4 Content Marketing Goals for a Coach Website

Written by in Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Writing for the Web
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ContentMatters 4 Content Marketing Goals for a Coach WebsiteHow should content marketing be used on the home page of your website? What makes good website copy? More specifically, if you’re a professional service provider, like an executive coach, a consultant, a lawyer, health care or financial adviser… how do you create a website that attracts clients and gets potential new leads?

No matter what business you’re in, your content must achieve four things. Here are four goals for your online content:

  1. Connect immediately (by speaking to your readers’ challenges or problems)
  2. Answer questions and educate (by suggesting solutions)
  3. Provide choices without confusion (by providing 3-4 places to read more)
  4. Compel readers to take action (simple sign-up form or contact link)

That’s a basic outline that you could follow, not just for websites, but for your blog and other content marketing pieces.

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A Checklist for 2012 Content Marketing Plans

Written by in About Blogs, Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, How to...Tips, On Writing Better
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checklist 150x150 A Checklist for 2012 Content Marketing Plans2012 Content Marketing – how did we get here so fast?  I’ve been reviewing my 2011 blog posts, email broadcasts, videos, and taking stock. I hope you’re doing the same, so you’ll get an idea of what’s needed for your own business in 2012. (Photo courtesy Rawich/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Here’s a checklist for reviewing your 2011 content marketing results so you can know where to spend your time and energy in 2012:

  • What were your most effective blog posts in terms of numbers of page views?
  • Which posts generated the most comments?
  • What email promotional subject lines got the best open rates? (Checkout this previous blog post for Subject Line Tips)
  • Which email newsletters titles got better open rates?
  • Which white paper or special report got good download rates?
  • Where did your most qualified leads come from?
  • Which teleseminar topics got the most registrations?
  • What were the press releases that got the most clicks?

You should also be taking a look at the quality of your writing, especially for your blog. Although it’s a bit dated, a tried and true review of some sophisticated blog writing concepts is Sonia Simone’s review of the best of Copyblogger for 2008.  (I warned you, it’s a bit dated, but the concepts are proven and stand the test of time.)

What about you?  What are your favorites?  Most importantly, how did you do in 2011, and what are your plans for 2012?

If you’re still having trouble, check out my recent post on ready to publish articles.  Content marketing is easier when you can outsource some of the writing and researching to qualified writers. A great way to short-cut the time needed to research, write and publish quality online content is to find a good writer to supply articles.

Now, I’ve got to get back to my own review.  2011 was a great year, let’s see how much better we can do in 2012.  Happy writing!

 

 

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Content Marketing Tasks: Practice Makes Progress

Written by in Brain Based Content Marketing, Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Writing for the Web, Writing Speeches
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AnyQuestion AgingBrain 150x150 Content Marketing Tasks: Practice Makes ProgressIf you’ve spent your career avoiding certain marketing tasks because you don’t think you’re any good at them, you struggle each time you try, and you end up with weak results, take heart. Persistence has been touted by poets for a reason.

Your brain learns a lot each time you try something, even if you fail. If you stop trying, you’ll walk away with nothing. If you persist, however, the rewards are huge.

Example: public speaking. Many small business owners and entrepreneurs including many of my clients love the chance to get up and speak. The larger the group, the better. In my experience, they are extroverts. They love people and love conversations.

On the other hand, they usually don’t like writing. (Which is why they are my clients… they need content and they need to publish on the web – blogs, e-newsletters, ebooks, etc.)

Other people tend to focus their online marketing on content; they write books and they publish blogs and newsletters… and they hate speaking. They would rather have a root canal than deliver even a 3 minute elevator speech at a networking event.

While you can outsource your written content, especially online, you can’t outsource your speaking. You’ve got to deliver a speech yourself in order to represent your business and get clients.

Make no mistake, there is magic that comes from speaking from the podium. It works like a magnet for drawing people to you, creating credibility and potential working relationships.

You have to persist at things in order to learn them. Writing gets better each time you write, the same goes for blogging, revising web pages, writing sales copy, email promotions. The more you practice the better you are and the easier the task becomes. Here’s an example:

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Content Marketing Tip: Start with Ready-to-Publish Articles

Written by in Attracting Clients, Content Marketing, Writing for the Web
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blue man pondering Content Marketing Tip: Start with Ready to Publish ArticlesContent marketing is easier when you can outsource some of the writing and researching to qualified writers. A great way to short-cut the time needed to research, write and publish quality online content is to find a good writer to supply articles.

For example, as a former executive coach and psychologist, I write for other coaches and consultants who are too busy with clients to write their own newsletters and blogs. You can find good writers in just about any field.

While this has created a good business for me, doing what I love, I don’t see many people using other people’s content for optimal results. Furthermore, when they do use writers, they don’t personalize it to make it their own.

Content marketing doesn’t work as well without unique and personalized copy.  Some people use canned articles ‘as is’. They don’t take the time to add their own stories, to explain how it is for them in the work they do.

You need to connect the dots for readers.

  • Tell them why this article and these ideas are important to them.
  • Tell them about the work you do with your clients.
  • Tell them how they can learn more about what you’re publishing.

In my ebook Content Marketing with Blogs, I talk about the 4 Es: educate, entertain, engage and enrich the lives of people each time you write and publish on your blog. When you write, think about elements of each goal:

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When Business Blogging Works Too Well…

Written by in About Blogs, Content Marketing, Online Marketing
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bloggingincome 150x150 When Business Blogging Works Too Well…Blogging for your business works like this:

  1. You blog about the problems you solve for your clients
  2. You get found on the Web by the people who need your services
  3. People get to know you, like you, trust you
  4. They email or call and hire you (photo courtesy ddpavumba)

But then your business grows, you get busy, and what happens to the blog? I’ve seen hundreds  of business blogs written by smart professionals who haven’t been posted since last summer.

Here’s my own example. I think I enjoy blogging for other people more than I do for myself! The more work I’m getting ghost blogging for executive coaches, the more interesting my writing becomes, and the more fun I’m having. It’s all good, really, except for a few problems…

I am quite simply more excited about creating content that markets for other professionals than I am for myself and my own  business blog. I have long since stopped worrying about being “normal,” so that doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

But here are some problems… All the while, my ranking on the Top 42 Content Marketing blogs is slipping. I went from #4 to #10 to #17…to #45. I may soon be off the list entirely. Yikes! (List now defunct, but you get the point!)

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Business Blog: 4 Reasons to NOT Write Your Own

Written by in About Blogs, Content Marketing, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks
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ContentMatters Business Blog: 4 Reasons to NOT Write Your OwnGuest post by Adam Kosloff.

You’re swamped.

You barely have time to scan the headlines of your favorite news feeds. Probably the only reason you clicked on this article was to check out whether it might provide instant value to you. Can this article save you time and/or money and/or hassle?

Hopefully, it can. And not because this article will tell you anything you don’t already know – rather, it will remind you of business principles that you already apply in your everyday professional work but which you forgot once you started marketing online.

Here’s the message, loud and clear: 99% of busy business professionals and attorneys should not – repeat, not – waste their precious productive hours writing their own blog posts and website content. If you are guilty of this practice, stop it. You will burn yourself out, and your business will suffer – even if you enjoy doing the writing.

Not convinced? Consider these four arguments.

  1. You earn the most money – and generate the most productive return on your time – when you stay in your “area of strength. The more time you blog, the less time you will have available to serve your clients. Let’s do the math. Say you’re an attorney who bills out at $250 an hour. Currently, you write three blog posts a week. It takes you about an hour to write each post. $250/hour X 3 hours = $750.This means you are investing a whopping $750 every week into your blog. Are you really getting a return on that investment that justifies this practice?
  2. You are not a professional blogger.You have been trained as an attorney, corporate executive, or entrepreneur. Even if you consider yourself a master writer and communicator, web writing is its own very cagey animal.Creating ongoing, tonally accurate, riveting web content requires specialized skills that you must hone over years of practice. Undoubtedly, you could learn how to write more effectively for the web. But why bother? Your time and resources are extremely limited. You must husband them for the crucial tasks of operating your core business.

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Why Writing Like You Talk
Works Better for Your Brain

Written by in About Blogs, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Writing for the Web
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ContentMatters 001 150x150 Why Writing Like You Talk <br>Works Better for Your BrainToday’s guest post is by Barb Sawyers:

Many experts who try to write their own content need to rewire their brains, to abandon the lessons drilled into them at school in favor of the more conversational approach that works better online. The good news is that they can evolve.

Think about the conclusions of Dr. Norman Doidge in The Brain that Changes Itself, and other neuroscientists who have confirmed that people can recover or develop new regions to compensate for brain damage caused by strokes or congenital defects.

If they can make changes this profound, certainly you can rewire your writing process, even if it’s deeply entrenched from higher education, professional experience or other neural programming. Your neuroplasticity, as the brain geeks call it, means you can move from an objective style that builds walls to content that sticks to emotions and subconscious longings.

Yes, this takes practice, discipline and an open attitude, but luckily some of these changes come easily because they’re based on talking, the communication mainstay we all learned before writing.

I don’t have a million dollar research grant, but let me share what I’ve learned as my writing has adjusted. If you compared scans of my brain before and after writing for the web, I bet you’d see different areas light up, maybe new synaptic tangos too.

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Basic Human Motivation: 4 Ways to Engage Readers

Written by in Brain Based Content Marketing, Content Marketing, On Writing Better, Online Persuasion, Writing Great Blog Content
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peopletick 150x150 Basic Human Motivation: 4 Ways to Engage Readers

If you are writing content designed to persuade and influence, you need to know what makes people tick. (photo courtesy of digitalart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

There are universal drives that are common in all human beings, across cultures, across the globe. When you create content that appeals to either of these four basic drives, you can’t help but engage the hearts and minds of readers on a profound level.

We can learn a lot from evolutionary studies. Our brains haven’t changed much, nor have our fundamental motivations.

I suggest a frame work for understanding basic human motivations: the Four Drive Theory, presented by Professors Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Noria in their 2001 book Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices.

There are many theories about what motivates behaviors, but I like this Four Drive theory because it is based on studies of primitive man, primitive societies, and the evolution of brain functioning over the last 100,000 years.

It doesn’t matter if you view humans as being motivated according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, or Freud’s Pleasure/Pain framework, or any other drive theory. What matters for marketing is that you understand basic human drives, and what drives peoples’ behaviors at their most fundamental sources.

This theory doesn’t exclude other theories, but as a framework for marketing, I think it works quite well. Keeping these four things in mind, you can create more effective marketing that reaches the subconscious brains of your consumers.

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Content Marketing that Speaks to the Old Brain

Written by in Brain Based Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Online Persuasion, Writing Great Blog Content
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homeless 150x150 Content Marketing that Speaks to the Old Brain

You get better results with your content marketing when you speak to the “old brain,” the one that’s also known as the primitive brain or the survival brain. Knowing how the brain works will help you write better as well as help you with presentations to influence others.

There are a few principles to remember, and here’s a great story that makes this come alive… (photo courtesy Mantas Ruzveltas /FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

A Marketing Moment with a Homeless Man…

I want to share an excerpt of a story by Patrick Renvoisé, from his book Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Customers’ Brain. He tells the story of how he earned the equivalent of a $960/hour consulting fee from a homeless man…

One evening as I was entering a restaurant in San Francisco, a homeless person stopped me. His sign read, “Homeless. Please HELP.”

The man showed all the signs of distress with sad empty eyes. He looked me directly in the eyes, and I was compelled to hand over a few bucks. However, something led me to go further with this particular man.

Like many of my clients who try to get responses from marketing, his message was weak, and certainly not unique. So I gave him $2 on condition he let me change the message on his sign for at least 2 hours.

The man agreed, and I wrote a different message on the back of his sign. Later, we met up again.

He insisted on giving me $10, because he had made over $60 while I was having dinner. His usual take averaged $2-$10 an hour.

As my entire interaction had lasted only 30 seconds, this eight dollar profit translated into a $960/hour consulting fee, not bad.

All I did was apply what I know about the brain and marketing messages that get people to act.

Here’s what his new cardboard sign said:

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Entering the World of Social Media:
Better Late than Never

Written by in Content Marketing, Social Media Stuff
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(A guest post by Frank Anderson.)

SocialMedia by Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot 150x150 Entering the World of Social Media: <br>Better Late than NeverThe younger generation is, without fail, the heaviest participant in social media. Born straight into the world of online dependency, the art of social media is considered just another common form of innate communication. (Image by Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot, freedigitalphotos.net)

However, while Generation Y was spending their younger years amidst the World Wide Web, those born in the era of picture books and hand-written correspondence suddenly find themselves faced with an intense learning curve.

Engaging in social media in any capacity can be quite intimidating. The great thing is, however, at one time or another, we all start at the same level. Each of us faces similar challenges while striving to build an online reputation.

While one inquiry of interest can come in seconds or another in a matter of months, the recipe for success remains the same: maintaining discipline and a unique spark of creative will.

This great element of equalization is part of the magic that makes social media so unique. For anyone, anywhere, and most importantly  ̶  at any age, social media can provide a new and exciting world of engaging opportunity.

The ability for potential consumers to recognize and relate to you or your business through social media is proving successful for those willing to make the effort. If you’re not doing so already, no worries   ̶  it’s never too late!

Find your voice. Promote your business by promoting your personality. In the limitless world of social media, without doubt there is a group of like-minded individuals waiting to spot you in the crowd. Social media might lead to that breath of fresh air you never knew you needed.

If you don’t know where to start, turn first to a little self discovery. Explore your intended niche, your personal interests. Here are four tips to getting started:

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