Does your business blog make sense to readers?
The most frequent complaint I hear about blogging is “I don’t know what to write about.” This is because many business bloggers don’t have enough clarity about their blogging goals. Here’s how I help my clients solve this problem. (Image: freedigitalphotos.net)
Don’t Be a Pinterest Pinhead
5 etiquette tips for pinning on the world’s favorite social pinboard
It’s true that Pinterest is fun—designed to be a simple, beautiful way to pin all your favorite ideas, products and places on the Web—but it’s also true that it’s powerful. With a registered user base that includes over 10 million and grows every day, Pinterest represents great potential for influence. That’s why, to avoid serious copyright infringement or even just the simply bad manners that are possible on this popular social pinboard, it’s vitally important to practice good Pinterest etiquette.
So whether you pin for pleasure or pin for business, here are 5 key tips to make sure you’re doing it right!
Following these five etiquette tips will spare you the biggest and most common Pinterest problems—but is there anything I missed? What other Pinterest etiquette have you found to be important?
Shanna Mallon is a writer for Straight North, a Chicago Web development company with clients in diverse industries, from the makers of fire retardant clothing to providers of a leading merchant processing service. Check out the Straight North Blog, or follow @StraightNorth on Twitter!
If you want your content marketing messages to be remembered, you must engage the emotional memories of your readers. Memory formation happens in two ways:
1. You say or do something that makes an emotional connection.
2. Something happens that closely resembles a previously established emotional connection.
What results is a neural network of associations that get triggered by a hot-button stimulus. Everything we retain in memory is because it’s gained an emotional place in our brain. At some point, something was important enough because it was emotional. That’s what hot-buttons are… we feel as if someone has poked us.
As a content marketing professional, you have words and visuals in your quiver of tools. How do you poke someone and push their hot buttons?
Stories are key. Negative stories can get people’s attention, but can also leave a negative aftertaste, if not followed by positive stories. I’ve talked about this before, and here’s a graph to illustrate this: Read More→
There’s an important shift in content marketing tactics that affects professionals who want to get found, get known and get clients online. And that shift means a different mindset.
Not too long ago I came across a great blog post. There was a picture of a pair of glasses lying on a bench with this caption: Don’t you wish you could see through your customers’ glasses?
What if you could live in their shoes for a day? Or, track their brains as they go online to your website? What makes them click? What makes them take action?
Here’s where you should start thinking a little differently when writing content for the Web:
Smart content marketers are using persuasion tactics that appeal to emotions rather than reasons. They know that emotions not only guide our decisions and actions, they determine whether or not we buy. Read More→
Is your blog like my tennis, a hit or a miss? Are you writing posts that are clear winners for your readers? Are you serving valuable, relevant content within the lines of your readers’ needs?
This week I’m watching the world’s best players battle it out on the courts at the Parisbas Tennis Open in Indian Wells, California. I’ve noticed a few things that applies to content marketing.
Persistence and control is the name of the game. With me, I get impatient in a rally, and with a burst of aggression I’ll end the point with a whopping drive… clear out of the court.
I know people who blog like that. They write 600-900 words every few weeks, then wonder why they aren’t getting search traffic.
Blogging for your business doesn’t work that way. Steady as you go, writing at least twice a week, at least 350 words, focusing on the key words that drive results for your business, mixing information with stories, always keeping the reader in mind.
Business blogging is like tennis: you want to keep the ball in play. The “ball” is the conversation you have with your ideal clients, your readers. What problems can you solve for them? Keep the dialogue alive. You can’t do that when your blogging is inconsistent.
If you want to get found on the Web, you need plenty of content that’s relevant to your readers. The more you create new content, and publish on your blog, the better the possibilities your ideal clients will find you.
Get found, then get known by your readers. You are priming the pump towards getting new clients. Persistence pays.
If you’re an executive coach or leadership consultant who’s too busy with clients to manage your blog and content marketing tasks, consider outsourcing. Click here for information over on my site, Content for Coaches. I can help make your newsletters, blog, and Web pages rank high with both search engines AND your clients.
What can you learn about blog writing and content marketing from the theater?
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve attended local theater productions, including performances on The Naked Stage. (Photos courtesy Stuart Miles)
If you’re not familiar with this kind of theater format, the actors read their lines, sitting on stools, dressed in black, without benefit of costumes, scenery, makeup, or movement. Hence the name, Naked Stage: the presentation is devoid of any of the usual visual aids.
There’s a narrator to explain the scenes and movements, including sounds, which in this case consisted of a gun going off. In one of these performances, the narrator yelled, “GUN SHOT!” Not “BANG” but “GUN SHOT!” It is truly minimalist and much depends on the actors’ voices. Everything, perhaps. They don’t even look at each other, they are reading their lines. Read More→
You spend a lot of time writing content on your blog but if the only comments you get are from people looking for free marketing, maybe it’s time to revise your content strategies. Here’s a guest post from Chris Peterson at Straight North integrated marketing services in Chicago.
1. Your Blog as an Interactive Tool
When it comes to effective Web content, it’s no longer enough to post simple text with a graphic. Online newspapers learned that the hard way, but bloggers are discovering ways to use the Web as a means for two-way interaction – increasing the relevance of a blog while boosting Search Engine Optimization efforts to drive traffic. Below, read about some of the techniques you can use to engage your readers.
2. Polls
Your poll might not be scientific; in fact, the results could actually mean very little. But by providing a simple way for your readers to voice an opinion, you’ve given them an easy way to communicate with you. Ask them how they feel about something you’ve posted, or survey regular readers about what they’d like to see on your blog. Make them feel as if they are a part of the blog. They’ll reciprocate by returning and spreading the word.
Likewise, surveys include options for interaction. For example, a simple poll might allow a reader to click one of several poll responses, while a detailed survey could provide an option for submitting a personalized response.
3. External Links
Embedded links are an easy way to encourage people to use your blog as a resource. This also can help to lower your blog’s “bounce rate” as calculated by Google Analytics. Bounce rate simply refers to how your site is used – a quick in-and-out versus user interaction, with a lower bounce rate indicating greater interaction. Read More→
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.
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.
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: Read More→
Guest 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.
The study of the buying decision process, or neuromarketing, has had a tremendous impact on content marketing.
More brands are being studied in laboratories around the world as consumers are being hooked up to brain imaging machines, fMRI, EEG and other devices so that they are monitored while they read marketing messages and make decisions.
Neuromarketing is extremely expensive market research to do, but fortunately most brains work the same, with some exceptions for age and gender. So the results acquired for companies with big budgets are showing us how to create messages that have a powerful impact on the brains of all consumers.
Neuromarketing research studies have shown that these three factors determine whether or not a consumer is inclined to make a buying decision:
Attention, emotional engagement, memory: 3 keys to priming the brains of your audience to buy or take the action you want. (Source: The Buying Brain, A.K. Pradeep, CEO of NeuroFocus) Read More→
