by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Mar 20, 2014 | Blogging, Content Marketing, Social Media
Your business blog is an essential tool for your inbound marketing efforts in terms of SEO, generating social proof, credibility, creating a community, becoming known as a thought leader and generating visits, leads, and conversion to customers and brand ambassadors. It has to the opportunity to spin gold as if you have the Midas Touch.
It is THE most valuable piece of company real estate you own. With a little caressing and foreplay, it should resonate with your prospective buyers, meeting their needs, pain points and answering their questions. Whatever they may be.
“Companies that blog have 55% more visitors and generate 70% more leads than companies who don’t. Hubspot
Organizations are pumping up their online efforts to write compelling content and devour a piece of the market share, the hungry consumer. If you are not part of this bandwidth, churning out and feeding the insatiable, then you miss the train. It is a strong leader in your social media channels.
You write for them.
Not yourself.
Not the search engines.
They are the ones inputting the string of keywords to find YOU! Help them.
Laboring over content and strategy can present a challenge for many. Think about what you want to say to your readers.
Did you ever consider how much time and effort it takes to write, maintain and promote a blog? It is so overwhelming. Sometimes just coming up with the theme can be a challenge.
“Do not underestimate how vital it is to allot time to writing a post or creating an image specifically designed for each particular community. It could make the difference between comments and crickets.” Rebekah Radice.
While there are many helpful and educational posts regarding content, titles, SEO, buyer personas, best practices, tips, tools and other recommended suggestions, it can be a very large undertaking to sustain and not go insane in the process. We can also get buried in the learning process. You open one site and suddenly realize hours have gone by while you only began to research a simple topic but you sunk in the abyss of data and links.
Anatomy of a Blog Post
Begin by understanding your goals, strategy and tactics for your blog and content. Write them down and use an editorial calendar to help visualize and plan your content schedule. It is much simpler and easier when you see it “on paper.” It will also help to keep you accountable as well as organized with your writing, posting, sharing and analyzing of your metrics. This is just the bare bones, the skeleton for your writing and posting process. Read and research some of the best practices, save articles to refer back to you and put in your best effort. Guest author, Adam Connell shared some great tips and insight to help you enhance your writing and pique the interest of your audience, enticing them to share your post.
Blog
Write compelling and thought provoking content to reach your readers, answer their deepest questions and offer real solutions. That’s why you’re in business right? Not to push a product or a widget but to offer outcomes and resolutions to problems. Great content captures interest and engagement.
“Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.” Brian Clark
Why Should Your Business Blog?
Do You Make These 13 Content Marketing Mistakes?
The Benefits of Blogging: Why Businesses Do It, and You Should Too
Foolproof Formula to Incredibly Catchy Blog Titles
Keywords to Concepts: The Lazy Web Marketer’s Guide to Smart Keyword Research
Content Curation: 10 FREE Tools to Save You Time
3 Steps to Identify Blog Topics that are Relevant to Your Audience
HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator
WP Plugins
The WordPress plugins you choose should solve a specific “problem” or add key functionality and ease of use, for yourself as well as your audience. There are thousands of WordPress plugins to enhance your SEO, website speed, social sharing, curation and function of your site. Investigate and test the ones you feel will add the most benefits and features; not just because it seems like a shiny new toy.
Top 10 Social Media Plugins for WordPress
40 Experts Share Their Favorite WordPress Plugins
Content curation is now push button simple on WordPress
8 Top Free WordPress Plugins To Speed Up Your Websites Loading Time
10 Essential WordPress Plugins to Improve SEO & Usability – Search Engine Watch
Distribution
Once you written a fabulous post, you need a strategic plan to share your content and ideas. It isn’t enough just to write a post and push it to your social platforms. Use a variety of tools and platforms to broaden your reach and your message.
“The biggest mistake that I see bloggers and marketers make is spending an incredible amount of time creating a really great piece of content but don’t put the time into promoting it.” Adam Connell
32 Experts Share Their Best Blog Post Promotion Tips
25 Smart Ways to Promote Your Latest Blog Post
Conversations
Social Media isn’t a hit it and quit it mentality. If you think like this and don’t engage or only self-promote, you will not experience the value and global reach of social media. Your blog and your voice will be lost amongst those who build their relationship and give back to their communities.
“You can’t just smash blast anymore.” Instead, you have to give them what they want and then strive to aggregate with yourself so you can control your own marketing.” Jay Leopardi.
13 Tips to Humanize Your Brand
Customer Relationships – Engage Your Audience: From Profile to Preference
3 C’s of Effective Relationship Marketing
Relationship Marketing for a Digital World
What about you? How do you manage your blog, content and communications?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Mar 18, 2014 | Customer Service, Entrepreneur
Jane Wurwand, Founder, Owner of Dermalogica and The International Dermal Institute clearly understands the inherent value in the ability to scale your business via delegation. This mindset is a key driver for success. Delegating enables you to grow your organization, so you can focus on your core company objectives, removing you from the daily back end details which eat up your valuable time and actual productivity.
I am speaking as the Founder of my own company and I know just how challenging it can be to let go and delegate. Only by letting go of certain details and delegating them to fellow team members to handle that the company had the opportunity to truly grow. If I had clung on to the day-to-day details, or if I was a micro-manager, would my company be the success that it is today?
As a business grows, the founding visionaries need to let go of the details. This seems like a contradiction, and I really get it. I am speaking as the Founder of my own company and I know just how challenging it can be to let go and delegate. Only by letting go of certain details and delegating them to fellow team members to handle that the company had the opportunity to truly grow. If I had clung on to the day-to-day details, or if I was a micro-manager, would my company be the success that it is today? The simple truth is no.
Most business owners are more prone to think, “I can do it all myself,” but this self-limiting thought process does not allow you the time or full productivity to dedicate to the core of your business. You may be buried and merely just busy doing more menial activities that are NOT the best value of your time.
If you are entrenched with 10, 20+ hours a week on social media management, curating content, writing, editing, proofing and scheduling blog posts, calendar management, writing newsletters, WHO is operating your business?
Click to read the full post on Huff Post for Women
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Mar 13, 2014 | Blogging, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
Writing great and ‘share worthy’ content takes time.
It takes effort and isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do.
The problem is that simply writing something that is ‘great’ doesn’t mean that it’s going to get any views.
There’s a lot more to it than that.
In this post I’m going to share a number of things that I do differently when I write content. Using these tips I have been able to generate thousands of social shares on a relatively new blog.
Identify a problem and solve it
In recent years the bar has been raised thanks to the level of quality content that other writers are producing.
The easiest way to compel your audience to share your content is by identifying what problem they are experiencing and then solve it.
When people have been searching high and low to find the answer to a problem and they finally find it, they can be very appreciative.
Get the timing right
Sometimes timing can be a big factor.
A great example is when Google first announced that Google Reader was closing. The keyword ‘Google reader alternative’ became incredibly popular overnight.
Within a short amount of time there was an incredible number of blogs writing about the topic which meant that the competition went up dramatically.
Although the first few blogs to cover this would have seen significant increases in traffic, mostly from organic search.
Also, one thing that I noticed was that even the blogs that were late to cover the topic generated an above average level of social shares.
This type of thing is often referred to as news jacking because that’s essentially what you’re doing.
If you publish a blog post just before journalists are scrambling for information then you have a great opportunity.
David Meerman Scott also published a great book on the topic, learn more about it here.
Keep it easy to read
Readability is an important factor and it’s important to keep your articles at a level where everyone can understand them.
Breaking your sentences up into smaller chunks, writing clear sub headings and utilising formatting are all a good way to do that.
A very helpful tool that I found recently was the Hemingway App that grades your articles readability and offers ways to improve it.
Add value and come up with a unique angle
Before you start writing anything you need to think about how you can add value to your content.
Check out what other people have wrote about the topic in Google and find out what’s missing:
- Do you have a unique perspective on the subject?
- Can you add more detail and make a more comprehensive resource?
- Is there a content type that isn’t used?
There are plenty of things to think about but what you need to identify in most cases is the content gap.
By finding what’s missing you can make sure that your content fills the gap and becomes what people have been wanting.
Mention influencers and tell them about it
There is a form of marketing that is trending right now.
It’s known as influencer marketing.
The idea is marketing directly to those that influence your target audience rather than directly marketing to your target audience.
I’ve found it to be very effective but another thing it can really help with is content distribution.
By mentioning influencers in your content and letting them know (using Twitter, Google+ or email works fine) you can skyrocket the amount of social shares for your content.
People love it when other people say awesome stuff about them.
Finding influencers
There are a lot of tools on the market that can help you, but as a starting point I’d recommend giving BuzzSumo a try. It’s free to get started while the tool is in beta and it’s very straight forward to use.
Contacting influencers works best from a personal account even if you’re working on behalf of a brand – the personal touch works best. Something Jennifer Hanford covered here.
How to incorporate influencers into your content
Simply linking out to influencers can work great and for a lot of people it does.
There is a way to get more influencers to share your content.
That is to involve them directly in the creation of the content – you may have seen this referred to as group interviews or crowd sourced content.
The end result is the same – a group of influencers contributing content and because of that they are more willing to share the content.
Here are a few examples that have generated an impressive number of social shares:
The reality of influencer marketing
Instead of my websites or my clients starting out and having no audience whatsoever we have used this to put tap into the established audience of market influencers to put their content, their brand and their message directly in front of their target audience.
It’s not an overnight strategy, it does take time and there are more steps involved, but that’s the same in any form of real marketing.
Clicking publish doesn’t mean the job is done
The biggest mistake that I see bloggers and marketers make is spending an incredible amount of time creating a really great piece of content but don’t put the time into promoting it.
The truth is that clicking publish maybe all you’ll need to do if you are Tech Crunch or Mashable but most of us have got a fair distance to go until we reach that point.
I’d recommend checking this post out because it goes into a lot more detail (and it’s a very large topic) but ultimately after every post is published you need to spend as much time promoting it as you have done creating it.
Think about your target audience and where they hang out online. Then put your content directly in front of them.
Don’t do it in a spammy way or just drop the link in online communities but actually engage with your audience and start building a discussion.
Engage with your audience, be present and help them.
Soon enough you will develop your own influence.
Summary
There are plenty of ways to help get your content shared, this isn’t an exhaustive list by any means.
Now I’ll put the question to you – what do you do to help make sure people share your content?
We would love to hear more in the comments below.
Guest Author Blog Post:
Adam Connell is the Marketing Manager for a UK based marketing agency; UK Linkology. In his spare time Adam trains people to get better results out of content and social media.
Connect with Adam:
Twitter
Google+
Triberr
Photo Credit: giulia.forsythe via Compfight cc
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Mar 12, 2014 | Productivity, Time Management
Empower yourself for higher performance. Hopefully you are not spinning out of control, missing deadlines and leaving a pile of projects on a wait list.
If you want to be more productive, then you have to make some changes. It takes planning, effort and some realization of where and how you spend your time. Chances are that at the days end, you take time to review what you accomplished and what still remains on your To Do list. If your list is still a bit longer than it should be and you are scratching your head, wondering how does everyone else get so much done, realize that you are not alone.
You can improve. You can increase your productivity.
“When we’re busy, we see that as being productive, when productive is really narrowing down what we need to do.” Cathy Sexton, time management specialist.
Your productivity is partially based on your time management which requires discipline and commitment. There are many hindrances to time management but how you regulate your life, the “time” choices you make and your priorities establish your productivity output. If something is that important to you, then you will get it done; otherwise, you will make excuses. Your success depends on getting the most out of each day.
“What is it that successful entrepreneurs do differently from the rest? How do they accomplish more in the same twenty four hours that are gifted to all?” Brett Relander
Brett Relander’s post: How to Increase Your Productivity as an Entrepreneur clearly outlines 7 simple tips to help you become a more effective and efficient entrepreneur. They are every day cheats you can implement to enhance your productivity and stop wondering how other entrepreneurs are getting it all done. You can do it too!
1. Know your priorities, set long-term goals and break down your activities to achieve your prioritized objectives. With clear targets in mind, you are well-positioned to focus on present jobs and plan for future work. With defined objectives, day-to-day work can be organized in a streamlined manner.
Click to read more: brettrelander.com
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Mar 11, 2014 | Social Media, Time Management
Keeping a tidy and productive digital landscape necessitates a visible online presence with consistency and frequency or your voice will get lost within the noise and fundamental chatter. To build and maintain your networks it requires a great deal of time, energy and focus. There are literally hundreds of social channels to choose from, which can be overwhelming. You need to evaluate and understand your audience, where they hang out, what they want and what they consume. There is no one size fits all solution but if you aren’t putting in the time, implementing a plan and using the resources, then you may be spinning the hamster wheel and simply wasting valuable hours.
Sourcing your infinite online follower audience is a low-cost way to propel your small-business brand into the global digital world. Establish your brand with social media to cultivate relationships as well as strengthen existing ones. Your social media efforts are the architectural structure can lead to brand recognition, credibility, a positive customer experience, brand advocates, increased web traffic, search rankings and word-of-mouth marketing.
A social presence exceeds just a few posts on various channels; it is a two-way conversation. Interaction. Collaboration. Education. Communication. Community. Be strategic and formulate a viable plan that you will follow. We all have the same amount of time in our day but it is up to you on how you will invest and leverage your hours, skills and expertise.
You are the soul master of your time and productivity. If you do not have systems and processes in place, your efficiency and effectiveness will suffer. Design and create the habits geared toward your goals of success and business growth. There will be distractions and obstacles tossed in your path, but if you have a contingency plan, in addition to your ace preparation and planning tactics, you will not be so easily waylaid. Writing out your daily plan of attack and time allotment is more than just an exercise in futility. It is your company’s operation manual to streamline your social media operations, ensuring greater targeted success and focus. While it may feel like drudgery or busy work, it is time INVESTED not wasted. Consider it a vital part of your business plan. The strategies and tactics contained in this document also enable you to turn over the responsibilities of your SMM and take a vacation or a few days off without being tied to your computer or Smartphone. There’s a novel idea!
“So during those first moments of the day, which are yours and yours alone, you can circumvent these boundaries and concentrate fully on spiritual matters. And this gives you the opportunity to plan the time management of the entire day.” Menachem Mendel Schneerson
- Create your systems and strategies for your business and your online presence.
- Refine and revisit both to ensure you are on target and meeting your goals.
- Choose a few networks and ACTIVELY engage in conversations
- Don’t spread yourself too thin or you will not grow your communities.
- Have a daily list of activities for each social network
- Know and work productively at your best time of day.
- Understand that social media is an investment that will reward you but you must do the time.
- Find and USE tools that will enhance your productivity and efficiency.
- Set aside time each day for building relationships and monitoring your social networks.
- Evaluate small business success tips.
- Automate some of your content but NOT your conversations with tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Everpost, or Do Share
- Use an editorial calendar to help keep you targeted on content, networks, themes, posting times and metrics.
- Learn to unplug and focus.
- Don’t try and multi-task your way through your day.
- Write remarkable, valuable content.
- Curate and share using content discovery tools
- Use a WordPress Content Curation Theme & Plugin like Curation Traffic™ to save time and add your personal commentary
- Know where and how to syndicate your blog posts in addition to your social networks; i.e. Triberr, bizsugar, inbound.org, Technorati, Alltop and business2community.com
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Add your profile to Twitter directories
- Know your core genius and outsource the low payoff activities.
The key take away is a PLAN to implement and stick to in order to save some time and be more efficient with your social media marketing.
If you find all of this to be a little overwhelming, your day is already full, or you would rather focus ON your business rather than IN it, we are here to assist you with your social media management. Drop us an email, find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
Talk to you soon and thanks so much for reading our post. If it resonates with you or you know someone who could use a few tips, please feel free to share.
