by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Aug 20, 2013 | Blogging, Marketing, Small Business, Social Media
Content attracts
Marketing has drastically changed over the past several decades in terms of the delivery methods but no matter how you look it, it is still content driven and always will be. It used to be solely about print media and ad space but now it is more about vying for attention from your online audience. This can be the biggest constraint but with the right content, geared toward the right market, you have an opportunity to be seen and heard.
Consumers consume content: Feed them a healthy rich diet.
“The single most significant trend is the continued emergence of content marketing as a standalone discipline. Content, in all its shapes and forms, is core to everything we do as marketers.” Econsultancy.
You need remarkable content. Just what is that?
Remarkable content is written for your buyers and their needs. You are here to provide solutions to their questions and problems. When you can do this, you will see a higher conversion rate. You have the opportunity to attract your audience with compelling content and images through your blog posts, website, e-newsletters and online discussions.
How will these statistics influence your content marketing strategy? (courtesy of WSI)
- 79% of marketers report that content is more effective than paid advertising.
- Blogs have 434% more indexed pages
- 90% of consumers find content useful
Research:
- Your audience, your buyers and their key drivers of what makes them tick.
- Where do they hang out?
- What interests them most?
When creating your content, think about some of the common questions you have been asked.
- What problems does your product or service solve?
- How will your product or service help them improve their career, their daily lives?
- What makes it difficult for them to do what they need to do on a daily basis?
- What are their obstacles to success?
Your solution based content can produce reactions and needs to your offerings. Help your readers thrive and flourish.
Feed their hunger.
Invest in your content: 60% of the sales cycle is over before the buyer speaks with your sales team says HubSpot. This means it is up to your content to drive the message home with your blogs, ebooks, webinars and any other online content. “People don’t need to be told how awesome you are, let them come to you.” @sbedrick #BDNMaineWhatsNext
Content is more than text: Use images. They capture attention, invoke emotion, are more widely shared and help to simplify your message. Share the images on your social networks like Facebook and Pinterest. Articles with images receive 94% more views.
“Harnessing the power of images and visuals will make your marketing more powerful and more memorable.” Anita Campbell.
In a 2012 study by ROI Research, they found that 44% of respondents were more likely to engage with brands who shared pictures. This is a pretty big number that shouldn’t be overlooked. Visual content is fast becoming an important force for online communications. Pictures communicate your message quickly and succinctly. Consider the rise of infographics! This is a huge market to disseminate a variety of information, share data and statistics. Fav 5 Infographics
Here is an informative overview about the tools and benefits of visual marketing: How to Optimize Your Marketing for the Visual Marketing Revolution
“Blog posts became Facebook updates and Tumblr posts, which shrunk to Tweets and finally to Instagram or Pinterest. Here’s how smart brands are navigating the new visual social-media era.” Ekaterina Walter.
Share your “remarkable” content on your social media channels. Make sure it is a mix of third party articles which are industry specific and rich, some of your content and blog posts that are solving problems and answering questions and finally your company’s landing pages which is for the final lead conversion process. Your goal is for your audience to not only read and visit your site but to also share your content and materials.
Is your content:
- Sticky
- Useful
- Engaging
- Educational
- Problem-solving
- Insightful
- Branding
- Experiential
When you post poor content, you don’t get visitors.
When you don’t get visitors, you lose money.
When you lose money,
You close your doors.
Don’t close your doors, write rich compelling content.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Aug 13, 2013 | Customer Service, Social Media
People buy from people – we know this. Take the opportunity to humanize your brand and build foundations to nurture trust and loyalty. Simply creating accounts and posting content is not enough. We all enjoy the human touch and conversations. We are not science experiments, sterile metrics or robots. We are thoughtful engaging humans who want to be valued and heard.
We are inundated daily with all sorts of tools and ideas of what we should do and how we should do it, seemingly a little clinical at times. Reach out; personalize the conversation. It takes minimal time and effort.
Just be nice, take genuine interest in the people you meet, and keep in touch with people you like. This will create a group of people who are invested in helping you because they know you and appreciate you. Guy Kawasaki.
You don’t want to be ignored when you shop at a store or dine at a restaurant. You want to be greeted. You want to be welcomed. When I first moved to North Carolina I needed some new furniture. I was not only empowered with my move but so excited to furnish my apartment. Upon walking into a local establishment, I saw 5-6 salespeople milling about. I wasn’t greeted. I wasn’t asked if I wanted help. No one seemed to notice me.
I never went back AND I of course tweeted to them about their horrific lack of service. The point is, whether offline or in the digital world, pay attention to your followers.
The most successful marketer becomes part of the lives of their followers. They follow back. They wish happy birthday. They handle problems their customers have with products or service. They grow their
businesses and brands by involving themselves in their own communities. Marsha Collier
Think about what impresses you most about the brands and companies you follow. What sets them apart from the competitors? What drives you to like, know and trust these brands?
How can you scoop up some market share and humanize your brand?
- Engage your followers in conversations. This is SOCIAL media. “Social media is not a media. The key is to listen, engage, and build relationships.” David Alston.
- Show authentic interest in their business and their lives. Sincerity drives rapport.
- Focus on relationships. Sure it can be a numbers game but the quality is better than quantity. I would rather have four quarters than 100 pennies. “Activate your fans, don’t just collect them like baseball cards.” Jay Baer.
- Listen and respond to industry-related issues. We all like to have a voice.
- Follow up and respond to all messages. It is common courtesy and good business.
- Have a personal picture of yourself. Let them look into your eyes and see YOU, not a graphic.
- Provide introductions to other followers. Introductions are powerful tools – it says I know who you are, what interests you, and who is important in your network.
- Promote other people’s content. Self-promotion should be a smaller portion of your content marketing. A random act of kindness is paying it forward. It is always a nice surprise to see your own content shared by other thought leaders. “Social Media is about the people! Not about your business. Provide for the people and the people will provide for you.” Matt Goulart.
- Reshare your follower’s posts. A retweet is once again sharing the love and showing that you are listening and following.
- Show your human side. Your passions, failures, successes. Isn’t this what helps bring people closer together? It isn’t a weakness to share such details, but a strength to show your vulnerabilities as well as your dreams.
- Share your expertise on trending topics. Your knowledge is wanted and needed. Solve problems and inspire others to think deeply. Think value not “me me” fluff.
- Encourage feedback from your community. Asking questions and cultivating responses shows you value their input.
- Set up keyword alerts. Follow industry chatter, hashtags and your brand. Respond accordingly. Following the conversation and being able to troubleshoot promotes you as an attentive brand manager.
Be THAT company, THAT person, that you want to buy from.
Today people don’t trust companies. One of the things marketers want to do is to humanize their brand. What better way to do it than put a live person in front of them? Jackie Huba.
What steps do you take to humanize your brand?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Aug 6, 2013 | Blogging, Social Media
Blog syndication provides a distribution channel to enhance your readership and exposure. You can’t just write a post and hope that it is found. In our last post: Why Should Your Business Bog? you learned about the purpose of a business blog as well as some core best strategies.
You have heard “content is king.” It is your currency to drive engagement, authority and conversions. After you have written such rich and educational content, share it on your social channels and start the buzz to develop your quality relationships and branding.
“Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the people who read blogs.” Seth Godin
Social media and SEO are related as you have seen in your social searches and Google has validated this as well with Google+ and Google Authorship. Content that is relevant and can be trusted as authoritative will help drive both search engine and social media marketing. Content that is shared on your SM channels is prioritized and has a great deal of influence with search engines and your audience. When people see that your content has been liked and shared, this becomes “social proof” and they are more apt to visit your website and read your content. Content that has a social connection is presented more often in search results, giving you the opportunity for a higher ranking. Your social shares help to promote more inbound links, increases page rank and influences SEO with your use of keywords.
“Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. This effect is prominent in ambiguous social situations where people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior, and is driven by the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation.” Wikipedia
How and where can you promote your blog?
- Leverage the power of your website with a link in the navigation bar
- Link internally to other posts
- Use sidebars to promote popular posts
- Add a link in your email signature
- Include your blog in your email marketing newsletters
- Create a weekly or monthly digest of your most popular posts and email this to your opt-in list
- Add a blog link to your business card
- Include your blog on your social media profiles
- Share your posts with your network
- Become a guest author for other industry thought leaders
- Include social share options on your posts
- Add an RSS and Feedly button at the top of your blog
There are many other sites and different types of blog and article directories to help push your content for further exposure and notoriety. While the list below is short, it is a baseline to start the process of promoting your posts.
Here are some other resources and articles you may like to read:
TopRank Best List of RSS Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog and Feed
Link Building Strategies – The Complete List
The Content Marketing Conversion Funnel [Infographic]
YOU are at the center of The Conversation Prism
What steps do you implement to promote your blog content? Do you have any favorites that have considerably driven your engagement or met your goals?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jun 6, 2013 | Social Media, Virtual Assistant
Managing your business can take an army and you can’t do it alone, but who should you trust to help you with your business operations? Your proprietary documents? Trade secrets? Login credentials? Client lists?
An established, entrepreneurial virtual assistant. You need a vested partner who understands what it takes to run a company.
You need a “weapon of mass production.” A virtual assistant will help you to effectively manage and execute your business dealings at a great cost savings too because you only pay for project time. There are no hidden costs, insurances, training, equipment or “benefits.”
A VA can be your brainstorming partner, your sounding board for your ideas and innovations.
A VA will seek out other vendors and collaborators.
A VA is your right arm and second pair of eyes for editing, proofing and creating documents.
A VA will help manage your calendar and appointment scheduling.
A VA is your researcher for content curation.
A VA keeps your ears on social media trends and analytics for your brand.
A VA enables YOU to focus on your core genius – the tasks that you do best.
A VA is your time manager.
What are you waiting for?
Isn’t it time you stopped doing all of the low payoff activities that demand your attention but don’t generate income?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Feb 17, 2013 | Small Business, Social Media
Listening in on the digital chatter is essential to your social media success and company expansion. You need to know about your industry, brand, competitors and trending topics but where do you start? There are hundreds of tools to help you to listen more, engage on a deeper level, troubleshoot, follow trends that influence your business, identify prospects, increase your ROI and to develop your network, all enabling you to grow your business and manage your online reputation as a thought leader.
Creating your online brand and reputation requires active listening, not just pushing content. The variety of platforms is exhaustive so choose a few, set up keyword alerts and monitor the content and voice in your stream. Test drive some of the FREE tools listed below to begin listening and analyzing your social media marketing efforts.
Develop your goals and strategy with a few tips in “Social Media Monitoring: Horton Hears a Whos”
Here is a great infographic about social media monitoring tools. If you scroll to the bottom of the image, you will see many of the ones mentioned in this post.
FREE Social Media Monitoring Tools
Bottlenose Real-time social intelligence engine searching social media with up to the minute news
Engag.io Monitor and engage in your online conversations on one platform. “Your Inbox for Online Conversations and Relationships.”
FollowerWonk Find, analyze and optimize your Twitter following
Google Alerts Receive email alerts based upon your keywords
Google Reader Harvest relevant content, RSS feeds, blog posts and websites
Guzzle Topic based news aggregator monitoring hundreds of feeds
Monitter Twitter real time keyword search
Social Mention Monitors 100 + social media sites bringing you all social media results relevant to your search query (keywords)
Topsy Search and analyze the social web
Twazzup Real time Twitter search engine
TweetLevel Keyword search, analyze and engage: Identify top Twitter influencers, real time keyword and hashtag insight, company buzz
Twtrland Visualizes social footprints; use keywords, hashtags @ name
Twubs Search industry and trending hashtags
Uvrx Social search using keywords, hashtags, names, brands
WhosTalking Social Media search tool, combining data taken from over 60 of the internet’s most popular social media gateways
Your turn: what are some of your favorite tools or suggestions?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Feb 11, 2013 | Small Business, Social Media
In today’s ever competitive business climate, social media is not a passing fad or simply a source of amusement for the younger generations. It represents an essential platform as part of your marketing mix. Consumer buyer behavior now reflects their consistent quest for up to the minute information about your company’s products and services. People buy from people and customers prefer the immediacy of the web, the data they can search, the recommendations they find and a community for their voice. You need to not only have an online presence but to be actively listening to your prospects, colleagues, partners, competition and clients.
A recent survey by Deloitte revealed that 60% of consumers are going online more often to locate the best products and services and their decisions are greatly influenced by the tools, information and service they find when they visit websites or perform a search. Brand loyalty and reputation are still based on the quality of the customer experience.
Social media is a vital component to your business, marketing, sales and customer service strategies.
Some companies fear creating a social media presence because they believe that if they do, they may provide their audience with a platform to complain or otherwise post negative feedback. Whether you create your community or not, the “talk” is still out there and if you are not listening, then you are missing the opportunity to troubleshoot and amend any potential detrimental comments about your organization.
Whether you are B2B or B2C, your social media presence should represent a strong role in your marketing and online energies. Your message must reach your audience where THEY reside, not where you think they are. Whether you choose to blog, send an e-newsletter or generate dialog via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram or Google+, you need to discover where your client “hangs out” and greet them on their territory. Remember, you will need to utilize more than one neighborhood to reach your target markets.
“You don’t have to tweet, or Facebook, or even blog. But choosing not to embrace social media, even minimally, is choosing to be invisible.” Cindy Kraft
Take a look at these staggering social media statistics:
- 1 million websites have been integrated with Facebook (Huffington Post)
- 80% of users like to connect with brands on Facebook (Huffington Post)
- 1 billion registered Facebook users (Huffington Post)
- 200 million registered LinkedIn users (Huffington Post)
- Since the founding of Twitter, there have been 163 billion tweets (Huffington Post)
- 56% of customer tweets to brands are being ignored
- 625,000 people join Google+ everyday
- The +1 button is clicked 5 million times per day
- Websites utilizing the +1 button increase page traffic by 350%
- 80% of people prefer to get coupons, promos, and discounts from brands in social media (HubSpot)
- 43% of all online consumers are social media fans or followers. (Harp Social)
- 84% of B2B marketers use social media in some form (Aberdeen)
- B2B businesses experience a 61% success rate in customer acquisition using LinkedIn.(HubSpot)
- 91% of experienced social marketers see improved website traffic due to social media campaigns and 79% are generating more quality leads (The Social Skinny)
- 67% of Twitter users are more likely to buy brands that they follow (iModerate Research Technologies)
- YouTube has Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
- Marketers spend an average of 4-6 hours a week on social media (Social Media Examiner)
- 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter, and 20% have closed deals (Mindjumpers)
- Pinterest is retaining and engaging users as much as 2-3 times as efficiently as Twitter was at a similar time in their history. (RJMetrics)
Social media is constantly evolving due to the mobile, social nature needs and wants of your consumer. They are more informed, apt to search for company details online, voice their opinions within their communities and forums, and make buying decisions based upon this data, as well as their network’s feedback.
Social Media Start-up: a few things to consider
- Where is your audience?
- What are their pain points?
- Listen to the chatter
- Create a strategy
- Generate a content calendar
- Post consistent relevant and valuable content
- Respond to comments
- Use keywords in your content
- Create alerts based upon your company, personal name, industry
- Who and where is your competition?
- Measure and track metrics
Investing time and effort in social media can be a very overwhelming mission, but I can assure you that it is well worth it. Once I discovered social media, my business converted to 100% virtual and all of my business growth comes from social networking, referrals and word of mouth. From a client perspective, I receive many phone calls per month with clients sharing their online successes, from speaking engagements, new connections, networking opportunities, guest appearances, increased sales and web traffic to new partnerships and other corporate achievements.
What are YOU waiting for? The time is NOW!
