Does your business or that of your clients' have an online presence, of any sort? As you are reading this on Facebook, I'll assume that the answer is 'yes'. If I'm wrong, then I invite you to join the 21st Century way of doing business, albeit a little late.
I'd like to share some thoughts with you about the importance of having a content creation strategy, rather thank approaching content on an ad hoc basis. Your strategy might be modest (2 blog posts a month) or full-on (daily posts, weekly press releases, social media posting schedule, etc), but having that strategy and implementing it, will keep you on track in an online business environment that is full of distractions and talk of the 'next big thing'.
I'm not alone in this view, nor is it based on the need to create more business for myself (!). HubSpot's recent 2012 report on the "State of Inbound Marketing" has really driven this point home. In terms of how frequently blogs are updated with new posts and how this timing relates to customer acquisition, the following was discovered:
- Companies which posted more then once a day enjoyed a customer acquisition rate of 92%
- Those who posted once a day enjoyed a customer acquisition rate of 78%
- Those who only posted 2 or 3 each week had a customer acquisition rate of 70%
- Weekly postings generated a rate of 66% acquisition and monthly postings acquired only a 56% rating (HubSpot, 2012)
The principle demonstrated here is: the more frequently you post, the more customers and leads you'll attract. There are a number of reasons for this:
- If customers know they'll be seeing regularly scheduled, fresh new content they'll go to your blog or site more often, and look for any alerts that you send out.
- This will result in them developing trust in you, in the recommendations you make and your brand. Trusting visitors become leads, who will convert into customers, then loyalists, and, ideally, advocates for your business/service/product/brand.
- Search engines also love websites that continuously provide them with new content to offer Internet users. Fresh content means higher Google ranking as well as higher ranking with other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo.
So here's the challenge: how will you be able to come up with all the time and ideas needed to create fresh posts several times each day?
Create A Schedule For Your Editorial Activities
To help you get started, first put together an editorial schedule. This is a way of holding yourself or anyone else handling content creation accountable. Begin by determining what kind of schedule you'll set up (weekly, bi-monthly, monthly or annually) and then start listing your business, its brand, or the product or service orientated content ideas.
Avoid sticking only to blog posts however, expand your horizons by including ideas for eBooks, white papers, social media posts, webinars, press releases, document sharing and more.
Next, to keep your blog ahead of the schedule, start identifying content source opportunities - setting up Google Alerts for the key terms used in your niche will help. It's all too common for a business to start falling behind, then, once this happens the problem can turn into a chore and begin falling far behind schedule.
The final step to take: implementing and maintaining your content. One option available for facilitating this activity effectively is software for customer relationship management (CRM) and Content Management systems (CMS). Investing in these kinds of systems can potentially allow you to form an almost one step management of adding and keeping your blog and website's content organized while simultaneously updating each of your social media accounts.
I use WordPress for my sites, and this allows me to add content in advance and nominate its automatic publishing date. This is great if you want to take the plunge and outsource a batch of content that can be loaded at once, but drip-released over a period of weeks or months.
Getting Other Teams Involved
If you're planning on creating your business-orientated content single-handedly, then the past will reveal that you're headed for failure. By getting your company's other teams involved in creating content relevant to your brand, product or service, or by having your content creation outsourced to professionals, you'll be tapping into a great way to access more valuable content ideas - ideas that you may not even recognize exist.
For example, your customer service personnel is one team you'll most likely be able to draw upon for content ideas. Comprised of the people who assist and interact with your customers and leads each day, your customer service staff know the types of people that make up your target market. They know what they're looking for, what they love or struggle with regarding your products and services, and how they use your products and services - they are in the best position too to ask for customer service testimonials.
When getting other teams involved, be sure there's a set procedure for content and idea submission, or you may find yourself burdened with more material then you can handle!
Don't Leave Out The Visuals
Did you hear Pinterest has now become the Internet's 3rd most popular social media website (according to Mashable, 2012)? This means that now, more then ever, it's critical, to have content that's visually engaging as well as textually engaging. Providing visual content will lend your business additional online exposure and if you produce it yourself, it's free - to take photos of your displays, products, labels, executives, packaging, etc and store them in an easy to find the folder. (using Dropbox myself, I find it's especially convenient for storing images, particularly when you want other team members to access them).
This isn't the only advantage though. Visual content boosts user engagement and also aids the development of your brand's identity. Earlier this year, Simply Measured reported that just having an image or anything visual incorporated into a social media post can increase your site's visitor engagement by 65%. The explanation for this is that:
- Infographics and other types of visual content can showcase content in a way that can be instantly processed by people who think 'visually'. And because they are attention-grabbing (at least the good ones are!) they have a much greater chance of being shared, increasing your business/product's online exposure.
- Content that's appealing visually attracts visitors' eyes and piques their interest and curiosity.
- According to a study conducted by the US Government, 83% of learning is achieved visually (OHSA, May 1996) - so the more visual the content that you include to accompany your written content, the more memorable it will be.
The key principle here is that you have to keep an eye out for opportunities to create content that's visual as well as textual.
If your organization is holding a holiday party or participating in volunteer events, take some pictures and post them online.
If you've run a survey or gathered a lot of information that will help promote a product or service you're selling or demonstrate your company's industry-related expertise, combine them into an infographic.
If you have any testimonials from customers, these can also be incorporated into your visual content.
Opportunities are abundant, so any business, regardless of whether it's a medium or smaller sized company or a one-man-band, can take implement a content creation strategy that will enhance its online presence. You can keep it really simple, but I recommend you take the time to make it happen.
Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Kerry_Finch/119788
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