The online world is fast becoming a noisy marketplace where it’s more and more challenging to be heard above all the words and images.
For all of us seeking to maximize our online presence and capture real value for our websites, digital content creation represents the gateway to larger audiences.
But with so much noise, what is the best way for you to be heard? Take a look.
6 Tips for Digital Content Creation
- Digital content means more than just words. While words and images are key, a website is now really a collection of many powerful tools designed to interact in different ways with visitors. Think about all the digital possibilities available today including audio, video, graphics and animation.
- Stay true to your message. All the blogs or video in the world can’t help a confused message. When creating digital content, focus on that one key message, theme or storyline. And then tell it! White papers, press releases, blogs and podcasts are just some of the ways companies can offer up compelling content.
- Choose your words carefully. Even Thomas Jefferson knew this one when he cleverly uttered, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
- Words matter, particulary the right words. Search engine optimization (SEO) is directly tied to the words you choose. By selecting appropriate long-tail keywords, you increase your chances of connecting the right people and information -- and rising above the traffic noise.
- Stretch your creative side. Mixing digital mediums can be incredibly fun, so let it go when working with images or interviewing that CEO for a podcast.
- Make more connections. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ ... all these social media sites offer tremendous opportunities to connect. Content can become a country without borders, so take advantage of these networks to connect your content to new audiences.
- Keep learning. The world of digital content creation is still young. With new software and tutorials springing up daily, you’ll never be short of ideas or resources that can help your project along.
Digital content creation can be an exciting journey, particularly when you discover a new way to tell your story through sound or images.
We're coming up on Super Bowl Sunday and those who call ourselves Giants fans are very, very excited. Inbound marketers around the globe should be excited, too.
By our nature, inbound marketers have a lot in common with the Giants team that finds itself one win away from the world championship. What could inbound marketers have in common with Manning, Cruz, Coughlin & Company? A lot more than you might think.
How Inbound Marketers Are Like the Giants
- We keep pounding away. This season was not an easy ride for the Giants. After starting off with some successes, they lost four in a row during weeks 10-13 followed by a demoralizing loss to the Washington Redskins in week 15. They could have given up, but they didn't -- winning five in a row to go the Super Bowl. Inbound marketers don't give up, either. We keep pounding away, creating new content, building new landing pages, nuturing new leads and converting new customers. Consistency is the trick with inbound marketing.
- We have multiple tools. When the Giants are playing well, they can hurt their opponents in different ways. QB Eli Manning can throw long to WRs Victor Cruz, Hakeem Nicks or Mario Manningham. The Giants can pound it up the middle with RBs Ahmad Bradshaw and Brandon Jacobs. Or the defense can make something big happen with a sack or turnover. Inbound marketers have lots of tools as well. We can create content on our blogs or put it on our landing pages. We can use SEO to get found by the right people. We can promote our content with social media and email campaigns. In short, we can find lots of ways to win.
- We are disciplined. During week 14 in a must win game against the Dallas Cowboys, Coach Tom Coughlin benched star running back Bradshaw for the entire first half. Why? Bradshaw had missed curfew and Coughlin decided discipline was more critical to the Giants' success than having any one player in the game. Inbound marketers must also be disciplined. New content must be created consistently. If your plan calls for blogging twice a week, you must post twice a week. If one post does great, you can't take the week off and dance around the end zone.
- We don't get intimidated. When the Giants made the playoffs, they knew every playoff game would be on the road. When they won the wild card game against the Atlanta Falcons, their next opponent would be the Green Bay Packers in Lambeau Field. And the Pack had lost just one game all season. The Giants were not intimidated and beat Green Bay 37-20 for a huge win to put them one victory away from the Super Bowl. Inbound marketers aren't intimidated either. We can compete well against outbound marketers, even though they're often the favorites with big budgets and established champions in their organizations. Why? Because the inbound marketing game plan is a winner.
- We're in the Super Bowl. The Giants this Sunday play in one of the most watched sporting events of the year. More than 110 million people tuned in to the 2011 Super Bowl. This is a marketer's dream, which explains why TV airtime during the game is the most expensive of the year. Inbound marketers play in the Super Bowl every single day. We live on the Internet, which has more than 2 billion worldwide users -- nearly 20 times the viewership of the Super Bowl. We work in the single biggest marketing opportunity ever known. It's game day every day.
I may not be wearing blue every time I sit down at my desk to write a blog post, build a call to action or set up a new landing page, but I know I'm approaching it just like the Giants, who created an improbable run to the Super Bowl this year with unsurpassed discipline and toughness. That's what it takes to be a successful inbound marketer.
The tools the Giants relied on this year are the same tools we inbound marketers use every day of the week. Except this Sunday, of course. When we'll all be watching the Giants beat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI!
On this blog we talk about Inbound Marketing a great deal, as it's the best way I know to conduct online marketing successfully.
Inbound Marketing allows us to turn websites into lead-generating propositions, rather than simply sit as billboards on the side of the information highway. But, you may ask, where's the proof that Inbound Marketing works so well?
The answer comes in our new, free Inbound Marketing eBook: "Lead Generation Lessons from 4,000 Businesses." What do these lessons show? Here are three examples.
3 Lessons from Our Inbound Marketing eBook
- Blogging pays huge dividends. Companies that blog 16 to 20 times per month get 3 times more leads than those that do not blog.
- Social media is fantastic for promoting content. Businesses with 301 to 1,000 Twitter followers have 5 times more traffic than those with 1 to 25 followers.
- Landing pages are critically important. Businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages get 7 times more leads than those with just 1 to 5.
Importantly, this eBook is built on real data from 4,000 businesses that conduct Inbound Marketing using HubSpot Inbound Marketing software.
If you'd like to see more about just how and why Inbound Marketing works, click on the image below to download the free eBook.
(This post originally appeared on the Veronica's Nap blog of author Sharon Bially, who is head of our book publicity program.)
My husband is in the food business, so the debate over whether higher prices mean better quality is constant in our household. Pricier restaurants are usually better, right? And those underpriced gems? Why are they underpriced if they’re really gems?
The same debate is raging in the book world right now. An eBook priced at $9.99 has got to better than one at $2.99. And let’s not even talk about those 99-cent “dollar dreadfuls.”
But… wait. Haven’t you ever been disappointed — disgusted, even — by a meal you’ve paid a lot for? Or delighted to discover a cheap neighborhood café where someone’s uncle or grandma is cooking up family recipes with a dash of love?
(Don’t even get me started about what actually goes on in the kitchens of those pricey joints. You don’t want to know.)
The parallels are eye-opening. Fancy restaurants have fancier amenities and higher overhead costs to cover. Many are run by corporations backed by investors demanding profits and growth. And if you step back and analyze why certain categories of books are more expensive for the most part, you’ll realize that a lot of it has to do with corporate profit margins and bottom line.
Is that what you want shaping your reading choices or your impression of a book?
It’s true that there are plenty of dollar dreadfuls out there. But there’s just as much cr*p available for far more than $9.99.
Unfortunately, it seems a lot of readers don’t make that connection and assume that a book’s low price equates to poor quality. A friend of mine recently asked, “What can you expect from a book that costs $2.99?” That widespread bias is misleading, and sad.
It also hurts authors. Pricing has a big impact on book sales. Simply put, more readers buy lower-cost books. Unless a book is some sort of blockbuster or buzzed-about trend-setter, many of its potential readers will hesitate or hold back at higher price points. Those who don’t may be the type of sophisticated, discriminating readers every writer dreams of appealing to, but do we as authors really want — and can we really afford — to be discriminant about who reads our books?
With no bookstore presence, no New York Times review or media platform to help spread the word about Veronica’s Nap, I’d personally rather price the eBook on the low side, cast a wide net, sell more copies and increase the probability of reaching the individuals who will truly care about it.
Smart shoppers will understand the importance of other signs of quality, such as my cover blurbs (including one by a National Book Award winner), a peek at the content inside and rave reviews by book bloggers and Amazon customers.
Like the scent of a home-cooked meal wafting out from that modest-looking, mom-and-pop restaurant down the street, these speak for themselves.
(This post originally appeared on the Veronica's Nap blog of author Sharon Bially, who is head of our book publicity program.)
You may have already heard me shouting in excitement about the fact that the Kindle version of Veronica’ Nap has been selling like crazy!
Since the free promo I ran on Friday, January 13, it’s been downloaded by over 6,100 people, has reached #1 in the Kindle Jewish fiction category (it’s now hanging in there at #4, just a few spots below international blockbuster Sarah’s Key) and hit #2 in the overall contemporary fiction category. Sales have continued steadily since the promo at about 40 per day.
People have been asking: “What’s the trick to making this happen?”
While there’s no single trick, there are many steps authors can take that’ll up the chances of making Amazon work to sell their books. Most importantly right now is: Enroll in the Amazon KDP Select program, which gives authors who agree to sell their e-book exclusively on Amazon the chance to run 5, 24-hour promotions over the course of 90 days.
With millions and millions of users each day and all sorts of mythical algorithms that supposedly help get books in front of their most likely audience, Amazon is perhaps the single most powerful book promoter there is.
I’ll also venture to guess that two things may have contributed to the success of my own first promotion:
1) Listing Veronica’s Nap in Amazon’s Jewish fiction category.
The Jewish reader market is colossal. If indeed Amazon is using its magical algorithms to target it, I’m sure that’s given Veronica’s Nap a promotional steroid shot.
This kind of fine-tuned targeting makes perfect sense not only on Amazon, but also from an overall marketing perspective, as I’ve blogged about at Writer Unboxed.
2) Having many four- and five-star Amazon reader reviews.
When total strangers click on a book’s page and see 20 customer reviews averaging just about 5 stars, they’re probably compelled to explore further. A list of positive reviews that keeps growing surely helps, too.
* * *
Which leads me to three other things that I think are key for everyone:
1) A book’s product description.
As a PR pro, I cannot emphasize enough how important this one-paragraph summary of a book is — and how important it is for this description to be spot-on and professional-grade. Not professional fiction-writer grade, but professional marketer grade. I’ve seen too many authors miss the mark with their own their descriptions by leaving out the points and language that will hook readers (and including lots of verbiage that won’t).
2) The “Look Inside” feature.
Gotta have it. It let’s readers make a quick decision about whether they want to read more. Which brings me to the need for….
3) A kick-*ss first line and page (then second, then third, etc.)
Remember the age-old “first page” rule about making the first page, the first sentence, even the first word as compelling as possible to hook an agent? It’s more important now than ever. Agents often say they’ll know by the end of the first line whether they’ll keep reading a manuscript. A book’s potential readers will, too. If you’re a new or unknown author, this is your chance to draw them in.
And I’m a firm believer that in today’s publishing marketplace, it’s readers’ opinions that count the most.
Blogs are one of the best tools I know for online marketing, serving as the centerpiece for inbound marketing campaigns. And it's no secret, either. Many companies have embraced blog marketing as an important part of their overall marketing mix.
Unfortunately, quite a few of these organizations are making simple mistakes, seriously undermining the effectiveness of their blog marketing campaigns.
By simply knowing what they are, these errors can be easily avoided. In that spirit, here are 8 ways to go wrong with your blog marketing.
Common Mistakes in Blog Marketing
- Setting up your blog on another domain. Free blogging services such as Wordpress, Tumblr and Blogger are terrific, with powerful features that make blogging a dream. For your company's blog, however, it's critical to host the blog on the same domain as your website. That's because a big goal of blog marketing is to drive traffic to your site, where visitors can become interested in your products and services.
- Burying your subscription options. One of the great advantages of blogs is they can automatically send posts to readers, either via email or RSS feed subscriptions. It's important, then, to make sure your subscription options can be easily found. Make them big and above the fold so visitors can subscribe without having to scroll and look for them.
- Ignoring keywords when choosing topics. Blogs are powerful search engine optimization (SEO) vehicles for many reasons. Thus, your blog posts should be optimized around the keywords you want to emphasize for your business. In this way, your blog posts become signposts for your company, found when users conduct Google searches relevant to your products and services. Keywords should drive your blog topics.
- Writing about yourself. Blog posts should be useful to your readers, helping them in their own endeavors. Posts that simply advertise your company's products or services are not similarly useful to readers and will not entice them to spend time with your content or share it with others. When you sit down to write, keep your readers' needs in mind.
- Drafting posts that are too long. Your posts don't need to be exhaustive explorations of the topics you are examining. They should simply give readers a taste for new ideas that can be useful to them. Readers should be able to consume your posts quickly and easily. In addition to keeping length short, use lots of bullets, numbers and headlines to make reading even easier.
- Underestimating the importance of images. Picures and graphics make blog posts more appealing and, therefore, should be included with each post you write. A great image can draw readers into a post in a way that text alone cannot. Just look at how newspapers and magazines use images. No reason why your blog can't do the same thing.
- Blogging without a schedule. Sticking to a rigid publication schedule is not the point of this exercise. Consistency is. If you are scheduled to post every Monday and Wednesday, the key is to make sure you get out posts twice a week. Readers will get used to hearing from you and the collective SEO value of all the posts you create will only grow over time.
- Forgetting about social media promotion. Once you've drafted and published your post, get the most out of it. Sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ will expose your work to new readers. Make sure to have social media sharing links available on each post to ease the process for your visitors.
Avoid these common mistakes and your blog marketing efforts will bear fruit, driving traffic to your site and allowing you to capture leads and generate new customers.
Inbound marketing is a great way to supercharge your website, transforming it from a simple billboard to an interactive machine that can -- and will -- develop leads and new customers.
Voillà, your website becomes an investment rather than an expense.
This seems like a no-brainer. After all, what business wouldn't want a return from its website investment? Before embarking on an inbound marketing strategy, however, it makes sense to confirm that this approach is right for your particular business.
To do so, consider the following.
Will an Inbound Marketing Strategy Work for Your Business?
- Are your potential customers online? Inbound marketing is an online strategy, so you obviously need an online audience. This doesn't mean you need to have a lot of customers right now who find you online. It means your customer base should be relatively web savvy. Some companies underestimate this, figuring that since they have a brick-and-mortar location, online marketing is not for them. In truth, most consumers are online today -- just where you want them.
- Are you comfortable creating content for your business? Inbound marketing is all about content. So, it's important to consider whether your business is one where you can envision creating compelling blog posts, white papers, etc. This doesn't mean you have to write them youself. You can hire for that. The question is, do you have expertise that can be shared effectively as web content? Hint, most companies do.
- Can your business make use of leads? The point of inbound marketing is to generate leads through the creation and promotion of compelling content. So you must have a business where leads -- individuals who become interested in your products and services, over time -- are truly useful. Companies that rely solely on impulse purchases, for example, may not care much about long-term leads. But many, many businesses do.
- Will you convert your leads? Getting good leads from your inbound marketing strategy and nuturing them until they are engaged is where the marketing effort ends. Now it's up to sales, and for smaller companies this may well be the CEO. Make sure you're willing to spend the time to follow up with your leads and take the final step of converting them to customers. This should be the fun part, where you actually generate return on investment.
- Are you willing to be scientific? Here, I don't mean go out and get a PhD. Simply put, any inbound marketing strategy is a process that can be measured and produce predictable results. You need to spend some time with your data, analyzing what is working and what can be tweaked. With the use of good inbound marketing software -- we use Hubspot -- the data itself speaks volumes, helping you fine-tune your program for maximum results.
If you decide an inbound marketing strategy is right for your company -- and it is right for quite a number of organizations, of all sizes -- then it's just a matter of getting started. What are you waiting for?
Farrell Kramer Communications is pleased to announce the launch of a full suite of Inbound Marketing services, which can turn your website into a lead -- and customer -- generating machine.
Why Inbound Marketing?
Ever wonder how some companies' websites consistently generate tons of traffic, which is converted into leads and, eventually, customers?
Ever look at your own website and wonder why it just sits there, like a billboard on the side of a deserted highway?
The secret to many successful corporate websites is Inbound Marketing, a system that uses the creation of compelling content in a systematic way to drive the right kind of traffic and convert it into leads and customers.
How Do Inbound Marketing Services Work?
Inbound Marketing is a 4-step process. It works as follows:
- Step 1: Generate Traffic. New, compelling content is created on the website and made accessible via search engine optimization (SEO) and blogging. It is promoted in a variety of ways.
- Step 2: Convert Traffic into Leads. Website visitors come across free offers, such as eBooks and whitepapers, appealing to them specifically. They enter contact information in order to download the free content, converting them into leads.
- Step 3: Nurture Leads to Become Customers. Once leads are in they system, they are put into automated lead nuturing campaigns, receiving periodic emails with additional useful information. Once sufficiently engaged, they can be approached as potential customers.
- Step 4: Analyze the Process. All sources of site traffic are captured and analyzed over time, helping to understand what is working and what is not.
As part of our Inbound Marketing services offering, Farrell Kramer Communications has become a certified partner agency of Hubspot, which provides the finest Inbound Marketing software we have seen. Hubspot software automates much of the Inbound Marketing process, making it more efficient and effective.
In fact, the blog you are reading now is powered by Hubspot software, as is the entirety of the Farrell Kramer Communications website.
Over time, we'll be blogging a lot more here about Inbound Marketing and how it can help you, in addition to the content we will continue to offer on Public Relations, social media and content creation. If you'd like to learn more about Inbound Marketing services in the meantime, please feel free to contact us.
We'd like to wish all of you a wonderful holiday season and offer our best wishes for a prosperous 2012.
FKC Blog will be on vacation until just after the New Year. We'll be launching an exciting new service at Farrell Kramer Communications early next year, so please stay in touch with us here on the blog for all the details.
Twitter is a great tool for companies of all sizes. It can serve a number of purposes: enhancing public relations activities, driving marketing programs and powering lead generation initiatives.
Importantly, like most social media, Twitter is absolutely free and not hard to do. It just takes a little knowledge, a bit of time and a dash of commitment.
If you've got those covered, just follow these 5 tips to get yourself tweeting like the social media experts.
How to Tweet Like the Social Media Experts
- Tweet with a purpose. Social media experts know that to use Twitter effectively, you've got to have a plan. Twitter is a great way to drive traffic to your website. So, one approach may be using Twitter to enhance your content marketing strategy. It can also be used to get additional exposure for your PR clips, making them more valuable. The key is to know why you're tweeting. This will keep your program focused.
- Build your followers strategically. A Twitter program is only as effective as the followers you have. So, put some real thought into whom those people should be. If you are looking to engage prospective clients or customers, follow people who fit that profile. There are lots of search tools and lists to help you find the right folks. Then, it's just a matter of following them and creating interesting tweets so they follow you back.
- Tweet consistently. Social media experts know that consistency on Twitter is critical to success. Commit to tweeting a certain number of times a day. Somewhere between 5 and 10 should get you going. This need not be a burden. There are tools that allow you to write a day's worth of tweets ahead of time and schedule them for posting at specific times of day. This is a great way to make sure you cover all your topics.
- Don't put Twitter on autopilot. If you write your tweets ahead of time, make sure to keep an eye on your Twitter app and respond to what's going on among your followers. Retweet your followers when they post something interesting. Ask a question every now and then. Work to engage with your followers when you have time. You don't have to do this 24/7. But a little will go a long way.
- Provide useful information. This is absolutely key. When you tweet, create posts that will be helpful to your followers. If you write a blog or whitepaper that contains good advice, by all means tweet it out. Your followers will be appreciative. On the flipside, if you're being overly promotional in your tweets, your followers will get the idea quickly enough and unfollow you. It pays to be a good Twitizen.
There are certainly lots of ways to improve your Twitter efforts. But if you start with these five, your Twitter program will be off and running and you'll soon be tweeting like the social media experts.