Pinterest Marketing – Lunch & Learn Prezi

Posted on May 15, 2012 by admin

Welcome to the Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions Lunch & Learn session, “Pinterest Marketing”. For those of you who missed the presentation, we wanted to provide the opportunity to view the Prezi here. Check out the link below and be sure to contact us if you have any questions:

Lunch & Learn Prezi

Posted in Pinterest Content Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Email Marketing – Does it Work?

Posted on May 15, 2012 by admin

Long before you had 300 online “friends” and knew what a hashtag was, email marketing was a valuable outreach tool for potential and current clients, allowing you to segment audiences and tap into their key interests.
It still is.

Email marketing remains a top tool for permission-based communications with clients, supporters or potential clients and holds a unique niche among online marketing tools. One reason is that your website visitors or social media followers are giving you the go-ahead to send them special news and updates. Another reason is that you can easily track which parts of your email messages they’re actually opening, and you can see precisely what action steps they’re taking – especially how many times they’re using your email marketing tools to land right on your homepage.

In fact, the rise of social media has given email marketing knew strength and vigor. You can easily pair up an email marketing campaign within your social media strategy, by setting up an enewsletter or email-based discount that you create as a special part of your website. Then push out the enewsletter link across all your social media platforms, or share an exciting intro section of a story you’ve included in your enewsletter to entice them to subscribe and read it.

Mobile technology has also given new life to email marketing, because your subscribers are more likely to open and browse through your email marketing messages because they don’t have to be a their workstation or home computer to do so.

Keep in mind your enewsletter messages should be clear, straightforward and valuable, like all your other content creation efforts. Make the navigation very basic and uncluttered. Try using a second-person voice, including statements with “you” in them, as if you were talking to a friend. After all, you’ve gained their permission to talk with them, so email marketing opens that door to a more personal dialogue. Ask users to take a next step in every piece of email communications, be it going to your website or reading your social media.

Preview, edit and check your email newsletters and messages before they go out to make sure everything looks the way you want it to- including on mobile formats and various browsers – before you hit the big send. Give readers a chance in every message to opt out, and remember email marketing is another conversation route with your audience but should always maintain your brand integrity.

When you are ready to start working on your email marketing strategy, contact Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions and we will get you headed in the right direction.

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A Cup of Coffee with Polly

Posted on May 14, 2012 by admin

 

We are starting to get a little sad as our Coffee Talk series is coming close to its end. Something that might be interesting to you, our reader, is that these Coffee Talks are just as enlightening and entertaining for us as they are for you. Most of our team members work from home, coffee shops, or wherever WiFi is available, and not in a traditional office setting. Which, is a rare and wonderful opportunity, but  we don’t get to know each  quite other as well as we’d like to. However, we still have a few team members to visit with, and this week we’d like you to meet one of our newest – Polly Howard. She has recently joined the SJC team and here is what she has to say:

Since I was in elementary school, I have always had a passion for writing. When I was in the fifth grade I wrote a 20-plus page story and dreamed of publishing it. Going through some old papers some time ago, I came across my beloved story and realized I had quite a bit of editing and some expanding on the story in order to make it to its prized hard-back quality!

This love for writing continued on to high school and college, but took a bit of a different spin. I majored in broadcast journalism and spent the first six years of my career in broadcasting. Writing in that capacity sure takes on a different style!

My love of writing continues, but it seems to have taken a back seat to life’s craziness. I am fortunate to have come across the opportunity with Susan to be able to spend a little more time focusing on and fine-tuning my words and typing skills.

When I am not in front of the keyboard, I enjoy spending my free time outside. I love summer and sun, especially when I can dig in the garden.  I love to spend time with my family, including Stella, our daughter, and we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of a little brother or sister for her. We opted to be surprised, or at least I have, to enjoy one of life’s greatest blessings and surprises! We’ll now have even numbers for family games, as my husband and I love sports either as participants or spectators, specifically football.

Susan’s take on Polly –

When it was first suggested by a mutual friend that I meet with Polly, my first thought was that I already had enough writers and I didn’t really want to expand my core team. But, I heard she also had an interest in marketing and was considering starting her own firm at some point in the future. I figured I, at the very least, needed to meet this person who could potentially be my competition.

It was a good half hour into our first meeting before I realized Polly Howard is Polly Parsons who used to come into our living room as the Prime Time anchor at KQ2. I was taken by her approach to her career and family, as well as the aspirations she has for her future. After several conversations we decided to bring her on board.

We have some fun plans for Polly, but we’ll let that be part of the surprise. You will see more from her come out of the SJC creativity bank as time goes on.  I for one am excited about what we have in store – and we’ll be ready to celebrate it soon enough.

And, while Coffee Talk may be winding down, I have some ideas to share with Heather (our Coffee Talk editor) to keep this an ongoing and fun read for all of you on Monday mornings. Thanks for spending those few minutes with us. Do come back next week – we still have a few talented people to showcase.

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Tips to Include Case Study Copywriting in Your Content Marketing

Posted on May 11, 2012 by admin

How much of your copywriting budget do you set aside for writing and promoting the case study? Have you recognized the value in developing and marketing this content? If you have happy customers, you have an opportunity to turn that experience into a case study and promote it through your online channels.

Our copywriting and content marketing efforts often include the development of a case study as we believe it’s important to celebrate and promote success. Potential customers want to know what you bring to the table, and not just in your own words. They want to know how you perform in real-world situations. What better sources to provide this information than your current customers.

The case study isn’t the end of the evaluation stage, but often serves as a starting point to gain a better understanding of the services and value you offer. The case study should examine the entire process, outlining the challenges your customer faced before they found you, the activities you incorporated to address those challenges and the positive results they have enjoyed as a result of your efforts.

Prospective customers will recognize those positive benefits and the potential they have in making a similar change within their environment. Don’t be surprised if that prospect asks to speak directly with your customer to ask even more detailed questions and affirm the case study information in the process.

If you’re ready to make the case study a part of your copywriting and content marketing efforts, keep a few tips in mind:

  • Gain the customer’s permission and include them in the process
  • Include information on the challenge, opportunity, solution and results
  • Prominently display the case study on your website and promote it effectively through social media channels.

Now that you’re ready to take your copywriting and content marketing efforts to a case study initiative, we can help. We’ll interview your satisfied customers to develop a customer study to help you shine as a leader in your field. For more information, contact us today.

Posted in Content Marketing, Copywriting | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Should Your Copywriting Efforts Include White Papers?

Posted on May 10, 2012 by admin

White papers – at one time they were technical, dry and frankly rather boring to read. Today, a new trend has emerged. Companies are increasingly using the white paper to function as a more interesting marketing piece. Should you be using this tool in your copywriting efforts to create great content?

The answer to this question really depends upon the industry in which you compete. If yours is a retail location with a website to compliment the in-store experience, white papers will do little to nothing to help drive sales. Sure, you could hire a copywriting service to put together a six page report on the importance of coordinating accessories with a trendy outfit, but the audience you’re after isn’t going to read it.

On the other hand, if you’re offering the latest app to support efficiency in the corporate environment, you need to enable interested parties to build their knowledge on the functionality and why they need it. This is the perfect opportunity to secure that copywriting firm to create a white paper for you. When added with specific information, great graphics and clear relevance to their needs, the white paper makes a powerful marketing tool.

When you’re ready to start down the road to a great white paper, there are a few tips to remember – even if you’re hiring a copywriting firm to take care of the writing for you. First, pay attention to length. There are no hard and fast rules concerning the optimal length of a white paper as there are always exceptions. The thing to remember is the quality of the content. It needs to be rich, well-written and relevant to the reader.

Second, make sure you don’t use the “white paper” as merely a longer version of your sales letter. You’re most likely trading this white paper for contact information with visitors to your site; they will feel cheated if they receive nothing more than a long sales pitch. The white paper should offer value to the reader, not the one providing the white paper.

Once you’ve provided the meat of the topic in the first 7/8 of the paper, it’s OK to include an ending paragraph as to why your company can deliver the product or solution or meet a need.

If you’re ready to explore the potential in a white paper, but you’re not sure where to start, we can help. At Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions, we’re focused on producing great content that drives results. To learn more, give us a call today and we’ll discuss some options.

Posted in White Paper Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Can Twitter Tweak Your Profits

Posted on May 9, 2012 by admin

Twitter is a powerful tool for driving traffic to your site and generating a buzz for your business, if you use it correctly. Sending a new tweet on occasion won’t generate a great deal of traffic; you need to make sure you capture your audience and build a rapport with them through a consistent and intentional strategy. There are a few crucial steps to consider when implementing Twitter into your marketing strategy. An articlein SocialMedia Today outlines these points very well:

  1. Research everything you can about Twitter and how other businesses are using it to benefit their company. Going into it blindly will only be a setup for failure.
  2. Strategize your every move on Twitter. Make your posts “clickworthy” so that your followers will stay engaged.
  3. Use your brand to build awareness about your company or services. Make sure your tweets share your expertise in your field so that your followers (tweeps) will know they are following something/someone who knows what they are talking about.
  4. Stay connected with your followers. If they tweet back to you, make sure you (or a designated person) answer them. Don’t leave their tweets ignored or your efforts will be simply a waste of time.
  5. Make sure you stay active on your Twitter account. A tweet every once in a while won’t cut it, you must be as loyal to it as you are to any other marketing effort you expect will produce results.
  6. Make sure that your tweets have keywords implemented into them so that they are searchable, but don’t overdo it. If your tweet is full of hashtags and @ signs, you’ll quickly lose follower interest.
  7. Use tools such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite or the helpdesk software to check the influence you have on your followers. Make sure they are potential customers and not someone just browsing. If they aren’t potential customers, you may need to rethink your strategy.

Twitter can be a great asset to your company if you know how to use it and use it wisely. If you need assistance, talk to the professionals who do this every day. They can help you build your brand and make your tweets “clickworthy”. At Susan J. Campbell Copywriting, we’re steadily growing our followers through a targeted strategy. For help on getting your campaign going, give us a call today.

Posted in Brand, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Social Media Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Content Marketing: Should You Go In-House, Outsource or Stay Put and Hope to be Found?

Posted on May 8, 2012 by admin

Feeling lost in terms of reaching customers online and searching for ways your information or site can be found? Unlike theories around survival strategies, customers won’t find your online services if you just stay put and watch for the rescue helicopter.  With content marketing, you have to get moving to get found. The solution is content creation and content marketing. The challenge, of course, is time.
As you determine which areas of content marketing you need to implement, such as keyword-focused web writing, a blog campaign or a new social media strategy, you will likely arrive at the question “should I do content marketing in-house, or hire someone to do it?”

The answer is both.

A recent article from the Whole New Web gives insight into doing content marketing in-house or outsourcing, including tips in key areas:

Start with your strategy and an editorial calendar. Your goal is to push out information that pulls customers in to your site, pulls them in to your social media, gets them reading and sharing your blogs, and of course converts them to leads and sales. Manage your strategy by laying out key tasks into an editorial calendar, showing what phrases and keywords you’ll emphasize, through what channels, by whom and on what date.

This can be a change of culture or approach for many in your organization, and without a clear, focused and effective strategy, nothing else in your content marketing efforts will be successful. Ask for help from a professional in the content creation and content marketing industry to make sure your plan is doable and effective – and to prevent that ominous cloud of feeling overwhelmed.

Consider how the work will flow. When you’re a content marketer, you become a content curator – you create and share targeted, valuable information that creates action. Determining how each element of content – from keywords to video to enewsletters and fresh website copy – can reach a specific audience is part of the workflow process.

In the beginning, look to a pro in content creation and content marketing to help you learn to understand and maximize your content workflow. Later, you may be able to assume the overall management of some of the content areas. But in the beginning, it’s critical to get this piece of the content marketing pie right – and very right.

As for content writing, write some content in-house and allow for some of your content to be created through outsourced professionals. This way, you’ll still have that authentic touch that comes from your day-to-day organizational workings, but you’ll also have new perspectives and new insight into reaching customers from content creation professionals. You may be able to email your content creation professionals with a few key thoughts or ideas and see them turn those into great new content that is reused across multiple formats, like a blog and an enewsletter.

SEO optimization: check out the professionals for this one. Using tools like backlinking, forum postings, identifying optimal keywords and managing their results takes time and a level of focus you should outsource. Content creation professionals are there to help you maximize the value for all your written messages and get the highest SEO outcomes possible – so that you can free up some precious mental real estate for other areas, like building your customer relationships.

Should you do content marketing in-house, or hire someone to do it? The answer really is both as the team-based approach to carrying out your content creation systematically, strategically and effectively means you have time focus on your core competencies, and your customers feel even more strongly about the value of your service.

At Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions, we specialize in helping clients to identify the right strategy to meet their needs. While content is our specialty, we work directly with our customers to determine what should be handled by our team and what is best kept within their network. To learn how we might be able to help improve your content marketing efforts, give us a call today

Posted in Content Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Java with Jimmy

Posted on May 7, 2012 by admin

It’s Monday morning again, and you know what that means. Grab your favorite mug and fill it with coffee, take a sip and learn a little more about our team. Today we want to introduce you to the only man in a company of women – Jimmy Myers. He is a brave soul with a passion for writing, so start your week off with a smile and read on!

Majoring in mass communications with a minor in literature at Northwest Missouri State University, I try to draw on both to write informed (non-fiction) articles at SJC. When not on the 9-5 at the local paper, and when I’m not slugging out blogs and tech articles at the home office, I’m engaging the overly hyper six-months-old Weimaraner in my home. A three-mile jog is not enough for the dog named Winston (full AKC name: Sir Winston Bacchus Barrygibb); his energy is incredible and sometimes wears me out.

When time allows, I’m working on house projects, which right now includes upgrading the electric service so I can install new HVAC and researching how to repair a flat roof porch. My house was built in 1922, so there is ALWAYS something to fix.

I also have a small garden that is more fun than I ever though it would be. I’m currently eagerly watching lettuce, shallots, hops (for home brewing), spinach, tomatoes, oregano and basil thrive in the small plot in my backyard.

I’ve been with SJC for about eight months, and it’s exciting to see it grow and to be a part of that growth. It’s also been a total emersion in the tech world. Do you want to talk about interactive voice response or telemetry? Give me a shout.

Susan’s take on Jimmy –

A common phenomenon is an email or a phone call from someone who wants to work with Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions. Sometimes they know what we do, and sometimes they just want to work from home. We have to be careful that the people we bring onto our team not only blend into our culture, but also bring value to fulfill a need. When Jimmy was suggested as a potential add to a company full of women, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

What we actually found in Jimmy was an enthusiastic writer willing to tackle new projects and topics, even with a tight deadline. He’s never afraid to take on something new and he has a vested interest in producing the kind of quality we need to deliver on our promises to a growing client base.  He’s been an excellent addition to our team, helping to take our quality to the next level and enabling us to take on a wider variety of projects.

One of our favorite things about Jimmy is his fun personality, which tends to shine in his communications with me and my project manager (remember Monday Morning Coffee with Lisa?). It’s always fun when you’re on a tight deadline and a fun quip comes across in an email, forcing you to stop, smile and relax a bit. And, while the rest of the team may be looking forward to a girl’s trip to a local home decor store as a perk for a job well done, Jimmy offered to stay behind and shampoo the carpets. Gotta love that kind of work ethic!

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Are You Using Apple Blossom Marketing?

Posted on May 4, 2012 by admin

The weekend is approaching and if you’re in or close to St. Joseph, MO, you’ll have no trouble finding something to do. Aside from the Air Show, Women’s Build Day at Habitat for Humanity, the Pot of Gold Auction at the Albrecht Kemper Museum of Art and Better Block St. Joe, it also time for the Apple Blossom Festival. A St. Joseph tradition, Apple Blossom marketing is 88 years strong.

If you haven’t prepared a float and your idea of a good time is not walking in a parade, the good news is the Apple Blossom festival weekend can still provide value. This traditional weekend is something that allows you to enjoy the benefits of an already strong customer base. The Apple Blossom Festival has brand value – are you making the most of it?

The Better Block St. Joe organization certainly is, celebrating the activity scheduled to take place downtown. If you operate a business in the St. Joseph area, you have the opportunity to leverage Apple Blossom marketing by simply mentioning the name and what you plan to offer customers during the active weekend.

This is not to suggest you encroach on the trademark of another, but a simple post like this or a banner across your homepage that reads, “Coming to enjoy the Apple Blossom Parade this weekend? Once the festivities are done, check out our $4 lunch special.” or something of that nature will work. The idea is there are people coming to the metropolitan area for the weekend – how can you draw some of that traffic into your business?

Event marketing has been a key tool for driving traffic and capturing attention for a number of years. For those in this area seeking to leverage Apple Blossom marketing, the idea is to capture that attention and provide a holistic approach to entertainment for the consumer at large. Pay attention to your community and the different planned events and how you might be able to attract new revenue dollars and build new and lasting customer relationships.

Need ideas on how to create that buzz in your own marketing strategy? Susan J. Campbell Copywriting can work with you to brainstorm and identify new ways to grab attention. For more information, contact us today.

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Creating a Better Downtown

Posted on May 3, 2012 by admin

There have been many groups over the years that have tried to wake up the sleepy downtown of St.Joseph, MO, but with little to no success. There are many questions that come to mind when the topic of revitalizing our downtown comes up: What makes the Better Block St. Joe group different from the others? What makes it stand out from the rest? And will their efforts be successful? What is the one thing that the current organization has that the others didn’t? The answer is simple…social media.

Better Block, also featured in this Tuningfork.TV article, is an initiative that did not originally start here in St. Joseph, but success in Texas has generated excitement here in our small city. Now, a number of local organizations are working together to  temporarily fill vacant storefronts in the 500 block of Felix. The purpose for this initiative? Demonstrating to local citizens in St. Joseph in hopes of proving that the downtown has great things to offer – if we develop it. Better Block St. Joe has a strong following on Facebook and Twitter, the two largest forms of free advertising in today’s fast paced world of social media marketing.

This is the first time that Better Block St. Joe has organized this event and there is always a learning curve when an event with this much potential is planned (rumor has it that there is already a second event being discussed). By using social media marketing to get the word out, hopefully it has made the residents of St. Joseph just curious enough to show up this weekend to support their efforts. People are likely wondering if this is the group that will succeed in bringing life back into the downtown area.

In an article from The Atlantic Cities, a local real-estate developer known as Public Interest Projects suggests there is solid proof that a city’s downtown can not only thrive when it is rebuilt properly, but it can be the financial answer to a city that is going broke. Joe Minicozzi, the new projects director at the real-estate firm in Asheville, believes that “Per-acre, our downtowns have the potential to generate so much more public wealth than low-density subdivisions or massive malls by the highway. And for all that revenue they bring in, downtowns cost considerably less to maintain in public services and infrastructure.”

For example, “Asheville has a Super Walmart that is not located in its downtown. Its tax value is $20 million, but it sits on 34 acres of land. This means that the Super Walmart yields about $6,500 an acre in property taxes, while a remodeled JCPenney downtown is worth $634,000 in tax revenue per acre.” (Add sales tax revenue, and the downtown property is still worth more than six times as much as the Walmart per acre.) That is a staggering statistic. Please take a minute to read the rest of the article (see the link above); it’s worth the read and it helps put things into perspective in a way that makes sense to those of us who don’t have a degree in economics.

Here at SJC Copywriting Solutions, we do what we can to support local businesses. The Better Block St. Joe event is just an extension of that support. We are going to be there because we want downtown St. Joseph to be a thriving, economically successful part of our city, and we hope you do too. Come out this Friday and Saturday to visualize the potential of our downtown. After the Apple Blossom parade, just go down to the 500 block of Felix to show your support.

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