Tag Archives: content marketing

Why Use Content Marketing?

Are you one of those people who prefers learning through videos instead of reading?

As an avid reader and professional writer, I don’t really relate, but I figure you deserve to learn about the benefits of small business content marketing too.

With that in mind, Part 1 of the new Austin Copywriter video series all about content marketing for small businesses is ready!

Check it out below, and be sure to let me know if you have any questions or feedback.

In case you’re not able to watch it, here’s the transcript:

Hi! I’m Austin Copywriter, Kristen Hicks. Look, I know as a small business, you have limited resources and really need to be careful where you invest your time and money. There are lots of options for advertising and marketing, so what makes content marketing worth considering?

Here’s the thing, people are sick of advertising that feels like advertising. Do you actually sit through commercials anymore if you have the option to fast forward?

Do you bother to look at the billboards, the ads on public buses, or the ones they even put in bar bathrooms these days? Probably not. I don’t

We all encounter too much advertising and have gotten really good at tuning it out.

The solution to that problem is content marketing.

Content marketing is based on a simple idea. Tell people what they want to hear, rather than what you want them to hear.

But how does that lead to sales? We’ll get to the how and why more in parts 2, 3, and 4 but it does!

Small businesses have long recognized the value of building a solid reputation on good products and personal customer service. Content marketing just helps bring those proven values into the Internet age.

Check back soon for Part 2 in to the Introduction to Content Marketing for Small Businesses series, where I’ll discuss just what content marketing is.

How to Hire a Good Freelance Blogger

Blog posts, articles, and random acquaintances are all telling you how much you need to be blogging for your small business. That sounds nice and all, but who has time to write regular blog posts? And if everyone else is doing it, why would anyone bother to read what you write?

When Blogging Isn’t Worth It…

The fact is, all those sources harping on the benefits of small business blogging aren’t wrong, but they’re not always telling the whole story. If you start a blog to start a blog, that’s just dumb. Blogging without a strategy is a huge waste of time and energy.

Even if you do somehow manage to put out posts once a week, getting it done isn’t enough. Unless your blog posts offer valuable information to the people you want to be reaching, and more importantly, actually get read by them, you’re not getting anything back for the work you put into it.

…And When It Is

If you’re going to start a blog for your small business, you want to do it right. Your posts need to be approached with a specific goal in mind. You need to ask yourself:

  • What do I want to get out of the blog?
  • Who do I want my posts to help?
  • What do they need?
  • How will the blog, and each individual post, represent my brand?

How to Find the Right Blogger

Your time is valuable and running a small business means you’ve got a lot on your plate. If you do want to branch into blogging for your small business, but don’t want to personally take on the time obligation, you need to find a good freelance blogger.

It might be tempting to head to one of those sites that offer a few hundred words for pocket change, but we’ve already established that this isn’t worth doing unless you’re going to do it right.

You want to work with someone that will take the time to get to know your brand (bonus points for prior expertise in your industry), knows how to write for the web, and understands the importance of appealing to your target audience.

A good freelance blogger will insist on:

  • Understanding your small business blogging goals.
  • Learning all about your business and products.
  • Getting a clear picture of your target audience.
  • Learning what kind of questions and issues concern them.
  • Developing a blog strategy focused on providing value to your specific audience (e.g. prospective customers).
  • Discussing some kind of strategy to promote the content and get it in front of the right people (although expect this part to cost more).

Basically, if you just want posts up so you can say you have a blog, go ahead and hire a content mill for $20 posts. If you want a blog that serves as an actual marketing tool, look for a freelance blogger with the chops and online marketing know how to push for everything described above.

Link Building is Dead, Practice Link Encouragement

Within the most of marketing industry, to say that link building is dead isn’t terribly controversial. Nonetheless, many businesses haven’t yet left behind the idea and come to marketing firms and consultants convinced it’s what they want for their business.

The shift in the direction that SEO and online marketing have taken in the past couple of years due to recent Google updates is good for consumers, but bad for businesses looking for an easy fix to outrank the competition.

If you care about competing online, you can’t hire someone to do a little SEO work for you as a one-off project and expect results. Instead, you’ll have to drop the idea of an easy fix, and think bigger.

Content Marketing=Link Encouragement

It’s certainly still true that gaining links back to your site is mostly a good thing, but the quality and relevance of the sites giving you those links matters more than the quantity. The only way to get a link from a site with any authority is for them to want to give it you.

They have to believe that what you’re offering provides value for their visitors, and feel comfortable associating their site and brand with yours. Without that, you won’t get anywhere.

For this reason, the best approach is not to set out to “build” links, you need to encourage them by providing something that relevant sites will value. As you’ve probably surmised by this point, that means content.

The Good News

Content marketing is not an easy, quick fix. It’s a long-term process. But, it comes with many benefits besides link encouragement.

Content gives you the opportunity to earn trust from your audience and demonstrate that you know your business. A consumer trying to choose between a business that talks about how good it is, and one that shows how good it is by giving a taste of the knowledge and expertise it’s able to impart has an easy choice.

With some time, effort and strategy put into it, your business can build up a community around its content that doesn’t just attract customers, but creates advocates. A customer that feels she has a relationship with your business will make sure that people in her life know who to turn to when they need your services. A loyal customer that feels a bond to your brand is a better marketing tool than anything a marketing firm can do for you.

The Secret to Good Marketing…

The end goal of marketing is to help a company make more sales. Each company must determine the best intermediary goals their marketing should accomplish in order to reach that point. But to be successful, marketing must aid in creating a more profitable business.

Nonetheless, marketing serves a different role than sales does.  Sales is about getting a person to cross that final line of making a purchase or signing a contract. Marketing is about getting them to the line to begin with.  If you meet a new guy at a party and he spends a lot of time talking about how awesome he is, you probably won’t walk away from the conversation convinced. If you hear from your good friend Joe how awesome this guy is, or if he impresses everyone at the party with great jokes and stories, he’s a lot more likely to win you over as someone worth knowing.

In the same way, a business offering up a sales pitch about how great they are won’t gain much traction without a reputation to back that up.

Marketing (alongside the equally important customer service) is an important tool in building that reputation. You have to:

a)    Make sure people know your company exists (and what you do), and

b)   Build up enough trust that you’re the first place they’ll turn when they need what you offer.

To do so, you have to focus less on yourself and how great what you have to offer is, and think more about what the customer needs and how you can help.

…It’s About Giving

Content Marketing Means GivingThe secret is that you have to set ego to the side and focus on providing something of value. You should already be doing this for current customers, whose testimonials and positive word of mouth are some of the best marketing tools in your arsenal. To attract new customers and gain their trust, you need to think about what you’re willing to offer them for free that will demonstrate your knowledge and integrity.

In many cases, this means content. Turn the expertise and good ideas you have into blog posts, articles, videos and other forms of informational tools that answer questions your prospective customers are likely to have.

It could also mean a free version of your product with lighter features than the paid version.  If you’re a service provider, this could take the form of a free consultation that gives potential clients a taste of your expertise tailored to their needs.

None of these forms of giving are selfless. They’re designed to help you gain attention for your business and build a reputation around your expertise. Even so, isn’t it nice to embrace a business approach that doubles as doing something good for people?

Know Where to Draw the Line

Ok, so giving plays an important role in good marketing, but you’re still running a business. You have to approach your giving with a strategy in mind.

If you’re providing a free version of your product, decide just how much functionality you’re comfortable giving away before users have to upgrade to the paid version.

If your focus is more on content, most of what you produce should be focused on value for the consumer, but some of it can be about you. MacKenzie Fogelson recommends the 80/20 rule when it comes to social sharing. The same can be reasonably applied to the content you produce.

If 80% of your content is all about helping your target audience, 20% can be about product updates, special deals, and other forms of promotion. If you do enough preliminary work to gain the customer’s trust, those pitches will only be getting to an audience already interested in what you do.  By that point, you’ll be the guy at the party with Joe’s recommendation and the stream of jokes that have already made everybody laugh, and people won’t be as inclined to doubt you’re as awesome as you say you are.

What Popular Podcasts Can Teach Us About Content Marketing

A little over a year ago when I purchased Carbonite, a program that creates an automatic, online backup of your computer, I made sure to use the Nerdist promo code. Not only did it earn me some kind of discount (I don’t remember the particulars), but I knew it was a way for a free podcast I like to get a little extra monetary support.

People appreciate free content. That’s not exactly a controversial statement. In fact, many have determined that members of my generation, and especially those a few years younger than me, don’t appreciate the value of content and just won’t pay for it. Period.

I don’t think that’s true. I know I’m not the only who’s made a point of thinking of a piece of free content I like when making an associated purchase. Popular podcasts like the Nerdist, WTF with Marc Maron, and Doug Loves Movies all thrive in part due to sponsors, and their listeners’ willingness to support those sponsors – with a nod to the podcast’s help in sending them there.

Notably, the comedians at the center of each of the podcasts mentioned have also seen their careers blow up due to the popularity of their free podcasts.

What still sounds counter-intuitive to some now feels like old news to many: providing something people value for free can be a good way to make money.

That’s pretty much the definition of content marketing, and there are a number of wildly popular podcasts out there that do a good job of demonstrating just how well content marketing can work.

I wrote this post not as a way to encourage businesses to make podcasts as a form of content marketing, although that may be a good move for your business, but rather to point out these two notable lessons that businesses can learn from popular podcasts:

1) People appreciate free content and, by extension, the businesses and brands that help make it free.

If you’re in the camp that thinks young people won’t pay for content they like – just look at the Veronica Mars kickstarter campaign. I’m betting the popular show about high schoolers didn’t raise all that dough exclusively from people in their 30’s and up. I don’t think people have lost their understanding that it takes money to produce the content they like. I think instead, they’ve become pickier about what content they feel is worth paying for and have different ideas of what paying for content looks like.

Many people, myself amongst them, have “cut the cord” when it comes to cable, and trust the internet to bring us all the tv that we think is worth our time. Most cord cutters are tolerant, perhaps more so than our cable-subscribing brethren, of the commercials that play during shows made available online. We recognize that this is the cost of free content – a few minutes of ads per episode. On the other hand, the cost of a monthly cable subscription, which would buy us more shows and channels than we care to watch, seems wasteful.

What does this have to do with your business and content marketing?

It speaks to the psychology behind how people view the things they liked. Not too many people will go out of their way to buy something just because they see it in association with content they find valuable — but if it’s something they already need (or might need sometime down the line), that product gains a serious edge against competitors. By associating your business with a brand they already like, or becoming that brand via quality content that you develop, you become the Carbonite that someone is happy to choose because it not only gains them a good product, but helps fuel the content they value.

2) Good, free content is a powerful tool to build up your reputation.

As previously mentioned, most of the comics behind popular podcasts have credited the podcast with career resurgences – from more people at their live shows to tv hosting gigs to sitcom and movie offers – much of which likely would have never happened without investing time in offering something entertaining for free. The podcasts made them more recognizable and built up a fan base that has ensured them revenue from a number of other means, besides the podcast sponsorships themselves.

By the same token, Copyblogger‘s extremely successful business model was to become the leading authority on creating valuable content…as a way to sell software.  The connection between point A and point B isn’t a simple, direct line, and building a reputation like the one they have takes a lot of time and a large investment in good writers. Nonetheless, they’ve built a fabulously successful business off a foundation of content that people love.

The moral of these various stories is: don’t be stingy! It can be hard to wrap your head around profiting off of giving something valuable away for free, but there are plenty of models out there that show, if done well, it works.