What do we mean by content marketing? We are going to set out our stall by guiding you through what content marketing is and ways of improving it. Internet content isn’t just for businesses and broadcasters, it is also for the individual sitting at home with their laptop, with an interest in writing. The internet opens up a huge opportunity to get your voice and key messages heard and content can be published for little cost, or even free of charge.  

Content can be business-related, educational or written for entertainment purposes. Content might include the information you host on your website, blogs, videos, live in-person events such as networking events or virtual webinars, social media posts, e-newsletters, brochures and flyers. Larger organisations would incorporate TV adverts and PR stunts into their content strategy for example. 

Content such as blogs are a fantastic way to get your brand’s voice heard. When your content is shared the better your website will rank in the google search engines and the more traffic will find its way to you. Creating content across a number of platforms is key to driving more traffic to your website and gaining more clients and business leads. It also needs to be relevant and tailor-made to your audience as they come first. 

Here are our top five tips to improving your content marketing  

1. First step towards improving your content – Write a content strategy  

In order to improve your content marketing it is essential to have a strategy in place. Content marketing and content strategy are linked but they are different. Content strategy is all about content management and governance.  Write down and map out what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for. Who’s your audience? Your plan should incorporate your writing style and the frequency to which you plan to share your content. What visuals will you use such as videos and images?  

What’s the one thing that makes you stand out from your competitors? What are your objectives? You also need to think about measuring the success of your content marketing.  A successful content strategy relies on using pillars and clusters. A pillar page is a central topic or broad subject. The cluster topics surround it such as blogging, email newsletters and analytics. Add hyperlinks to your pillar page to make your content more accessible. If you haven’t added pillars and clusters to your strategy do so immediately.   

2. Getting the right message out to the right person at the right time 

Marketing isn’t just about sending out blogs, posting up videos and sending out e-newsletters in the hope that more traffic to your website will come. It’s all about timing and being strategic – getting the message out to the right person at the right time.  To do that you need to customise each stage of your marketing plan. 

3. Incorporate social sharing into your content and blogs  

Always aim to produce inspiring content that is shareable. 

Blogs and other website content become infinitely more powerful with the installation of social sharing widgets that allow users to share content to the biggest social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and pinterest. Visitors to your website need to feel empowered to share your blogs or articles to their social connections. One example of good practice would be to encourage people to hit ‘like’, ‘tweet’ or ‘share’ at the bottom of your blog as a call to action. 

Reshare content using an important tool called Buffer. Buffer allows you to bulk upload and organise content to be posted to Facebook, twitter, google plus and linked in at a date and time of your choosing. 

Another method of sharing your material is to convert blogs into slideshare presentations. www.slideshare.net helps to drive traffic to your website. Convert your text into a pdf to post on slideshare. Once published, slideshare presentations can be read and re-shared by the slideshare audience or shared onwards to facebook, twitter, pinterest and more – and can even be added to the news section of your website.  

How to add share buttons to your website  

One of the easiest ways of installing the social media buttons on your page is through the plugin AddThis (www.addthis.com) As well as the social media sharing options add a ‘Subscribe via RSS’ button in a prominent place on your page so that your posts appear on your audience’s Google Reader or RSS feed as soon as they are published. 

4. Handy hints to think about when blogging …  

When writing a blog, write keyword headlines that create solutions to problems such as …’How to potty train your child.’ ‘List’ posts are extremely popular in almost any industry such as 10 top marketing tips for your blog. Be sure to revisit your posts from time to time to keep them up-to-date. 

Write blogs about breaking news within your sector as this positions you as an authority figure in your readers’ eyes. Try and encourage the reader to respond and engage with your content. For example, what do you think? Tell us in the comments below.  

One of the biggest challenges when writing blogs is creating fresh content week in, week out. One technique to use is called ‘spinning.’ In summary, it involves taking an important topic and writing about it from a variety of standpoints. A blog entitled ‘10 top tips when marketing your business’ could become ‘what not to do when marketing your business.’  

5. Don’t rely on just one type of content marketing 

It’s easy to fall into the trap of relying on one type of content marketing such as blogs for example, and expect positive results to fly in. This is in spite of the latest statistics that demonstrate how blog output has increased by 800% in the past five years whereas organic social share of blogs has decreased by 89%. 

Don’t heavily rely on one type of content. Think about using podcasts, videos, Instagram and white papers to get your key messages out across.   

Before you go… 

Hit like tweet or share below today and get your social media connections talking about ways to improve your content marketing.  

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The post Ways to improve your content marketing first appeared on Opus 4 Marketing.

During times of financial difficulty, external marketing is usually the first thing that businesses think about cutting back on. It can quite often become the sacrificial lamb in challenging economic times. The first thought of many employers when it comes to making savings is to ensure the company’s operational costs, people’s wages and general overheads become the main priority. Many companies are still reeling from the after-effects of the global pandemic and are looking for a quick financial fix. However, marketing should be the very last thing employers seek to cut back on. 

For the past two years COVID-19 has left its imprint on the world, disrupting local, national and international commerce. Businesses have consequently suffered with reduced workforces, customers, prospects and revenue. During times of uncertainty, it’s natural to look towards tightening your belt and to slow down the rate at which your money is going out. Marketing often falls victim to cut-backs as it is considered less important than other areas of the business – when in fact it should be considered the most important.  

Cutting back on your marketing budget all too often becomes the easy option as there’s no employees to get rid of, no legal costs to pay, and there’s the sense that marketing can resume once the economy picks up again. However, this is misguided logic as the best businesses increase their spend on marketing during times of economic distress. 

Spending money on marketing helps grow your business and audience, culminating in new clients and leads. It is the main tool that drives revenue back into your business. Marketing gets your brand out there which in turn makes customers aware of your products and services, leading them to make their buying decision. When you decrease your marketing budget you decrease how often you are visible to your customers –allowing your competitors to swoop in.  

Your marketing strategy is integral to your continued success and is still crucial during times of economic hardship. The emphasis might shift from driving sales to building relationships to keep your customers, and potential new customers, invested in your success. It is important that companies adapt to their clients’ needs and an example of this is to be sensitive and empathetic throughout COVID-19. Having a marketing team to hand that can really help shift and shape your key messages keeps your brand at the forefront of people’s minds. 

Should you decide to cut your marketing budget, this will impact on your whole marketing strategy leaving clients wondering where you’ve gone. Or worse, that you are in danger of closing down. Marketing communicates to your audience that you are continuing to keep their best interests at heart, reinforcing their trust in your brand. Include in your strategy opportunities to launch that new product. It’s a case of grasping the nettle and launching new ideas into the world when your competitors might be holding back. 

Slashing your marketing budget puts you in a difficult position when you’re ready to fire on all four cylinders again. Having spent a great deal of time expanding your brand’s reach, by the time you decide to scale back then months – or years of progress could be lost. Ensuring that your marketing strategy remains robust also helps to protect your reputation during times of uncertainty. Whether you’re using testimonials in your website campaign, case studies or interacting with customers on Facebook you’re demonstrating to prospective customers that you’re professional, reputable and here to stay. 

The best businesses focus more on marketing during difficult economic times rather than less. Have confidence in your marketing team who are experienced in managing your budget and helping your business to grow. 

The post Marketing in Challenging Times first appeared on Opus 4 Marketing.

• Develop exciting interactive content 
• Maximise social media 
• Make your website easy to navigate 

A successful website depends on a high level of user engagement. Website engagement plays a crucial role in helping your business to succeed. But what does user engagement mean exactly? User engagement is the length of time a visitor stays on your website to read your content or interact with key features such as adverts, videos and pop-ups. Website engagement is needed to generate new leads, make sales, retain customers and create new ones. 

What are our top 11 tips?  

We have comprised a list of 10 top tips to guide you on your journey towards keeping visitors engaged in your website. Above all, think about making your website attractive, interactive and user-friendly. In turn, the longer visitors decide to stick around and engage the better your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) will be and the higher your business will appear in the google search rankings.  

1. Keep an eye on your bounce rate 

Don’t forget to analyse your bounce rate when assessing how successful your user engagement levels are. The bounce rate measures the percentage of users that clicked on a page of your website but left without visiting anywhere else. The lower your bounce rate the better. 

2. Develop interactive content 

Bringing your website to life with interactive content boosts engagement. As well as providing a strong Mission Statement on your homepage, think about the visuals you can include and ways to encourage visitors to take part in interactive quizzes and assessments, surveys and polls. Other visuals include pop-up ads that require a user’s attention as it is a small window that appears while browsing a website. Marketers use pop-ups for advertising their business and services and generating leads.  

Make use of interactive videos such as youtube posts about your products and services, tailor-made to your audience. Visuals communicate ideas that you can’t express in words. Other interactive content includes blogging, testimonials, and video enhanced case studies. 

3. What’s popular and what’s not? 

Use tools such as Survey Monkey to find out what users of your website are looking for in terms of content or design and respond accordingly.  

4. Become more social! 

It is imperative to link your website to your content on popular social media channels such as your Facebook page, your Linkedin page, Twitter and Instagram to increase user engagement. Visitors should be able to read your latest tweets and react by either retweeting what you have shared or by sending direct messages to your business.  

An example of how you can boost engagement in your website is with Facebook-embedded posts. Since 2013, Facebook has made it possible to embed personal profile or page posts onto an external website. These embedded posts help encourage users to interact with your statuses away from the official Facebook site – boosting your website engagement. Take note – as long as the status update is made public it can be embedded. 

5. Choose your writing style  

Choose a friendly conversational tone or formal professional tone for your business. Your writing style encourages user-engagement and is important to your brand identity.  

6. Add a prominent search box to your website  

Don’t make users search for the search box! Add a prominent search box where website visitors can easily locate specific content and engage. Search boxes are usually positioned on the top left-hand side of a website. Think about adding features such as a drop-down menu from the search bar to increase traffic and user engagement. 

7. Make your website accessible  

Make sure you put in the effort to design a mobile friendly version of your site. This allows users to absorb your content and interact with your website when on the go. It is important to make your website accessible to both desktop and mobile phone users. Another tip to consider is introducing and installing an app that links directly to the website which is fully compatible with mobile phone usage.  

8. Don’t leave in a hurry! 

Don’t make your website visitors wait or leave in a hurry – reduce your page loading time. Slow loading pages put people off. By using tools like Pingdom you can test whether your page loads within two seconds. Although images can be engaging, reduce the number you upload to increase the speed of the page loading time. Another handy hint is to download plug-ins to ensure the image loading is delayed until readers scroll to a specific area of the site.  

9. Get linked in  

A good linking structure to your website boosts your SEO ranking and helps users navigate the website easily. Make the links descriptive.  Internal links direct a website user from one part of your website to another. It signposts visitors to other content and reduces your bounce rate. Essentially a strong linking strategy increases web engagement because it helps your website’s SEO, it makes it easier to navigate your website and means visitors will stay on your webpage for longer.  

10. Collect email addresses 

Collect email addresses to keep users engaged with your content and to provide content up-dates. An example of this would be to include a pop-up opt in form where web users can type their email addresses. Another option is to place a subscription form on your sidebar. 

11. Contests and giveaways 

Holding contests or giveaways can generate page visits, subscriptions, conversions and website user engagement. Users could be rewarded for content shares, referrals, social media likes or testimonials. This is turn will boost your place in the google rankings. 

Creating good website engagement helps sell your products and services, maintain good customer relations and win over new clients. Take action by following our top ten tips above and help your business to evolve with the times.    

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The post Boost Your Website Engagement first appeared on Opus 4 Marketing.