content shades to help you identify and create awesome blogs, product descriptions, and more. A Descriptive List: 50 Shades of Content Authentic content. When writing content, you always want to make sure it is authentic. This will help make your content powerful, and help engage your reader base. Just write from your heart and what you know, and you will be creating excellent, authentic content. All your content should have a shade of authenticity. Exceptions could be sales targeted/landing pages, where you are trying to sell rather than simply offer authentic advice or wording. Bold content. Bold content is a great way to catch people’s attention. You can be bold by writing opinion pieces on things within your industry or the latest trends. This is a good content type for emails, home pages, and other busy, targeted areas of text. Creative content. When you write your content, you need to make sure you are being creative. A great way to gain creative inspiration is to write on the latest trends. For example, I took the opportunity to use 50 Shades of Grey as inspiration for a post that helps you learn about the different aspects of content. Use whatever you want and you can have some incredible, creative content. Blogs are a great outlet for content creativity. Direct content. If you are telling your readers something important, you always need to make sure you are being as direct as possible. This will help show people that confident, know what you’re talking about, and also help convert them from simple readers to clients. Email content is one of the best “direct” content shade examples. Engaging content. Engaging content is something that everyone needs. It helps to get your readers and clients involved, which really helps your business be successful. All your content should have a shade of engaging. Fun content. You want to provide your readers with something of value, but you don’t always have to be super professional. When you write your content, you should always make sure you include something fun to add more life to your blogs. This could be something trendy, like how many businesses brought up “The Dress” on their social media sites. Social media should always have a shade of fun to avoid being boring. Good content. This is a given when it comes to content – it always needs to be good, or what we refer to as high-quality. Focus on crafting great content pieces all the time. It might seem like it takes too much time to focus on good content, but when you do, you get some great results. Let’s be honest: all your content should be this shade. Horrible content. Now, this is a shade you absolutely want to avoid. Horrible content is a surefire way to make sure your content fails, losing you many clients and revenue. You need to stay away from horrible content at whatever cost. You don’t want to face the terrible consequences of it. Unfortunately, a lot of it exists on the web. NO content of yours should be this shade. Inquiring content. This is great when it comes to creating engaging content, especially for social media. Ask your clients and readers questions, and have them provide their answers. You can give silly polls or ask serious questions that can help you tweak your content to be more powerful for your readers. Emails and blogs are good outlets for this content shade. Joyful content. When you write your content, you should always make sure you have a happy tone to it. It doesn’t always have to be puppy and rainbows, but make things more upbeat for your readers. We get enough negativity with the latest news reports, so give your readers some great, positive content. It can be pretty powerful being one of the bright spots on the Internet. Seasonal blogs and emails are a good way to present this shade. Knowledgeable Content. You can write content on almost anything, especially with the Internet at your fingertips. However, this can sometimes lead to you writing content that isn’t very knowledgeable. When you write your content, make sure it is on a topic you know or one that you have done a lot of research on. Lackluster Content. This is yet another form of content you want to avoid. Lackluster content is boring, and many times, unreadable. Make sure you craft fun, engaging content all the time to get the best results from it. Macabre Content. Now, this could be good or bad, depending on your macabre sense of humor, and your industry. You can write macabre content, just always make sure to stay tasteful, and keep it on the lighter end of macabre humor (Tim Burton is a good example). Natural Content. Natural content is a great way to rank on the SERP and also helps keep people on your site, reading. You can write natural content by not focusing on keywords and writing about something you have a passion for. Original Content. Your content not only needs to be knowledgeable, natural, and good, it also needs to be original. Write your own content, on your own ideas and you will easily have great, original content. Of course, you can always gain inspiration from others, just always make sure … Read more

A Guide To Guest Blogging: A Big Boost For Your Business

December 31, 2020March 5, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Guest blogging is one of the best ways to increase traffic, generate leads, and build brand awareness. From a business perspective, well-chosen guest blogging opportunities can result in a massive amount of positive impact on a site. Guest blogging gets you noticed by the people who need to notice you. As a brand, guest blogging opportunities allow your company to get their name out there, while at the same time allowing the readers to then experience your content production skills firsthand. When you do guest blogging right, you’ll start to realize the massive return this form of organic content can afford. 3 Ways to Determine Your Guest Content Goals Before you embark upon the twists and turns of the guest blogging road, you’re going to need to determine what you want to get out of your guest blogging opportunities. Just like every other structured marketing campaign, you need to have an end-game in mind to properly utilize your guesting posts. Ideally, as a guest blogger, you will be seeking to do one or more of the following: Position yourself as a go-to person in the industry. Guest blogging allows you to share your experience and knowledge, which helps others perceive you as an expert. Gain exposure for your brand, products, or services. This also helps to generate backlinks that help your SEO campaign immensely. Drawing an audience. When done correctly, guest blogging can help you gain new readers that can become sales for your site. For these goals to come to fruition, you need to have a unique mix of skills and execution. Just having an idea isn’t enough to get the most out of your guest posting. You need to become an expert in your field, reading every bit of information you can get your hands on. Once you’ve done that, you need to develop a real and actionable plan for gaining the attention you deserve from your guest blogging efforts. How to Figure Out What’s a Good Guest Blogging Opportunity and What Isn’t Most of the major players in the content creation field are open to the idea of having a guest blogger on their site. The tough part can sometimes be being chosen from the crowd. After all, experienced guest bloggers are more likely to get first preference than inexperienced bloggers. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get your foot in the door, though. After all – everyone starts somewhere! When you’re just starting out, you may have to settle for less prestigious guest blogging opportunities. Although these aren’t as glamorous or far-reaching as the larger blogs, they are no less important in your quest to build a name as a well-known blogger. That said, it’s well worth your time and energy to learn to differentiate good guest blogging opportunities from bad ones. Here’s how: What Good Blogging Opportunities Look Like Good guest blogging opportunities are those that give you a decent amount of coverage for your time investment. Remember, your guest blog should be as well researched (or better!) than your personal or in-house blogging efforts. For professional guest blogging situations you are going to need to pitch your topic to the owner of the blog to see if it meshes with what they’re trying to achieve. Generally, you and the host can sit down and discuss what they expect and what you can deliver. From there, you may be able to develop a working topic and title before you get writing. Keep in mind that some guest blogging options will offer less support than others, and this is largely a function of traffic. The most in-demand guest blogging platforms get thousands of submissions each month, and it’s impossible to keep up with them all manually. That said, these platforms tend to use electronic forms and a team of editors and content managers to get guest blogs up on their sites. This shouldn’t rule a guest blogging platform out for you. Instead, pay attention to things like the professionalism of the staff, the Alexa Rank of the site, and the expedience with which staffers get back to you. What Bad Guest Blogging Opportunities Look Like To put it simply: bad guest blogging opportunities are those that don’t give you a lot of coverage or that abuse your work without giving you enough in return. Beware of sites that make it excessively easy to guest blog for them, since they’re among the worst offenders. While you shouldn’t have to jump through flaming hoops to get your post featured, you should expect there to be a review and quality assurance process. If this doesn’t exist, it’s a likely bet that, not only will your guest post not count for much, but that it will quickly be lost in the sea of low-quality blogs out there. Keep this in mind: If all you have to do is sign up and post then it’s probably not a very high-quality opportunity. Avoiding these sites is important since they don’t help you attain your guest blogging goals. These are usually the sites that take anything you give to them as a blog post without an actual discussion with the owner or content manager. Again: if you don’t have to talk to a real person or team, it’s probably not a good idea to guest post for them. Guest Blogging Doesn’t Mean the End of Direct Content Production Just because you’re getting into guest blogging doesn’t mean that you can stop producing your own original content. If anything, it’s an encouragement to continue with your own direct content. When you finally start to earn customers from a guest blog, you’ll still need to show them that you can back that content up with your own work. That’s why maintaining your own blog and content creation efforts is so important throughout. Setting up an internal content production schedule helps you to balance your private posting with whatever guest opportunities arise. Guest blogging allows you to create relationships with the audience of the host blog and this can translate into growing your own … Read more