Business owners and marketers use Content Marketing to build their business, but in many cases a great blog article or website page falls flat and does not generate enough traffic for the amount of time invested into the article. This article will explain how to avoid this mistake in website marketing.
BLOGGING AND CONTENT MARKETING
Imagine that you have invested all your energy in an amazing piece of content that you plan on posting to your company's website or blog. You post it, and then–nothing. Absolutely nothing happens.
So how do you socialize your most valuable content? Assuming that you have truly valuable educational content that people are going to love and share and that is free of hype, this is going to work.
Why is it that great content is not shared with people? Because we are lazy. Yes, it is as simple as that. Unless it is made effortless, people are not going to share your content on their social networks. You need to embed social sharing in key strategic locations in your content. Make it so that people can click one button with one action and share your content on networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Linkedin.
Social sharing can be embedded in a blog post, an e-mail and even a .pdf file. But if people have to craft their own headline and create their own tweet, people are not going to do it. Just imagine if only ten people shared your content with their friends. If your content is really good people are going to want to share your content with other people. This results in enormous amounts of free traffic.
Social share buttons with a graphic that represents the four major social media networks—Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+, which make it so all that is needed is 'one' click, make your content's visibility grow exponentially. If people can easily share your great content, they will. "Easily" is the key word.
CONTENT MARKETING AND THE POWER OF BLOGS
What do you say to people that say blogging is dead? The problem is that we are defining article marketing the wrong way. A blog is just a way to format information. One company can have four or five different blogs. So, when someone says that blogging is dead, it is absolutely not true. What could be a more accurate description of the evolution of content marketing is that the old strategy of blogging has moved into a new era—social sharing, and blogging can be a vehicle at which great content is shared on the four major social media networks—Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Linkedin.
If your singular goal is to teach people better than anyone else in the world, and you put that information into blog format, you will be successful. It happens in every industry. Good teaching will never be dead.
WEBSITE OR BLOG AS A DESTINATION
Social media is not in your control. All it takes is for Facebook to make one change, and everything you have invested in your social media campaign can be potentially no longer profitable. Your investment can be wasted and go down the drain. So, in order to protect your business from this, keep your website or blog as your "destination" at which you channel your visitors. Yes, it is great if visitors visit your Facebook Page, but in the long run, your business will benefit more if the final destination is your company's website or blog. Because from there, you can channel visitors to your call-to-action.
KEEP YOUR DESTINY IN YOUR OWN CONTROL
What is the the best way to protect your company from wasting investments of content on social media? One word—control.
Companies go out of business every day because they invest everything in their social media campaigns instead of investing in quality content in a blog of website. Your ultimate destination that you want to drive your visitors towards should be your blog or website. So, instead of putting all your eggs into social media, invest in great content that is posted on your website or your blog. The articles that you write, you will use forever and your content will always help in your ability to communicate with your prospects and existing clients. You can use that content on a blog, in an e-mail marketing campaign, or you can use that content to share on your social media platforms. That content is yours and you can use it forever. Use and build upon your library of great content because there is power behind producing content. The effect it has—on a business and the employees, a brand and their call center is affected in the long run with quality articles that are written by a business owner (or a quality ghost writer) who strives to teach and be the best teacher in their field.
CONTENT MARKETING, YOUR ARTICLES, AND YOUR BUSINESS WEBSITE
What is content marketing exactly? Content marketing is teaching people through text, audio or video about whatever it is you do. Content marketing is a the theme of your quality, originally written articles and the basis of which your online marketing campaign will build upon. We have a name for great teaching and whether it is a blog, a YouTube video, or an e-mail marketing campaign—all this includes content that we are producing and pushing out the masses. Content marketing is huge and a strong part of building businesses on the Internet today.
BLOG AND WEBSITE TRAFFIC
A lot of people believe that if you build it they will come. This is not always the case.
By using content marketing, many companies have saved their business after the recession started. Radio, TV, print, and Google Adwords are expensive advertising tools, so smart companies have taken every single question that they have heard from a customer or prospective customer, and turned that question into a title of a blog post. A great content marketer or blogger says "If they ask, I am going to answer". A great business owner knows the value of content marketing and blogging. By providing this quality content that was asked, it should be on your website or blog somewhere. Within a matter of hours or days, your website can benefit from one single, quality well-written article. This can be achieved by just writing an article about something that a customer or prospect has asked. In sales, you often answer the same questions over and over again. Great content can shorten the sales cycle and increase profit. By shortening the sales cycle, you are able to save time on sales calls and, sometimes even close a deal over the phone rather than traveling to a prospect's home or business. Believe it or not, people read about a product or service in huge quantitates, well in advance before making a large purchase. With quality content on your website or blog, visitors will explode, leads will explode, and more people spend more time on your site so that your prospects are more prepared when your sale representatives start the sales cycle. Content is the most powerful sales tool in the world (when used properly). Shortening the sales cycle is the goal.
Service based businesses, and any business in any industry can benefit from this sales and marketing technique. You can reach price agreements with shoppers in a faster amount of time just by teaching your prospects through great content that answers questions that people ask. By becoming the best teacher in your industry or in your city or town, the principle of communication and great teaching, two parties will fall in love with you—Google and search, which means your website or blog will have a huge increase in traffic! And real people will be more interested in your product or service because you have taken the time to generate great content that answers their questions. Your prospects will appreciate you for being sincere and transparent. By providing the type of content that people in the past were not able to get, you gain trust and sales prospects.
WHAT IS GREAT CONTENT?
You must acknowledge that all content is not created equally.
What is great content? Great content is written like a person's speaks. Talk to the reader like they don't know what you are talking about. Acronyms and words that no one has ever heard of can hurt your content. Talk to your readers like they have no idea what you are talking about. And answer questions that on one else does. Talk about things that no one in your industry talks about. For example, many companies shy away from listing prices on their website or blog, so they just avoid the subject. Instead, embrace the subjects that no one else has the courage to embrace. Write about the tabu subjects. For example, you don't have to list exact prices. You can be vague with prices, while at the same time addressing the question that people looking for your product or service are interested in. By doing so, you make your company stand out from your competitors.
OSTRICH MARKETING
Some people think that a common problem or question will go away or not come up and that people will not notice if your company just doesn't mention it. This could not be further from the truth. People do notice! That is why this is called the Information Age. People know everything about you so you should not hide anything. Be open and transparent in your marketing and your clients will appreciate you for it. When you meet with a client for the first time, you want that prospect to feel like they have known you for a long time because they have read your articles or listened to your podcasts. Speak in everyday, conversational language. One way to do that is to pick up your smart phone and record yourself speaking out an entire article, then transcribe it yourself. Eliminate the marketing message from your content and answer questions, and your content will go further. It's called a blog, not brag. You can brag on your website, but on your blog—don't brag, but instead teach. Yes, include a call-to-action, but in the long run, an article on your blog is a teaching instrument.
WEBSITE ARTICLES AND YOUR BUSINESS REVENUE
Connect an article to revenue. How does a company connect its blog to business results?
On your website people can fill out forms and analytics track where the people that filled out the form or placed an order came from. With analytics, you will know where those people originated. HubSpot is one popular analytics tool. Google Analytics is a great one and it is free. When your sales team is aware of the content that you as a business owner have produced, it provides your sales team with another tool in their arsenal and gives them the vehicle of which they can teach. By following up with a sales lead, you can reach out and follow up with a prospect and answer a question that they had previously raised. Follow up with leads with an e-mail that includes a link to an article or video that answers their question, wait a few days—then follow up again. Every sales representative should be an active participant in the company blog because the sales team knows which questions are asked and the blog is the vehicle at which those questions can be answered.
TEACHING AS A SALES TECHNIQUE
Each employee can be a teacher.
Content marketing is a culture and we can all be teachers. In many companies, one silo is the sales department and one silo is the marketing department. They don't communicate and the content marketing cycle is broken. By including the sales team in the generation of your blog content, you merge the two departments. Your brand and blog will benefit and the culture of the company with merge into one environment that has a common theme. By making each employee a teacher, everyone in the company merges together into a common culture rather than separate silos.
WHAT IS A TIPPING POINT?
A tipping point is the magic number of page views that are required for a visitor to stay on your site. If you really study your analytics, you can learn your tipping point and learn how to make your closing rates go up. If visitors read the pages above that magic number, you are able to increase your closing rate. Conversely, if the visitor reads fewer than that magic number, then the closing rate reduces. Every industry has a tipping point and every service industry has it too. This principle applies to marketing online. If someone spends enough time on your site, they will eventually become a customer.
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