7 Ways to Take Your Content Marketing to the Next Level

Online marketing is all about the content. Content marketing is an essential part of building your business.

 How else will people find your content — and by extension your website. Part of converting is a good content plan that allows people to find you and decide that you offer something valuable enough to buy. But is your content marketing as effective as it could be? If you are struggling a little bit with getting your site to the next level, here are seven ways you can improve:

1. Start with Quality

 In the past, content marketing was a quantity game. While quantity can help, don’t forget about quality. Search engines — and consumers — are more sophisticated than they were 10 years ago. Quality content is a must if you want to stand out. Even if you post less frequently, you can see results if the content is high quality. This means including in­depth, useful pieces. While it’s tempting to give in and focus on the click­bait, at some point you need to provide value to your audience. 

2. Check Your Grammar 

While you might not be completely error­free all the time (we all make mistakes), you want to do your best to use proper spelling and grammar. Proofread your content before releasing. This goes beyond looking at website copy and blog posts. When content marketing, it also includes your social posts. You want everything to look as clean as possible. 

3. Post Consistently

 Start with a smaller number of posts if you aren’t sure you will be able to maintain quality output. These days, it’s more about expectations and readers and customers know that you will post consistently once a week, and your information will be high­quality, they will be more likely to return. They will even look forward to what you have to say

4. Research Your Topics 

Just because you think something is a great idea for your content marketing strategy doesn’t mean that it is. Instead, research your topics. There are plenty of tools out there that can help you analyze results of different topics. You can even figure out which are likely to do well using keywords or URL. Research to make sure that your chosen topics are going to convert well with your audience before you commit

5. Take Advantage of A/B Testing

 It can be a little tedious to use A/B testing with your content. However, effective content marketing includes keeping metrics on what works and what doesn’t. Pay attention to things like short articles and long articles, which headlines seem to do better, and which topics your readership prefer. Compare different efforts so you can refine your topics and approach to become more effective

6. Optimize Your Website 

Make sure your website is optimized for search engines. You want people to find you, and to stick around. Don’t forget to optimize your social posts as well. Content marketing that goes to the next level requires a great deal of planning on optimization. You need to coordinate what goes on your website with your social sharing.

7. Know Your Audience 

Understand what you audience is looking for and deliver. You don’t need to try to appeal to everyone. In fact, you are likely to fail if you try that approach. Instead, consider who is likely to buy your product or service, and focus your content on what is likely to be useful and relevant to that segment of the population.

  Source : http://huff.to/2bl5Bzi

The 10 Most Destructive Lies Business Owners Tell Themselves

We talk to ourselves constantly. Okay, maybe not literally, but the psychological phenomenon of self-talk is real and it can have a major bearing on your life, moods and even your professional performance. Self-talk can manifest as reactions to certain events and situations. For example, you might think “that was a dumb mistake” or “this is going to be awesome,” and these thoughts generally have an effect on how you perceive the event in question. They can also manifest as assumptions, in the short-term or long-term, about different aspects of your life and business.

There’s no question that business owners lie to themselves, often knowingly, but some lies are innocuous. Others, like these 10, are destructive and should be avoided at all costs.

Lies Business Owners Tell

My Customers are Going to Love This

This lie stems from your own personal biases. You came up with the idea for your business (or product), so, of course, you’re going to love it! That doesn’t mean everyone else in your target audience is going to, and assuming that’s the case may set you up for failure. If you don’t have any objective data backing this statement, you’re lying to yourself.

Everything Will Work Out

It won’t. Not if you allow things to continue as they are. There’s this persistent myth that businesses succeed because they had a good idea and a good system. Then they just waited for everything else to fall in place. This isn’t true. Successful businesses have to experiment, tinker, and evolve constantly. You have to put in the effort if you want to succeed.

I Can Always Change This Later

This can be true, depending on the context, but it’s not a line of thinking you want to apply to many areas of your business. Assuming you’ll be able to change something later gives you a lower threshold for quality, meaning you’ll start off with a weaker strategy. And thanks to procrastination, you’ll probably end up never changing it anyway. Start strong if you want to finish strong.

I Don’t Have to Worry About This Yet

There are many reasons for procrastination, and some of them are actually pretty good. However, when you delay a task, the indefiniteness of “I’ll worry about that later” can set you up for a perpetual cycle of delay. Instead, if you don’t have time to do something, either schedule a concrete time to do it in the future or delegate it to someone else.

I Have to Do This Myself

Entrepreneurs love to get their hands dirty, and many take it as a point of pride. You might convince yourself that you’re the only one with the skill set or experience to handle a certain task, or that if you don’t do this yourself, you’ll lose control of your business. However, it’s unlikely that these things are true. Learn to let go, and trust your teammates to help you out.

I Don’t Have Time

Entrepreneurship is demanding. It takes a heavy investment of time and effort to see any progress, so many business owners end up putting off or ignoring other aspects of their life — like family, friends and leisure time. Trust me, you need to make time for these things, or you’ll regret it later.

I Just Have to Work Harder

Working harder isn’t always the best approach, just like hitting your head against a brick wall with more force isn’t going to help you tear it down. Instead, opt for smarter, more innovative solutions to your problems. Putting in more hours with a “brute force” style will leave you burned out and frustrated.

This Could Never Work

This lie often stems from preconceived notions about different strategies. You might hear an idea for the first time and immediately write it off as impractical or useless, or you might be presented with a strategy that didn’t work out well for you in the past and assume it could never work out. It’s important to be open to new ideas, especially since many strategies can be feasible as long as you use the right approach.

All I Need Is . . . . . 

Businesses are ridiculously complicated, and even to the most seasoned, successful entrepreneurs in the world, they’re somewhat unpredictable. There are too many variables for you to definitively boil down any problem to a single factor. If you give yourself this problem-solving tunnel vision, you could wind up ignoring the factors that are actually responsible for your predicament. Know that every problem is complex, and no one fix will solve everything.

No One Understands

Entrepreneurship can be painfully lonely. Because you’re working long hours, you’re in an isolated position, and you have to put on a “brave” face for your employees and clients, you might find yourself thinking that nobody understands the stresses you’re dealing with. This weighs heavily on the mind. But don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re alone. Connect with other entrepreneurs and open up about your experiences.

Don’t feel ashamed if you lie to yourself. In fact, if you don’t, you’re in the minority. Some lies are important to reframe your expectations, help you think more positively and direct your line of thought to something more productive. However, don’t let yourself get caught in a trap of unproductive self-deception. Keep your thoughts and assumptions in check by remaining as objective as possible in your business.

  Source: http://bit.ly/1XY9dVM

9 ways marketers can stick to their strategies

Editor’s note: In “The Marketing Plan Handbook,” author Robert W. Bly explains how you can develop big-picture marketing plans for pennies on the dollar with his 12-step marketing plan. In this edited excerpt, Bly explains the nine steps you can take to make sure you're getting the most out of your marketing plan.

Consistency is important when you’re trying to implement a long-term marketing plan, so resist the temptation to abandon a strategy if it doesn't work immediately.

Give it time to work. These nine steps can help you make the most of your well-crafted plan:

1. Every day, be renewed by your vision. Your mind can be your greatest asset or your most tiring obstacle.

Begin your day by renewing your mind with the clarifying power of your vision. When W. Clement Stone and Earl Nightingale both said, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve,” they knew these were far more than simple words on a page. There simply is no substitute for the power of belief.

When you believe, obstacles that would throw your entire day into chaos suddenly become bleeps that you just intuitively know how to solve without expending valuable time or energy. Don’t laugh this off as touchy-feely. This is one of the most inexpensive and profitable investments you’ll ever make in yourself. Just do it.

2. Focus on your niche. Become the expert in all things involving your niche. Don’t limit your knowledge to the services you offer.

The more you know about your niche’s priorities and challenges, the more valuable a resource you can become to them. Become familiar with other professionals who can assist your niche with challenges outside your expertise.

When you’re tempted to work with clients outside your niche, make sure the time and payoff will be worth it and won’t draw you away from your commitment.

3. Stay close to your ideal client. Networking, surveys, online community forums, trade magazines and associations are all great ways to keep sharp about the things that matter to your ideal client.

Stay on top of the news and ask yourself how your client’s needs will be affected by changes in the business and world environment.

4. Keep your eyes on your competition. If your clients stop think­ing that you offer a competitive advantage in addressing their needs, you lose and the competition wins. Enough said. Don’t be the last to know what your competition is doing.

5. Make sure you’re positioned to win. If you’re doing the first four steps, you’ll know when it’s time to change your tune, tweak your message and speak a new language that’s more in tune with what your ideal client needs.

Ask yourself, “Is my unique selling proposition still unique? Does anyone do it better? What one thing can I do to serve my clients better?” That’s how you stay unique.

6. Take action every day. Stick close to your plan. Follow your schedule. Complete the actions you say you'll complete in your daily sched­ule.

At the end of the week, give yourself a grade for effort. Then give yourself another one for accomplishment. If you’re getting A’s for effort and C’s for accomplishment, trouble­shoot.

7. Focus on one marketing project at a time. One of the greatest mistakes people make in setting goals is trying to work on too many things at one time. There's tremendous power in giving focused attention to just one idea, one project, or one objective at a time.

8. Ask yourself good questions. As you think about your goals, instead of wishing for them to come true, ask yourself how and what you can do to make them come true.

The subconscious mind will respond to your questions far more effectively than just making statements or wishes.

9. Congratulate yourself. You’re halfway home. You’ve done something that less than 3 percent of the population has done—set goals and create a plan for achieving them.

Every study on the subject tells us you’re far more likely than most to succeed with your plans if you'll only do one thing: Take action.

Be that external force. Plan your work—then work your plan—and you’ll have an unstoppable moneymaking system that can grow your business beyond even your most amazing vision.

Source : http://bit.ly/1PTjFLG

10 Ways Social Media Can Boost Your Career

So many people think that social media is just for time-wasting. It’s not.

Social media can be an invaluable tool when looking for a new job, or even when trying to boost your skills for your current role. Try these ideas and see how you go.

A Visible Resume on LinkedIn

The most obvious way that social media can help your career is by using the social network dedicated to professional networking: LinkedIn. Although, that’s not the only social network that can help you get a job. Wherever you do it, once you’ve put your resume details online, you never really know who might stumble across them and want to hire you.

Get a few great testimonials each year, keep your skills updated and browse the LinkedIn site occasionally to meet new people. Just be sure to use our powerful LinkedIn code while you’re there.

Curating Content For Your Expertise

Whichever social network suits you most, curating content for your expertise is a perfect way to showcase what you know and care about. Pinterest and Twitter are ideal for this, but you may also see great results on other social networks.

The things to keep in mind about curating content are that you’re showcasing what you know, you’re attracting followers who like that sort of information, and you’re positioning yourself as an expert in that knowledge. And what’s more, because you’re reading the latest news regularly, you probably ARE an expert.

Meeting Other Experts In Your Field

Social networking is a two-way street. You might be attracting experts in your field by the things you curate and talk about, but also you might find yourself drawn to other experts in your field by what they post.

It doesn’t really matter how you found each other: what matters is that you build on that, grow acquainted with each other and perhaps even become friends. You’d be surprised what sort of opportunities can come up just because someone you know realizes you could be the right person for the job.

Actively Researching Companies To Work For

LinkedIn is an obvious starting place for a bit of active research on companies you might like to work for. But don’t stop there! Check out Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and more.

Try searching all profiles on all social networks for the name of the company and see which executives and employees are posting publicly. See what you can learn about the company culture from these individuals.

Using Social Networks To Find Jobs

Across all forms of social media, you’ll find job postings. They’re not always that easy to find, since hashtags like #Jobs can get overrun by spammers pretty quickly. But use #Jobs and a related hashtag as a starting point and you’ll soon find the less-popular, higher quality feeds worth following.

Also, check out our awesome system for finding jobs via social media.

Learning About Your Co-Workers

These are the people you work with every day, but what do you know about them? If you want to have something a little more personal than the weather to chat about, try to learn about these people via social media.

For starters, make a Facebook group and a Twitter list for your co-workers and take a look in regularly to see what they’re posting. This is quite a passive way to learn more about them over time.

For a more active approach, try searching Facebook for interesting things like “TV shows liked by people who work at MakeUseOf”. You’ll know exactly which shows to bring up in the coffee room.

Attracting Clients And Employers

All of your regular posts, genuine relationship-building and active curation eventually pull together to create a social profile that shows you’re a skilled, interesting, relatable individual. Potential clients and employers come to appreciate your professionalism, they recognise your face and they remember who you are. Who are they going to hire when they next have work that needs doing? You, if you’re available.

Carving a New Role For Yourself in Your Current Job

So, you’re always tweeting, you run two YouTube channels, use Snapchat every day and have a massive Instagram following? Not only are you probably a millennial, but you’re possibly the most qualified person in your office to handle these forms of social media for the business.

Even if the marketing team want to keep control of the accounts, you could still offer your services as a consultant to the team. Perhaps you could even help by being one of the video personalities for the team — a lot of the older generations are quite camera-shy compared to millennials.

Writing Content to Showcase Your Expertise

This is a little bit beyond just curating the articles you’ve read. What I’m talking about here is actually writing a 500+ word article on the subject matter yourself, offering your own insights and expertise to the readers.

Of course, you could make your own website and do this on your own blog or guest post for a larger blog. But certain social networks offer a built-in editor for longer pieces and they have a ready-made audience awaiting your post. Try writing your article on LinkedIn, Medium or directly on Facebook and see how well it’s received.

Follow Career-Boosting Accounts

There are many great career-boosting tools and blogs dedicated to boosting your career, such as The Muse and Levo. Find your favorites and make Twitter and Facebook lists for their respective social media accounts. Also, follow LinkedIn influencers that discuss job advice.

From then on, once a day you can browse through your feeds and maybe learn something useful you can use to help your career.

Source : http://bit.ly/1SAX4p1

Why Your Business Needs Social Media Marketing

Your company finally has its website, Facebook, and even a Twitter account set up. You are getting some traffic, you have a small following, and you've thrown up a few status updates and links.

Maybe your website or social media handles even show up in a Google search once in awhile. Check "Social Media Marketing" off that list of things to do. Mission accomplished. Wrong! Or maybe you still think that your business can't benefit from social media marketing at all? Wrong again!

It really doesn't matter if you are a sole proprietor or a CMO at a Fortune 500 global corporation. Your business can significantly benefit from social media marketing regardless of its size or business model. Why does social media marketing matter so much? 

Well I'll tell you why! Here are just a few simplified reasons why your business will grow and improve with SMM:

1) Increase Website Traffic, SEO, Referrals, & Revenue Generation

This is pretty obvious. Your social media platforms promote your website links and the content you produce. You get more traffic to your site, your search engine rank improves (and in turn more organic traffic is generated), you get more referrals from readers / viewers / subscribers / followers / customers / clients / colleagues, and you make more money! Depending on your business model, your income may be generated from product / service sales, advertising revenue, sponsorships, contracts, partnerships, subscriptions, investors, donations, or other means. Simply put, increased quality and quantity of traffic derived from social media = more money. This can be true for all companies whether you sell muffins, clean houses, manage portfolios, or market the latest cloud computing software.

2) Interaction, Branding, and Exposure with Customers, Prospects, or Industries

Your business can always benefit from interacting with your customers, clients, readers, viewers, peers, prospects, or industry heavy hitters. Many people and organizations believe this to be the most important aspect of social media marketing. So establish a positive dialogue that will lead to signing a new client. Successfully promote a current client's business. Provide exceptional customer service by answering a question or addressing a concern. Tell the world about your latest campaign, product, or service. Let the customer tell you what they view as your strengths and weaknesses, or how you can improve your business. The possibilities are endless and you'll be missing opportunities if you don't have a strong social media marketing strategy in place. If you don't properly manage or expand your company's community and network, you are leaving money on the table.

3) Increased Perception of Being Connected, Tech Savvy, and Legitimate

A lot of people think this is more of a subjective or less important aspect of social media marketing. I think it's an incredibly important one if you consider basic human psychology. While business professionals can usually distinguish between quality and quantity of social media statistics, the average person may not. So who cares if your company doesn't have many followers, friends, subscribers, views, tweets, likes, posts etc? Turns out a lot of people DO care. If you are a billion dollar corporation and you have 200 Twitter followers, that obviously doesn't look very good. It looks especially poor when your competitors have 200,000 or maybe 2,000,000 followers.

Why does your company have 6 tweets when you do business on 6 continents?

 Perhaps your business is nonexistent on critical social media platforms or your employees aren't representing your company online. 

Or maybe there is little or no activity on any of your social media accounts. This can make your company seem out of touch, which can be especially damaging if your target market includes younger or more technologically proficient customers and industries. It certainly won't help you relate to millenials if you are a B2C company and have them as one of your main "buyer personas". I've seen technology, media, marketing, and online retail companies with minimal social media marketing presence! It's not pretty. 

People and companies do look at numbers and make judgments based on them, fair or not. Having a minimal or nonexistent social media presence makes your company look bad and your competitors look better by comparison. You will lose revenue and market share if you don't successfully compete on all relevant social media platforms.

4) Return On Investment (ROI)

Social Media Marketing can have an excellent Return On Investment (ROI) compared with traditional forms of marketing such as mailers, radio ads, television ads, magazine / newspaper ads, billboards, etc. 

You could easily spend hundreds or thousands (or significantly more depending on your business) of dollars on any of these traditional marketing methods. 

If you are a sole proprietor or small business owner, that price tag can be a risky or completely impossible option. 

Even a global corporation may be looking to tighten their marketing budget or get more value for their dollar (for example: Procter & Gamble this year opted for a frugal Twitter campaign as opposed to a multi-million dollar Superbowl ad). Social media marketing can be that viable affordable alternative, or a significant component, of your marketing strategy. 

Not only will your social media platforms save you money in the short term, these platforms and SEO-boosting power remain in place to pay dividends months and even years with minimal maintenance.

And because it's digital, you can usually modify your social media marketing platforms or strategy as needed .

It is necessary these days to be able to adapt and make changes within a matter of days, hours, or even minutes. You could be spending a fortune on traditional advertising or marketing consultants when social media marketing could get the job done for a fraction of the price.

5) Analytics 

This is an enormous benefit that you receive from implementing social media marketing into your business strategy. You usually get minimal data in response to traditional marketing campaigns. 

Sometimes you aren't sure whether your business is benefiting from one traditional method or another. With social media marketing, you can get incredibly detailed, immediate, and convenient statistical reports on nearly every aspect of your SMM campaigns. 

You'll get key measurables such as impressions, clicks, comments, likes, shares, subscriptions, referring links, sales, time on site, detailed demographics, and much more. Analyze this data and modify your social media posts and ads accordingly to achieve even greater results. 

You don't get that with a newspaper ad or television commercial. You can get these detailed SMM analytics from Google Analytics, CRM platforms, individual social media platforms directly, or other web services. 

6) Integration

Finally, you can seamlessly integrate social media marketing into your overall marketing and business strategy. 

Your social media marketing complements and/or links to your email marketing, website, direct mailers, telephone, print ads, and radio / television ads. You may notice these days that half of the ads out there already have links to the company's social media URL or solicit readers / listeners / viewers to follow them on social media. 

Every email marketing campaign and website should be fully integrated with its SMM if it isn't already. And everything radio and television is already integrated or being integrated with online media. Magazines, newspapers, and newsletters are all online now as well. Complement your overall business marketing, sales, and customer service with social media savvy. 

Of course there are dozens of other important reasons why social media marketing is important for your business success. I will continue posting more specific SMM articles so I can share my thoughts and experiences with specific social media platforms, paid advertising options, specific industries, and various business models. 

Source : http://bit.ly/1Jup3Wc

Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2016

2016 is set to be another big year for the ever-changing digital landscape – with more channels changing or becoming a vital part of the marketing mix. Just last week, for example, Facebook announced an interesting move towards expanding its Messenger platform to businesses, despite the fact it has been quelling organic business reach in the news feed for some time now.

With that said, here are the main digital marketing trends to focus on over the next 12 months:

Mobile

The number of users accessing the internet via mobile devices continued to rise above desktop in 2015 - and to highlight just how much these stats are predicted to rise year on year, in April Google implemented ‘mobilegeddon’ an algorithm update that favours mobile friendly and responsive websites.

For 2016 mobile will be a key focus within the digital marketing arena, where a lot can be learnt about user behaviour from Google’s ‘micro-moments’: the identification of the complex consumer journey for mobile devices.

The STATS

• You can increase unaided brand awareness by 46% simply by showing up in mobile search results
   
• 51% of Smartphone users have discovered a new brand, product or service when searching via their mobile
   
• 30% of all online shopping purchases now happen on mobile phones

Content will still rein as King

In 2016 content will still rein as King and brands will and should continue to develop effective content marketing strategies that really engage their target audiences.

A key focus for 2016 should be to ensure all created content is fully optimised with relevant keywords, whilst appealing directly to targeted web users. Ultimately your content may read brilliantly, but if it fails to engage and attract web visitors it is of no real value.

The STATS

• Posting content with an image on social media is likely to increase engagement. A study found that tweets with images received 150% more retweets than those without.
  
  
• Only 28% of content sharing happens through social media – the remaining 72% happens via email and other private communication methods.
  
  
• According to a study, content shared on Thursdays has the longest link lifespan

Data is there for the taking

Marketers now have access to more personal data than ever before. If you haven’t sat down and really analysed this, 2016 is definitely the year to do it. Understand exactly where your main target audience is located, their gender, their age range and how they engage with your product or service - and then use this to create a marketing strategy that really appeals to your stakeholders, whilst driving results.

The STATS

• Social media insights can support your overarching social strategy, highlighting exactly what type of content, posted at which times, drives the best results
  
  
• The amount of data stored online is set to be 44 times larger in 2020 than in 2009
  
  
• Without the use of online data, marketers would struggle to create a full picture of who their target audience is, and what makes them tick.
• 
  

Video goes viral

Dubbed as the future of content marketing by many, video provides an engaging, informative and shareable platform to promote your brand, message or content in an easy-to-digest format. Its growing popularity has even been felt by social media channels like Facebook, which reported earlier in the year twice as many users now watch videos via the platform.

Video will continue to grow in popularity for 2016 and should be a focal point of all digital marketing campaigns. If created with some innovation and pushed across all relevant channels (based on analytical data of course!), you will be guaranteed great results.

The STATS

• YouTube receives one billion unique visitors each and every month
  
  
• 64% of Smartphone users prefer to watch a YouTube video as opposed to undertaking research or read a product manual.
  
  
• By 2017 it is predicted that video will account for 69% of consumer internet traffic

Source : http://bit.ly/1PbbXMl