5 Steps to Content Marketing Awesome – You Can Do This!

Successful content marketing programs are ongoing communications efforts that empathize with customers and deliver useful experiences. Each content object published is a promise to the community that something relevant, useful and info-raining is in store.

Consistently producing content experiences that inform and inspire creates one of the most powerful customer states: anticipation. Few things are more powerful for attracting a loyal following of customers and advocates than the anticipation to see what’s coming next.

But how can companies with slim budgets create such a content marketing program? While there are entire books on the subject, I think these are the 5 essential components for initiating a growing momentum of content awesome.

1. Identify customer segments – Start with something as simple as best and worst customer scenarios. What are the common characteristics of the customers you want to do business with? What distinguishes the need or reason to buy your products and services for one group of customers compared to another? What are the demographic and behavioral differences amongst groups of customers? Create profiles or personas for each distinct customer group.

2. Map the buying journey – For each customer segment, what are their preferences for information discovery, consumption and taking action? What channels are influential during the buying cycle? Do they use search? Do they use social? Do they respond to paid or social ads? Do they subscribe? What is it like for them to buy from you from awareness to interest to consideration to purchase. Map it out – for each customer segment.

3. What questions do buyers have during the sales cycle? – Every customer has questions that lead them to purchase. What are your customers asking? For each customer segment and each customer journey from awareness to purchase, identify the important questions your buyers need answered into order to gain the confidence and certainty needed to buy from you. Survey your customers, look at your on-site search engine for logged queries to find questions used as search terms, look at social networks for relevant common questions as well.

4. Leverage those Q & A’s for your content plan – The most fundamental and impactful thing a business with little marketing resources can do to create awesome content marketing results is to answer the questions customers have as they go from awareness to purchase. BUT: Don’t just inform your customers, help them feel that your business is the best answer by providing experiences. Articles are great, but videos, interactive tools and engagement with other customers in the same situation is even better.

5. Optimize for search, social, and user experience –  Don’t fall victim to random acts of marketing disease. Organize your content Q and A according to customer segment and how they will discover, consume and be inspired to act on your content. Optimize your content for what buyers are searching for – use the language of the active buyer, who is looking for solutions. Optimize for social discovery and sharing too. Also optimize to info-tain and to create a great user experience. Make it easy to find the right information and for buyers to act with speed and convenience. Solve information problems with your content but also create great experiences when finding, consuming and acting on that content as well.

If you have to, start small focusing on your best customer segment with a blog, video and one or two social networks. Walk before you run and develop some kind of hypothesis for your initial experiments with answers based content. Just understand that these 5 steps are the content marketing muscles you’ll need to exercise on a regular basis to create momentum, anticipation and content awesome that builds community and grows revenue.

http://www.toprankblog.com/2014/04/content-marketing-awesome/

Starting a Business: SAYING IT vs DOING IT

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They say everyone has at least one business idea inside them but how many people actually have the conviction to follow their ambition?
Having an idea is one thing but what a successful business needs is competent execution and a receptive marketplace.
One of the reasons I am passionate about small businesses is their energy and creativity. A small, emerging company has the great advantage of being agile. It can try new ways of doing things, new ideas for delivering a service and new ways to save money. SMEs really are a breeding ground for ideas and creativity.
Once the idea for a business has hatched, it then needs testing and challenging and there is no better way than asking your potential customers what they think. The idea may be good but it will only ever be a viable business if there is strong execution and a commercial market for it.
This process is critical for your long-term business success. You can make a written business plan say anything and convince yourself that your profit will materialize – but if customers don’t like or need your service then it will fail.
What I look for is that innovative, well thought out business from a passionate entrepreneur.
Recently I was introduced to an entrepreneur who has started an online business; Really Useful Stuff. I regularly meet entrepreneurs and they will always take the opportunity to pitch their business to me. However, what I liked about this particular business and the approach was the fact that the founder Kay had thoroughly tested every aspect of the business and brand. The idea had been tested with focus groups and key stakeholders. The great thing about an online business is that you can create a beta version of the site and put it out there to gauge reaction without actually spending any money. Doing this will give you the research to improve your offer.
This brings me to the point of social media. We all know that it’s a great promotional tool, but it’s also a great source of feedback. It costs next to nothing and allows you to really grasp the opinions of your customers.
Feedback can of course be brutal as well as constructive. You may find out some truths about the business and brand that are not easy to hear, but the most important skill to have is being able to take the criticism and adapt the idea to suit the market.
It’s a competitive world, but there is always room for a great idea or adapting an existing idea that has the right mix of planning and testing.
But it’s also not enough just to expect customers to find you online – for a company to be truly successful you have to constantly think of innovative ways to engage with them and build their loyalty. Customer service must be woven into the DNA of any business.
Moving from ‘saying it’ to ‘doing it’ requires a combination of executing a great idea, willingness to adapt, passion and an appetite for challenge.

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130702105655-32175171-starting-a-business-saying-it-vs-doing-it?trk=cha-feed-art-title

Opt-In for Email Marketing Success

                                                                                                    

Running a successful email marketing campaign isn't as simple as erratically sending out emails. An ideal approach is to request that potential customers visiting your blog or website subscribe to receive company emails. This approach is known as Opt-In or permission marketing, and has a number of distinct advantages such as:

• Low-Cost Promotion
• Simple & Easy Process
• Quantifiable Results
• Direct Marketing
• Rapid Communication

Opt-In marketing is a great advantage because only interested customers fill out an email form on your website, meaning your message goes out to individuals who truly qualify as potential customers for the company. Their email subscription through the Opt-In Form is an expression of their interest in what you have to offer-- unless the Opt-In Form is clearly created with the intention of grabbing their attention.

Website visitors do not always have an inherent interest in signing up for the company’s email promotions. More often than not, they begin with building interest in the company’s products, services, or website content, and signing up for Opt-In is an extension of that interest. Therefore, an Opt-In Form should be noticeable and innovative. When constructing your Opt-In form, try to:

• Use catchy headlines
• Format content to grab attention through subtitles and bullets
• Add sharing options for social media networks
• Follow attractive font and color themes
• Insert relevant images
• Make Enticing Sidebars

http://www.volacci.com/marketing-news/opt-email-marketing-success

7 Habits of Highly Successful People on Social Media

Last year I heard the unfortunate news that Stephenen Covey had died.  A father of nine and a grandfather of fifty-two Steven has a large family to carry on his legacy.

The powerful strategies Stephen taught, like the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People in this post, continue to live on strong as well.

When I was in school I read Stephen’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and his strategies have stuck with me ever since.In this post I take Stephen’s 7 Habits and show specifically how these traits are present in highly successful people on social media.

Habit 1: Be Proactive

You can’t just put up profiles and expect people to start flocking to you in droves.  You need to be proactive.

Here are a few different ideas for being proactive on social media so that before long the results will start rolling in.

• Post fresh content daily
• Schedule content ahead of time
• Actively build new connections
• Focus on continuous positive improvement.
• Take initiative and realize that your decisions and actions are the primary determining factor for effectiveness in social media.

Find the times that works best for you and take action to improve your social media results. Be responsibility for your choices and the consequences that follow.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ~Steve Jobs

Make sure to be clear and specific about the social media goals you have. How many followers and likes do you want to achieve?  Set a date  Of course quantity of followers is a determining factor in success but so if the quality of the connections you are able to create.

Envision the ideal characteristics of successful social media brands for your business.

To achieve these will you need to outsource?  Most goals are more easily achieved when others help so if and when you get others involved make sure to share the end you have in mind with them as well.

Create a mission statement for your social media goals and review it often.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Prioritize, plan, and execute your week’s tasks based on importance rather than urgency.

Having plenty of Twitter followers is a great asset for your brand and can help you achieve success, but any business will starve without traffic, leads and sales.

The first thing you should do is create a webpage where you can capture leads and link to it within your Twitter bio. Define the goals that are essential for you to succeed, and use social media to help you achieve the goals that matter most.

Habit 4: Think Win-Win

Genuinely strive to help other people succeed on social media and more often than not this win-win attitude will reciprocate and come back to help you.

When you follow or like someone and they follow or like you back, this is win-win.

When you share someone else’s content and they do the same for you, this is win-win.

I’m sure you get the point. 

A “win” for everyone involved is a much better long-term solution than if only one person in the situation had gotten their way.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

Use empathetic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which compels them to reciprocate the listening and take an open mind to being influenced by you.

Don’t just be a broadcaster, be a communicator. On Twitter use search to find conversations that matter to you, and get in on them.  Being a thought leader does not mean putting other people down, but exists in engaging with a conversation and shedding your own light on the topic at hand.

Asking questions are a great way to get feedback and spark discussion, and they work well on Facebook and Twitter.

Position yourself as an expert by starting an “Ask me anything” thread on Facebook where you are around for a set amount of time to answer any questions about the topic at hand.

Habit 6: Synergize

Combine the strengths of people through positive teamwork.

On Twitter you can engage with others on your team to create a #Hashtag trend.

Go to tweet ups and meet other people in real life.  Although social media is an awesome form of communication it is no substitute for real face-to-face interaction.

When working with others online in person conversations are not always possible since people are often half a world a way.  Still you can spark synergy with your close connections through regular communication. Phone calls are great and Skype video chats are even better.

When you work with others you can create ideas and achieve goals that exceed what either of you could have come up with alone.

Habit 7: Sharpen the (Social Media) Saw

Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle.

For social media this means that you will need to continually renew your content and connection building efforts to get continually new and improving results.

This means investing into improving your social media knowledge today so that you can benefit from this knowledge into the future.

http://smartonlinesuccess.com/7-habits-of-highly-successful-people-on-social-media/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SmartOnlineSuccess+%28Smart+Online+Success%29