While it’s true I promised you the remaining tips for your social media strategy, there’s an amazing infographic from Alltop I wanted to share with you first. I first found this great information on Twitter (thanks @GuyKawasaki). If you’re curious as to why there’s so much emphasis placed on content marketing, you need to check this out: http://holykaw.alltop.com/the-content-marketing-explosion-infographic?tu2=1
If you’re confused by the question, the likely answer is that you don’t have one. If you’re doing anything with social media without a strategy to guide your actions, you’re wasting time and resources. In fact, you could skip social media altogether and let your competitors dominate in this space.
Chances are, that’s not your intention. Fortunately, the Social Media Examiner has provided some tips to help you along the way. We’re borrowing from their expertise to provide you some guidance on developing your social media strategy. Check it out:
Outline Your Goals in Your Social Media Strategy –
You know one of the most important elements within your business is to have a goal. You likely have goals for sales, number of customers called, number of donors reached, etc. The same applies here – what do you hope to accomplish with your social media? While you’re developing your answer, don’t forget to keep it simple and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic/Relevant, and Timely).
A Social Media Strategy Beings with Research –
You know where you want to get to, but how will you get there? What are your competitors doing? Where are your customers or donors hanging out? Where are the key conversations surrounding your industry taking place? You need to know the answers to these questions before you successfully launch your campaign.
Develop a Digital Rolodex –
If you want to be considered the authority in your industry, you have to play the game. Make connections by following the right conversations. Subscribe to blogs in your industry and keep a list of influencers who are relevant to your business. This not only helps you to build relationships naturally, it also provides an excellent resource for your content.
More Social Media Strategy Tips to Come……
We don’t want to offer everything we know in the first post. After all, we want you to come back. There are 4 more tips we’ll provide in the next blog. Until then, start on the first three – you’ve got your work cut out for you. The good news is it can pay off in the end.
Finding an evening when the kids have plans outside the home at the same time provides a unique opportunity for a date night. At this point in our marriage, that date night includes running a few errands that couldn’t be attended to during the week while the majority of my focus is on content marketing.
Necessities out of the way, we headed to a local eatery, ready to use a gift card presented by my awesome team for Boss’s Day. (Yes, I’m a little behind on the redemption curve.) Just before the 7:00 bell, our restaurant of choice was starting to overflow in the waiting area, an expected phenomenon on a Friday night.
Management must have forgotten to inform the hosting staff of this phenomenon as we were not greeted with quality service, but instead exasperated looks by individuals clearly annoyed at the prospect of serving yet another couple who had walked through the door.
While this particular location is supported by a national ad campaign and powerful branding, their food and service were not enough to attract my attention. The only reason for my business was the possession of a gift card that included three other restaurants not available in St. Joseph. My total spend? Only $2 more than the face amount of my gift card.
If I were truly standing on principal, I would have walked straight over to the night manager and pointed out the poor behavior of the staff responsible for greeting those providing their revenue. Will that hurt the restaurant’s business? Probably not, but they won’t get my money anytime soon.
For the smaller business without a national ad budget – or even local budget – the focus has to be on quality of service. We provided content marketing for companies all over the world, but even quality writing won’t bring new revenue for these companies if they don’t place a priority on service.
That said, plan for your content marketing strategy only after you implement clear guidelines for caring for your current customer base. It just doesn’t make any sense to attract new customers if they will quickly turn to your competitors.
If you’re ready to explore the power of content marketing, give SJC Copwriting a call – we’d love to help you with your strategy.
On an almost daily basis, I am often asked about my line of work. One common question, once I explain exactly what it is that we do at SJC Copywriting, is how we know what to write about. This is a simple question, but it doesn’t have a one-word answer. In fact, the answer could be considered flaky: it really depends.
This ambiguity is not to deflect the question, but to provide an opportunity for explanation. The real answer is that it depends on the client’s audience. Yes, we do writing of our own – as demonstrated by this blog – but the focus of most of our work is creating dynamic content for our long list of clients.
I like the explanation provided in this Content Management News piece: focus on the needs of your marketplace. We could easily fill pages and pages with content exploring the benefits a client offers to customers, why their product is truly the best and how to maximize an investment in the latest solutions – but do readers really care about any of those things?
To truly use content to its fullest value – leveraging the marketing potential – you have to ensure it offers something to the reader. If your site inundates the visitor with an overload of things they need to do for you, what value do you deliver in this experience? Excessive sales notes and “Act Now” commandments simply scare people away. You lose the power of the exclusive offer when visitors don’t understand how they will benefit.
Content marketing as a strategy only works when it is designed to extend value to the reader. Simply posting content for the sake of content to try and earn search rank results will quickly tag a site as spam or junk. In fact, Google now has human reviewers checking sites and trashing those with no reader value. Legitimate sites aren’t generally a concern, but the reality is the bar has been set higher than ever.
That said, what are you doing to extend value to your readers? Do you extend just enough that they want to come back for more? If you aren’t sure where to start, we can help. At SJC Copywriting, we know content and we know marketing – a combination of the two online can drive more revenue for you. The only question that remains is – what are you waiting for?
Good news: even in a wave of exciting Internet-based marketing tools, the basics still matter – in fact, the basics of your brand identity mean more today than ever. Your efforts to be found online and to connect with new audiences are hinged upon the solid foundation of a clearly-articulated and unique brand identity.
What, Exactly, Is Your Brand?
Your brand is the unique combination of your logo and tagline that tell a potential buyer why you’re different from everyone else, and why they should select you and your services. Who do your customers think you are? This is also a key element of branding your business, as well as the information that lets your clients know precisely what they’ll receive from you.
Your Logo is Your Thumbprint
Create a logo carefully, as this small piece of art packs a great deal of power in making you memorable among your customers and helping them sort you out from a list of competitors. Don’t overcomplicate your logo so that it isn’t readable, but allow some room for boldness. Make sure your logo can be reproduced well in black and white or color, since you’ll be placing in on everything you send out – your letterhead, your web site, your emails and social media pages.
Taglines: An Essential, Straightforward (and Fun) Branding Tool
Your tagline is a statement about the best work you do – in only about five words. This takes time and effort, but is critical toward tying together your logo with the outcomes your clients can expect. It’s a showcase of who you are as an organization and communicates the top benefits you offer. Many organizations create a snappy logo but not an accompanying tagline — and they’re missing out on a distinct branding opportunity.
Emotion and Consistency: You Need ‘Em Both
Your logo and tagline should create some form of emotional punch for your viewers and clients, and this emotion should be repeated over and over. The colors you choose, the fonts and the message should all point to emotional energy. Sound complicated? Try it this way: think of your brand as capturing a feeling like power, progress or triumph. Identify a few emotion-packed words that you will want to focus in on when creating or reevaluating your brand identity. Once you’ve crafted the right logo, tagline and emotional strength, be sure your brand identity remains like your thumbprint and appears on everything you do – from your top-notch blogs to your press releases and of course, your email and social media signatures.
For the greatest success, aim for incorporating the traditional basics of powerful brand identity into newer tools, like backlinking and forum posts – all part of your overall brand strategy that’s built on quality, meaningful content. Contact our innovative team at Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions today to discover an easy, effective brand strategy for 2012.
Join the Club: LinkedIn groups are powerful
Attract Great Minds with LinkedIn
LinkedIn Answers: Strategic Posting Arena
Even with the intrigue of tools offered by networks like LinkedIn, all your efforts to build a stronger brand identity and more leads must be connected to an overall strategy. That strategy should include integration within the basics, like brand recognition and quality web site content – which never go out of style for the impacts they provide. When you are ready to plan your social media strategy for the upcoming year, contact Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions to guide you.
As 2011 comes to an end, take a moment to think about your social media objectives for 2012. Twitter has compiled this Year in Review to put things into perspective – read through some of these eye opening statistics, and when you are finished, contact Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions to help guide you into your social media future!
Content marketing. Content-driven marketing. SEO. They’re all terms that relate to the same critical, but fundamentally basic, concept: Businesses that use the power of the Internet to hone in on the specific information their audience is looking for, get more leads and make more money.
Defining Content Marketing
Content marketing is the act of identifying the keywords and phrases that will get you the most recognition and action online, and then using those words in high-quality, useful news posts, blogs, articles, social media messages and web copy. Though the tools used to carry out content marketing may be somewhat new, the philosophies behind it aren’t. You could consider content marketing as taking the fundamental philosophies of good marketing one step further to turn interested users/readers of your material into buyers.
The key, as addressed in a recent post on CMO, is quality. You will be more influential with key audiences when your content (blogs posts, e-newsletters, articles, videos, social media updates, web site material) is original and serves to educate and inspire. Let all your content for 2012 work to answer users’ questions, and their loyalty and their business will follow.
Like fundamental marketing methods, content marketing must be addressed within a strategic schedule. You need a plan. This schedule should include knowing which keywords are most effective for your desired audience, and how and when you’ll post or write about those keywords. You should still see the basics of traditional marketing strengths within a content marketing strategy, such as press releases, but these, too, should be plugged in to blogs, social media posts and e-newsletter and web site material. Luckily, there are numerous content recycling techniques and strategies out there to make this process straightforward – and fun.
Characteristics of Good Content Marketing
The information should be credible and serve to educate your reader. It should also inspire readers toward some next step, and this will naturally allow your content to create strong dialogue and relationships. Readers should be able to give your material a quick read and feel that their questions are answered. Ultimately, your quality content marketing materials will allow you to be “found” by potential customers without an overwhelming effort to push the message outward.
Set up your marketing strategies in 2012 around quality content-marketing, and let the nature of the process delight you with results. If you’re ready to get started, contact Susan J. Campbell Copywriting to help you get started.
Can you effectively define what it means to brand your business? This video was produced by the University of East Anglia in the UK and provides a great tutorial to what it means to brand. If you’re ready to explore what this means for your business – contact Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions today!
Social media is the easiest way to grab the attention of a potential customer. In fact, 48.9 percent of companies use social medial to generate leads for their company. Make sure you are utilizing the social media tools to the best of their potential or you may miss out on opportunities along the way, as captured in this blog.
In order to generate the most leads from your social media, follow these seven simple guidelines:
Social media can be used for so many different things. Whether it is to visit with current customers to ensure their satisfaction, advertise your product to grab potential customers, or just to inform people of the services you have to offer. No matter what you are using social media for, make sure you are using it to the best of your ability so that you can gain the most benefits from it in the long run.
Need help putting your social media strategy in place? Contact Susan J Campbell Copywriting Solutions today for a free consultation.
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