March Madness is upon us, and there is no team worth routing for, quite like the SJC Team. If you are looking for real change…honest-to-goodness real development of your marketing strategy and communications plan, you’ve found the right team. We are a marketing company dedicated exclusively to campaigns and content creation. Our sole business purpose is to provide a new avenue of promotional effectiveness for you and your brand.
To-Do: Create report. Attend meeting. Write content. Repeat.
If your list looks like this, consider this perspective – you can have fun with content creation. You can enjoy it and look forward to it. It can be a task that looks like information curating and storytelling instead of just another task. And, it can be a task that reflects your own personal style.
As you regain your energy toward content creation, it may be helpful to remind yourself why creating fresh content that’s valuable to your audience really does matter and makes a difference. An article in the Journal of Financial Planning also serves as a reminder that content creation is valuable across all industries, and that the basic principles that make creating content fun apply whether you’re working with investments or the latest designer shoes.
A few ways to shake up your content creation habits:
1. Choose a solid opinion, and stay with it. Give readers a new way of viewing a topic, and don’t be afraid to share your honest thoughts on what’s happening in your industry.
2. Discard the concept of “perfection” and aim for creativity. If you feel stuck because you think your content must be completely perfect prior to posting, take a chance and set that feeling aside once in a while.
3. Talk about your core philosophy. People want to know why you do what you do, so tell them in a series of blogs.
4. Throw in a personal experience or two when you can. Don’t be afraid to talk about your own experiences from time to time.
5. Work with a professional to help you stay on track and to keep content creation from becoming just another to-do task. Professional copywriters can work with you on which keywords to utilize, and how. They can also create an editorial calendar that will help you feel like you’re working toward effective goals each week and month.
It can also be helpful in your content creation strategy to record ideas you see, hear and read in a separate notepad somewhere you can easily access. You can refer back to this brainstorming list when you need some inspiration. On the same note, keep a bookmarked reading list to glance at that includes top blog sites, websites and articles your target audience is likely to be reading. This can also generate ideas that you can share in your own way with your own style.
No matter the source for your content creation muse, keep creating on a consistent basis as long as the information is important and meaningful to your audience. This makes all the difference.
It has been said that there’s always room for improvement. If we had been completely satisfied with Henry Ford’s Model T, there would have never been room for the Ferrari or features like heated seats and navigation. But the fact is, consumer needs evolve.
A Hubspot blog features several ways to optimize your marketing so competitors don’t pass you by. First, evaluate the effectiveness of landing pages and homepages. These pages are not just designed to look pretty but rather present a powerful opportunity to gather visitor information for tailoring conversations and offering for more effective interactions.
Things your landing pages should possess include catchy headlines, good graphics, compelling copy, links for sharing, and optimized forms. They must quickly and clearly communicate your value proposition. Consider evaluating different options to optimize your marketing; tests show that B2B sites can achieve up to a 40 percent increase in leads through A/B testing.
Also do an analysis of what generates traffic to your homepage. In other words, what is your audience seeking? The images and content on your home page should be tested to ensure they match the queries of your most engaged visitors. Additionally, each page should have no more than one business objective such as driving leads, finalizing sales, etc.
Another way to optimize your marketing is to fine-tune your email strategy. Since those on your email list have elected to receive information from you, they represent one of your best sources of leads. According to The Magill Report, for every dollar marketers spent last year on email marketing, $39 was recouped. This kind of ROI starts with segmenting your email lists (to better tailor messages) and establishing an effective method of measuring results. There are various automation and workflow tools to help with this process. Note: email campaigns should be mobile friendly as the majority of people today check email on their smartphones.
Finally, to optimize your marketing, incorporate quality copy. Quality content anchored with keywords and strategic links can pull traffic to your website, blogs, and enewsletters and give you the best return for your investment. And, don’t forget the catchy headline because some people do judge a book by its cover!
Is Facebook like, so five minutes ago? Well, it certainly looks like some adolescents may feel that way.
Leave it to the younger generation to let you know what’s hot and what’s not. Teenagers may be flippant, but that’s what drives them to stay abreast of new trends. According to this Business Insider article, teens are bored of Facebook and are now embracing a new face of social media.
While we wouldn’t call it a “break-up” per se, teens are certainly flocking to more private ways to share their duck lips and most intimate thoughts. Even Facebook itself admits it may have lost its luster when it comes to the younger generation.
In the social media giant’s yearly 10-K report, authors note that younger users are substituting Facebook with other comparable apps. Services like Instagram and Snapchat represent the new face of social media because they allow for a more intimate way of engaging with friends. If this trend continues, Facebook execs admit there could be a problem.
Josh Miller, CEO of Branch.com, a platform used to aid online discussions, says in his blog entitled “10th Grade Tech Trends” that highschoolers are indeed shying away from Facebook. Miller’s own 15-year-old sister admits she saves Facebook for last, visiting only after she’s done her stalking via Instagram.
What is it about Facebook that has helped popularize this new face of social media? One point that Miller’s sister raised was that Facebook wasn’t private enough. She advised that the only people willing to chat on Facebook were the ones she wished to avoid. Ellis Hamburger of The Verge said that Facebook had gotten too big to serve everyone’s needs and in the process, teen engagement fell through the cracks.
Adam Ludwin, creator of Albumatic, a photo album app designed for social media, said that young adults participating in one of his focus groups also expressed a desire for a more unique experience.
For teens, the new face of social media appears to be a photo-driven, cozier exchange amongst friends. The market has spoken. Are you listening?
Some Like it Hot: UCP Chili Challenge is Recipe for Success
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
This simple phrase could describe the outstanding (if not legendary) success of the annual UCP of Northwest Missouri Heart of America Chili Challenge. In 2013, the event raised $150,000 to support the mission and work of the nonprofit organization – an all-time record.
Now in its 27th year, the Heart of America Chili Challenge is a chili cook-off filled with friendly rivalry, a smash hit fundraiser and a community outreach event all packaged into one. Preparations begin a few months in advance with the UCP staff and volunteers, including a silent auction, an online auction and organizing 60-plus teams to cook up their best chili creation.
A much-anticipated element of the annual Chili Challenge is the People’s Choice Awards, which allows chili teams to begin raising support before the event – and during the event – in the form of monetary votes from the public. (It works. It really, really works.) The top People’s Choice team, Nestle Purina, earned more than $66,000 in cash for UCP of Northwest Missouri, with other competitors also raising tens of thousands of dollars in support.
How do they do it?
The formula for success begins with the way the organization itself fulfills its mission – to create a life without limits for children and adults with disabilities across Northwest Missouri. Through innovative preschool programs, an adult program, and help with career training and job identification that matches consumers’ interests, UCP has helped thousands of individuals with disabilities reach their goals and look forward to bright futures. Everything that happens throughout the year returns to this mission.
The organization’s outcomes tell the story of its success on paper, but it’s the smiles and the joy on the faces of the consumers who are served by UCP that speaks to the heart: this is an organization that truly does what it says it will do. A nicely designed website and publications like the UCP Annual Report help share this story with the public, as well as the testimonials UCP receives from the families themselves.
When you pair this clearly articulated mission with a well-organized team of staff and volunteers, you have some additional elements of the Chili Challenge success story. They’re ready to help, and they know what roles they will be filling and how to carry out the details.
Another vital and remarkable element of the Chili Challenge recipe for success is the continued enthusiasm from local businesses and community entities. They are, in many ways, the heartbeat of the event and are ready to jump in each year with new recipes, new ideas for raising funds and new ways to playfully engage their competition. They’re cheering for UCP all year with their talk and plans for the Chili Challenge, and they have truly changed thousands of lives during the life of the event with their dedication and generosity. They love taking part and it shows.
Today, SJC congratulates UCP of Northwest Missouri on continued success of their Chili Challenge event. When the right mission, the right message and the right people are in place, things really do heat up.
You know you have a lot to do with your content marketing to promote traffic to your site. You also need to schedule your social media management posts and engage on specific networks. How do you keep track of everything you need to do? The editorial calendar, of course!
Content marketing is quite possibly one of the fastest growing and most effective methods of reaching out to consumers today. Done properly, it is a tool to help you build your brand, reiterate to current customers reasons for remaining loyal, and convince would-be buyers that your brand is the one to trust.
The following three guidelines for content marketing shared by marketing expert Heidi Cohen offer insight for developing copy to assist you in meeting your critical business objectives:
Following these guidelines for content marketing will help you stay focused on customer needs, which is at the heart of all successful copywriting.
A quick look at graphs produced by Google Trends shows that there has been a growing interest in “content marketing” as evidenced by the number of searches occurring over the past couple years, while searches for just “marketing” alone have declined or remained stagnant. Despite its growing popularity, there has been much ado about content marketing as of late, so what’s all the content marketing hype?
A Velocity blog outlines a few of the complaints lodged against content marketing, and reveals that when the layers of the onion are peeled away, it isn’t content marketing per se that the critics have a problem with – it’s all the content marketing hype.
First, let’s look at what content marketing isn’t. Content marketing is not a fad. Fads come and go with the wind, but content marketing in its truest form has been around for over a century. Certainly no one in the field is claiming that the practice is anything new – what is new, however, is the name and its application to the Internet and social media.
Next, content marketers are not trying to hide the fact that they aim to connect the intended audience to the source. We’re all selling something, aren’t we? What makes content marketing unique is the approach – instead of the old, features and benefits beating, content marketing actually puts the sales pitch to the side for a second to offer readers something of value.
Contrary to what those furthering the content marketing hype would like us to believe, content marketing and marketing are not synonymous. Content marketing is only one slice of the marketing pie, but its acceptance has caused it to overshadow less effective methods.
As Velocity points out, while “blind hype, crappy names, bad content marketing and ignorance of marketing history” may be reasons to be a little more critical of the wave of content that’s flooding the market, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. At the core of the content marketing hype, there does still exist pure copywriting that continues to live on for one reason – it works.
Feeling a little ho-hum about writing weekly blogs? Perk up your blog this week. Your readers will appreciate it and you’ll remember why you’re writing weekly blogs in the first place.
A blog is a direct pipeline to quality content. Quality content feeds your search engine activity, and even more, your brand value. Quality content can be reread and shared thousands of times long after the blog has been posted, so it is indeed a task you can’t put aside. (Yes, it can seem repetitive at times).
A recent post offers some easy reminders for how to perk up your task of writing weekly blogs:
1. Remind yourself that your blogs have built success and value toward your audience. Review your statistics as your blog readership has grown over time.
2. Freshen up the way your blog page looks, but don’t over-obsess and allow that to get in the way of your progress.
3. Engage with your blog audience through social media questions, short polls or other tools to find out what they like reading and what they want to read more of. Use their statements in your blog or to get you started writing.
4. Sit back and read through your competitors’ blogs and online content. Use this information to rebuild your energy and craft new posts that highlight why you’re better.
5. Incorporate strategic images and infographics into your blogs. Not only does it boost avenues by which you blog can be found, it makes the piece more exciting to write and share.
6. Make a short list of new approaches, such as a how-to format, a blast from the past or a q/a format.
Writing weekly blogs can be repetitive, but it’s not drudgery – especially if you consider yourself a content curator, helping offer valuable high-impact information to your audience each week as part of an overall content marketing strategy.
The Stuff of Legends: Pony Express Museum Uses Storytelling as Top Tool
In a rapid-fire world of instant communication, the legendary start of the U.S. mail system – The Pony Express – seems to capture more tales of drama and excitement than ever.
No place in the Midwest seems to capture this attention of both young and old like the Pony Express National Museum, 9th and Penn Streets in historic St. Joseph, Mo. Perhaps it’s the marked decline of postal service, leading people to view early postal carriers on horseback with more nostalgia. Perhaps it’s the curiosity (and maybe yearning) toward this more personal, more painstaking and historic process of sending an actual letter across the miles that has spurred high numbers of visitation at the Pony Express Museum. Or maybe it’s our long-held love of the imagery of the horse and cowboy (or cowgirl).
It’s likely a combination of factors, all tied in with ways the museum has been listening to the audience and providing great storytelling. Evidence of the museum’s communication and outreach efforts can be seen throughout the year, but especially with record numbers exceeding 1,200 guests at the recent T.N.T. series (Tuesday Night Talks). Expert speakers covered topics like early railroads, settlers and stagecoaches and the audience couldn’t seem to get enough — prompting an encore presentation set for March 12, 2013. Seats have filled year by year, and the museum staff continues to take requests from guests about topics they want to know more about. It’s working.
New additions to exhibits, such as a blacksmith shop and a life sized oxen team with wagon are also bringing current members and new guests through the swinging wooden doors. Membership has always been a strong outreach tool for the museum, but events like T.N.T., the Pony Express Pumpkinfest and the popular summer Day Camp for children are boosting community members’ connections to the museum and making them feel like a new part of the story.
Perhaps the biggest expansion in recent years is the opening of The Pony School, a meticulously crafted replica of an 1860s schoolhouse. Complete with individual primer books and rows of bench-style desks, the schoolhouse draws groups and organizations to relive the simple but powerful beginnings of our educational system. Re-enactors and volunteers help bring the tale to life first-hand with accuracy and creativity.
Recent enhancements to the website, new video productions and plans for the return of newsletters (in the classic hold-in-your-hand paper format, direct from the mailbox) are also likely to boost support and membership. Even more, these efforts are connecting people across generations to the great elements of the Pony Express story that still hold true today: having a dream, fulfilling it bravely and being bold enough to carve out an exciting vision for the future.
Today, SJC congratulates the Pony Express National Museum on its success and extends our thanks for inspiring so many with great stories of our nation’s beginnings.
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