Monthly Archives: June 2014

The 4 Biggest Mistakes You Can Make When It Comes To Content Marketing

These days, useful engaging content should be at the very core of your marketing strategy. Consumers across the world are capable of skipping past television advertising, ignoring pictures in magazines and completely disregarding online banners, so your content must be something the average user wants to see. Content marketing is a technique that creates and distributes relevant, valuable, and consistent content to appropriately acquire a defined audience and drive the potential for profitable customer action. It has become an increasingly popular strategy that assists businesses in actively interacting with their consumers, and the great thing about content marketing is that once the attention of an audience has been captured, then it is generally easier to convince them to take the desired action. However, like any other form of marketing, there are still areas in content where you can go wrong, and knowing the most common mistakes can make them easier to avoid further down the line.

Mistake 1: Avoid Getting To Know Your Audience

Before you begin investing in content marketing, it is essential that you figure out exactly who your intended audience is going to be. If you don’t understand the people that you are reaching out to, you are more likely to create content that is unhelpful, irrelevant, and uninteresting. Take the time to do some research on your target audience, find out:

Their age
Their general whereabouts (United States, England, Global, etc.)
What they like and dislike
What kind of questions they are asking
What they are looking for
The way in which they interact with each other

Having this information will provide a great foundation for you to build content that your audience will want to see.

Mistake 2: Choosing Quantity Over Quality

Some people seeking the service of content marketers get too caught up in the idea of generating as many backlinks as possible without actually taking the quality of the content into consideration. The issue here is that content marketing should be about providing engaging, valuable information to your readers, encouraging them to continue engaging with your website or business. Offering poorly written content is more likely to have a negative effect on your reputation as a brand, and drive your customers away.

Mistake 3: Neglecting to Promote Your Content

It is important to remember when it comes to content marketing, that posting plenty of brilliantly written, useful content is a useful endeavour if your intended audience is never going to see it. You should always try to find new ways of promoting your content to increase its visibility, and remember that once you have posted something new on your website or blog, it can be a great idea to share your update through social media channels. Sharing a link on Facebook, tweeting, or pinning content can make it visible to many new people, and you can also consider placing guest posts on other influential blogs to help boost your reputation. Remember to add a link to your website whenever you post information or blog posts elsewhere around the internet so that users can find you.

Mistake 4: Never Varying Your Content

Sometimes, when hiring online content marketers, individuals focus too heavily upon the content in terms of blog posts, without looking into the different kinds of marketing that can also be used. Infographics, YouTube videos, slide presentations, and podcasts can also be a great way to get your information out into the public eye, and the more you vary your content, the more likely it is to be fresh and interesting, keeping your readers engaged. You might consider repurposing a singular piece of content into different forms, such as breaking an e-book down into various blog posts or having a conversation about it on a podcast.

A Guide to the Process of Search Engine Optimization

The use of particular key words and phrases are especially important when it comes to website optimization. Keywords are what most internet browsers use when they are looking for a particular site or subject within a search engine such as Google. A page that has been optimized for search engines is one that has been appropriately structured to rank well in the results for a particular search phrase. Typically, optimization can be achieved through the insertion of key phrases and words throughout certain areas in the HTML code of the website and in the body of content on the page.

How Can You Get Your Site To Rank Higher In Search Engines?

Typically, search engines will rate the relevance of a particular page by taking into account its use of links, tags, and content. The mathematical algorithm that is used rates the relevance of each page according to these statistics. Some of the best ways you can improve your ranking in search engines is with the use of the following:

Effective key words and phrases.
Well-crafted content
Optimized code and Meta-tags

Finding Effective Keywords

Doing the research to make your content count can be a little tedious, but it is an indispensable part of life if you really want to improve your search engine optimization, and achieve success online. You need to find keywords that are capable of supporting your content properly, meaning that they are relevant to your website or article, have a high search volume, meaning people often look for the keywords you are using, and have a small amount of competition. There are plenty of tools that can help you with the process of finding effective keywords, so make sure you dedicate some time to this before you get started on the next important factor in your online business.

Constructing Well-crafted Content

After you are sure you have chosen the appropriate keywords for your website, it will be time to start creating your content. Search engines are full of spiders or robots that automatically check your website, reading it to find out firstly, what it is about, and secondly, and what it should rank for. You can influence the decisions of these bots by optimizing your content properly. An important factor to remember, however, is that if you tailor your content entirely for the bots, you’re going to end up with some particularly boring text, and that will not help if you’re trying to convert visitors into regular users, or customers. The best thing that you can do is focus upon your visitor first, making the content engaging and easy to read, and then optimize for search engine bots elsewhere when you can. Make sure that throughout your content, you pay close attention to quality, originality, links, titles, subtitles and of course, your keywords.

Optimized Code and Meta Tags

Search engine bots read the content of your website, but they also read the code, and there are sections of this that you will also need to optimize, such as the Meta tags. The most important Meta tag that you should concern yourself is the description Meta tag. Although this doesn’t have much of an impact upon your ranking on search engines, it does tell your visitors what your website is about, meaning that it can have a big impact upon whether they decide to visit your site or not. When you are creating your Meta tag descriptions, be sure to include some keywords, and use full, coherent sentences. It is also important, however, that you don’t make the description to long as it may get cut off.

How to Use Guest Posting to Drive Traffic to Your Site

When it comes to online success, there are few things as important as traffic. Getting more people to visit your website on a daily basis, stay there for longer and indulge in the activity that you want from them, such as purchasing items or services, is the lifeblood of your internet based business. You can sell the best products around, produce the best services, and write the most amazing reviews, but if your website does not generate enough traffic, then it is effectively worthless. Some people rely upon having a great, search engine optimized content to drive visitors to their site, and while this can be an extremely lucrative way of generating traffic, it is not the only option available. Guest blogging can be a great way to get your name and your website out there for other users to see, building your reputation.

Firstly, Determine What You Want to Achieve

When you’re getting started in guest blogging, it is important to remember that it may take some time for you to start seeing results. Because of this, it is important that you are very careful about the work you do, tailoring each post to work towards your eventual goal. Your very first task will be to decide what your goal for guest blogging actually is. Knowing your goal ahead of time is absolutely essential when determining the kind of blogs you will be submitting your guest posts to. For example, if your blog, company, or service concerns computer technology, it is probably not a good idea to start providing guest posts to fashion blogs, and vice versa. These are three of the main goals when it comes to guest posting:

Getting exposure, so as to drive new traffic back to your website

Positioning yourself within well-known groups to establish yourself as a name in your particular industry

Using Guest posting to build back-links for your website.

Really good content could allow you to do all three of these things at once, but it is important to remember that if you are trying to achieve the first or second goal, you will need to find blogs to guest post on that have a large and active audience.

Submitting a Great Guest Post

A common query when it comes to guest posting is whether or not the best content should be used on your actual webpage, or for the guest post itself. Often, the answer to this question depends on the kind of blog to which you are submitting content. For example, if the blog you are writing for often uses several 600 word blog posts with various screen shots then your post should be similar to this. If the blog, on the other hand, has brief, 300 word posts with one or no images, then you should also tailor your post to suit this.

Remember, when you’re writing a guest post for another blog, you should try to think of it as something that is not entirely about you. Don’t direct attention towards your services, products or businesses on an excessive scale, simply provide information that readers would want to know about. Usually, it can be a good idea to save any information about yourself and your business for the author bio at the end of the post.

Make sure that you format your post to suit the ones that already exist upon the website. Before you write anything, take the time to look at the posts on your target blog, paying attention to whether they use bold text, images, quotes, headers, sub-headings, or any other kinds of special formatting. Research completed, you should be able to adjust your writing to meet the current standard of other posts on the site.

How to Properly Formulate an Effective Online Marketing Strategy

In the last decade, the advent of the internet and online marketing techniques has drastically altered the way in which we share information, introducing a profound impact upon the world of internet related businesses. Especially throughout the last few years, there has been a focus upon inbound techniques over outbound tactics, and more businesses than ever are discovering the advantages associated with publishing original content on a regular basis, instead of embedding advertisements into external content. A comprehensive, effective internet marketing strategy can help to launch businesses into new and growing locations, increase sales substantially, and help to rejuvenate the appearance of a particular company. Often, an appropriate online marketing strategy will require advanced knowledge when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), affiliate marketing, social media and more.

Content Marketing Is More Important Than Ever

If you want to establish a business online, creating a strategy for your marketing techniques is absolutely pivotal, and these days you simply can’t have good marketing without good content. One of the most prominent ways that companies are establishing their authority throughout various niches, and gaining the trust and approval of consumers is by consistently creating valuable, informative, and engaging content through a variety of online channels. This typically involves revealing relevant information about the industry at hand, which provides insight to an interested audience, or entertainment. By creating original content, a company can more easily build a rapport with its demographic, helping it to develop a loyal social following as well as create a positive reputation within their specific industry.

Make Sure You Properly Develop Your Brand Name and Image

Remember that although posting quality content is absolutely essential in today’s market, you need to also make sure that the image you are portraying to the world is appropriate. In today’s marketing world, a brand image and name can be as important as the marketing strategy itself, and choosing the wrong image for your company could lead to utter disaster within the online world. Remember that the brand you choose is what makes you visible to the internet, amongst not only competitors but also potential consumers too. When you’re building your website, pay special attention to the:

Name
Trademark
Website URL
Letter head
Image / Logo

Take the Time to Study Your Potential Market

It is no good getting quality content written for your website if it is text that could just as easily apply to anyone else. If you’re part of a niche market, you need to focus on this, and what it is you, as an individual, can offer to potential consumers. Centre your strategy on the particular demographic you are aiming to reach, instead of all internet consumers, as this will help the content to feel more tailored to your specific audience. To get started, select an idea of what would be your ideal consumer. Figure out everything that you need to know about your target demographic, and then figure out ways you can catch their attention.

Pay Attention to Your Competitors

To some people, this particular form of marketing strategy can feel a little bit like cheating, but it is absolutely necessary. There is no way that you can be sure of how successful your marketing strategy will be without paying attention to the work and behaviour of other websites in your niche. Your market research should mean that you know, to the exact number, how many followers your competitors might have on Twitter, how many people they regularly send emails or updates to, and how many people comment on their blog entries on a regular, or even daily basis. If you pay attention to the factors in your competitors’ strategy that are successful, and acknowledge the factors that are not, it will make creating your own success a great deal easier.

How To Keep Your Content Flowing Even When You Are Stalled For Ideas

It actually happens to the best of the writers and bloggers- stalled content. Blogging whether for a personal experience or for business, requires a constant flow of content. You cannot have a thriving blog without delivering rich content consistently. Yet, it is human nature to get overwhelmed by too many distractions, procrastinate or plain stop having any new breakthrough ideas. This often leads to a stalled or sometimes a neglected blog. With this post, you can help break this situation and get your blog running again.

Remember, if you do not have anything to post on your blog, you are not engaging your audiences, and you are losing precious time to market your blog to greater heights. Content writing is a serious business and it requires just as much of a thorough strategy as a meticulous project.

Ideas on the go

It is a common perception that writing content requires a steady flow of ideas. While this is somewhat true, you do not suppose that content writers are forever teeming with ideas. That is just not a complete solution. Instead, they take the time to jot down ideas whenever they strike. This way there is a solid stash of ideas ready for you, even when you hit a writer’s block. The best solution is to keep a small pad and pen always with you. However, if you are the forgetful kind, you can always make do with you Smartphone or tabs with the never-ending list of great apps that are designed just for such situations. Some of the best solutions include Evernote, Carrot, and 2Do. However, there are hosts of other list building apps in the market and you have to find the one that suits your needs the best.

Content production – short bursts schedule

While ideation is critical, it all hinges on your schedule of content production. After all, without the content writing, your ideas will just remain unrealized and wasted. The first rule of consistent writing is to not let things pile up. If you have to do a lot of tasks right before your post is due, chances are you would get overwhelmed and put off the post all together. However, if you finish your production in a schedule of short periods, you will not get overwhelmed and right before the publishing, you will have fewer things left to tackle. Start by dividing the entire production to sub categories – research, writing, editing and publishing. These subcategories should be further sub divided depending on the complexity and the length of the post.

Remember do not create a short burst schedule for more than 15 minutes each period. This period should have tasks that can be comfortably completed within time and give yourself a 5-minute break after every few short burst.

Timing it right

Sometimes a strategy can fall flat purely because you timed your production wrong. Whereas if you strategize better you can give yourself double the time in the production lineup. The production does have to start at research and end at publishing but in between, you have many tasks that can be coordinated differently. You can tackle the photo edits and link building to your blog before starting to edit. This can give you ample amount of time to re-visit your content with fresh eyes. Again, with a content block, it is necessary that you do not leave the table completely. Finishing these related tasks while pondering over the topic, can sometimes help kick start your writing easily.

Habit for pre-blogging

Get in the habit of pre-blogging. This is a very recently discovered routine but all successful bloggers have tried this for a very long time. Pre-blogging is a culmination of all the small detailing on your CMS platform that might be necessary during each publishing. If you can finish the tagging, tentative keyword assigning and introduction to your new post on your blog, you will have a readymade idea to play with during your next content creation. This is especially lucrative for bloggers who tackle a news beat or have a higher frequency of publishing. Pre-blogging cuts your publishing time in half and helps you keep the content production continuous.

Keep on top of correspondence with readers and bloggers

The best ideas often strike when in conversation with like-minded people. In your case, it can be a part of your entire content production process. Reader engagement and interactions with niche bloggers is tantamount to a successful blog. However, you can further create an inbox label to jot down ideas during your email and chat correspondences with various readers. Your reader mails, twitter streams and social media accounts can also be your personal survey for future posts. These places are the best hubs to find out exactly what your readers want to read and you can build interesting write-ups around those subjects.

How to Profit From the Expanding World Of Social Media

When it is utilized correctly, social media can be an extremely valuable asset to your company or organization. Whether you are a start-up business, legacy, commercial or non-profit establishment, the ability to communicate and interact with your demographic on a regular basis will help to boost the amount of supporters you receive, build the loyalty of your current customers, and establish a stronger relationship between company and consumer. Like any other marketing tool, social media needs to be properly used if you want to make sure that you maximize the profits you can gain from it and some of the most important things you will need to do when you are getting started include:

Coming Up With a Strategy
Researching Your Audience
Finding the Right Tools
Starting and Joining Conversations
Using Great Media

Figuring Out Your Strategy

Like anything else in business, you should never get started without formulating some kind of plan. It can take a long time to properly build a relationship with a specific demographic, and what you say online can stay with you for a particularly long time. You need to get started knowing exactly what your overall message is going to be. For example, if you want to inform people about the sort of services you have to offer, then you should have an advertisement strategy in place. Next, you should understand that the tools of social media will change and evolve over time, so you need to ensure that you always keep up to date with the platforms your audience are using.

Learn About Your Audience

If you want to make a sale, you need to find customers that want to buy your products. The trouble with this, is that there are usually companies selling similar products and services to yours spread all over the internet, so competition is usually quite harsh. The first thing you need to do to gain an advantage is to research the organizations that have once been in your shoes, this means looking at what your competitors have been doing for the last couple of years. Next, try asking your customers what kind of social media platforms they use on a regular basis, then advertise that you are available on the internet, and ready to be followed.

Finding and Using The Right Tools

One of the ways people online struggle when it comes to social media is concerned with implanting a proper transaction system that will work securely. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, are a fantastic way to communicate with people, join conversations and start debates, but they are not as good as they could be when it comes to ecommerce. Hopefully, new tools that will create a better reaction between social conversation and ecommerce will soon be implemented. Until these are active, however, you will need to apply the right tools for the content you share on social media.

Using Great Media

When it comes to marketing anything, producing content that is interesting and exciting to others is extremely important. A great thing about social media is that it can provide a way of encouraging users to contribute original new content themselves, creating organic text. There are various ways that you can go about encouraging users on a social media site to contribute content to your media channels, and one option is by using great multimedia content. Multimedia content has become increasingly easy to produce these days, and is often a fantastic way of getting people to participate with your social media enterprise. This means you can use videos, images, polls and more to catch your audiences’ attention, and get them involved.

Why Should You Focus on High Quality Content and Natural Backlinks with Panda 4.0?

Google Panda, a program that is known widely across the internet, concerns the process of search engines learning human preferences through the use of surveys and data. For those wondering where the name originates from, the term Google Panda comes from the expert in Machine Learning, and google engineer Navneet Panda. The panda program uses artificial intelligence to conduct a Machine Language Algorithm, which carefully considers the quality of the content that it comes across, judging it on the basis of:

How unique or original the content is

How relevant the information is when concerned with regular searches

What design elements are relevant, such as graphics and designs

The links that are generated within the site

By considering how users connect with the words that are written on a particular website or page, Google Panda helps to construct the way search engine optimization works, based on an understanding of click rates, browse action, bounce rates, search impressions and the amount of time any user spends upon a particular site.

The Importance of High Quality Content

The algorithm works by stopping sites that have poor quality content from making their way to the top of the rankings. This means that the most important thing for websites that want to be seen today, is high quality content. Acting as a sort of quality filter, the algorithm filters through search results to determine which sites have the best content to offer, and which don’t. The important thing about this update is that the better it works, the more google will be able to guarantee its users a supply of high quality results when they search for information, providing rich, enjoyable, and interesting content.

It is important to remember that this update is more than just your average refresh, and it places more emphasis than ever on the need to produce high-quality, frequent, original content to websites. The first step in ensuring that your website remains successful after the update is to ensure that your site has a blog that will allow you to post content. Once you have this set up and appropriately designed, you will need to generate a process for creating, posting and sharing content on a frequent basis. Because Panda punishes content that is not unique, if you are found to be duplicating your text from other sources, or posting low-quality text, then you will need to rethink your approach to search engine optimization.

Using Natural Backlinks

The recent update to Google Panda has also begun to uncover various undercover link building methods that have been utilized in the past, such as Forbes and Overstock. This has led to low quality sites and websites that generally churn out spam to be penalized. With the Google Panda update now firmly in place, there is really only one good way to build your links, and this is through authentic, quality content that the users on your website will love enough to share and link to throughout their internet journey. Write something that is engaging and special, and readers will flock to it. If the content that you provide is interesting, and gives people the answers they are looking for, then they are more likely to want to share that information with the people close to them. One of the best ways to help you in generating your natural backlinks is to try forms of link baiting. Although this can be an extremely time-consuming route that requires a great deal of energy and research, it may be the best that you can do for your website at this time, as long as you want to prevent Google from penalizing your content.

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