3 Keys to Create Engaging Content for More Customers and Sales

One of the most exciting fields for startups right now is content marketing. This engaging way to spread the word about your business has continued to grow as different forms of content gain popularity. Though it all started with the typical blog, companies are now using various forms of content marketing like podcasts to drive more traffic.

This form of marketing is hard to master and with the dozens of verticals involved, it’s rare to come across a valid informational source. That is why Jason Quey started the Content Promotion Summit, an online event that is bringing together over 60 of the world’s best content marketers.

This free event that started July 25, was aimed at teaching the ins and outs of blogging, podcasts, public relations and more. If you’re looking to start with the basics, below are three keys to creating engaging content to get more customers:

1. Develop a strategy.

Every house needs a foundation. The same goes for your content marketing. Entrepreneurs creating a blog need to lay out a strategy that focuses on their goals.

As an example, Drift, a messaging app that helps you grow your business, utilizes their blog to create a voice around sales, marketing and customer acquisition. In under eight months, their blog has grown to over 30,000 monthly visitors without a budget, making their company a thought leader in messaging apps.

To develop your strategy, I suggest reading the Grow and Convert blog where Benji Hyam details the Google Suggested Search hack. This basically involves long tail search terms focused on how-to questions, comparisons, and questions.

2. Gain credibility.

You have the right foundation for your content strategy. Now you will want to know how to create the content to execute on that strategy.

There are different ways to establish credibility and some ways are better than others. Getting press attention, interviewing influencers in your industry, blogging on other company blogs and answering questions online are all ways to gain credibility.

As an example, at my startup Sourcify where we help entrepreneurs find the right manufacturer in minutes, we like answering specific questions on Quora that address the pain point we are solving. This not only gets us traffic but also boosts credibility as people upvote our answers.

3. Utilize social media.

Social media is one of the best ways to share your content. With that said, social media is all about engagement and far too many companies overlook this fact. Companies today post on social like they’re talking to a brick wall.

Hillel Fuld, one of the world’s top tech bloggers and co-founder ofZCast recently told me a story of when Gary Vaynerchuck explained the return on investment of social media. He described social media as being your mom. Mothers are always there to compliment their children and instill confidence. Social media is there to do the same for your customers.

Though content marketing may not show immediate results or returns, it is a must in today’s world of online marketing. By growing your blog or starting a podcast, you’ll see long term growth and gains that you wouldn’t have imagined possible. You could be invited to speak at major events or write for major publications, but if you don’t start now, who knows where your content could lead you.

 Source : http://entm.ag/2bC8CqZ

Six mobile marketing tips for businesses and brands

From chatbots to personalisation, here advertising and mobile experts share their tips on how to master mobile marketing.

We type tap and swipe our phones, on average, 2,617 times a day, according to new research by data company dscout. For heavy users that can rise to more than 5,000 “touches”. The figures are stark: mobile is where you find people’s eyes and hands. It means that brands can’t afford to ignore mobile as a marketing platform; it’s now an essential way to attract new customers and build brand awareness.

Telegraph Media & Tech Connect asked some of the top ad agencies and mobile experts to share their tips for marketing on the powerful, pocket-based platform. Here’s what they said:

1. Know your chatbots

“Chatbots provide a great opportunity for brands to engage in a personal and smart way with their audiences. We’re seeing a big shift in traffic from traditional social media platforms to messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.

“With six out of the top 10 most used apps globally being messenger apps, it seems like a really interesting way for brands to exploit having a direct conversation with their customers. This worked well for KLM Royal Dutch airlines, when it launched a chatbot via Facebook Messenger to deliver flight information, itineraries, boarding passes and even delay information. That’s both useful and relevant.”

2. Think about how people travel across devices

“How you advertise across these devices depends on your product. Marketers need to understand how devices fit into the customer journey. There’s often a very complex path when people discover a new product or service: they jump between devices during the research and consideration process (this can be very varied across industries and product types).

“The size of the purchase makes a massive impact; a car purchase will involve a very different path across devices than buying replacement ink for a printer. It’s so easy to buy ink from Amazon on a handheld mobile device, you almost don’t even think about it. But if you are buying an insurance policy, it’s a lengthier process. Understanding how devices fit into your specific customer journey is important.”

3. Stop obsessing over tech and focus on users

“Businesses focus on what application or technology is coming next, but the people using it don’t care about technology – they care about what technology enables. The best technology is seamless, useful and invisible. Rather than focusing on technology or trend, shift your thinking to the user first: to their behaviours (the way the mobile user consumes content in a more snackable way); location (tailoring content depending on whether the user is at home in front of the TV or in a shop); and their need, which tends to be more immediate compared to a desktop user.”

4. Personalisation breeds quality

“Personalisation is the big trend in mobile. As datasets become richer, artificial intelligence becomes more powerful and shapes expectations, brands will be expected to offer more personalized content and better-curated experiences through mobile. Eventually ‘Recommended for you’ will reflect where you are, what you're doing and what your needs are, with no questions asked.

“In particular, it means that good content will find its way to the right people, creating a strong incentive for marketers to place an emphasis on quality rather than quantity when it comes to content.”

5. Sites need to work for mobile; being responsive isn’t enough

“Consumer behavior is different on mobile, which means that site builds must exploit the functionality mobile offers, with click-to-call buttons or GPS store locators to ensure the needs of consumers are met.

“If you have an app, it’s also really important to think about how it works with your site. 

“Having a single user journey – with actions performed on one touchpoint showing up in another – is critical to ensuring that the customer journey is seamless. The key here is they can continue whatever it is they started on the device or touchpoint, they choose.”

6. Ask yourself: where is the right place to advertise?

“Two important areas of mobile content consumption are the social ‘feed’ (Facebook, Twitter and so on) and editorial ‘read’ environments (for example, an article on the MailOnline mobile site). But consumers in the ‘feed’ are in a very different mindset than those in a ‘read’ environment.

“We asked a group of mobile users to spend 15 seconds interacting with a social feed and 15 seconds reading an editorial story. We found that users in the feed scrolled past about three ads, translating to a dwell time of only about 1.5 seconds per ad. In the editorial environment, users scrolled past an average of one ad, with five seconds dwell time – a much better exposure for a brand.

“But it’s not just about speed. Consumers in a feed are searching for something to engage with, but in read mode, they’ve already opted into an article they want to pay attention to – much better exposure for contextually relevant brand messaging.

“There’s one more thing to remember: grabbing an engaged consumer’s attention isn’t enough; if you don’t serve an ad that’s more creative and interactive than a standard static banner, for example, you can’t blame the audience for failing to interact with it.”

 Source : 

Download the free app now.. Iphone and Android.

What Are the Top Three Things an Angel Investor Looks For?

Today, I am starting a new column here at Small Business Trends. In addition to my regular weekly articles that focus on data-driven discussions of entrepreneurship, I am going to cover my experience as an angel investor in two new monthly columns. Below, we will focus on the top three things that angel investors look for when evaluating a potential investment in a startup company.

What Does an Angel Investor Look For?

A Business Addressing a Real Customer Problem

The first thing I look at when evaluating whether or not to invest in someone else’s startup company is whether the company is responding to serious customer pain point. Selling a new product in a new company is very difficult. But if the startup is addressing a true problem that customers have, it will stand a chance of succeeding.

For example, I recently invested in a company which produces a biosensor that allows growers of fresh produce to identify pathogens, like Listeria, in minutes, not days. Faster identification of pathogens saves both money and lives, both of which are important to growers.

A Company Offering a Dramatically Better Solution than Competitors

The second thing I look for is the company’s solution to the customer’s problem. The odds of the company’s success are much higher when the entrepreneur is offering a dramatically better solution than other alternatives.

For instance, one of my portfolio companies uses artificial intelligence to allow salespeople to develop customized openings for email messages. The company’s product allows sales people to create email messages with three times higher click-through rates than templated messages. And it allows the sales people to create the message in less than half the time it takes to do it manually.

A six-fold increase in the number of “click-throughs” per minute of crafting time is a major improvement to companies undertaking email sales.

A Business-Led by an Experienced Entrepreneur

The third thing I look for is startup experience. As someone who has researched and taught entrepreneurship for 25 years, I can tell you one thing for sure. Much of what it takes to be a successful company founder cannot be learned in school or working for someone else. It is learned by doing.

That is why I look for entrepreneurs who have started at least one previous business with a successful exit. The exit doesn’t have to be huge. But the act of building a company and selling it to someone else for a reasonable return on the entrepreneur’s time and the investors’ capital already puts a founder in rare company.

More importantly, that outcome indicates to me that the person knows several things that inexperienced entrepreneurs might not know. For instance, the founder of one of my portfolio companies, had three previous exits, including a company he sold in 2011. That experience was a big draw for me when I investigated financing the company.

There are many more things I will investigate before I make an investment decision — whether I like and trust the founder; whether the entrepreneur can sell; whether the team is complete; whether the company’s business model makes sense; whether the idea is scalable; whether the market is large enough ; and whether there is sustainable competitive advantage, among other things.

But if I had to list the top three things an angel investor looks for when making investments — it’s these three items identified above.

    Source:http://bit.ly/1SGWhPP

5 marketing quotes of the week

5 Must-Have Tools for Every Startup

Let face it – you are struggling to get your startup on track but failing to manage everything on your own.  Well, you surely don’t have enough budget and investors to assemble a top-tier marketing team, nor do you have enough time to learn the basics of everything and become jack-of-all-trades.

In fact, the age of “if you build it, they will come” strategy is long gone and is never going to provide you the same exposure that it did in the past. However, making use of some tools will get you started in the right track and give you enough space to kick-start your profitable business in no time.

Check out these 5 must-have tools for every startups.

1. Content Marketing Tools

It has been reported that fifty-eight percent of B2B marketers increased their budget for content marketing in 2015. Content marketing tools are considered as the back-bone of most online businesses today as they help in creating, distributing, and measuring effectiveness of their contents. Here are a few content marketing tools that can be useful:

• Google Analytics – Google’s analytics tool makes it easy to customize reports, measure the impact of social media and mobile on website traffic.
• Alexa – Though this tool is currently neglected by many, it provides data and global rankings for commercial websites and their effectiveness on the web.
• SEMRush – This tool helps to track keywords and rankings, both paid and organic.
• Moz – This platform can be used to monitor social media, manage SEO campaigns, and measure different online metrics.

2. Social Media Marketing Tools

Social media is considered the future of online marketing and if you are to make you start up a word-of-mouth, you need to start promoting you or your brand on social media starting on day 1. While there are several social media platforms available, using them one at a time might be time-consuming and boring. There’s no need to worry as social media marketing tools are there to back you up. From creating, curating, managing, scheduling and analyzing, these tools will empower your brand to capitalize the market. Here are a few that might be helpful for you:

• Buffer– From creating a posting schedule to different social media accounts including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and G+ pages, Buffer is a all-in-one social media marketing tool.
• IFTTT– Another all-in-one tool that has recipes for your social media needs, IFTTT lets you post, read and do all sort of things with almost all social media platforms available.
• Social Rank– This tool helps you to identify, organize and manage your followers and potential customers on different social media platforms.

3. Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing is probably the oldest and still one of the best ways that is proven, effective and important for any kind of businesses and startups. No matter what comes in and goes in the world of digital marketing, email marketing is what will exist forever and will always remain crucial to grab success. Here are a few email marketing tools you need to use:

• MailChimp– An ESP tool that has both free and paid plans, you get some pretty useful and powerful features with MailChimp.
• The Hemingway App–  Want to make you copywriting clear and conversational? This is what the tool will help you with; optimize emails.

4. Project & Employee Management Tools

Most startups and small businesses do not care much about using project and employee management tools as they handle a small number of projects and work in small groups. But, if they are to grow big eventually, they need to have the know-how of handling bigger projects and large employee and clients’ base.

Pingboard‘s CEO Bill Boebel says: “We found that most of our customers were still managing their org chart in PowerPoint or Visio — even with several hundred employees. These documents are time-consuming to maintain, difficult to share and often become out-of-date shortly after they are created. And quite frankly, org charts made this way are ugly.”

Here are a few easy-to-use and useful tools:

• Org chart software– This tool helps to create and structure the members, their relationships and relative ranks according to their positions and jobs
• Basecamp– From managing projects, groups and client works, Basecamp is an all-in-one tool to manage everything at one place.
• Trello– Another project management tool to give you perspective over all of your projects, Trello makes collaboration with employees and clients easy.

5. SEO Tools

If you or your company needs to gain quick attention and visibility online, search engines need to be on your top priority. From gaining leads, making sales and making an impact through online visibility, SEO is what every startup need to focus on first. Here are a few SEO tools to track and maintain the online presence:

• Ahrefs– From link profile data to content referral information, Ahrefs does everything you need to track you and your competitors.
• Schema Creator– Addition of schema or micro data can increase search engine visibility and Schema Creator is what does it in minutes to your website or blogs.
• MozBar-It lets you perform a range of SEO tasks from your browser, including keyword ranking data analysis, schema validation, and SEO metric reporting.

  Source: http://bit.ly/1WxKaID

Be curious

More about me go to : www.patrick-osinski.com

Top 6 B2B digital marketing predictions for 2016

As we stepped in 2016, we looked back at the digital marketing landscape, which is evolving at astronomical rate in comparison at any other industry; that’s because the web, itself, is changing faster than ever.

With heaps of data pouring out of new devices, products and social platforms every minute, it is of utmost importance for marketers to understand how this data will impact their content & community marketing strategies in 2016.

Therefore, in this article, we try to boil down what changes are requiredfor tomorrow, what traditional strategies are no longer relevant, and what marketing trends will carry us forward in the coming year, especially for the B2B Businesses.

Here our 6 digital marketing trends to watch out for in 2016:

1. Be Mobile Ready –

This includes responsive websites, landing pages, mobile marketing, and mobile-specific content. With the number of smartphone users worldwide predicted to surpass 2 billion in 2016, this could turn out to be the game changer of marketing trends. In 2015, we saw brands allocating almost half of their digital advertising budgets to mobile, a 50% increase over 2014 spending.

In 2016, we expect location-driven mobile marketing to gain momentum through wearable technology, augmented reality, and the Internet of Things.

2. Be the veritable social butterfly –

It’s true, the importance of social media, social engagement, social networks and social sites can no longer be denied. The world has gone social, and marketing is the veritable social butterfly. In 2015, social media marketing was rooted in personalization. Brands can use platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter, to deliver targeted messages to their customers.

In 2016, in a bid to grab their share of marketplace attention, brands will need to connect with their customers in real time. Live social sites likeSnapchat will dominate the social media marketingdomain as Virtual Reality (VR) technology goes mainstream.

3. Watch out for content marketing as it continues to dominate –

As mobile and social media marketing takes over the more traditional forms of advertising, the demand for platform-centric content is going to get bigger than ever.According to CMI, 51% of B2B firms plan to increase spending on content marketing in 2016.

The biggest advantage of content marketing is that it helps prospective customers move through their Buyer Journey much faster because the brand is providing answers to questions that are being asked before the prospect is reaching out to the sales person.

In 2016, B2B firms will need to adjust their marketing budgets, increasing investment in content marketing– from people to vendors, to tech solutions, which manage, measure, and optimize content.

4. Be ready as search indexing evolves yet again-

Every year, Google comes up with almost 500 changes to their algorithms, so organic search is on a continuous cycle of evolution. Currently, we’re at the precipice of two major shifts in how people will be searching on the web, both of which will have a significant impact for B2B marketers to take notice this year.

The first major change will be in terms of how Google and other search engines index mobile apps. And the second significant change will be in the way that search engines incorporate virtual assistant app data, like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Facebook’s M.

In addition to the traditional keyword-based, social signal-based, and link-based SEO, B2B firms will also need to re-examine how their content is being crawled and indexed for the always on-the-go user leveraging one of these assistant apps.

5. Be ready to embrace video content –

While 2015 was a significant year for online video, according to a report the medium will become an even more essential part of the digital marketing mix in the coming years. With many teenagers preferring YouTube to traditional TV, online video is particularly key to engaging those under 18, or Generation Z.

Where user behavior goes, so must your digital marketing strategies, and B2B marketers who start video early will gain the first-mover advantages with their prospects as well as with the media.

6. Ride the marketing automation wave –

Over the last year, we have realised that a business with any number of customers needs to have a CRM system to manage customer information, send those customers time-based or trigger-based email communications, and recognize when a customer might be ready to buy again. This will not only ensure customer retention, will also facilitate repeat purchase from those loyal customers along with positive word of mouth.

While most of us spent a majority of our time looking for the ‘Next Big Thing,’ B2B firms need to ensure that their strategies are adaptable to the changes happening in the industry, while still positioning their brandfor success by staying ahead of the most important digital trends.

In 2016, B2B firms should focus on creating a refined, almost personalized digital journey that is consumable on all devices, at all touch point, and can be attributed back to the marketing efforts of the brand.

Source : http://bit.ly/1TOTfhT

What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?

According to Google Trends, interest in content marketing has been on the rise since January 2011.

But this should not surprise anyone. We all seem to be awash in content marketing.

What’s surprising is that many content marketers don’t have a documented strategy.

First we need to clear up a little confusion about content marketing strategy.

Content marketing strategy defined

Some people like to make a distinction between the terms content strategy and content marketing strategy. The distinction, they suggest, is best explained with a Russian doll: a smaller strategy is inside a larger one.

In this case, content marketing strategy is the smaller strategy inside the larger one,content strategy.

There is some truth to this.

Content strategy, according to Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach, involves the planning, creation, governance, and maintenance of content, whereas content marketing strategy focuses on the narrow discipline of marketing content.

Fair enough, but I think this distinction is confusing and needless because we can also talk about content marketing strategy as the planning, creation, governance, and maintenance of content … and not lose any sleep.

I’d like to proceed with a clear definition of a content marketing strategy.

So, if strategy means “a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result,” the specific goal or result for content marketing would be “building an audience that builds a business.”

For our purposes, then, let’s define content marketing strategy like this:

A content marketing strategy is a plan for building an audience by publishing, maintaining, and spreading frequent and consistent content that educates, entertains, or inspires to turn strangers into fans and fans into customers.

Which brings us to the next important question.

Do you need a content marketing strategy?

If you are a small business with a few employees or a one-man or one-woman shop, you may be thinking that your content marketing is so simple that you don’t need a plan.

Won’t a list of things that need to happen written on the back of an envelope get the job done?

Yes, that’s one way to begin, especially if you are typically a perfectionist and just need to start your content marketing rather than waiting until you have the perfect plan.

But at some point you will need to develop a more comprehensive plan — and then document it.

• Content marketers with a documented strategy feel more confident in their work.
• Content marketing challenges don’t seem as overwhelming when you have a strategy in place.
• A documented strategy makes it easier to get buy-in from stakeholders.
• It’s easier to chart your success when you have a documented strategy.

Crafting a simple content marketing strategy

Let’s be honest: Unless you are a content marketer for a big company, you don’t need much. Just a plan to help focus your time, money, and energy.

In fact, you can document your content marketing strategy in the time it takes you to answer the following 13 questions:

1. Who are your users?
2. Who are your competitors?
3. What do you bring to the table?
4. What do you hear?
5. What content do you already have?
6. What is the purpose of your content?
7. How often should you publish content?
8. How will you distribute your content?
9. Who is in charge of your content?
10. Who will produce your content?
11. Who is going to maintain the content?
12. Who is responsible for the results?
13. What’s your destination (core strategy)?

Your content marketing strategy begins with this person

The person I’m talking about is your customer.

Your customer is the focal point of your content marketing strategy. You need a substantial, deep, and comprehensive understanding of who she is.

When you do, the strategy will write itself. You won’t have to guess or wonder. But a weak, flimsy, or flat-out wrong understanding of who your customer is will sink your strategy every time.

Check out these five resources to help you understand who your customer is:

• Research checklist: Don’t Create Your Content Strategy Until You Research These 6 Things
• Empathy map: A Complete Guide to Crawling Inside Your Customer’s Head
• Worldview: Tap into This Psychological Driver to Create the Ultimate Message
• Customer experience map: How to Use Customer Experience Maps to Develop a Winning Content Marketing Strategy
• Personas: How Creating an Imaginary Friend Can Make You a Better Writer

Understanding your content

Once you thoroughly understand who your customer is, evaluate the content you already have.

This exercise will not only help you spot the gaps in your content that you need to fill, but it will also help you see that old content can become outdated and cost you top positions in search engines, cause user-experience failure, and more.

So, here are four resources to help you review your current content:

• A Brief Guide to Fixing Your Old, Neglected, and Broken Content
• How to Conduct a Content Audit for Quality and Audience Experience
• How to Plug the Holes in Your Content Funnel that Are Costing You Money
• The Single Best Way to Create Hit Content in Record Time

Measuring your content marketing efforts (conversion)

Ultimately, it comes down to this: how do you know if your content marketing strategy is working?

You’ll know if your content marketing strategy is working if you measure it.

This is why question 13 on the content marketing strategy worksheet (What’s your core strategy?) is so important.

That core strategy should:

• Give you room to stretch, fail, get back up, and grow
• Allow you to adjust as your environment changes around you, without having to make a drastic change
• Align with your values, so you’ll be able to sustain it and endure challenges over time

But how do you measure that? If you are like me and the words “analytics” and “measuring” make you uncomfortable, check out Mike King’s article:

• A Quick-Start Guide to Measuring Your Content Marketing Efforts

That should keep you busy for a while.

In this hour-long session, our Chief Operations Officer, Tony Clark, and Chief Content Officer, Sonia Simone, talk about:

• Why content creators should have a basic understanding of web analytics
• What tools you must use (forget about the rest and focus on these)
• The essential metrics you should measure to get the best performance out of your content
• What to do with the information once you have it

Source : http://bit.ly/1KPMXvO

The 5 Biggest Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a Business

Don’t expect overnight success.

If you are planning on starting a business this year you are undoubtedly full of excitement. While raw excitement, infatuation and determination are all great, you need to make sure that you proceed with caution so as not to encounter the common pitfalls that lead to business failure.

The 5 Biggest Mistakes to Avoid  When Starting a Business in 2016

Avoid making these five beginner mistakes many new entrepreneurs often make—and good luck with your new business venture!

1. Expecting overnight success

Very few businesses are going to go from launch to successful revenue monster overnight. Yes, it happens, but not as often as one might think. The media is always going to talk about a unicorn startup that was conceived on a bar napkin and valued at $100 million two months later, rather than a business that’s been plugging away for the past few years, barely staying above water.

So, go into it knowing that you may potentially need a long time to get your business off the ground. If it happens quickly, that’s a bonus, but it’s better to have realistic expectations and not be disappointed.

2. Sitting back and assuming sales will roll in

It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is—if nobody knows it exists, your business will die. You have to market your business and put it directly in front of your target audience.

My online marketing company receives a lot of inquiries from startups that all have the same question: “What do we do if we don’t have a marketing budget?” 

Actually, there are plenty of things that you can do if you are willing to put in the work. A well-thought-out content marketing strategy and media outreach campaign can be executed with little to no marketing budget.

Simply assuming that your target audience will magically discover your brand is foolish—be prepared to grind hard in the beginning to generate momentum.

3. Failing to perform simple due diligence

Will your business name be infringing on an existing trademark?

Is there a domain name available that will make it easy for potential customers to find your business online?

Is your business name available on all the popular social profiles?

These are just a few examples of basic due diligence that can help you avoid problems down the road. A basic word mark search through the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) should be your first step. If it looks like your business name isn’t going to infringe on a mark, see if the domain name is available and then move on to social media profiles.

There are plenty of coupons floating around online that will allow you to register a domain for a dollar, and creating social media profiles won’t cost you a dime. Just be sure to secure your online footprint first.

4. Not going in with a long-term plan

Running a business “on the fly” without a well-thought-out plan is entrepreneurial suicide. On the fly can lead to mismanagement of funds and resources, which will ultimately sink your ship.

While you can’t predict (or prevent) all obstacles you will encounter, setting up some long-term planning will help you avoid inexcusable mistakes. For example, a long-term marketing budget will help ensure that you have funds to cover the marketing, while still leaving enough money to handle operations and payroll.

Source : http://for.tn/1O4yA1l