Can You Handle Content Marketing In-House?

Posted on August 7, 2012 by admin

Even with a thousand fancy online tools, selling your product or service is still about reaching people. Dialoguing with people. Building a relationship with people.

Reaching the people you’re after and encouraging them to take action requires solid, high-value and original content – and often. The question for many organizations is “can you handle content marketing in-house?” or “how much can I do and how much should I outsource?”

A recent article says that the 73 percent of businesses felt coming up with new, fresh content on a consistent basis was a key challenge. In close running is the challenge of finding enough minutes or hours to get the content created and published, at 75 percent. Tracking and analyzing results was also a frequent issue with content marketing, as was keeping upper level management on board.

One way to answer the question of whether or not to handle content marketing in-house is to look more closely at the hurdles you can leap with some outside help as you map out high-value content creation strategies:

– A professional content creation service can give you the pinpointed strategy and direction you need to keep the original content on-track and ensure it uses effective keywords. The editorial calendar is one of the most useful tools you can implement across your team, and a content marketing professional can efficiently help you map out your keywords and the tools you’ll use for specific audiences.

– You may find you can locate relevant and useful new information online related to your industry, but a content creation agency can turn this into unique, compelling new articles, blogs, whitepapers or social media posts. In this way you can work together as a team to keep the great new content coming.

– A content creation professional can evaluate and guide you as you track and evaluate your results, using tools they’ve subscribed to and learned to use for maximum value. You may decide to run reports in-house related to your content creation efforts, such as website traffic and social media usage, but a content creation professional can tell you what these numbers mean your next steps should be to keep your online relationships as strong as possible.

Content marketing that has a team approach – i.e., your ideas and insights guided by a professional – keeps the task fresh, fun and effective, and keeps the focus on the people you started doing all of this for in the first place (your customers).

Posted in Content Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Monday Morning Coffee with Susan

Posted on August 6, 2012 by admin

One of the things we never really did in our series of Monday Morning Coffee blogs was to post something about our company founder and why our name bears her own. Often asked why she formed this company and what it’s all about, she decided to share a few bits with you to understand first why the word “copywriting” is included in our name and why this was the road she decided to take.

Roughly seven years ago, the commercial landscape within St. Joseph was presenting a challenge to those with career aspirations. For some, the future looked bright, as long as they were content with the status quo and didn’t have a drive for moving up the proverbial ladder. Others, however, observed a market that had not yet matched pace with others and unless positioned within a specific market with a dynamic growth strategy already in place, the outlook was somewhat frustrating.

Susan J. Campbell was one of the latter, viewing her position at the time as one that offered little promise for advancement to quench her thirst for vocational challenges. At the same time, she was juggling something many working mothers struggle to overcome – the guilt associated with pursuing a career when tradition demands she stay home. Not one to work within molds established by faceless entities, Susan saw no reason why she couldn’t have the best of both worlds.

A love of – and talent for – writing, a successful business background and a drive matched only by a few led to the creation of Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions. Much research uncovered a growing market for quality writers who also understood business. And, with the booming online world, the market was right for Susan to jump into something brand new, something she could do from home.

The primary focus at company launch was writing copy (hence the term, “copywriting”) for companies throughout the world. As her experience and reach grew, so did her customer base, project load and opportunity in the market. And, because the company was home-based, Susan also had the opportunity to serve as PTO president, Girl Scout leader, Boy Scout leader and on a number of different civic boards in the St. Joseph area.

Today, the company has grown to include two employees and a broad base of contractors offering talents such as writing, design, development, social media management and more. In many instances, the individuals filling these roles are also moms seeking the opportunity to pursue that career challenge while also balancing the opportunity to be present for her kids. The business continues – not just because Susan loves what she does, but because she has seen the blessing the company has brought to many families in the process.

At Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions, the focus is really on what is important and healthy for the individual first, the company second. This is one of the reasons we were named the YWCA Employer of Excellence. Susan’s intentions are to continue to grow the company, but not at a pace that puts that primary focus at risk, but one that allows for the continuation of, “quality work completed by an excellent team,” she says.

If you want to learn more or hear the story firsthand, give us a call. It’s a success story Susan loves to tell and one that continues to open doors for the company. With that – enjoy the rest of your Monday!

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4 Steps to Social Media Success

Posted on August 3, 2012 by admin

If you’re not using social media as part of your marketing strategy, you’re likely missing out on a huge opportunity for referrals and sales. Social media is today’s watering hole where people swap stories, advice, gossip, and recommendations. You don’t want to miss an opportunity for your company to be amidst this friendly clamor.
With social media, happy customers can spread the word about your company like wildfire. Social media success is defined by actively engaging with your customers to build better relationships, brand visibility, and eventually sales. But you can’t just throw up a Facebook page and hope that your customers knock down the door. Social media success does take some work. These four steps will get you there:

1)      State your purpose. You need a good understanding of what goals you want social media to help you achieve. Is your goal to increase brand recognition? Do you want to direct customers to your website? Being clear about your purpose will help you develop a winning social media success strategy.

2)      Research your target audience. After all, what good does it do if you have a great social media campaign and it’s not connecting with those most likely to do business with you? Knowing demographics including age and income is important, as is familiarity with customer passions, how they spend their money, what they do in their spare time, and where they hang out online.

3)      Stop Selling. Customers will buy from you after you develop rapport with them. The ultimate goal should be engaging with your customer on a deeper level; if you get this part right, the sales will follow. Remember, 80 percent of your business stems from only 20 percent of your customers. These individuals should be your focus.

4)      Get Friendly. If you’re going to get noticed, you have to be sociable. Those achieving social media success are the companies creating interesting, informative, and interactive content for their users.

The representatives at Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions are experts in achieving social media success. If you don’t want to miss this opportunity but feel like you’re in over your head, call today and let us help you implement a solution.

Posted in Consistent Customer Communications, Content Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Social Media Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Building the Right Online Presence

Posted on August 2, 2012 by admin

There are a lot of things that need to be learned during the courting or dating process. You want to learn all you can about the person. You want to know their likes, their dislikes, what makes them tick, etc. You wouldn’t ask someone to marry you or accept a proposal without knowing a few of these things ahead of time.

This is the same concept to use when you’re trying to attract business online. Just as you want to make sure to look your best when you’re headed out on a date, you want to make sure you have the right online presence when it comes to reeling in more clients.

You must understand what your customer is looking for, according to this article about building your online presence. You need to know what it is that will move them from an online browser to buyer.

While understanding your target audience is important, it’s going to take more than that to generate solid, loyal customers, who turn to you, believing you are the expert in your field and will be repeat customers. Your online presence must be crafted in a way that is special to you. If you’re dating, you wouldn’t make up another persona to impress, so you shouldn’t do it in business.

Your message must be special to you and only you and be part of an organized, thought out process to build your online presence.

Once you have developed a relationship with your customers or clients, continue to court them along the way. Learn all you can about them and make sure you are visible online in all the places that your clients will be.  If they see your message over and over in the right place, at the right time, then your right online presence has paid off.

This concept applies consistently in your content creation and management. At Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions, it’s our job to work with our clients to determine their brand presence and support it online on a consistent basis. Everything we do is geared toward building that online presence and ensuring it supports the client’s mission. To learn how this approach can help your business, give us a call today.

Posted in Marketing Strategy, Social Media Marketing, Website | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Value of Content Management

Posted on August 1, 2012 by admin

In the online world, it’s not enough to simply build a site and hope people will find it. If they know the name of your company or your direct URL, there’s no need to worry. But, do you want to be content with simply catering to your current customer base or do you want to expand and identify new prospects? If you’re leaning toward the latter, it may be time to consider the value of content management.

For those new to online marketing, content simply refers to the articles, blogs, press releases and any other text-based materials you use online to push out a message. The value of content management is found when partnering with a firm that can help you identify things to write about, create the content, post it appropriately and then use it to promote your message through multiple channels.

The name can easily be a misnomer – giving the impression that you need to focus on marketing the content you just created. On the contrary, you want to use that content to drive traffic to your site, your social media pages and to your blog to garner their interest and generate leads. The content you create is valuable, but only if it generates action. Will your readers come back for more? Will they contact you directly to inquire after your services? Will they share information with those in the same circles?

All of these actions can help drive business for you, if you develop a strategy, execute on that strategy and measure the results. To help in the process, here is a checklist to follow so you can truly leverage the value of content management:

  1. Establish a goal – what do you want to accomplish? Do you want more traffic, more leads, more engagement? Identify the goal and make it achievable and measurable. If you haven’t drawn more than 10 people to your blog in the last year, don’t assume one change will draw 10,000 – be realistic.
  2. Identify the tools – what do you want to use to accomplish that goal? Do you plan to write some blogs and then push them out to readers via social media channels? Do you plan to write a press release and distribute to national media channels? You’ll find the value in content management when you know what content to use.
  3. How will you measure – measuring the impact of the selected tools and how close you are to your goal is critical. Marketing is a challenge within any company as the outcomes are not directly related to the inputs, making it more difficult to justify the investment. With content management, however, you can directly measure your number of hits, actions, responses and more.

This short list is just to get you started, but it forces you to sit down and answer the tough questions before you invest any time or money into these activities. And, keep in mind, that the true value in content management is knowing what content to use and what it should do. If you can’t answer these questions – it may be time to invest in a professional.

Posted in Content Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Website | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

I Have a Storefront – I Don’t Need a Website

Posted on July 31, 2012 by admin

If you have a storefront to sell you products, do you also need a website? Yes, if you want to increase your chances of people actually finding your online store … and if you want to stand out from others in your field … and if you want to be viewed as a welcoming “expert” to potential customers.

A recent article describes the options available for storefronts, including ecommerce sites, Amazon, eBay sales or even a WordPress platform just for selling products. While these may seem like a simple solution to selling products online, success comes when the storefront is part of an overall content creation strategy – including optimizing on keywords, using blogs to identify yourself as the expert and offering buyers an answer to their questions with a well-written website.

Offering just a storefront and not a website also robs your business the opportunity to create a powerful, lasting customer experience across multiple channels. Your website is the friendly face, the greeter, the helpful “staff” member that conveys key information about your products and your brand to your audience.

Through keywords in the website text, your SEO rank dramatically increases. Through opportunities to sign up for enews updates, to read news articles and view exciting images and video clips, you set the stage for visitors to take action (which would be the next step, shopping at your storefront).

Launching a website to complement and open the doors to your storefront also allows for the critical function of blogs and backlinking. Blogs feed strategic traffic to your website and build the trust factor toward you instead of others in your industry. Backlinking allows you to place your website address within the conversation of industry leaders and hot forums, further solidifying your competitive edge.

A well-written website, keyword optimization, blogs and social media work together in your favor to add serious value and higher interest in your storefront. Remember, there’s more to an effective website than just writing the words you want your audience to read – an effective strategy is a must if you want to drive measurable results.

Posted in eCommerce, Marketing Strategy, Website | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Monday Morning Coffee – and the Chiefs are in Town

Posted on July 30, 2012 by admin

Joetown has taken on a red hue as the Kansas City Chiefs have arrived for training camp. Missouri Western State University was primed and ready by the middle of last week and signs at area businesses made their appearance before Friday’s kick-off. While the arrival of our favorite football team is great news for local businesses – what does it mean for the consumer?

This is one area where the Chiefs, Missouri Western and Training Camp sponsors have collaborated with the fans in mind. Your fee for attendance to their outdoor practices? A $5 parking fee. Sure, you’ll have to purchase any food or souvenir items that catch your fancy, but the sheer entertainment of watching the practice is included in your parking cost.

For a list of scheduled practices – check this MWSU link.

The move to St. Joseph for the Chiefs not only kept the team closer to home, it also allowed for the opportunity to build a strong community around their efforts. Yes, St. Joseph has long been a Chiefs football town, but now businesses owners and fans alike can strengthen their dedication. Businesses owners enjoy the added revenue from two weeks of training camp promotions and added consumers and citizens enjoy the opportunity to get up close and personal with their favorite players.

Plus, for those who have made it a point to get to Training Camp in the past two years, the rumors are true – the players are good guys with personable skills. They talk to the fans, the kids and consumers who purchase tickets to the games. They understand why it’s important to interact and what it means for the team as a whole.

It’s all about public relations. Even in this day of online marketing power and a focus on social networking, face-to-face interactions are still valuable. Organizations vying for the consumer dollar are competing with everything from music to electronic devices to instant entertainment.

Without that personal connection, the one with the loudest message and the most money to spend on advertising is more likely to win. For Chiefs football, the budget is there for the advertising, the licensing of gear is in place and viewing opportunities have been secured for more money than most of us manage in a lifetime. But our attention spans are short and without that personal connection, we just may turn to Green Bay or worse – the Raiders.

For those profiting from Chiefs Training Camp this week, it’s a boost for business and another opportunity to make that personal connection. It really doesn’t matter if you’re a professional football player or an insurance company – show the customer you care with personal attention and the loyalty will follow.

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Can Facebook Help my Business?

Posted on July 27, 2012 by admin

Facebook is no longer just for fun – it’s now an integral part of many successful marketing strategies. It has become popularized because it’s a cheap and easy way of gaining exposure, and lots of it.

For example, let’s say you have 20 customers following your page. If those 20 customers have 100 friends each, you have just gained 2000 potential prospects without lifting a finger. Another advantage is that the process is much quicker than waiting for your current customer base to verbally refer you to others. You will also gain credibility as friends of your customers “like” your page and become fans.

The benefit of social media is that it allows you to meet your customer where they are and interact in the medium that they feel most comfortable. Pretty much everyone has a Facebook these days, and the potential for influence and referrals is enormous. Instead of picking up the phone book and looking for, say, a plumber – customers will ask their friends on Facebook for a recommendation.

The strategic use of Facebook also helps spot problems or potential issues and lets you address them before they get out of hand. Monitoring discussion boards and interjecting feedback are great ways to engage customers, find out what they’re thinking, and influence how they perceive your brand.

Other ways you can engage customers through Facebook include announcing upcoming events, providing links to relevant information such as the company newsletter or Twitter account, and embedding videos like client testimonials.

However, utilizing Facebook to drive business does take some skill. It’s not just about throwing up a page and hoping people flock to you. Maintaining the site requires work and entails keeping your content fresh and current so that people will want to keep coming back for more.

To fully leverage the potential that Facebook offers, sometimes it’s necessary to enlist the help of a professional. Experts at Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions can help your business develop a strategy to maximize Facebook SEO efforts and continuously drive traffic to your site. Call us today, and we’ll show you how.

 

Posted in Consistent Customer Communications, Social Media, Social Media Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Am I Ready for eCommerce?

Posted on July 26, 2012 by admin

My business can boom from going global and the only way I can do that is if I push internet sales. That is the secret that will keep my business flourishing and it will take little work to do so. Not so fast! While eCommerce may be the wave of the future, you still have to have your ducks in a row, so to speak, or you’ll fall flat.

Statistics from an article indicate just how fast the internet caught on. It reached a million users in a fraction of the time it took radio or television to do the same thing. Knowing the potential of online sales can be endless, but you have to have a foundation in place in order to be successful.

You must have a website and be able to manage the traffic flow that comes in and out of that site. You need to be ready to accept new sales and be prompt in your delivery. Through eCommerce you’ll be able to stretch well outside your home-based region and across the globe, but unless you know how to deliver your product or service in a timely fashion, the extra sales could end up hurting you in the long run.

To truly be ready for eCommerce, you need to be prepared that your customers have researched your business to determine if you are worthy of their business. As easily as it was to reach you, with just as much ease they can seek out your competitors and determine which product or service is best worth their money.

In a time when consumers are pinching pennies and always on the lookout for the best bargain, you have to be able to compete and express the value of doing business with you over another company. Your marketing needs to be top notch to match your product or you will get eaten alive in the eCommerce world. It takes a little planning and a lot of execution, but as soon as you know that you can determine if eCommerce is your next step for a profitable endeavor.

Being ready to open a shopping cart on your website is a big step and if you are ready to take it but aren’t sure where to begin, we can help. Contact Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions to take the next step in your business adventure and we will make sure it is done in a way that will put you a step above the competition.

Posted in eCommerce, Website | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

I Don’t Have Time for Social Media

Posted on July 25, 2012 by admin

How many times have you uttered this statement? You know the value social media brings to the table, but you just can’t justify the time spent making it happen. You’re too busy with customer calls, appointments, meetings and everything else in your day that generates revenues. It’s your core competency and it’s what should be taking up your time.

That said, it’s still important to incorporate social media into your day. Why? Because the activity you produce on these platforms can impact your success in the market. In other words, you need to get into the conversation and there are a few good reasons why: it impacts your search engine results, it’s an opportunity to engage directly with customers are end users and the competition is doing it.

Social Media Drives Search Engine Results

You already have an online presence and people are finding your website – that should be good enough, right? But, how are people finding your site? Are they typing in the URL because they saw it on your business card or letterhead? Did they type in the name of your company and you appeared on the first page in Google and they were able to click through?

What if a potential customer wanted to find your company, but didn’t know the URL or your name? They know they need what you have to offer, but they don’t know that you exist. You’re located in another city or state and dealing with you via the Internet is just fine, but how will they know you exist? If you are actively engaged in social media platforms using your targeted keywords, they’ll find you.

They will not only find your website, but also your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn conversations by simply starting a search with your keywords. Just be sure when you develop your keyword strategy that you’re using the same words your customers would to look for you. Be strategic in the design of those lists if you want measurable results.

Social Media Offers an Opportunity to Engage

Believe it or not, customers are already talking about you on social media platforms whether you have a presence there or not. They are talking about your products, services and customer service – or lack thereof – when they exchange information. If you’re not engaged in the conversation, they get to control the message. That’s great if they are really happy with what you do – not so much if their opportunity has fallen short of their expectations.

Social media platforms offer you an opportunity to address those situations and provide a solution that creates satisfaction. You then get to talk about it on the platforms and invite others to do the same. Engage with your customers or end users on a regular basis and you not only build a rapport, you can also gather valuable business intelligence.

Social Media – the Competition is Doing It

While your mother always told you it’s not OK to jump off a bridge just because everyone else was doing it, you know that argument didn’t hold water – no pun intended. If your competition is doing it, there’s a reason. Do you want them dominating the conversation in these circles? Do you want potential customers to only land on their website because you aren’t engaged? Are you missing revenue opportunities because you don’t have time for social media?

When you look at the bigger picture, you don’t have time to not do social media. It HAS to be a part of your strategy if you want to win. The timing can work itself out, especially if you engage an outside firm to give you a hand. At Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions, we can handle the social media conversations for you. It doesn’t mean we won’t want you involved, be we can help develop and drive the strategy so you don’t have to. To learn how we can help you, contact us today.

Posted in Social Media, Social Media Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment