What do you expect when visiting a website? For most users, the most important thing is decent content that they can really engage with.
At a guess, your organisation probably does amazing things every day and your issue is that you don’t tell anyone about it? If you’re nodding right about now then it’s time to kick start your content marketing plan. It’s time to start telling users about what you do and how you do it, or for those of you that have a content marketing plan, then this guide will also help you keep your existing audience happy and engaged.
PRACTISE
‘But I’m not a copywriter, I’m a marketer’ I hear you say? News flash, online marketing is constantly changing. You can either choose to hold onto your old ways or move with the changes and start generating quality leads through your online channels by creating unique, valuable content. To start creating engaging copy, start practising. Here are some top tips to help you to do this:
- Listen to your competitors
- Identify the style of writing that suits your organisation
- Identify the content and style of writing which encourages engagement from users
- Poor grammar? If you didn’t score an A+ in English class then make sure you ask your colleagues to proof your content.
- Twitter lists – want to be the first to write about a new topic? Start creating Twitter lists of industry leaders and soon you will begin to identify or predict new industry trends.
IDENTIFY
Identify which type of content is appropriate for each of your channels. For example, industry news is suited to LinkedIn whereas casual content about your office and team would be appropriate for Facebook. Once you identify which content suits which channel you will have a better idea of the type of content you will need to generate, together with the volume of each type of content required.
BUY NOW!
Forget the hard selling tactics, users are bored and immune to shameless sales plugs. Talk about and around your subject matter and services. Users want useful information and if they decide to engage with you online, you will be in a better position to gain business from these leads. For example, if your organisation solves problems for your clients, then perhaps write about your approach to solving problems, from people to paperwork. Don’t have ten giant banners reading, “We can solve your problems – call X NOW!”
DON’T BE A COPY CAT
Your online channels offer you an opportunity to discuss topics at length and you can offer explanations, suggestions and quality content to your users. Make sure you use your online platform to listen to your competitors as this will allow you to make your content unique. It will also allow you to identify user interests, relevant content and up-to-date industry moods. I use Hoot suite lists to monitor competitor’s online activity – this helps to keep my ears to the ground!
THERE IS NO ‘I’ IN TEAM
If you don’t know everything about a topic – that’s OK. Make sure all the content you publish is accurate; if you are unsure of the facts or need further information make sure you involve other members of the team so you can get it right. If you post ambiguous content on your website or social media channels, users will react negatively to this content. Don’t be afraid to delegate content provision to others within your team.
MEASUREMENT
Start benchmarking your results by recording the number of followers you have on Twitter, the number of likes you have on Facebook, the ranking position of your website for your chosen target keywords within Google (Google webmaster tools will help) and your Klout score. Once you start posting content, start tracking the engagement of each post to see how effective these are in terms of engagement. Google Analytics, Twitter analytics, Facebook insights and Klout are all useful and free tools which will help with this.
‘I DON’T HAVE THE TIME’
Of course creating interesting and engaging content for your users takes a lot of time to kick start and continually update, anything that adds value generally does. If you are struggling to add news and blog stories to your website then it’s time to consider hiring an external content curator. Content curation involves finding, organising and sharing content online. If you are having trouble with the above and don’t have the time to dedicate to your content then consider a content provider that will work with you to achieve your online goals.