Tag: Content Marketing

5 simple steps to boost your digital hygiene in 2017

5 simple steps to boost your digital hygiene in 2017 by Bill Snyder.  Available from <http://www.cio.com/article/3155093/consumer-advice/5-simple-steps-to-boost-your-digital-hygiene-in-2017.html> [Jan 6, 2017 7:27 AM PT ]

January is a good time to stop making excuses and get your digital life in order. Here are five inexpensive, money-saving, aggravation-reducing ways to maintain tech, and protect yourself and the environment in the New Year.

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions. Let’s face it, no one keeps them.

Instead of resolutions, here are five simple ways to help you save money, avoid digital disasters, and get your personal technology into top-flight condition. None of the tips are complicated, and I’ve used them all during the past few years so I know they work.

Audit digital subscriptions

These days, many digital services have auto-renew subscriptions. It’s wise to regularly check your credit card statements to see what you’re billed for. You may find a charge for a streaming-video service, magazine or newspaper you forgot about but still pay for. You don’t have to get all compulsive about it, but you might even put reminders on your calendar to cancel services before trial periods expire or keep a list of all of your paid subscriptions. If nothing else, the list will come in handy at tax time if you itemize deductions.

Buy (and use) a can of compressed air

This one sounds goofy, I know, but the vents on your laptop and the spaces between keys on your keyboard collect what technical experts call “schmutz.” Clogged vents can cause overheating, and that can kill your laptop. Junk inside a keyboard can cause keys to jam. A 3.5 ounce can of compressed air costs $4.99 at Best Buy, and Amazon charges $7.34 for a 12-ounce option. Both are a lot cheaper than the new laptop you’d need if you fry your system’s motherboard.

Find a password manager to love

Hacking is an epidemic today, but most folks simply aren’t going to make and keep track of different passwords for every site. No one can track dozens of passwords without writing them down somewhere, and that, of course, defeats the purpose. But a good password manager can be a lifesaver.

I use LastPass, and its free version now let’s you share your passwords across multiple devices. LastPass finally supports Microsoft’s Edge browser, as well as Chrome and Firefox. The service generates complex passwords for each site you visit and stores them in what it calls your “vault.” You only need to remember one master password. A couple more password mangers that get good reviews are LogMeOnce and 1Password.

Backup, backup and backup again

You’ve heard it over and over again, but many users are left without their data, music and photos when a drive fails or malware corrupts their systems. Backing up can be a pain, but so can locking your door and keeping your money in a bank. If your digital stuff is important to you, you need to back it up to the cloud or buy a roomy external drive — or both.

I use Google Drive, and it offers 15GB of free storage and 100GB for $1.99 a month, while Microsoft OneDrive gives you 5GB for free and 50GB for $1.99 a month. Upload speeds are generally slow, so the first time you backup to the cloud will likely take a while. Another option is to buy an external drive. A 2TB drive (or 2,000GB) now costs well under $100, and most of them come with software to automate the backup process.

Recycle old electronic junk

By now, most Americans recycle newspapers, bottles and cans, but many old electronic devices still wind up in a landfill. That’s a real problem, because they contain heavy metals and other pollutants than can get into the water table. Instead, take them to an electronics recycler. Most cities have them. To find yours, simply Google “electronics recycling” in your community and you’ll quite likely find more than one. If you ditch an old smartphone or over-the-hill PC, make sure you wipe the hard drives and get rid of any personal data.

5 simple steps to boost your digital hygiene in 2017 by Bill Snyder.  Available from <http://www.cio.com/article/3155093/consumer-advice/5-simple-steps-to-boost-your-digital-hygiene-in-2017.html> [Jan 6, 2017 7:27 AM PT ]

10 Small Business Tips for SEO, Content Marketing and More

10 Small Business Tips for SEO, Content Marketing and More by Annie Pilon.  Available from <https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/12/10-small-business-tips-seo-content-marketing.html> [Dec 03, 2016]

When it comes to marketing a small business, there are many different methods you can use. There’s SEO, content marketing, email lists and more. If you want to learn more about marketing your business using some of these methods in 2017, take a look at the tips from members of our small business community below.

Watch These Marketing Trends in 2017
If you want your marketing plan to work in 2017, you need to understand all the latest trends, tools and methods available. In this Midas Media post, Nat Rubyan-Ling shares some marketing trends you should know for 2017. And BizSugar members comment further on the post.

Get Better Insights About Your Audience
If you want to create content that resonates with your audience, then you first need to learn about them. There are some essential tools and methods you can use to get useful insights, as this post by Jenny Knizer on the Content Marketing Institute blog points out.

Find an Interesting and Profitable Niche for Your Online Venture
Whether you’re creating a blog, an ecommerce store, or any other type of online business, you need a niche. Since there are already so many different types of businesses online, you may need to get creative in order to find a niche that is both interesting and profitable. This MyBlogU post by Ann Smarty includes some tips.

Use These Customer Retention Strategies That Work for Small Businesses
Once you’ve executed your marketing plan and gained new customers, you still need to work hard to keep those customers coming back. Luckily, there are some tried and true customer retention strategies that can work for small businesses. You can see some of them in this Plousio post by Evan Tarver.

Learn What to Do After Creating Your Buyer Persona
If you want to market to specific customers, you first need to create a buyer persona so you understant who you’re marketing to. But even that isn’t enough. For more on what to do after you’ve created your buyer persona, check out this Magnificent post by David Reimherr. And then see what BizSugar members are saying about the post here.

Rank for Your Competitors’ Keywords
There are many different schools of thought when it comes to using your competition to gain search traffic. In this post, Neil Patel examines some of the pros and cons of this concept for different types of businesses.

Build a Marketing Budget for 2017
Before you really get started on your marketing efforts for the new year, you need to set some kind of budget so you don’t reach beyond your means. This Search Engine Journal post by Jacob Baadsgaard features some tips you can use to create a marketing budget for 2017.

Use Marketing Velocity to Increase Your Sales and Revenue
Marketing velocity is the speed at which your marketing efforts work to deliver results. So its an important concept for marketers to understand. In this crowdSPRING post, Ross Kimbarovsky details some ways you can use marketing velocity to increase sales and revenue. And the BizSugar community also shares thoughts on the post.

Help Your Ecommerce Store Recover From a Growth Setback
Running an ecommerce business isn’t easy. You’re likely to face setbacks at some point or another. So understanding how to recover from those setbacks is paramount. Shayla Price shares some tips for doing just that in a post on the Kissmetrics blog.

Get the Most Out of Your Holiday Emails
Email marketing can be an especially effective tactic during the holiday season. But in order to get the most out of it, you need to really understand your subscribers and what they’re looking for this holiday season. To see more tips about getting the most out of your holiday emails, check this Marketing Land post by Scott Heimes.

If you’d like to suggest your favorite small business content to be considered for an upcoming community roundup, please send your news tips to:  sbtips@gmail.com.

Typing Photo via Shutterstock through article source
10 Small Business Tips for SEO, Content Marketing and More by Annie Pilon. Available from <https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/12/10-small-business-tips-seo-content-marketing.html> [Dec 03, 2016]

5 Essential Steps to Take Before Launching Your First Site

5 Essential Steps to Take Before Launching Your First Site by .  Available from <http://tech.co/5-essential-steps-to-take-before-launching-your-first-site-2016-12> [December 7, 2016; 9:15 am]

hind every successful product or service is a great website. This is because in today’s digital age every business needs a high-performing and aesthetically pleasing online home where consumers can learn more about its offerings. Although the process of creating a site is easier than ever thanks to the hundreds of site creation options available, the process of creating a site that can actually perform for your company is still pretty complex.

Although it may be tempting to sign up and build your new site on the first template service you see an ad for, take a moment to think about your company’s needs as it grows first. There are several key areas where entrepreneurs should focus as they create their first website in order to set the site up for success in the future.

Here are five essential steps you should take before launching your first website.

1. Choose a Relevant Domain Name

Most website creation services will allow you to host your site within their domain. The problem is, doing so tags the service’s name onto your domain name, which clues site visitors in to the fact that you didn’t pay for your own hosting. The first step you should take in securing a solid domain name is to choose a reliable hosting service that is secure and capable of handling your site’s needs. Check out PC Mag’s guide to the top hosting services of 2016 if you’re not sure which hosting services are highly rated among site owners.

Once you have a hosting service that will allow you to create your own domain name, select a domain name that will be intuitive in a consumer’s mind when he or she is looking to visit your site. This not only helps you further establish your brand, but it also helps consumers find you without having to look up your business first. You can use a domain lookup tool like this one to find out if the domain you have in mind is already taken. If it is, the tool will provide several suggestions for similar domain names that aren’t already taken which could help you identify an available option that is relevant to your brand.

2. Work With a Versatile CMS

The site you build now will need to be updated regularly as your brand grows and industry needs and demands change. This is why it’s important to begin with a CMS (content management system) that is versatile enough for web developers and designers to go in and make changes as necessary in the future.

The most widely used CMS among the creative industry is WordPress. This is because the platform is customizable, SEO friendly, easy to use and navigate, secure, and flexible. All of this essentially means that it is an excellent platform to build and grow a successful site within. Wordpress benefits site owners and the creatives who work on their sites.

3. Invest in Design

Templates have made it easier than ever to build and alter your own site. If you have the resources to hire a designer and would prefer to go that route, great! If not, a DIY template is a great way to get going on your site, so long as you avoid free themes at all costs.

Free templates and WordPress themes might seem appealing at first, but there are several issues you might run into later on down the road if you opt for a free option rather than investing a small amount in a paid theme.

First of all, free themes look like free themes. They are pretty generic and don’t do much to help your brand stand out from competitors in its field. Second, they often don’t come with all the bells and whistles you’ll need and aren’t guaranteed to be responsive.

Some of the top themes for WordPress run for around $59, which means you can get a high quality WordPress theme for your site that includes everything you need without breaking the bank.

4. Run CRO Testing

Even if you pick the coolest WordPress theme, it can do very little for you if you don’t do your part to create solid user experience on your end. This is where CRO, or conversion rate optimization, testing comes in.

Your conversion rate shows how many visitors who come to your site actually convert to customers. Conversion rate optimization basically means taking a strategic approach to improving the performance of your site by defining your site’s goals, collecting consumer insights, and making the most of the traffic your site receives based on what you’ve learned from AB testing and consumer feedback.

CRO is an important process that should be implemented prior to your site’s launch to ensure it is able to perform to its highest potential for your brand.

Quicksprout and Qualaroo both offer up excellent CRO testing guides for beginners if you need some help getting started. If you’re already familiar with CRO testing, I recommend checking out this Tech.co article for some excellent tips for refining your strategy.

5. Make Sure It’s Mobile Friendly

A user’s ability to access and view your site easily from a mobile device has always been important. However, it’s become increasingly important now that Google has officially announced an algorithmic change that favors sites with mobile-friendly design.

Changes to Google’s ranking algorithm now push sites that are not mobile-friendly down in the search results and boosts those that are mobile friendly up in ranking. If your site doesn’t pass Google’s test for mobile-friendliness, it could be difficult for consumers to find it as they search relevant terms in the search engine.

Speak with a designer or enlist the help of an SEO to find out how you can make your site mobile friendly. Building your first website is equal parts exciting and nerve-wracking. Despite the frustration, keep focused on the details and implement these tips throughout the creative process to build a site with a solid foundation.

5 Essential Steps to Take Before Launching Your First Site by .  Available from <http://tech.co/5-essential-steps-to-take-before-launching-your-first-site-2016-12> [December 7, 2016; 9:15 am]

 

Top content marketing tips: Writing for Mobile – Converting in 3 Words

Top content marketing tips: Writing for Mobile – Converting in 3 Words by Gareth Bull - Director at Bulldog Digital Media - Bulldog Digital Media.  Available from <http://www.netimperative.com/2016/09/top-content-marketing-tips-writing-mobile-converting-3-words/>. [September 21, 2016]

Mobile is the future but where does ‘responsive copy’ fit in? Writing for a tiny screen means getting to the point in an instant and converting people with succinct copy. Gareth Bull from Bulldog Digital Media, offers some essential considerations for copywriting for mobile websites.

Mobile is the future but where does ‘responsive copy’ fit in? People often talk about mobile as if the design was the only thing that mattered, but content is key too. How do you adapt your copy and content creation process to mobiles? Writing for mobile means getting to the point in an instant and converting people with succinct copy, but it also means giving them valuable content and a user-experience that’s comparable to desktop. Here are some essential considerations for copywriting for mobile.

Mobile content consumption

Nowadays, people are actually reading (shock horror) on their mobiles. Technology habits are changing, and the latest smartphones are increasingly powerful and optimised for web browsing. Good mobile content should be a continuation of web content, not a second-class platform that frustrates with its lack of information. A bad mobile experience is bad for a brand.

Despite the need for clarity and succinct copy, it’s wrong to assume a ‘dumbed down’ attitude to writing mobile content. See your mobile readers as savvy content consumers. Give them the good stuff, but give them the option to have it as a takeaway snack if they want to.

Shift to adaptive strategy

There are so many content platforms, with smartphones differing wildly in their capabilities. You need a strategy for how your content will be consumed across ALL different platforms, not micro strategies for every device. This is known as adaptive content: content that will adapt to a customer, situation, and device. Content that is smart and freed from design constraints. Content that doesn’t care so much about where it is, but about where it is best deployed.

Writing adaptive content is about breaking content down into blocks that can then be used by different platforms. Think smart, structured, and adaptable. Write in blocks, ideas, and nuggets, rather than paragraphs and pages. Use structure and metadata to mark up your content for devices. Adaptable content success boils down to proper content auditing, user-testing, refining core messaging, and shifting content strategies away from older desktop-based models.

Content audits

Survey all the content you have- what is being used by people? What is turning them off? What can be re-purposed? Approach your content audits analytically, breaking down content into key ideas, audience, engagement metrics, and possible future value. It’s a good idea to get a few different people involved in the evaluation process to avoid copy blindness. Don’t be afraid to cull useless content. You want to be left with only the essential content that matters to your audience.
Create a connection fast, but don’t be afraid of the scroll

You have three words to impress, seconds to sell- or do you? The mobile copy experience is more about giving people information fast and engaging them…then inviting them in for more if they want to. It’s not about stripping everything way.

  • You have to make sure that the first words above the fold are compelling and that they put the user first.
  • Don’t use a phrase “because you like it”, think about how a user will use it to get to the next step.
  • If you want users to make a choice quickly, lay out all the different pathways for them. Use simple phrases or visuals.
  • Include long-form content on mobile too- people will read it if it’s relevant.

Appeal to mobile user priorities

Information architecture is absolutely key for a mobile website. It’s important to give people key information quickly to make their journey easier, avoiding too much tapping and scrolling. Rejig information architecture to fit around user priorities. Prioritise this over fancy visuals or animations, as it will have a big impact on user-experience and your site’s engagement metrics.

Copy challenges & work flow

Writing for mobile is an opportunity to better your writing across the board. The focus on user priorities, succinctness and functionality should help refocus all your content. Writing for mobile should also help you redefine your copy workflow, seeing copy as adaptable and multifunctional, rather than treating pieces as discrete entities. Embrace spreadsheets and metrics to help you break down your copy into different formats.

Break it down

Often brands and businesses get bogged down with complex brand messaging, positively smothering the user with USPs and selling points. Sometimes breaking an idea down into its simplest form is the most effective way to create a genuine connection. To make an idea stick better, use the tried-and-tested SUCCESS principles. Making ideas sticky and simple is a great mobile copy strategy that will have positive effects across the board.

No easy answers

After all, ‘mobile experience’ means many things- it could mean a small screen and a dodgy WIFI connection on a train, or it could mean a huge screen in a company boardroom. Mobile is just the latest in a long line of digital transformations, and it’s one that businesses and brands need to embrace to compete in the current digital market. Karen McGrane’s e-book on mobile contentstrategy has a lot of fascinating insights into mobile content and writing for mobile if you wanted to explore the topic further.

Top content marketing tips: Writing for Mobile – Converting in 3 Words by Gareth Bull - Director at Bulldog Digital Media - Bulldog Digital Media.  Available from <http://www.netimperative.com/2016/09/top-content-marketing-tips-writing-mobile-converting-3-words/>. [September 21, 2016]

Here Are 7 Content Marketing Tips for Your Startup

Here Are 7 Content Marketing Tips for Your Startup by A.  Available from <http://tech.co/7-content-marketing-tips-startup-2016-09> [September 12, 2016; 9:00 pm]

Most effective startups hit the ground running with their content marketing efforts. If you own a startup and want to generate a lot of buzz, build up a base of interested buyers and, take the world by storm, you’re going to need to focus on content marketing way before day one.

It’s easy to assume that kick-starting a content marketing campaign involves a lot of work, and it’s partly true. However, by following these six tips, you’ll be on your way before you know it.

Define Your Audience

While setting up your startup, you should have conducted plenty of market research to determine the types of people who are most likely to want what you have to offer. Take the information that you have already gathered about your target audience and refine it further by creating unique buyer personas for the various different types of people who you will be targeting.

Going forward, use these personas to craft content that is as effective and engaging as possible.

Establish a Strategy

As eager as you may be to get started with your content marketing efforts, there’s no point in proceeding without establishing a clearly defined strategy first. Now that you have defined your buyer personas, you can safely do so.

Your strategy should clearly outline various details of how you will engage in content marketing. Address questions like how often you’ll publish, where you’ll publish, what types of content you’ll use, and who will you be creating said content.

The key is to commit yourself to using the strategy rather than just writing it out on the first day. Making it easy to amend will go a long way as well, because you will almost certainly have to tweak it again and again as time goes by.

Choose Content Creators

As a startup, you probably aren’t in the position to spend huge amounts of money on content. However, making sure that you allocate decent amounts of your marketing budget for it will go a long way in helping you set up right the first time.

If possible, assign someone on your team to produce content for you. With any luck, you already have a proficient writer and marketer on board. Ideally, they should be well-versed regarding SEO and online marketing too.

Otherwise, hit up crowdsourcing sites to find reliable writers. One way to keep costs low is by choosing cheaper writers and then editing their work to suit your standards.

Brainstorm Topics

To keep your content flowing along, it helps to come up with a huge list of topics right off the bat. At first, brainstorming ideas will seem easy. Before too long, though, you’ll get writer’s block worse than ever.

Use sites like Reddit and Quora to see what people are curious about when it comes to your particular niche or industry. Speaking of niches, go ahead and get specific about certain topics to generate more ideas. In fact, in-depth pieces that cover specific aspects of a subject tend to do quite well.

For each topic that you come up with, define the platform on which it will be published. Go one step further by defining when it will be published. With all of this work out of the way, executing your strategy will be a snap.

Be Different

To truly stand out, you must be intentional about not fitting in. Do something beneficial to your audience and remarkably different from what’s common that you get everyone talking about it. One way to take an unconventional approach is to develop an interactive content format for your audience.

A good example is the homepage of Neil Patel’s blog, QuickSprout. Once you input your URL into it and grant it Google Analytics permission, it pulls data from your website, analyzes it and gives you insights on making your better content.

Another good example is the homepage of HowMuchCostAnApp. It leads you through a step-by-step, “if-this-then-that” process that helps you decide what specific features you want in a mobile app and how much it would cost.

In both cases, the content is interactive, benefits the audience and is unconventional.

Choose a Platform

Your first instinct may be to spread your content across as many social media platforms as possible. However, this is a good way to waste a lot of time and money. Instead, turn to the market research that you’ve conducted to determine where your ideal customers tend to spend time online.

Do they generally favor Facebook, or are they more often found on Twitter? If you run a B2B startup, don’t forget about LinkedIn as a platform for your content. Use analytics to see which platforms seem to work well and which don’t.

Continually adjust your strategy accordingly until you have narrowed things down to the most effective platforms and channels for your audience.

Publish, Promote, Refine

With all of the groundwork out of the way, you’re ready to start publishing content. Of course, publishing it–even on the ideal platform–is merely the first step. You must actively promote it too, or it will disappear into the ether.

Therefore, get serious about your social media game. Establish and get active on the platforms that matter the most to your target audience. Don’t just promote brand-new content, either. Over time, pull up old pieces of content and promote them again. It’s amazing how much mileage you can get out of a single, well-crafted piece of content.

Finally, use analytics every step of the way to continually refine and optimize your content and your overall strategy. Remember that content marketing is, by necessity, always a work in progress.

Here Are 7 Content Marketing Tips for Your Startup by A.  Available from <http://tech.co/7-content-marketing-tips-startup-2016-09> [September 12, 2016; 9:00 pm]