MarketingSherpa Blog

Picture your ideal customer deciding where to spend his or her time and energy. They want something good for even a small time investment. Your headline, emphasizing value, gets their attention. They invest a click and continue reading.

That is the ideal scenario. But once your customer has clicked through to your full content, that’s when the real battle begins. How do you make it so impactful that not only do they read the whole thing, but they actually stay on your page and continue through the funnel?

Tip #1. Never bury the lead

We all know abstractly that people are busy, with a lot of other content competing for their attention. But when it comes time for pen to hit paper (or fingers to tap keys), many marketers don’t know where to begin.

There’s no need to be mysterious — tell them why they’re here and why they should stay. For example:

Why you’re here: You’re trying to find some marketing content motivation and/or tips.

Why you should stay: I have four additional tips coming (and boy are they good!), honed from years of writing over 2,000 pieces of (mostly) successful content for MarketingSherpa.

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So, you have low blog engagement or a handful of loyal followers that you were expecting to blossom into a world-wide audience — but it’s just not happening.

I’m not an expert content writer or blog wiz. However, working at MarketingSherpa has given me insights that I would not have otherwise about what can make certain pieces of content successful while others flop.

Here are three common mistakes to keep in mind as you structure your individual blog posts and also determine your blogging strategy:

1. It’s all about you

The biggest mistake that content creators can make is centering their blogs on themselves.

They open with a relevant, beautiful challenge that the audience is facing, and then they ruin a perfectly good opening by presenting their product as the flawless solution — or their service as an end-all-be-all to those interested in a DIY experience. Content consumers aren’t looking for a reason to buy from you. They are looking for a resource to solve problems.

Be real, be relevant and be genuine. Make sure that your blog humanizes you, and explain how your audience  can learn from, and apply, your mistakes to their own campaigns.

Lastly, edit — grammatically and for content. Even the world of food bloggers (which I frequent) knows that the audience really only cares about how much salt is too much salt and why cream of tartar really makes a difference in the cookie recipe rather than just adding more baking soda. The annoyingly long charming story about your grandmother’s old pickup truck isn’t a necessary preamble for what I’m really interested in below.

Remember, every sentence should justify the reason as to why your post is solving the problem that your audience faces. It’s about them.

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Having in-house bloggers on your marketing team can keep your content flowing, but there are limits to the audience they can reach.

One way to solve this challenge, according to Carolyn Kmet, Chief Marketing Officer, All Inclusive Marketing, is strategically recruiting third-party bloggers outside of your team to help deliver the right mix of credibility and content that can reach new audiences.

At this year’s Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) in Chicago, MarketingSherpa hosted the event’s official Media Center. Our team of reporters interviewed marketers from across a variety of business verticals to learn insights on what works in ecommerce marketing.

As Carolyn explained to Allison Banko, Reporter, MECLABS, third-party bloggers can deliver additional exposure opportunities for your brand.

“Bloggers can position brands beyond traditional reach,” Carolyn explained.

According to the MarketingSherpa E-commerce Benchmark Study, less than 40% of all companies surveyed utilize affiliate marketing as a traffic driver to an ecommerce site. Using bloggers as affiliates can help with driving traffic from audiences outside of your reach.

The trick is, as Carolyn explained, is to build relationships with bloggers and offer them content opportunities that make exposing your brand to their audience worthwhile.

To do that, she often recruits third-party bloggers outside of her team as affiliates and helps them access industry thought leaders for interviews that would be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain otherwise.

The affiliates create content from those interviews to share with their respective audiences.

“There’s a lot of transparency, Carolyn said. “It gives them fresh content for their audiences.”

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Two previous MarketingSherpa Blog posts, “Content Marketing: Interviewing internal resources,” and “Content Marketing: Making use of internal resources,” covered meeting the challenge of infusing the knowledge of your internal experts into your content marketing strategy.

Marketers, particularly in the B2B sphere, are regularly told that there is a wealth of great insight and knowledge to be mined for content within the enterprise walls. The challenge is turning that knowledge into content that can be shared.

The first post in this series looked at the popular tactic of interviewing those internal experts and turning the interview material into blog posts, e-books, podcasts and more. The second post in the series offered lists of tips and ideas from three content marketing sources.

Today’s post provides three interesting approaches to take in meeting this content marketing goal:

• Thinking like a publisher and developing an editorial process
• Gaining buy-in at the highest levels to improve the process
• Implementing an interesting tactic dubbed the “blog closet” can provide a wealth of internal expertise for sharing

Kari Rippetoe, Content Marketing Manager, Marketing Mojo, explained how her team takes a publishing approach to content marketing with an editorial process:

We rely heavily on internal resources to create our content!

I’m the content marketing manager for a digital marketing agency, and we create a variety of content including blog posts, webinars, infographics and guides.

Our staff has expertise in a lot of different areas of digital marketing, and we want to showcase that expertise through our content. In fact, content creation is a big part of our culture here. So, almost the entire staff contributes regular blog posts and periodically present webinars.

When I first joined the company, there was an “editorial” calendar of sorts in place for the blog. In fact, the only real purpose it served was to assign blog post deadlines to each writer. This was done without any real interaction with or input from the writers. In addition, writers would run up against their deadlines with no idea about what they were going to write – resulting in last-minute scrambling to get something written.

So, I implemented the following:

• Regular editorial meetings with the writers to determine topics in advance, so they have more time to think about what they want to write.
• True editorial calendar tracking not only due dates, but topics, keywords and special holidays/events to keep in mind.
• Editorial review process to ensure quality of content.

We’ve seen dramatic improvements in the efficiency of content creation on our blog because of these process changes. There is a lot less stress on the writer and me, as the editor of the blog, to get the content written, reviewed, published and distributed.

Brandon Gerson, President of Business Development, Mak & Ger, provided an agency perspective on the importance of making internal content a process that begins from the top down:

This is a challenge that our agency faces on a regular basis while trying to create content for our clients.

Interviews work well, but it is best when they can create their own content.

The challenge is that we are trying to do our job, which requires their help, but they have their own job to do, and thus, by working with us, they are not getting their work done.

Here is the best way we have been able to remedy this …

Take a top-down approach and work with the CMO to make an organizational commitment to generating content.

This helps each department allocate a certain amount of time and employees towards generating content. Ideally, this can be a team effort that can occur on a Friday, when productivity levels are low anyway. A few members of a department can get together and share ideas and turn it into bullet points. We then have a dedicated person email these bullet points to our agency partner, who then works to turn their bullet points into blog posts.

We position this as not only a way to help us create content for their marketing, but also as a camaraderie, brainstorming, team building time where new ideas can formulate.

It can be a hard sell initially, but when it works well, it adds a lot of value to all involved.

We have been able to get one client to commit to this approach with their sales team and it has produced some great content that has helped all of their closing rates. In addition to blog posts, we have been able to create white papers, numbered lists, e-books and other assets that they now use to nurture their prospects further down the funnel and it has worked well for the entire organization.

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After leaving the world of public relations, I dove head-first into the world of marketing. It didn’t take long for me to realize my skill set as a public relations professional made me a different breed of marketer.

For example, while marketing concentrates on product placement, public relations focuses on building relationships.

Using basic public relations tactics can strengthen your marketing campaigns by reinforcing brand identity, expanding your customer base and creating an integrated customer experience.

To do this, you must master social media and understand how to use it effectively.

For the late adopters, you no longer can afford to ignore social media.

Consider that an Infosys study recently found consumers are 38% more likely to interact with retailers’ Facebook pages than their websites. Smart marketers are creating brand consistency by putting as much thought into their social media campaigns as they do on their websites.

But before you start tweeting and posting updates, keep in mind that all social media was not created equal. Knowing how to use the different platforms is going to give you an edge over your competitors and strengthen your brand identity.

Facebook is a place for conversations

Facebook encourages interaction between users. Communication consists of comments, likes and shares. The feedback that you get on this platform creates an interactive conversation with your audience.

When you post content that isn’t generating feedback, you’re not creating conversations. Instead, you’re creating noise and this will make the content you post irrelevant in the eyes of your audience.

If your Facebook page has low interaction, take another look at the value of the content you’re posting and who your audience is. Also, keep demographics in mind to help keep content relevant.

Let’s not forget that in order to have a conversation, you need to respond to the feedback of your audience. The easiest way of doing this is by replying to their comments.

Twitter allows you to network

Because Twitter feeds are constantly updated with a mosaic of content ranging from information to entertainment, there’s something for everyone. Tweets are similar to a stream of consciousness.

Start by searching for content that interests you. The search results will include people who use those keywords in their handles and hashtags. Follow, favorite and retweet to start building an audience.

Twitter is a great tool for connecting with people and organizations in an open environment. If you want your tweets to be found by your audience, use strategic hashtags.

If enough people interact with a hashtag, it starts trending and gets displayed on the main Twitter page. Businesses also have the option to pay for promoted tweets.

Playing in Austin? Tweet us using #BandVan and we’ll come give you a ride. pic.twitter.com/zSv4i4Z0s5

— Taco Bell (@TacoBell) March 12, 2014

The key to Twitter is personal interaction. It humanizes brands. An excellent example of this is @TacoBell. The sassy account has 1.1 million followers and constantly interacts with fans.

Blogs put you in control

The really fantastic aspect about blogs is that you don’t have to pitch your story to the media. By eliminating the middle man, you decide what gets published, when and how.

Because the featured content is your own, you’re in control. But with that control, comes a whole new set of challenges and demands to successfully build an audience of advocates.

A strategic blog should include content that informs, entertains and reinforces your value proposition.

Blogging includes the ability to engage in storytelling. While websites sell products, your blog sells your brand. By brand, I mean the “perception” that your customers have of you.

You can do this by featuring content that personalizes experiences with your product or company. For example, Starbucks uses its blog to publish content ranging from event recaps to letters from CEO Howard Schultz.

Stay relevant by planning out your blog posts and publishing consistently. A blog that is not updated consistently is wasted potential. Followers want to regularly consume information and if you don’t provide it, another blog will.

Putting it all together

When Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo rescued a panther cub, it did a fantastic job letting everyone know about it.

The picture the team at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo featured on their Facebook page received 1,313 likes and 137 shares, but they didn’t stop there. They also tweeted a video and posted mini press releases on their website.

ADORABLE ALERT: We are sharing new video of the #rescued #Florida #panther #kitten at the Zoo’s veterinary… http://t.co/uIQkDYtyCH

— Tampa’sLowryParkZoo (@LowryParkZoo) February 24, 2014

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Every day I wake up, come into work, and stare at a box.

So do you.

Oh, it’s a magical box. I can write words in it that will instantly appear the world over.

But sometimes, we have to peer outside of this box, and think about content marketing as more than just digital words, pictures and videos.

Content marketing can also be a grilled cheese sandwich

Some of us (me for sure, how about you?) are so focused on digital channels for content marketing – to improve SEO, build email lists, gain more fans and followers – that we overlook an entire universe outside of this digital box.

For example, can content marketing be:

A grilled cheese sandwich?

In this MarketingSherpa case study, Bonvoy Adventure Travel rented the Gorilla Cheese NYC  food truck,  and let the good folks in Midtown Manhattan name their own price for lunch.

This is a great example of content marketing because it demonstrated Bonvoy’s value proposition while offering something of value to the audience: the triple cream brie with prosciutto di parma.

At the end of the gooey day, Bonvoy served up 34,000 impressions on Twitter.

Print?

As digital marketers and publishers, sometimes we overlook the value of good old-fashioned print. It obviously meets the two conditions of content marketing above (demonstrate value prop while providing value).

It is also more credible than digital, and, like the above example, it can help your content marketing cut through the clutter. Zig where others zag.

For example, there are 861 million results in a search for “IT Solutions,” but I guarantee there are way fewer magazine articles that cover that topic.

Don’t take my word for it. The “Godfather of Content Marketing” himself, Joe Pulizzi, wrote about why you should consider print for your content marketing strategy.

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One of the perks of growing up in Northeast Florida was being able to watch space shuttle launches from my backyard. I never became an astronaut, but having NASA as one of your neighbors has an impact on you.

For example, I still keep up with NASA’s continued efforts to explore space, which is currently centered on a strategy of looking to planets in the Goldilocks zone orbiting around stars as big as our sun.

As a writer and editor, I often think about where the Goldilocks zone exists on our blogs.

Sure, there are a lot of factors to consider, but what I’ve found is that discovering the ideal zone where the conditions of voice and benefit exist in just the right amounts so an audience can flourish is truly not easy to find.

But, there are a few elements to consider that can point you in the right direction.

Start with the bare bones of blogging

If you break a blog post down, you’ll usually find it consists of two basic elements:

• Identity – The human element of your content’s voice
• Benefit – What the audience gains out of your content

When writing blog posts, hopefully your goal is ideally to try and find the balance between those two elements while keeping the interests of your audience at the forefront. 

Here are a few Venn diagrams to help put this into perspective. Now, let’s take a look at some of the imbalances and why they matter.

The messenger in blogging is a part of the message

A blog that is light on identity lacks the humanistic touch that makes your voice unique.

I often see this as a common problem for newer blogs still developing their voice in the market, but it can quickly become a problem even for established blogs.

To put a little context around this, blogs traditionally started as a platform for democratic content. It was a way for thought leaders to bypass the gatekeeping of traditional media and cut through the noise by taking their message straight to the people.

This idea still holds true today to a large degree even as blogging continues to evolve, but the trick to remember is the messenger remains a vital part of the message.

Consequently, if your blog voice is an erratic messenger with no unique identity, even the most beneficial content on the planet will not save you from eventually being abandoned by an audience.

Before you publish another post, take some time with your team to review the basics around your brand’s persona and how that persona translates into delivering a consistent voice in your blog content.

Just make sure the messenger is not the entire message  

In the case of overdeveloped identity, the majority of attention is focused on the brand or the author and not on the audience or how they benefit from your content.

The upside of an overdeveloped identity is that it’s is easy to spot – I call it “look at me” blogging.

Now, don’t get me wrong; you want to include a certain amount of personable information in your content. After all, that human element of blogging is what made blogging so dynamic to begin with.

But, the challenge rests in knowing when to deliver enough voice identity in your blog posts to be personable and transition from that to delivering benefit to your audience.

“Look at me” blogging is seductive because it’s easier to do than producing value for an audience, but the consequences for your blog are toxic.

The best way to avoid this is by holding your blogging to an editorial standard where the promise of benefit to your audience is always the focus.

If your team develops the habit of fleshing out value first by asking, “What will the audience get out of this?” before a single word is put on paper, you’ll discover that easily understood value is also easily delivered value.

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Often, the best ideas for our content come from the MarketingSherpa audience,  such as  this note I received from Steve, “There was a very good graphic in a recent post from Rand Fishkin. I think it would be interesting for you to add some ‘quantitative metrics’ to this.”

Let’s take a look at that graphic …

I reached out to Rand, who is the CEO of Moz, to get a little background on the chart, which looked almost like a yin and yang of modern marketing to me.

“The items in red aren’t necessarily all terrible things you shouldn’t do,” Rand said.

“Interruption marketing can be well done, but as the graphic notes, there’s no flywheel effect generating momentum, and these channels/tactics, on average, lead to higher costs of customer acquisition. In some markets and for some companies, that may be a fine tradeoff, but it should always be a conscious one,” he explained.

Today on the MarketingSherpa blog, we’re providing a mixture of quantitative metrics, case studies, how-to articles and other resources to help you improve your own inbound marketing efforts by learning more about how your peers are effectively using these tactics …

SEO & PPC

Local search has had the biggest positive impact on marketing objectives, with 54% of marketers indicating so, according to the MarketingSherpa SEO Marketing Benchmark Survey.

How to Switch to SEO, PPC Strategies to Increase Leads: 10 Steps to Triple-Digit Lifts

Local SEO: How geotargeting keywords brought 333% more revenue

PPC Marketing: Two accidents reduce cost-per-lead 20%

Opt-in Email Lists

Only 39% of marketers maintain an opt-in only subscriber list.

Email Deliverability: How a marketing vendor with 99 percent delivery rates treats single opt-in lists vs. double opt-in lists

Read more…

When I joined the MECLABS team in January, I was fully aware I would soon become best friends with WordPress. I truly believe WordPress is one of the most efficient ways to put out great content that not only looks polished, but is very simple to use.

Clarity is extremely important when it comes to content, so producing blog posts a reader can understand relies heavily on how it is displayed.

A blog post with photos in random places, sections without a subhead and discussing a process without the use of photos to accompany text are just a few of the millions of ways a reader can get lost in your message.

However, these are all elements you can control.

Here are five tips and tricks I’ve learned to improve a WordPress blog …

Tip #1: Use invisible tables for side-by-side comparisons

Sometimes, if you have just one image in a blog post, you can get away with setting it on the left, right or even in the center of text. This works great especially if your image can stand alone. However, if you have two images (a before and after example, etc.), it is definitely worth taking the extra time to craft an invisible table and place your photos into the code.

Here is an example from the MarketingSherpa blog post in which I placed two examples of an email side by side for easier comparison.

As you can see, placing the two images next to each other works well in this case. If they were placed one on top of the other, the reader would lose the before and after effect of the email. I would also recommend adding a caption to the photo, if the meaning without it is not very clear.

Coding an invisible table in HTML is an easy process that takes just a few tweaks. You want to start by uploading your images into the WordPress Media Library. Then, within the actual post, switch from the visual editor to the HTML editor. Next, paste the below code where you want your table to be:

<table style=”border: none;” cellspacing=”10″>
<tbody>
<tr style=”border: none;”>
<td style=”border: none; vertical-align: middle;”><a href=”FILE URL 1“><img class=” wp-image-11378 ” title=”IMAGE TITLE 1” src=”FILE URL” alt=”” width=”xxx” height=”xxx” /></a>CAPTION</td>
<td style=”border: none; vertical-align: middle;”><a href=”FILE URL 2“><img class=” wp-image-11379 ” title=”IMAGE  TITLE 2” src=”FILE URL 2” alt=”” width=”xxx” height=”xxx” /></a>CAPTION</td>
<td style=”border: none; vertical-align: middle;”></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Now for the important part. Go back to the Media Library, select “edit” for the image you uploaded, and copy the File URL provided. Paste that URL into your first table box, and return to the upload gallery to grab the image title.

Be mindful if what you’re putting into the table does not match the upload information, it will not work.

Once you put the image title in, you will once again need to put in the same image URL. Finally, include the dimensions of the image, indicated by “xxx” in the example above. There is no need to change “wp-image” number.

Repeat this process for other photos you want to put into the table. It is also easy to make a third or fourth photo in the table: simply copy one of the table boxes, which is the code in between “<td style… and </td>,” and paste it into the code.

Tip #2: Use padding around images to separate from text

When using smaller images, a design that works well is to nestle the photo to the right or left of text. For example, this blog post used a small image placed to the left of the text.

Sometimes, if you put in an image, it may be too close to the text, or might cause strange separation of the text. For example, you might have a lost bullet point separated from the list, or maybe a few words orphaned from the rest of the sentence it belongs to tucked away under an image. To fix this problem, play with the vertical and horizontal space of the image to place the text into a desirable format.

In this MarketingExperiments blog entry, the original design plan was to have images larger in size, centered and acting as separators between paragraphs.

However, with multiple images, it is easier on the eyes and for the reader to have them neatly in the margins, sized smaller, but with the ability to be viewed larger once clicked.

Plus, for a post containing steps, having smaller images adds a level of clarity as the reader can fully see the steps in the subheader and the steps of testing, all without having to scroll all over the page.

For the first image, it was necessary to add a horizontal space to the right of the photo so the bullet points would not overlap over the image. This was done after the photo was uploaded and set into the appropriate spot to the left of the bullet points.

Vertical spacing is also a great and easy way to make sure there is enough space above and below the image.

One important tip to note is moderation is key – you don’t want to have an image on the left and an image on the right back to back in the body of your content. Try keeping a series of images or photos all on the same side of the page if they are in close proximity of each other.

Then, by selecting the image in the visual editor and selecting Advanced Settings, you can add any amount of space into the options. Here is what I used:

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We asked for your nominations, tallied up the results, and now we want to know who has earned your vote … for the marketing industry blogs that you find most helpful.

What blogs have made you better at your job? Helped you garner impressive results for your company or clients? Reward those blogs by using the poll feature to vote for your favorites in the poll below, a list of the most-nominated blogs chosen by you, the MarketingSherpa audience.

It’s an interesting list. Some very established industry blogs; some I had personally never heard of before. You can vote in the poll below (in just one category, or in all the categories) and then scroll below the poll for links to these blogs if you’d like to learn more.

The top vote getters will receive the MarketingSherpa Reader’s Choice Award in their category, as well as be invited for a very rare opportunity – to write a guest post on the MarketingSherpa Blog.

UPDATE: Voting has now ended. We’re now tallying up the votes, so be sure to check back later for the winners.

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