Why Conducting A Content Audit Is Important For Your Company In Today’s Marketing Environment

May 13, 2020/in Articles, Content Marketing, Directors /by Mark Beebe

As the years go by, your business’s content audit is going to evolve in a variety of different ways. Your audience may change, your products or services may change, your message may change, and your branding may change. These elements may not change much, but if your company is around for more than a few years, odds are that something will change in some way. In some cases, as we’re seeing today amidst a world that’s staying at home during a pandemic, the business environment changes.

All of this means that the content you’ve been generating may change as well. As a result, it’s important that you perform a content audit to make sure that existing content remains effective and that new content helps to address your goals.

Performing a Content Audit

A content audit is essentially a thorough evaluation of the existing content living on your website. You will want to make sure that all of your content aligns with your current brand identity and messaging. Not to mention that if your target audience changed, it means that some of your older content may no longer be relevant. It’s one of the main reasons you’ll want to develop your buyer personas if you haven’t already. You should also look for content that has outdated information. The last thing you want to do is provide content that’s backed by data that’s inaccurate because it’s outdated. In many cases, you can just update this content to ensure that it’s accurate.

In addition to removing content that is no longer relevant and updating content to ensure it’s accuracy, you should also identify gaps in your content library. For example, you may find that you have a significant amount of content that targets three of your four buyer personas; however, you have very little content targeting that fourth persona. You will want to fill in this gap by focusing your content creation on that fourth buyer persona. You may also find gaps in regards to the type of content you’re creating that you’ll want to address as well.

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Adjusting Your Strategy During COVID-19

The marketing environment has changed drastically. For example, you can no longer attend trade shows or in-person events in order to generate awareness about your brand. The production of new video content is limited as well. However, online marketing remains effective. In fact, if you adjust your content strategy accordingly, you may be able to reach even more potential leads. This is because more people are at home than ever before. As a result, many of these people have more time to explore your content. With that in mind, the following are a few types of content you should focus on creating for your audience during COVID-19:

Blog content

If you’re not regularly producing and promoting new blog content, then you should focus on doing so. Begin publishing content more often since your audience is going to have more time on their hands. Don’t shy away from tying your content in with current events (specifically, COVID-19) either. The more helpful your content is, the better.

Use chat more

Since your website will become a much more prominent part of your marketing strategy than ever before, invest in live chat and chatbot features. Online chat features are a great way to keep audiences engaged. They also help provide important information that can guide your leads through their website experience.

Webinars

Webinars are a great way to educate your audience about various topics. They also tend to be more engaging than other types of content. Webinars don’t require any production value — any of your company’s leadership can film a webinar out of the comfort of their own home. The success of a webinar is mostly dependent on the information provided. Additionally, viewers can ask questions during live webinars, making them all the more engaging.

Virtual events:

Virtual events can be similar to webinars; however, webinars don’t necessarily have to be live. By hosting a live virtual event that requires registration, you can generate more interest. People are more likely to tune in if there’s a chance of missing out, after all. There’s also a good chance that you’ll draw a larger audience in today’s environment since more people will be available to attend. There are a lot of different types of virtual events you can hold, such as Q and A sessions with industry influencers or CEOs.

There are still opportunities for effective marketing during COVID-19. First of all, make sure that you perform a thorough content audit. Doing so will ensure that all existing content supports your current marketing goals. You will also be able to identify any gaps in your content marketing efforts that need to be addressed. While some of your marketing efforts will be limited, you can use this opportunity to focus on creating content that will be effective at increasing engagement during COVID-19. For example, by producing more blog content, virtual events, and webinars.

Effective Advertising Requires Authenticity and Humanizing Ads

May 11, 2020/in Articles, Brand Story Telling, Content Marketing, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

Many businesses assume that effective advertising is achieved when your marketing efforts lead to more leads and more sales. Unfortunately, many companies become overly promotional as a result. Advertising isn’t just about promoting products and services. It’s also about providing value to your customers in other ways. Trying to convince a customer why they should buy your product is rarely an effective advertising technique. Instead, you should be less promotional. For example, creating humanizing ads can make your brand more relatable to your audience. Such ads also show your audience that the bottom line isn’t the only thing you care about. Doing so also helps build a more authentic brand identity.

Providing Value To Your Audience

One of the common mistakes businesses make is to focus too much on showcasing their products and services. Before you can try to demonstrate the value of your products and services, you need to demonstrate the value of your brand. Creating an authentic brand identity is crucial to being able to sell your products and services.

To demonstrate the value of your brand, you will need to add value in a non-promotional way Achieving this requires that you understand who your audience is and what their needs are. For example, many small businesses aren’t going to be investing in new products or services as a result of the COVID-19 situation. This is especially true for small businesses that aren’t considered essential. Trying to convince small business owners to purchase your products or services isn’t going to be effective right now. However, content that can help educate small business owners during COVID-19 is going to be very useful to them. For example, content about the recent small business stimulus program that explains how to go about obtaining funds.

Creating such content provides immediate value to your target audience. Additionally, it shows your audience that you understand what their needs are. The ability to demonstrate this understanding will help increase your brand authority, resulting in more trust. As a direct result, your audience will be more likely to believe that the products and services that you offer will help them address their needs once they are capable of making new purchases.

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Creating Soft-Selling Ads

In addition to creating content that offers value to your audience, you should also create soft-selling ads. Soft-selling ads help to advertise your brand without doing so explicitly. Traditional ads are known for being more aggressive. They will often end with a clear call-to-action to buy a product or invest in a service. For example, a traditional cereal commercial might show a person enjoying a bowl of cereal. It might also list all of the healthy benefits. A soft-selling ad does not focus on the product or service that you’re trying to sell.

Some companies are focusing on spreading awareness for important information about COVID-19 using soft-selling ads, such as emphasizing the importance of social distancing. Budweiser has focused many of its new ads on highlighting the heroic work being done on the frontlines by everyone from healthcare workers to grocery store workers. These ads are effective because they aren’t shoving their products in the faces of viewers. However, their efforts to deliver valuable information to everyone showcases their authenticity.

Another great example is Jack Daniels. They produced an ad showing people socializing over video chat from the comforts of their own home. This ad highlights the importance of staying at home during the pandemic. It is also accompanied by a great slogan: Dear humanity, cheers to making social distancing, social. With love, Jack.” This ad is humanizing without every attempting to sell a product. As a result, it helps to lend the brand authenticity. If they had ended the commercial trying to sell their whiskey, it wouldn’t have been nearly as impactful.

Authenticity Matters

One thing to keep in mind when creating content for your audience is that you need to be authentic. You can’t come across as pandering or as taking advantage of a situation. The audience will always know. The only way to avoid such a pitfall is to truly have your target audience in mind when you create your content. Focus on your buyer personas and think about what their needs, problems, wants, and fears are, both in general and in the world today. Doing so is the only way to ensure effective advertising.

6 Essential Steps to Healthcare Content Marketing

April 13, 2020/in Articles, Content Marketing, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

When it comes to healthcare and wellness, roughly 80 percent of people tend to use search engines like Google to find information and advice. As a healthcare provider, you should take advantage of this by investing in a robust healthcare content marketing strategy. By implementing a good healthcare content marketing strategy, you’ll not only be able to establish yourself as a healthcare authority, which will help to earn more trust amongst potential patients, but you’ll be able to generate more leads as well. Keeping that in mind, the following are six healthcare content marketing tactics that you should leverage in order to improve engagement with potential patients.

1. Write A Blog Focusing On Your Niche

A website blog is one of the easiest ways to produce and publish informative content on a regular basis that can help to attract new leads as well as keep existing leads coming back. Create content that focuses on medical information relevant to your niche. In fact, by focusing on your niche. you’re more likely to attract your target audience. For example, if you’re a general health practitioner, then writing a blog post on steps to take to avoid the coronavirus is relevant to your practice. However, if you’re a dental practice, such a post is not relevant to your medical niche. Make sure that the content you create is helpful and informative to your specific audience.

2. Post Patient Testimonials On Your Website

Building trust is absolutely essential to the success of a healthcare marketing strategy in general. Since new patients are putting their health in your hands, you will need to find ways to build that trust. While creating high-quality content can go a long way in building trust, you should also create patient testimonials. Patient testimonials are essentially positive reviews from previous patients. Potential patients are going to be much more at ease if they see that you have a lot of patients who had a good experience with your healthcare services.

Set up a dedicated patient testimonial page on your site so that it’s easy to find. Although you can simply post written comments from past patients, you should consider creating patient testimonial videos, which are even more effective.

3. Introduce Your Team Of Healthcare Professionals

Being able to put a face (or faces) to your healthcare business is going to help make potential customers feel much more comfortable about scheduling an appointment or contacting you. After all, it’s not knowing about what they’re getting into that tends to put people ill at ease. With that in mind, flesh out your about page with content about your healthcare professionals. For example, a photograph of each doctor along with a short background paragraph can make a big difference. If you want to go the extra mile, post a video interview with each one of your doctors (or main healthcare providers).

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4. Create Interactive Content

The majority of people who are searching for healthcare-related content are looking for information that pertains to their own health. As such, creating interactive content can help you to address their needs more effectively. For example, health assessments and quizzes allow them to go over their symptoms in order to get a general idea about their current health. This type of content tends to be highly engaging, not to mention that it can lead to more appointments being scheduled as well.

5. Establish A Relatable Brand Personality

In order for potential patients to be able to trust you, they have to feel like they know you. While fleshing out your about page can help, it’s also important that you establish a brand personality that they can connect with on a more personal level. If your content is too dry and has no personality, it will feel like they’re just getting information from a textbook. You want it to feel like they are getting information from one of your healthcare professionals. Keep this in mind when creating your content. Additionally, get your personality across by interacting with leads directly. Whether through a live chat feature, on the comment section of your blog, or on social media.

6. Analyze The Performance Of Your Content

Monitor the performance of your content over time using analytics. Track metrics such as page rankings, traffic generated, traffic generated by source, click-through-rates, social signals, backlinks earned, and conversion rates. This will allow you to identify content that’s performing well so that you can make adjustments to improve your healthcare content marketing strategy over time.

These are just six tactics that you should focus on when implementing a healthcare content marketing strategy. With an effective healthcare content marketing strategy, you’ll find that your ability to attract new patients and to engage with them will improve significantly over time. As a result, there will be more leads, brand awareness, and an increase in brand trust.

How Healthcare Content Marketing Companies Can Step Up in 2020

April 10, 2020/in Articles, Content Marketing, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

With the COVID-19 pandemic spreading across the nation, healthcare content marketing is more valued than ever before. We have always needed healthcare companies to create the innovative products and services to help us deal with life’s ailments. However, with so much uncertainty in the world, now is the time for leaders in the healthcare field to realize that sharing what they know is just as important as delivering their products and services. As a result here are a few ways healthcare content marketing companies can aid the public during these times of uncertainty.

Make Your Content Reliable

Healthcare content marketing, or any kind of content marketing, should make good on the promises that people will read in your meta description. Nothing is more frustrating to a reader, than following up on an enticing description, only to find generic filler content. Now, with a crisis causing a nearly unprecedented amount of uncertainty, the public is looking for whatever concrete solutions that they can find.

For example, if you’re a B2B company who sells ventilators, then provide as many details as possible. That way uncertain decision makers, will know all they need to about your equipment, and view your company as a credible source of information. Another way to remain reliable in a crisis is to have a 24/7 live helpline open to anyone seeking aid. You can even incorporate chatbots into your company website; that way you can be available with a fast follow-up the next morning.

Make sure to have in-depth content prepared in advance and tailor it to each departmental decision maker. That way department leaders, such as medical directors, can assess their needs, in regards to the equipment your company can provide. Above all else, make sure that your content and sales teams work in tandem beforehand so that all of your messaging aligns properly. Whatever else you offer, your company’s B2B content must be personalized, accurate, and actionable.

Create Specific Landing Pages

In addition to timely blog posts, articles, and press releases, creating a landing page is another way healthcare content marketing companies, can aid the public. More specifically, you should focus on creating a landing page that’s a hub for all things crisis related and link it back to your homepage. A unique landing page is an efficient strategy to route people to the right resources as quickly as possible.

Enjoy the article: 5 Key Healthcare Marketing Strategies to Implement in 2020

Incorporate Customer & Patient Feedback

A good way to build reassurance from the public is for them know that there are others who have benefited from your advice, products or services. For B2B companies, knowing exactly which facilities have used your products to solve internal crises can help turn potential customers into paid ones. Furthermore, when you include your customer’s feedback into your content, you’re providing information that can drive decisions.

Make Sure You Are Mobile Optimized

When something newsworthy occurs, chances are your customers aren’t going to pull out their desktops to get information. They’ll more than likely reach into their pockets and pull out whatever mobile device they have. If your content isn’t mobile-optimized, your company is likely leaving a lot of business on the table.

Additionally, mobile loading speed is something to be weary of. While tolerable most of the time, a slow loading and poorly optimized website, runs the risk of scaring away potential customers. As a result, your audience will likely abandon your content in favor of your competitors. This is especially true during times of crisis, as the public will want quick access to vital information. With a good majority of all online traffic in the U.S coming from mobile devices, it’s a good idea to make sure that your content gets into their hands first.

Empathize With Your Patients and Customers

During these trying times, your patience and empathy will be needed more than ever. However, this is only the first step. Your customers will need actionable information that they can digest quickly, in order to feel more at ease.

Use bullet points or subheadings, so that people can scan your content clearly. Be sure to include visuals in your display. Chances are, they’ll help your customers remember information much better than text alone. With that in mind, try to keep your content accurate and easy to read. Think about what it is that your target customers or patients want to know, then create your content around that.

Finally, transparency is another way to reassure others of your sincerity. The more actionable and proactive your information is, the others will see your commitment to their well-being. Furthermore, you lessen the risk of needing reputation management further down the road. In conclusion by applying these principles, you can help millions feel reassurance that their life is in the right hands.

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The Importance of Lead Generation and Content Marketing Agencies

March 27, 2020/in Articles, Content Marketing, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

Your company is struggling to generate leads, and you’re looking for a quick and relatively simple solution. I have the solution, but you’ll probably groan because you’ve heard it before. “Content is king” might be an overused term, but that’s only because it’s proven to be true. A foolproof solution to your lack of leads as well as website foot traffic is lead generation content marketing. Nowadays, the quality of your company’s content is more important than ever before. Granted, there is more space to generate content and share it on the Internet, but with increased space comes tougher competition. We as marketing agencies feel pressure to stand out from the pack with remarkable content that converts our website’s visitors into potential leads. Consistent, quality content will attract the attention of readers, as well as encourage them to trust your company. Content marketing agencies can also help you create effective content marketing strategies and manage your content channels.

So what exactly is “quality” content?

Quality content has a specific purpose, format, and topic. The purpose should help the users find an answer to their questions or interests. The format you choose should fit your content well. In order to attract more leads, the content in the conversion stage should consist mainly of content offers.

Choose an appropriate format

The format of the content offers can be a multitude of things; such as case studies, white papers, forms, calls-to-action, visuals, eBooks, emails, and landing pages. For example, if you want to demonstrate to users how a product works, you might use the template of a visual, such as a video or an image, rather than an eBook. On the other hand, if you wish to show your readers a how-to process that is also aesthetically pleasing, an eBook format would work better than a visual one.

In terms of topics, your content should be educational as well as specific. You should conduct market research and create content with your buyer personas in mind. Imagine you are your buyer persona: what problems do you need solutions for? How far are you in the buyer’s journey? What language would you use when typing keywords into the search engine? This can help you cater your content towards your target audience.

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Be consistent

Another factor that makes content “quality” is frequent and consistent publication. If your readers know they can count on you to publish a semi-weekly blog in a specific time window, they are much more likely to see you as reliable. Webdam’s statistics show that blogging consistently has led to B2B marketers generating about 67% more leads marketers who do not, which is a huge advantage. After you’ve earned their trust, a number of your visitors will subscribe to you and convert to leads.

Lead generation content marketing is a proven way to get the word out about your company and have potential customers become interested in your business. Without good, consistent content, people will have little reason to visit your website or truly believe that you’re a leader in your field. Don’t let this happen to you.

Figuring Out Your Bounce Rate Benchmark

January 27, 2020/in Articles, Content Marketing, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

When it comes to your website, it’s important to monitor how it’s performing. Tracking performance allows you to adjust different tactics. Thereby ensuring that you have the best chance of attracting high-quality leads and converting them while they’re exploring your site. One metric that you should be sure to monitor is the bounce rate. However, the bounce rate benchmark isn’t as easy to read as you might think.

What Is The Bounce Rate?

A “bounce” occurs whenever someone who has visited your webpage leaves the page without engaging further. This is generally seen as a bad thing since visitors who leave without engaging may not be interested in your content, may have a poor first impression of your website, or did no0t find what they were looking for. A bounce can be triggered when a visitor returns to their original search results, closes their browser, stays inactive on your page and the session times out, clicks on an outbound link, or enters a new URL into the address bar.

While a high bounce rate might indicate that there’s something wrong with your page (for example, it’s not loading fast enough, resulting in visitors returning to their search results in frustration), it’s not always a bad thing. In some cases, certain pages simply have naturally high bounce rates. For example, contact pages often have high bounce rates. This is not because the visitor is leaving as a result of a negative experience — instead, they may simply be using the contact information they’ve found to reach you. With that in mind, you’ll want to set a different bounce rate benchmark for different types of pages.

Setting Your Bounce Rate Benchmark

Setting a bounce rate benchmark is important. When you monitor your bounce rate of certain pages, you’ll want to be able to identify if the bounce rate is too high or not. A bounce rate under 40 percent is considered normal, while a bounce rate between 20 and 30 percent is excellent. However, there are other factors to consider as well. Sometimes a 50 percent bounce rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing. With that in mind, the following are some of the factors you’ll need to consider when setting your bounce rate benchmark for different pages on your site.

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The type of page

As previously mentioned, some pages are going to have higher bounce rates than other pages because of the type of page that they are. Content-based pages, such as blog pages, tend to have higher bounce rates. A visitor might spend some time reading a long-form blog post and then leave after finishing. Unfortunately, this can trigger a bounce if all they did was read the post. But this isn’t necessarily a negative thing — if they stayed on the page and finished reading the entire post, then there’s always a chance they’ll come back to your site in the future.

Additionally, content pages are often visited via links posted on social media. This means that someone who came to your site, via a link to your blog that you posted on Facebook may go back to your Facebook page after they’re done. Just because they didn’t engage further on your website, doesn’t mean that they’re not engaging on your social pages afterwards. In addition to content-based pages, reference pages tend to have high bounce rates as well. For example, FAQ pages, form submission pages, and sales confirmation pages.

The device used

The device the user is on affects the bounce rate as well. People using a desktop are more likely to engage with a webpage that they are visiting because they have more time. Mobile users tend to be in more of a hurry and are more likely to bounce as a result.

The origin of the traffic

Knowing what channels your traffic is coming from is helpful since the origin of the traffic can affect the bounce rate. Visitors coming to your site from social media pages tend to go back to the social channel they came from. It’s why social media bounce rates are usually two to three times higher than bounce rates from other channels. The highest bounce rates come from display ad traffic. As far as the lowest bounce rates go, they tend to come from referral and email traffic. This is because visitors coming to your site from a referral or email link, are more likely to have an existing interest in your brand and are more likely to continue engaging on your site.

Although bounce rates are an excellent metric to track in order to monitor your website’s performance, it’s important to understand the factors that contribute to your bounce rate. Understanding why the bounce rate is what it is will make it easier to judge the performance of your pages.

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Cornerstone Content & Why You Need It

January 13, 2020/in Articles, Content Marketing, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

As you likely know at this point, the success of your inbound marketing strategy depends significantly on your content strategy. Your content strategy, however, probably consists of several different facets. As you plan your content, it’s important to understand that not all content provides the same value to your strategy. Some content is much more valuable to your marketing strategy than other types of content. The most important of this content is known as cornerstone content. It’s useful to understand what cornerstone content is and that you implement it on your website.

What is Cornerstone Content?

Cornerstone content is the best and most important content found on your website. Out of all the content you create, this is the content that you want to rank highest in search engines. It provides new visitors with an overview on important topics that are relevant to your business. For example, cornerstone content for a roofing contractor might include an article, about the different types of materials that can be used in a roof installation. Or how to tell when your roof needs to be replaced. It can also include an in-depth breakdown of services offered by your company and when they might be needed.

As such, cornerstone content can take the form of a blog post or a webpage. Cornerstone content is generally found at the top of your funnel. Since it provides visitors with a thorough introduction to a topic, it doesn’t need to be gated.

The Benefits

The following are some of the benefits of creating and implementing cornerstone content onto your website:

Increase your brand awareness – Your content is more likely to be found by new visitors, who are looking to educate themselves about certain topics. Because your content provides visitors with an introduction to certain information, it should help to drive awareness of your brand as a result.
Create a positive first impression on visitors – People who first arrive at your site are more likely to do so via your cornerstone content. If the information is helpful and insightful, then you will leave a good first impression. This will encourage them to continue exploring your site and to read other content.
Earn natural links – Cornerstone content is more likely to earn links from other respectable sources. As a result of being a good source of information for people who are new to the topic. As such, cornerstone content is more likely to earn traffic as a result of external links.
Drive relevant web traffic – Create what is relevant to your brand, then the people who search for the topics you’ve focused on are more likely to be part of your target audience.
Build brand authority and trust – If what you create is of high quality, it will help to build brand authority, making it easier to earn trust from new visitors.
Repurpose into other types of content – Because cornerstone content is a long-form introduction or overview of a topic, you can repurpose it into other types of content, such as smaller blog posts.

How to Create What You Need

As important as cornerstone content is, creating it is a simple process. The following are some of the basic steps you can take in order to create what’s needed for your website:

Identify main keywords – Do keyword research to determine what the main keywords you want your website to rank for. Use these keywords to form the topic ideas for your content.
Write long-form content – Cornerstone content should be more in-depth pieces of content that provides readers with highly-informative material. Content that is impressive in both quality and scope is more likely to be linked to. Make sure that when you begin crafting that it’s well-developed and comprehensive.
Connect related content – Link your cornerstone content to other pages and other content on your website that’s relevant. Keeping it interconnected will help boost your SEO as well as make it easier to keep visitors on your website.
Optimize – Make sure you also use proper keywords in your headers, meta tags, titles, and URLs.
Make your content accessible – It should be easy to find your cornerstone content. Even if new visitors don’t find it via a search, they should be able to find it when on your website. It’s why you should link to it from your homepage.

When it comes to your content strategy, the importance of having this information on your website is essential. It is the foundation that will help to drive the success of your content marketing strategy in general.

Blog Vs. Vlog: Why Your Business Should Begin Vlogging

December 26, 2019/in Articles, Blog, Content Marketing, Directors /by Terry Becker

The blog has long been one of the preferred tactics for content marketing strategies. Using a blog, you can easily publish a variety of different content, from written articles to infographics and more. However, blogging isn’t the only content marketing tactic that works. More and more businesses are beginning to vlog as well. The concept of a vlog is simple — it’s a blog in video form. The question is how do you decide which to choose between blog vs. vlog for which type of content?

The Benefits Of A Vlog

These days, vlogging can be done with nothing more than a smartphone, making it both affordable and easily accessible. It’s important to have content available for your prospects and clients that prefer video to text. The following are some of the major benefits of utilizing vlogs.

Vlog content is easy to produce
With advancements in technology, the equipment you need to produce a vlog isn’t as expensive as you might think. Of course, you’ll want to spend some money to ensure that the quality of your video content stands out from the pack, but it’s more affordable to do so now than ever before. They also give you an easier way of explaining blog topics that you think would be better demonstrated visually. Words alone can not properly convey every idea.
Vlog are engaging
Vlogs are incredibly engaging and there’s a simple reason for this. Not only do people more easily consume visual content, but vlogs also allow you to showcase your personality. They provide a person, whether it’s someone in your company, a customer, or an actor, to represent your brand. By having someone on screen, viewers will be able to engage on a personal level much more easily. This is difficult to do with written content since you can’t immediately convey a personality.
Vlogs are mobile-friendly
It’s much easier for people to watch videos on their smartphones than it is to read blogs. Reading is more challenging on smaller screens, while videos can display in full HD and will run smoothly. It’s why half of all video content is viewed on mobile devices. Additionally, people who are watching videos on mobile are more likely to share. It’s estimated that 92 percent of people viewing videos on their mobile devices tend to share videos.

Choosing Blog Vs. Vlog

Many of the benefits of a vlog are advantages as well. Because of the fact that vlogs are video content, they are inherently more engaging, shareable, and mobile-friendly than blogs. However, you could argue that blogs are easier to produce — although some might not agree since blogging does require writing and editing skills. The thing is, there’s no necessity to choose between blog vs. vlog. Why not implement both? Both written content and video content have a place in your content marketing strategy. And when it comes to content, it’s good to have a variety. By providing your audience with content they can both read and watch, you cover all of your bases. Now the question becomes when do you blog and when do you vlog?

When to Blog or Vlog

Blogging is a great way to get a lot of information across to your audience. For example, if you have a lot of statistics that you want to share, then an infographic or a bullet list can be more effective than rattling them off on video. However, when it comes to things like tutorials or demonstrations, vlogging is going to be more effective since you can show your audience instead of having to tell them. It also depends on the message you want to convey. If you want to build a real connection with your audience, a vlog might be better suited as they can see and hear another human being. Even if you already have a strong connection with your blog audience, vlogging can only improve it.

Vlogs also work well for your social media posts. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are great places to share vlogs and get more people interested in your content due to easy sharing features. Since it’s a video sharing platform, YouTube is the best place to be uploading vlogs. Users receive video recommendations based on other content they have watched which makes the likelihood of the correct audience finding your videos greater. While links to blogs can be shared on social media, audiences are unable to view the entire content without going to another website. Vlogs can usually be viewed directly on the platform they’re shared on such as Facebook or YouTube, or a snippet of them can be shared on Instagram and Twitter, depending on the length.

Explore more ways to use video in your marketing strategy: Video Marketing Ideas: Using Storytelling In Social Media

There are advantages to both blogging and vlogging, but there’s no reason to limit yourself to one or the other. Both can be incredibly effective at informing and engaging audiences as well as attracting and converting more leads. In the end, it’s the quality of the content you create that matters most.

5 Noteworthy User Generated Content Examples & Benefits

November 5, 2019/in Articles, Blog, Content Marketing, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Nicole Wagner

Content marketing is an essential component of any successful online marketing strategy. The success of your content marketing depends on a variety of factors. Your content has to be relevant, informative, and of high quality. However, it also has to be varied. Creating content takes a lot of effort and it can sometimes be a challenge to create content that’s both new and exciting. One type of content that you should focus on is user generated content. User generated content adds to your content’s variety and provides benefits. Before going into some user generated content examples, it’s important that you understand what those benefits are.

The Benefits of User Generated Content

The following are a few ways in which user generated content can benefit your marketing strategy:

Free content – Constantly creating new content is a challenge for any business. However, user generated content does it for you for free. For example, asking your audience to submit creative content such as artwork or stories relevant to your brand creates a positive experience for both parties. Also, free content can boost your SEO and your social media reach.
Build brand trust – Consumers are naturally skeptical about anything that businesses have to say to them. It’s why they tend to trust the word of other consumers more. User-generated content, such as brand hashtags, gives users the opportunity to share their positive feedback about your company in a more authentic form. The content comes from the consumer’s point of view, which means that they’ll be more likely to trust it.
Engage customers – Allowing your customers to create content for your brand is a great way to get them involved. Brand engagement lets customers participate directly in your marketing efforts, which also boosts brand loyalty. Engagement helps customers feel like they’re communicating with real people, rather than just a business.

Learn more about content creation from Stevens & Tate: How To Create Content For Each Sale Funnel Stage

5 User Generated Content Examples

Now that you know the benefits of user generated content, take a look at some examples of brands putting it into action:

T-Mobile
T-Mobile attempted to steal customers away from its competitors by offering to pay for the early termination fees charged by carriers for any customers who switched over. In addition to being a stellar unique selling proposition, it was accompanied by an excellent marketing strategy that focused on user generated content. They invited customers of other carriers to submit break-up letters that highlighted why they were leaving their existing carriers for T-Mobile. Not only were many of these letters hilarious, they also highlighted the weaknesses of their competition. Over 113,000 letters were written, resulting in close to 70 million social impressions.
Warby-Parker
Roughly five years ago, Warby-Parker launched a campaign in which customers were allowed to request five pairs of glasses online to try on at home. This allowed them to try the glasses, pay for the pair they liked most and send the others back. It was an effective way to promote their online store. Additionally, they encouraged participants to post photographs on line of them trying on the glasses. Customers then gave and obtained feedback from each other, thereby driving engagement between customers and their brand.
GoPro
GoPro uniquely allows users to capture incredible footage using small cameras that can be strapped to their heads. To highlight the GoPro’s capabilities, GoPro used the footage that their customers filmed using their products as part of their marketing campaign. It was such a successful endeavor that you can now find over 40 million results for the word “GoPro” on YouTube, and GoPro itself has almost 8 million YouTube subscribers.
Adobe
This popular design software company ran a campaign not long ago called the Art Maker Series. During the campaign, they asked their users to share the work they did using Adobe products. Adobe used this content to promote their software. The campaign was incredibly effective as it allowed Adobe to show off their software capabilities while providing exposure to talented designers.
Starbucks
Starbucks ran a similar campaign to Adobe in terms of highlighting the creativity of their customers. They did this by running a Twitter contest called #WhiteCupContest. The contest encouraged participants to draw on their white coffee cups and submit them. Starbucks used the winning cup as a limited edition reusable cup design. They received over 4,000 submissions in just three weeks. It was so successful that Starbucks ran several similar contests after that.

User generated content is a great way to develop more content and help build your credibility with consumers. It also encourages consumers to participate, thereby building brand loyalty. Hopefully, these five user generated content examples inspired you to encourage your consumers to help create content for your brand.

Developing the Perfect Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy

May 13, 2019/in Articles, Attraction Marketing, Content Marketing, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Mark Beebe

The buyer’s journey has changed a lot over the years. This is a result of the consumer’s ability to explore multiple channels online and to engage in multiple ways. There is no distinct path that takes them from point A to point B in order to make a purchase. While one customer might begin doing research through a search engine like Google, another might ask their followers questions on social media to identify solutions to their problems, while yet another might stumble on an ad for one of your products in a magazine. Basically, every buyer’s journey is unique.

As such, it’s important that you have a presence on multiple channels and that you integrate all of your channels, processes, and strategies so that you can help meet the needs and nurture your leads at any stage of their buyer’s journey no matter where they are. This is known as omni-channel marketing. The following are a number of tips that you should consider implementing that will help you strengthen your omni-channel marketing strategy:

Be Consistent With Your Marketing Efforts

Consistency is incredibly important when it comes to omni-channel marketing. This is because your leads are likely jumping from one channel to another. A lead may see a commercial on TV, then visit your Facebook page, then go to your website. If your branding is different (for example, if your message is different, your tone is different, or even the overall aesthetic of your marketing is different), you’re going to confuse consumers and you’re likely going to lose leads.

Remove Siloed Organizational Structure

Because consumers may be at different stages of the buyer’s journey while exploring different channels, it’s important that your sales, marketing, PR, and customer service departments a

ren’t siloed. You need to make sure everyone has access to customer and prospect data at every stage and on every channel. This ensures that everyone is on the same page when it comes to identifying leads, engaging with them, nurturing them, and closing them.

Create Content For Every Channel

The more content you make available on different channels, the more successfully you’ll be able to reach consumers wherever they are. For example, if you only have a website, then you’re missing out on a lot of leads who use social media to find product or service recommendations. Make sure that you create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey and that you post it on a variety of platforms, including your website as well as social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and whatever other platforms your customers use.

Similar Article: How To Create Content For Each Sale Funnel Stage

Optimize Everything For Mobile Use

All of your online content needs to be optimized for mobile use. This is because many consumers may explore your website while on their smartphone or tablet. This is especially true if they are engaging on social media and follow a link back to your site, or they see one of your commercials on TV and decide to do a search for your company (more and more consumers use their mobile devices while watching TV these days). If your online content isn’t properly optimized for mobile use, then it may not load properly or be displayed properly.

Put Together The Proper Marketing Stack

Because you’ll be collecting data on leads and customers from a variety of different platforms, you’ll want to make sure that you have the tools needed to organize the data and to put it to good use. To do this, you’ll want to build a marketing stack using tools such as CRM (customer relationship management) software, CMS (content management system, analytics and data visualization tools, and marketing automation.

Omni-channel marketing is essential if you want to attract and nurture modern day consumers through their unique buyer’s journeys. These omnichannel marketing tips will help make it easier to reach consumers at every point of their buyer’s journey no matter where they are.