Podnar Consulting, LLC

Archives for September 2016

Content marketing: With so much content out there, style matters (updated for 2019)

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There’s a lot of content out there, and it shows no signs of slowing down: 2.5 quintillion new bytes of data are created every day. It’s estimated that, by 2020, 1.7M of data will be created each second — for every single person on earth! Talk about feeling like a small fish in a big pond! How are content marketers supposed to get their content noticed with so much competition?

Content that means business has both substance and style

Creating content that people can’t wait to read starts with writing about the right topics: If your site generates income from ad revenue, you have to drive traffic by writing about the things that matter to your followers. If you’re selling a product or service, your content has to illustrate how you’ll solve your customers’ pain points. But no matter how interested they are in the topic, they’re not going to suffer through bad writing. There are just too many other options for them NOT to go to a source where the process isn’t so painful. casual writing style When it comes to content, writing style matters. And, just like fashion, writing style constantly changes. While I’m sure it pains my English teachers and journalism professors, the written word has ditched the three-piece suit in favor of swimming trunks and flip flops. Outside of academia and government, there’s little room for formal, stuffy writing. And, if you thought you left picture books behind in preschool, guess again: Even the most highly educated readers now expect a side dish of images to go with their content. In other words, this ain’t your college essay. The language is more casual, footnotes are now links, and no one is going to tell you that you have to stretch it out for one more page. Fortunately, there’s plenty of information out there on the style that does work in content marketing. Let’s take a look.

Basic grammar

basic grammar Did you think I was going to tell you that things like grammar, punctuation, and spelling don’t matter anymore? Sorry. (Actually, I’m not really sorry.) While the rules have relaxed exponentially, there’s a big difference between intentionally breaking the rules and not knowing any better. And it’s pretty easy to tell the difference. If people think you don’t know any better, you lose credibility. If I land on a site that’s full of bad grammar (or a site design that makes me feel like I’m walking into a disco bar…but that’s a topic for another day), I bounce immediately. I’m not going to trust the quality of your product if you can’t get your web content right. And it’s not just me. In one study, 74% of respondents said they notice errors on company websites, and 59% said they’d avoid doing business with companies that made such errors. That’s because people assume that, if your content is sloppy, your products or services are likely to be equally as sloppy. Here are a few more statistics:

  • When Grammarly conducted a study in which they reviewed the LinkedIn profiles of professionals in the packaged consumer goods industry, they found a significant positive correlation between proper grammar and career success.
  • Another study conducted by a dating site found that 49% of respondents considered bad grammar to be unappealing. Likewise, 35% reported that they found good grammar appealing.
  • When a clothing company corrected a mistake on their product page (“tihgts” vs “tights”), conversions skyrocketed by 80%.

If you think grammar isn’t that big a deal, fine — but the data suggest otherwise. Need help with this part of your content style? Here are a couple of resources for you: Grammarly Hemingway And then, of course, there’s little ol’ me. I provide a full stack of content strategy services, from helping you develop your editorial calendar to writing and/or managing the outsourcing of content development.

Voice

ambulated This is the part where you set aside (almost) everything else you learned in English class. What works in content marketing is a casual tone that speaks directly to the reader: “You” instead of “he/she.” It’s about more than just pronouns, though. It’s about establishing a connection, creating the impression that whatever your audience is reading was written specifically for them. It’s not self-serving; it’s not preachy. It is authoritative — in a friendly way — and helpful.

For those of you old enough to remember Home Improvement with Tim Allen, it’s the unseen neighbor coaching Tim from behind the fence. If you aren’t, then it’s the helpful neighbor with older kids who tells the new parents next door how they got their kids to stay in bed at night.

Voice is also about branding. Just as customers recognize familiar logos without stopping to think about it, you want them to recognize your voice intuitively, too. Everything they read on your website should feel familiar, reassuring them that they’re in the right place. Because of that branding element, consistency is important. A lot of companies find it helpful to come up with a company style guide that covers things like sentence length, contractions, acronyms, etc. And with the explosion of regulations regarding digital content, your style guide should include things like your privacy and accessibility statements as well as your social media policies. Don’t get me wrong: You still have to know your audience. Lawyers and financial service professionals, for example, tend to expect a somewhat more formal writing style. And then there are industries like food and medicine that are highly regulated, and your content has to be in compliance. In general, though, the ideal voice is probably more casual than you think it is.

Images

I saved this one for last because it’s my least favorite. I’m one of the very few people who thinks better in words than in images. Images just aren’t intuitive for me; I’ve even caught myself reading descriptions rather than looking at pictures when I’m shopping for clothes online. Images are like a foreign language to me: I’m fairly proficient now, but I’ll never be a native speaker. Nonetheless, I can’t ignore the facts:

  • Content that contains relevant images racks up 94% more views than content without.
  • Images are 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than other kinds of content.
  • Facebook posts with images get more than twice the engagement of those without.

And then there’s video. Again, I’m in the minority: I hardly ever watch videos. It’s just not in my DNA to sit there and stare at a video when I could be reading. I’ve even turned down what would probably have been very valuable content marketing courses after discovering that the material was only available in video, not text. Again, though, I had to face reality:

So, despite my personal feelings, visual content wins every time, so make sure to include plenty of images, infographics, and, if appropriate, videos in yours. And that doesn’t mean cheesy stock photos of office workers shaking hands with silly grins on their faces. It’s simply too easy these days to find or make engaging images and videos. Here are a few resources that I use:

For images:

Unsplash (my personal favorite) Negative Space Picjumbo Fancy Crave Startup Stock Photos SplitShire Almost all of these are Creative Commons — meaning you can use them without copyright restrictions — and many don’t even require attribution. But always check the particulars for any specific image so that you don’t find yourself in unexpected hot water.

For image editing

Sometimes you’ll find an image that’s almost perfect and think, “If only it were a different shape/color/size,” or “It would be so much better with a bit of text…”. These resources let you turn “almost” perfect images into exactly what you need, and they don’t have the learning curve of something like Photoshop: PicMonkey (my personal favorite) Canva Design Wizard

For infographics

Piktochart Venngage

For video:

Machete Wevideo Filmora This list is definitely not all-inclusive, so if I’ve left off your favorite, please add it in the comments and tell us why you love it so much!

The bottom line is…your mama was wrong on this one thing. Appearances do matter, at least when it comes to content. As readers, we’ve gotten mighty lazy….and you can either fight it, or you can create content that people will actually read. Which do you choose? If you need help with your content marketing, I’d love to help, so please get in touch.

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Content marketing for SMBs: Things to write about that are better than funny cat videos

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what should I write about

If you’re a small business, I’ve got some good news for you: There’s a whole crew of potential raving fans out there, ready to support you in any way they can. In a survey conducted by UPS:

  • 41% of respondents said they’d rather support a small business over its larger counterpart — even if prices were higher.
  • 94% said that supporting small businesses is important.
  • Respondents perceived goods and services sold by small businesses to be of higher quality.
  • They also stated that they believe small businesses have a positive impact on the local economy.

See what I mean? People out there want you to succeed.

The challenging part is giving them a reason to fall in love with you. They’re already halfway there…you just have to court them a bit to prove you’re worthy of their loyalty and affection.

There are a lot of things that make a small business worth loving: products, services, customer service, pricing, etc. It’s part substance and part style…and then there’s content marketing, which is a bit of both. You have to create content that your target audience wants to read because it satisfies some need or desire they have (even if it’s just to be entertained), and you have to deliver it in way that’s…well, entertaining. Or, at least, not a chore to read.

The first and most basic step is knowing which things to write about: the substance of your content. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

A lot of small businesses make the mistake of assuming they know what kind of content their customers (potential or otherwise) want to read. It’s an easy mistake to make: After all, those of us running America’s small businesses tend to eat, breathe, and sleep our work. It’s not just work, it’s a passion — and so we give it everything we’ve got.

But that passion can sometimes make it tough to look at our business from any perspective other than our own, so we make false assumptions about our customers and what they want. That leads to a few content marketing missteps:

What not to write about

Blabbing on and on about yourself or your business

Don’t be the guy who pulls out pictures of his kids, dogs, cars, etc., and shoves them under the nose of anyone who will look. Yes, you want to be transparent and authentic — that connection is one of the things that make small businesses so appealing — but if everything you post is, “Me, me, me!”, the people you’re trying to reach will soon run just as fast as they can in the opposite direction.

You’ll be the guy at the cocktail party who’s so annoying the other guests make “rescue pacts” to pry each other away from your constant prattle. Good content marketing is about your audience, not about you.

Writing for people who do what you do

I see this a lot, especially with B2Bs: They write for people who do what they do rather than people who buy what they do. Sometimes they’re one and the same, but, more often, they’re not.

I learned this one the hard way, because I did it myself when I first launched my business. In what one of my former bosses would have called “a blinding glimpse of the obvious,” I realized that I was writing for other writers rather than for people who might need to hire a writer. Oops.

Similarly, I’ve seen startups post content about things like “how our remote team stays productive” or “how entrepreneurs can maintain a decent work-life balance.” There’s nothing wrong with those topics, but unless you’re selling to other startups, your customers aren’t likely to care.

Writing for your customers’ customers

Let’s say you sell supplies to grocery stores — things like shelving, coolers, carts, registers, etc. Writing about things like couponing, recipes, seasonal ingredients, etc., might seem like an obvious choice. And it would be…if you were the grocer.

But, if you’re the distributor, you need to write content that is relevant to grocers, not end consumers. Instead of publishing recipes, write about things like innovations in shipping, new trends in grocery store design, outstanding customer loyalty programs, etc.

If you want to write about couponing and recipes, fine — but package it in a way that your customers (the grocers) can use in their stores. Never forget who your real audience is.

Where to get ideas for relevant content

Sure, you can hire somebody to do market research so you’ll have an in-depth window into the minds of your customers. But a lot of small businesses don’t have that kind of budget. In that case, I can sum things up in one word: Listen. 

Sales

Are there any objections your sales staff hears over and over? If so, why not use your content platform to defuse them? So many people — B2B customers, especially — do online research before talking to a salesperson that defusing objections through your content could save a lot of time — not to mention upping the quality of the leads that do eventually reach a sales person’s desk.

Customer service

What issues do your customer service employees — or whoever it is that works with customers after the sale — hear repeatedly? Do the same problems crop up over and over? If so, address it through your content and let your customer service employees focus on issues that really do require human intervention.

Social media

What are your customers and others in your target market saying to you and about you? Two-thirds of social media users expect to be able to satisfy their customer service needs via social media. What concerns are they bringing up?

Obviously, things like poor products or bad customer service can’t be fixed by content alone, but you can certainly acknowledge any legitimate problems and write about what you’re doing to correct them.

As far as what they’re saying about you, it’s not just “influencers” who make an impact. 91% of company and brand mentions come from people with fewer than 500 followers. That means there’s a pretty good bet your customers are posting and Tweeting about you. So you have an opportunity to “eavesdrop” that simply wasn’t available 15 years ago…don’t let it go to waste. What are your customers saying about you, and how can you turn that insight into content they’ll be eager to read (and, hopefully, share)?

Real life

Whether you’re at a cocktail party or your kid’s soccer game, somebody will inevitably ask, “What do you do?” How do you answer? Can you answer the question simply and satisfactorily, or does the other person still have questions? If the people in your own social circles don’t understand what you do without a lot of explanation, it’s a good bet that potential customers might have similar questions. If you find yourself giving the same answer over and over, put it online, whether in a sticky blog post or on your “About” page.

 

Bottom line: Write about the stuff that keeps your customers up at night..or the stuff they can’t wait to dive into after a long day at work. If more than two people ask a question or raise an issue, get the answer out there on your content platform just as quickly as you can.

The hardest part about writing content that your customers can’t wait to read is putting yourself in their shoes. You have to write about what’s important to them, not what you want them to know. If you can do that, you’ll have a fantastic competitive advantage.

Stay tuned for a blog post on the style of good content and why it’s important.

Outsourcing content creation: How to master the logistics

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Whether it’s because you hate to write or are simply too busy running your business, you’ve decided to outsource your content creation. You feel a huge sense of relief, right?

Sure…until you realize that outsourcing content creation opens up what we here in the South call “a whole ‘nother” set of challenges. That’s why so many small businesses procrastinate even more after the outsourcing decision is made: They don’t know how to go about it.

This post will walk you through it. From my experience on the content creation side, I think these are the most important things to know:

Be smart about finding the right freelancer.

There are lots of places to find fantastic freelancers. Start by asking the people in your network for recommendations.

LinkedIn is also a popular source for finding writers, as is Copyblogger’s list of Certified Content Marketers (Self-interest alert: as a Certified Content Marketer, I’m on this list.) Writers with a Copyblogger certification have completed some extremely solid training. And just doing the coursework isn’t enough to get certified: The next hurdle is a thorough review of your content to make sure you can apply what you’ve learned.

Once you’ve identified a few candidates, it’s time to vet them. The key here is to focus on questions that provide information that actually matters.

In all honesty, some of the most common questions recommended for vetting freelancers are absolute BS. Knowing who my favorite blogger is will in no way help you decide if I’m a good match for you and your business. In fact, the best writers have their fingers in all sorts of different pies so they can keep up with the latest developments. They cast a wide net and go deep as needed. Click here for more information on which interview questions actually tell you something useful — and which don’t.

Complete a thorough content brief.

Not only does completing a content brief help you clarify what you want your writer to deliver, it’s a critical piece in the writer’s ability to deliver it. A good content brief does a lot more than tell the writer to bake a loaf of bread: It specifies wheat or rye, baguette or boule, etc.

The more specific you are about the content you need, the happier you’re going to be with the results.

Get a written work agreement.

Although this doesn’t have to be a formal contract (although that might be a good idea if you’re going to commit to a monthly retainer), it’s smart to have something to refer to in case problems crop up. Most professional writers will ask for a work agreement; if not, you can initiate it yourself. The content brief can serve as the foundation of the agreement, but there are a few other things it should cover, as well:

  • Payment structure: Will you be paying the writer by the word, by the hour, by the project, or by retainer?
  • Payment timing: Does the writer require a downpayment before beginning work? If so, how much is it? How long after the writer submits a final version of the content is payment due?
  • Additional services: Will the writer also be responsible for things like keyword research, social promotion, etc.? If so, is that included in the base fee, or is that extra?
  • Revisions: This one is extremely important. A lot of writers limit clients to one or two rounds of revisions, charging extra for anything beyond that. That’s because some clients aren’t really sure of what they want, so the project parameters change midstream. Limiting the number of revisions helps writers protect themselves against something over which they would otherwise have no control (and which can seriously eat away at your revenue). Other writers, myself included, offer unlimited rounds of “normal” revisions but do charge extra for revisions that are requested because of a change in direction. Basically, if I don’t deliver what you asked for, it’s on me. If you change your mind about what you want, it’s on you.
  • Copyright: Who will own the finished content? In ghostwriting, it’s common for all rights to transfer to the client, which means that the writer gives up all claims to the work and the client can use it however they want, including putting their own name on it as the author. In other situations, the writer retains ownership and, in essence, “licenses” the client to use it. In that case, you should use the writer’s byline unless you’ve agreed otherwise. Pro tip: Often, writers like to sell “full rights” but retain the right to use the content in a portfolio. That’s a great option as long as you both agree to it. 
  • How payment will be made: Will you pay by check? Paypal? Stripe? If either of the latter options, who will pay the processing fees?
  • Dispute resolution: More often than not, everything goes smoothly. But sometimes things go wrong. The work agreement should cover things like what will happen if the writer misses the deadline, if you decide you don’t want the content after it’s written, if you cancel the project before it’s finished, if payment is late, etc.
  • Other: If you want the writer to operate under a nondisclosure disagreement or have any other specific stipulation, make sure you include it in the work agreement.

Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, so please don’t take this as professional legal advice. These are simply the things I like to see in a work agreement. 

Make nice with the IRS.

Taxes can be somewhat of an issue if you don’t thoroughly understand your role in the process. Since I’m neither a tax attorney, an accountant, nor an IRS agent, I’m not going to attempt to explain the details. In a nutshell, though, you have to file a 1099 for any contractor to whom you pay $600 or more in a given year.

Some businesses — agencies in particular — like to get that out of the way and ask the writer to complete a W-9 up front. That’s makes a lot of sense from the client’s perspective — but, as a writer, I hate it. And I’ve turned down opportunities because a client insisted on it. I don’t like the idea of handing over my personal information without knowing whether there’s the potential for a long-term relationship. It’s like naming your kids on the first date. When we get close to $600, then I’ll be happy to complete a W-9 for you.

The important thing is to understand your responsibilities — and to carry them out in a way that doesn’t make the writer run for the proverbial hills.

Additional resources:

Form 1099-MISC and independent contractors

Time to send out 1099s: What to know

1099 vs. employee: You need to know the difference

Hiring independent contractors for your workforce needs (without getting in trouble for misclassification) 

Make nice with the writer.

Assuming you’d like to establish an ongoing relationship with one or more writers, it’s important to remember one thing: It’s really easy for us to move on. There’s a ton of work out there, and dropping one job in favor of another doesn’t disrupt our lives like changing full-time employment would. I don’t mean to make it sound like you should kiss your writer’s feet for consenting to take you on as a client; you are, after all, the customer and the distributor of the paycheck. Just realize that part of the beauty of the freelance life is having a lot of options. Click here to read my post about how to become your freelancer writer’s favorite client.

 

The days when freelancing was considered an alternative to “normal” work are long gone. Today, there are 53 million freelancers in the U.S., and it’s estimated that, by 2020, 50% of the workforce will freelance in some capacity. Developing your skills at working with freelancers will become an ever-more-important part of remaining competitive.

Have any questions about content creation? Or are you ready to take the plunge? Get in touch today and we’ll get straight to work.

How to Write a Content Brief That Will Help Your Writer Deliver the Goods

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I often use a cooking analogy when I’m writing about writing. That’s because content is a lot like chocolate chip cookies, hamburgers, bread, or anything else where there’s a gazillion different ways to make it. So if you just tell your writer you want bread, you could end up with white, wheat, rye, pumpernickel, even cornbread. All bread, but disappointing nonetheless if you were looking for sourdough.

Writing is pretty much the same. There are dozens of ways to write a given piece of content, even if you supply the headline. If you ask two different writers to come up with something for “The Best School Start Times, According to the Experts,” there’s a very good chance they’ll have absolutely nothing in common. Maybe not even the facts, since not all experts agree.

You can avoid that by investing a few extra minutes in your content brief (also called a “creative brief”).

Going back to the cooking analogy, a content brief is the recipe. It provides the writer with information about what you want, what you don’t want, etc. Sure, there are times when you won’t really care about some of the components…like when you’re depending on the writer for ideation. But the more specific your requirements are, the more specific your brief needs to be. A content brief is your recipe. It provides the writer with information about what you want, what you don’t want, etc.

An effective content brief contains some combination of the following elements (depending on your business):

content briefYour company

Give the writer all relevant information about your company:

  • What do you do?
  • Who buys your products or services?
  • What’s your company culture? Are you hip and laid-back, or are you more formal?
  • What is it that keeps your leaders up at night?

Not all of these will be necessary for every piece of content, but, honestly, it’s hard to give too much information. If it’s not relevant to the content in question, the writer will just skip over it.

Pro tip: Save your company information as a template so that you can reuse it.

Purpose

Always, always, always make sure the writer understands what you’re trying to accomplish with this particular piece of content:

Audience

It’s also critical to tell the writer as much as you know about your audience (or target customers):

  • Who are they?
  • What kind of work do they do?
  • What’s their level of education?
  • What problem are they trying to solve, or what desire are they trying to fill, when they buy from you?
  • Why will they read this piece of content? What do they want from it?
  • Where are they in the sales funnel? Are they just exploring their options, or are they ready to buy?

And, perhaps most important:

  • What’s their level of expertise regarding the subject matter? Do terms need to be explained? Do they need to be spoon-fed? Or does the writer need to be careful not to talk down to them?

Format

  • Will this be a blog post? A white paper? Email?

Other

  • The rumors about the death of keywords have been greatly exaggerated. They still matter. What keywords or phrases do you want the writer to use? And are your choices backed with research? Or should the writer do the research?
  • Are there any specific sources you want the writer to use (usually sources that your audience recognizes as highly authoritative)?
  • Are there any sources the writer should avoid (usually competitors or sources that your audience doesn’t consider to be credible)?
  • Does this piece of content need to reflect a specific theme or message that you’ve been trying to communicate?
  • Should the content conclude with a call to action? If so, what should it be?
  • Whom should the writer contact with questions?
  • Is there anything else the writer needs to know?

This list isn’t exhaustive; neither is all of the information necessary every single time. But the more information you provide, the happier you’re going to be with the result. Always share too much rather than too little.

 

 

Content marketing mistakes: 9 reasons people hate your site

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When it comes to content marketing, few things are more unsettling than the feeling that you’re shouting into a bottomless pit — not only does no one care; they don’t even notice. You feel like you could offer to give all of your stuff away without arousing the first flicker of interest.

The truth is, that’s not the worst thing that can happen. What’s far worse is when your content annoys the heck out of the very people you’re trying to engage.

Businesses that publish bad content are 27% less likely to be considered, and they’re 40% less likely to get the sale. (And those are 2012 numbers; they’re almost certainly higher now due to higher audience expectations.)

Bad content weakens your credibility…people expect that your product or service will be just as lousy as your writing. Bad content can confuse high-quality leads and drive them away, while attracting low-quality leads that just take up your sales staff’s time and have no hope whatsoever of leading to a sale.  Bad content can irritate readers so much that they share it with their entire social network — as an example of an annoying website.

Being hated is worse than being ignored.

Which content mistakes get you on the list of “worst websites ever”?

The bad news is that the list is kind of long. The good news is that the things on the list are pretty easy to avoid if you’re paying attention. Some of the items are from Hubspot, while others are…well, let’s just say they’re common sense, depending on which side of the keyboard you’re on.

Your site takes forever to load.

It’s just too easy these days to improve your site’s load speed.

Not only do slow pages annoy your audience, they annoy Google. And, for now, Google makes the rules. The search engine’s algorithms factor in load speed when they’re deciding where to put you in their search results (SERPs). If your website is too slow, you’ll wind up on page 5 — and, trust me, nobody makes it that far.

It’s not mobile-friendly.

responsive

More people are going to visit your site from a mobile device than from a desktop or laptop: 51% to 42%. And they don’t want to spend more time scrolling around your site than they do reading.

Just as with sites that are slow to load, visitors will give up in frustration long before they convert. Google doesn’t like it, either: Your SERP will suffer if your website isn’t optimized (the buzzword is “responsive”) for mobile. Again, it’s just too easy to fix. Almost all website themes coming out today are mobile responsive.

It’s ugly.

Would you go to a job interview with bed head and morning breath? (I sure hope not.) Well, throwing an ugly website out there and expecting it to attract customers is no different. An ugly website is actually kind of insulting to your audience, because it screams that you didn’t care enough about their opinion to make an effort.

Once upon a time you needed to know some coding to create an attractive, user-friendly website. But now there are just too many WYSIWYG (pronounced “wizzy-wig,” for “what you see is what you get”) themes for lack of coding knowledge to be a good excuse for bad design. Comb your hair and brush your teeth, already.

Pro tip: Make sure your type isn’t going to give your readers a migraine. When I click away from a site as soon as I get there, it’s almost always because the type is so small or faint I have to strain to read it. With other sites undoubtedly offering the same information, I see no reason to work that hard to read yours.

Your video autoplays at the worst possible moment.

You don’t know where a given customer is or what they’re doing when they access your content. Maybe she’s trying to keep her eyes open at a boring conference and doesn’t want her boss in the next row to know she’s surfing. Maybe his wife is in labor. He’s nervous, it’s taking forever, and he’s just trying to distract himself. But that doesn’t mean his wife is going to understand why he’s online when he’s supposed to be thinking about her and their new bundle of joy.

It’s never a good idea to take what somebody thought was private and make it public without their permission.

It’s hard to navigate.

hard to navigate

The most effective websites are also the easiest to use. They make sense. The menus are easy to find, and the various types of content are right where you’d expect them to be.

Your visitors aren’t going to stop and ask for directions — they’ll just leave and go somewhere else — so make sure it it’s easy for people to find what they’re looking for.

You content is full of logical fallacies.

Nobody likes to be treated like they’re stupid. But that’s exactly the message you send when you use logical fallacies in your content.

What’s a logical fallacy? An argument or claim that sounds good on the surface but doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

Some logical fallacies are just part and parcel of marketing. One example is that, if everybody else is doing it, it must be good: “All of your friends are using our app, so you should be using it, too.” That one is so ingrained in our psyche that most people don’t even catch it.

logical fallacy

On the other hand, there’s the logical fallacy of equating correlation to causation. For example, did you know that there’s a 95% correlation between per capita cheese consumption and the number of people who die from getting tangled up in their bedsheets? It’s a fact. But urging people to buy your sheets so “You can eat all the cheese you want without getting tangled and dying” would be a logical fallacy.

Just be careful about knowingly using a logical fallacy. It’s pretty insulting.

Your popups are, well, rude.

Cue the collective groan and bring out the root canal analogy: Everybody hates popups.

And yet…when done right, they work:

  • In one case study, a popup subscription form was 1375% more effective than a similar form in the sidebar.
  • When Darren Rowse swtiched to a popup subscription form, his average subscriber rate went from 40 per day to 400 per day.
  • On another site, switching to a popup opt-in form increased the subscription rate by 1000%.

But….(you knew that was coming, right?)

The way people complain about popups, you get the impression they’re about as welcome as Cousin Eddie would be if he showed up at the family reunion after a week-long bender. (And, sadly, not after a shower.)

The difference is in the execution. Way too many businesses subject their website visitors to popups that are simply rude, crude, and socially unacceptable. They show up too soon and stay too long…sometimes even refusing to leave when asked. They bounce up and down over the content the person is trying to read, jiggle, flash, and, in general, act like a spoiled toddler who has to be the center of attention. They interrupt the conversation the customer is already having with you to bring up something totally irrelevant (from the reader’s perspective, at least).

content marketing popups

They’re pushy, asking for your hand in marriage when all you were doing is checking out the scenery.

The bottom line is that popups can be very effective when it comes to conversions, but pay attention to current best practices.

Your mama never taught you not to pull a bait-and-switch.

Few things annoy me more (in the digital realm, at least) than clicking on a link that I think is going to take me to an informative, useful article, but instead dumps me onto a landing page where I have to give up my life history to read it.

Don’t get me wrong: Landing pages are crucial to conversion. Just don’t be sneaky about them. If your link leads to a download or to gated content, say so. Likewise, when people click on a link, they should be taken somewhere directly relevant to said link rather than to your home page.

The only way to contact you is through a form.

It’s not that forms are bad. It’s just that sometimes people need a question answered now. And they’re exactly the people who are most likely ready to make a purchasing decision. Give those folks an option.

I’m sure there are more (please feel free to tell me yours in the comments). The important thing to remember is that, while it’s bad to not have any content, it’s even worse to have bad content. If you felt little prickles of recognition reading this, you might have some work to do. If I can help, just let me know.

 

Content marketing: Should small businesses even bother?

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My three kids are close in age. As in really close — all three were born in under three years, and the younger two are only 11 months apart. I still remember how overwhelmed I felt with a newborn, an unsteady walker, and a very stubborn toddler.

Forget teaching my babies to sign; I was too busy changing diapers, making bottles, managing tantrums, and administering breathing treatments. I thought I was doing pretty awesome if everybody was alive and relatively clean at the end of the day. (Don’t ask about the house.)

It was a lot like being a small business owner. There’s just so much to do!

Depending on your business, you’ve got product development, marketing, sales, payroll, HR, funding, research and testing, etc. Oh, yeah…and customers.

So when everybody keeps telling you that you need to publish content, you probably feel like I did when my kids started pulling things out of the arts and crafts closet. If I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with it right that minute, and no one was in danger of getting hurt, I ignored it and hoped it would just go away.

You’re probably hoping I’m going to tell you the same thing…that, if you wait long enough, content marketing will go away, that businesses are tougher than you think, and that yours will grow up to be just fine, even without content marketing.

Sorry. It won’t.

I know, I know…you’re probably swearing at me right now and yelling that you don’t know how to “do” content and you don’t have time to learn. I get it. But, if I can help you understand why content marketing is crucial for small- and medium-sized businesses, I think you’ll start planning a way to make it happen.

What is content marketing, anyway?

It’s kind of like building a relationship with the parents of your kids’ friends before you ask them to let their child spend the night at your house. It’s silly, but it’s a good analogy.

Through content marketing, you introduce yourself to potential customers, build trust, and show them what an awesome person you are (because you’re providing them with valuable information and/or entertainment) before you hit them up with a sales pitch.

If you think that’s an overly simplified explanation, you’re right. Amazon has entire books devoted to small business content marketing. But that’s it in a nutshell.

Why is publishing content so important for SMBs?

Content marketing is more than just the latest advertising fad:

It works.

Content marketing is both cheaper and more effective than traditional marketing tactics. In fact, content marketing generates 62% more leads than traditional marketing – for 1/3 the cost.

And since most SMBs don’t have huge advertising budgets, that’s a pretty important benefit.

It’s good for brand awareness.

The more content you publish, the more chances people have to find their way to your website.

You get better leads.

Not only do businesses that publish quality content get 97% more leads than those that don’t, those leads are 8 times more likely to turn into sales than outbound leads.

Why? Because they’ve already taken the time to learn about you and your product or service. They’re already invested.

They’re also further down the sales funnel. Instead of getting them at the awareness or interest stage, you get them closer to the action stage.

To put it in a real-life context, let’s say you sell insurance. If you put thorough, relevant content on your website, your sales staff won’t have to spend as much time fielding questions from people who have no idea what kind of insurance they need or want — or if they even want it to start with. Instead, they they’ll be able to focus on people who want to verify or add to the information they found on their own.

Everybody else is doing it: 91% of B2Bs and 86% of B2Cs.

I’ve written a number of times that “because everybody else is doing it” isn’t a good enough reason to spend the time and resources needed to publish content.

And I still believe that it shouldn’t be the only reason…that you shouldn’t slap some filler content on your website just so you can say you have a blog.

But it’s indisputable that, if all of your competitors are doing it well, you’re going to miss out in terms of brand awareness, SERP rankings, leads, etc.

It’s like trying to play baseball without a glove. If you’re not using all of the available tools, you can’t keep up with the people who are.

Customers like it.

Unlike TV ads, pop-up banner ads, etc. — which are about as welcome as a telemarketing call right in the middle of dinner — consumers see content as both valuable and actionable. A full 61% of consumers say that they’re more likely to buy from a brand that publishes custom content.

When it comes to B2Bs, 80% of decision-makers say they’d rather learn about a company and its offerings through a series of articles rather than from advertising.

Consumers also trust branded content just as much as they do content from third-party publications (and they distrust those third-party publications more, 12% vs. 6%).

It makes you look smart.

The buzzwords are “thought leader” and “authoritative,” but let’s keep things real, shall we? Publishing relevant, high-quality content that your customers actually want to read, use, and share makes you look smart.

It’s no surprise that customers prefer to buy from somebody who looks smart. It helps them feel confident in your company and your offerings.

And here’s a bonus: Sharing content is all wrapped up in self-identity. People are more likely to share your content if doing so will make them look smart, well-informed, connected to experts, etc.

The downside, of course, is that content can also make you look dumb. Sloppy content that’s full of spelling and grammatical errors is going to make people think you’ll be just as sloppy with your product or service. And if your content isn’t targeting the right audience, readers will conclude that, since they’re obviously not the kind of person you’re talking to, they must be in the wrong place. The secret here is relevant, authoritative content.

It lets Google know you’re there.

SEO strategy is beyond the scope of this post, but the bottom line is that the more high-quality content you publish, and the more people link to it and share it, the more important Google thinks you are. And when Google thinks you’re important, they move you higher in their search results (SERPs).

Not convinced it matters? The first link on a results page gets 33% of the traffic from that search. Links from page 2 get less than 3%.

It lets customers know you’re still breathing.

Although the failure rate for small businesses is down significantly, dropping 30% since 1977, the ugly truth is that businesses still close every day. Fresh content reassures people that you’re still alive and kickin’.

buffet

If you came here hoping I’d tell you not to worry your pretty little head (yes, I speak Southern) about content marketing…I’m sorry. It matters just as much for SMBs as it does larger companies. Maybe more.

I know that your plate is already stacked as high as somebody who’s about to blow their diet at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

That’s why I focus on helping SMBs keep up with the big boys when it comes to content marketing — and to do it without giving themselves an ulcer or a premature heart attack.

If I can help, click here to get in touch.

If you’re just exploring, you might want to check out the related posts linked below.

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