Creative Content Marketing

MarketingSherpa just rocks. They put out great reports and summaries in addition to their weekly wisdom. And speaking of wisdom, reading through their recent “Marketing Wisdom for 2010” report prompted quite a few insights for this freelance copywriter. This week, we’ll delve into one per day (since there were a total of five, I figure it was meant to be!)

Today, I gush over what Dean Rieck of Direct Creative had to say. Any comment that starts with "Content is king" is going to speak straight to a freelance copywriter's heart. But he gives proof, talking about a client that created more than 7,000 pages of blog posts and pages. And got results. As he says, it boosted the website in search engine rankings and it created a large pool of keywords.

Although I'm "just" a copywriter, I keep up with all things marketing...or at least as many as I can. How to increase your search engine rankings via organic SEO is one of those things. It's not rocket science, but it does take work. As this guy says, in this case, thousands of pages of work. But that's not hard! 

Over and over I am approached by company's that want to improve their SEO and over and over I tell them to consider blogging...and they do not listen. It's like me saying I want to lose weight while chowing down on chocolate chip cookies. I have a choice to make. So do they. But blogging takes commitment and they must want a magic bullet instead (which is, I think, why so many companies turn to pay per click instead).
If you want to improve your search engine rankings, add blogging to your marketing mix. Blogging is not hard, nor is it time-consuming! In addition to blogging, your company has ample opportunities to be creating content that can go on your website: press releases, tip sheets, whitepapers, how to guides, FAQs...

Content is king, especially in the world of search. The way to win search is to have great, keyword rich, relevant content. It's that simple. Hire the best copywriter you can find, and let her get to work creating your content so you can get the rankings you want.

It's not rocket science, but great content might take your SEO to the moon.

A few months ago, I roughed out the text because I was getting quite a few questions about small business blogging from fellow small business owners. This is by no means a definitive guide, but someone suggested this morning that I post it to my own blog, so here it is:

Why do you want to start small business blogging?

First, be clear on your goals. I hope you are small business blogging for three reasons:

1. Search engine optimization
2. Thought leadership
3. Relating to customers

What will your small business blog be about?

Second, decide what your focus will be. What the heck are you going to blog about? What can you talk about that other people might not be? What topic gets you excited and would be easy for you to write about? For example, my friend with an Indian restaurant wants to blog. Possible “themes” for her blog are: vegetarianism, Indian culture, running a small family-owned business, having an ethnic restaurant in a redneck town, cooking, Indian food, recipes, being a single mom running a restaurant, food allergies, etc.

Another example is my local florist. I’m trying to get her to start small business blogging because she’s very online marketing savvy when it comes to pay-per-click, but less so for SEO. I’m also trying to get her to blog because she’s so knowledgeable and well-respected and she could be even more so. I’d love to see her write a blog as the florist expert, offering advice like when to start choosing the flowers for your wedding, seasonal suggestions for wedding flowers, plants as corporate gifts, catering advice, maybe she talks about her favorite catering venues. She could talk about the price of flowers as impacted by gas prices, how to keep flowers fresh, etc. I see it as “advice” oriented.

Or consider my small business blog: Although I’m primarily a Seattle copywriter, my real passion is marketing, and my beliefs about being customer-centric. (Stated at the top of my blog: helping people talk to customers not at them.) My goal with my small business blogging is to get people thinking a little differently about marketing, while still using keywords that are helping my blog get found for copywriting. In the future, I’ll be doing more consulting and speaking, so my keywords will shift, but the blog’s theme will stay the same. So on the other hand, my goal is also to get people thinking about me in a certain way.

Your small business blog title

Third: Decide on the title of your blog. Make sure it reflects your blog’s focus, but also your keywords if you’re small business blogging for SEO. For example, when I started a blog for an email marketing agency, I chose “Email Marketing ROI” for the title, so the URL included those words. (It now has a different name.) And that was the theme of the blog: improving email marketing ROI by providing useful information.

Set a small business blogging schedule

Fourth, set a schedule for small business blogging and adhere to it. Blog at least two times a week, but if you want search engine results, do it more often. I have a Task in Outlook that pops up a reminder for me every Tuesday and Thursday. In that task list is a running list of topic ideas (more on that later). If you have produced an email newsletter or another publication, you know you have a production calendar to stick with. Think of your blog the same way.

Round up the bloggers

Fifth, consider having more than one person at your company blog. It doesn’t have to be the CEO or the marketer writing the blog. In fact, the best blog content might come from someone who works with customers every day, or on the shop floor. The first person would have insight into customer concerns, and the other into production. Both would produce great blog content that an executive or marketer might not think of.

Be clear on your keywords

Sixth: If you’re blogging for SEO purposes, determine your keywords. Use a free keyword research tool like SEO Book (http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/) or Google Adwords (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal), or maybe you already know your keywords you want to win? Then look at how competitive the search landscape is for the terms you want to use. Remember, more specific keywords won’t be used by as many people, but they’ll get you found by the smaller group of people who are a more targeted audience for you. The less often you plan on blogging, the fewer keywords you’ll be able to use enough to compete. But come with 4 or so keyword phrases. Long-tail keyword searches seem to do well in blogs. Keep this list in mind every time you blog and use your keywords, in a post title and in the post itself. I usually write a blog post, then go back and sprinkle in a keyword or tool. And I admit it, I don’t focus on the SEO part enough sometimes because I get caught up in the topic. J

Do you want editorial control?

Seventh, think about editorial control: If more than one person will be small business blogging, do you want administrative control so content is reviewed before it goes live? Will someone be proofreading blog content before it gets posted?

Developing your voice

Eight: When you first start, you don’t necessarily have to post those initial blogs. Just write them in a Word document first, or even on paper. You’ll want to write a few to get your voice, a sense of how you want to come across. But do be yourself, do be natural and a real person.

Coming up with topics

Now the “hard” part (not really): small business blogging!! The biggest hurdle for people seems to be topics. What will we blog about? If after reading this you still don’t know what you’ll blog about, let me know…

Keep a running list of topic ideas. Then when it’s time to blog, use one of the ideas (then make sure you delete it from your list!). If you have a recurring task in Outlook, like I do, you keep your list there. Then when Outlook pings you, you’ve got your idea list right in front of you. But once you start blogging, you’ll start seeing topics all around you. I use one of the topics on my list maybe every 3^rd or 4^th time because something will have happened that prompts a blog post in the mean time.

Look for ideas in the newspaper, trade magazines, in other blog posts. I even get ideas from the radio and from conversations.

I haven’t done this yet, but try and use photos sometimes. Not cheesy ones though, don’t include photos just for the sake of photos. Or clip art, ugh! But real photos of real people, like your staff or your customers. Videos too…

I saw a blog that copied and pasted in press releases verbatim. I wouldn’t recommend this because search engines hate duplicated content. It’s better to blog on the press release and link to it. And if your company creates press releases and posts them online (and you should!), write a summary of the press release in your blog and link to it.

Link to other sources. If you read a blog that makes a good point, write your own blog post with your take on it, and link to the original blog. Ditto for online news articles, video clips, etc. You can link to anything. Consider subscribing to a couple of email newsletters or other blogs just to get your own thought processes going. Your reactions to what you read are also valid blog content.

Link to studies and reports that are released. Some bloggers are the filter for their readers, helping their readers find important information without having to look for it.

Talk about what’s going on with your business: Are you going to be at a tradeshow? Will there be live music at your tavern? Are you moving?

Be creative in thinking about what content will be interesting. Like my business is a copywriting agency, but I don’t tell people how to be copywriters. I try to help people be better marketers. If you owned a coffee shop, you wouldn’t necessarily blog on your coffee shop, that would get boring fast, but you could blog on the coffee industry perhaps, because you could still use your keywords.

Include customer testimonials with an introduction, maybe “We received a great email from Susan Smith about her new vacuum, and just have to share it with you…”

Never forget that small business blogging is about being real. You could even include a recipe! Say you had a staff potluck and Joe’s potato salad was a huge hit. Talk about the party and include Joe’s recipe.

Please don’t post just to post. I have a friend that does that because his only concern is SEO, and that means he’s putting a lot of useless stuff out on the Internet. L I want subscribers to my blog, and if I did that, just posted blogs based on keywords, subscribers wouldn’t stay very long because I wouldn’t be providing useful information!

That’s my start on blogging basics. Please, please let me know if it was helpful or not by commenting!!

Friday morning I was in Denver conducting a copywriting workshop with the copywriters, creative directors, Web site managers and content editors for a national company. I was brought in by the director of marketing to address the messaging in their email marketing specifically, but after reviewing their email examples, it seemed a broader approach was needed.

So the workshop consisted of reviewing what it means to talk to your customer, not at them, to write customer-centric copy that’s about the customer, not about you. The original plan was to critique one email promotion as a group, then have everyone rewrite four more on their own and compare notes. We ran short on time, so instead I put up a few of their emails on the screen and ripped them apart, nicely. I didn’t say anything that surprised or offended.

It seems the copywriters and creative’s hands are tied. They’re up against corporate, up against legal, up against people who don’t understand marketing or copywriting or—most importantly—email marketing. These poor folks end up going the safe route, using clichés like “don’t miss” and vague words like “great pricing” or “exceptional pricing.” They end up with meaningless email subject lines. They have to work around the images they’re assigned rather choose an image that fits the message.

Yuck.

What breaks my heart is that this company is perfectly positioned for messaging that’s emotional and empathetic. Their copywriters and creatives could kick ass if allowed to craft email marketing copy appropriate to the audience, and not to corporate’s preferences and tastes. Lesson here? Let your marketing team do their job! Trust them to know their stuff. They don’t question how the CFO handles the financials or how the CEO handles the board of directors. Why are they hindered?

But this company isn’t stuck, they see where they can improve. In the future, they’ll be segmenting their email marketing into targeted demographics, and they’ll be able to do more specific and therefore effective messaging, talking directly to the pain points and concerns of a particular market. I got the sense that their copywriters are chomping at the bit for that day to come!! Then all we discussed that day will come to fruition and their email marketing will work that much harder for them.

Despite their challenges and frustrations, running that workshop was a blast. I’m lucky. I love what I do, I love talking about copywriting and messaging, and I love being with people hungry to learn more and improve. And they all loved what I had to say. It sparked much-needed dialog among them, it got them inspired to strive harder for more compelling copy and to stand up to the powers that be that want to water down their copy. What more could this Seattle copywriter ask for?

This week someone told me no one ever looks at a home page. I have two responses to this: One, don’t ever forget the power of a first impression. Two, your home page has a very important job and can’t be treated lightly (we’ll cover that topic in another blog).

The power of the first impression can never be underestimated. Just think about what you wear each day. Your clothes are a huge part of the image people form of you, the mental one in their mind when they look at you and make a ton of assumptions about you just based on your clothes. I agonize over meetings with potential clients not because I’m worried whether or not I’ll get the job, but because I don’t know the “dress code” of a company until I’ve been on-site. I can make some assumptions: the software company will be more casual, the law firm will be dressier, the creative firm will wear black. But I have to dress so that I fit in and make the right first impression. Walking into the creative firm wearing the conservative office attire expected by the law firm means the creative folk will assume—before I ever even open my mouth—that I’m not part of their world. Ditto if the reverse were true.

And that’s just one example. There many more: how you dress for dates, social functions, meeting your future in-laws for the first time, even what you look like when you run to the store on Saturday morning. The importance of your clothes and the stories they tell is limitless.

So think of your home page as that initial meeting with a potential client and make sure you’re dressed to make the right first impression. Again, it’s about being appropriate. A Web site that sells all kinds of cheap items, one that is frequented by people who know exactly what they’re looking for, that site can be cluttered and in-your-face with pricing and specials and shipping deals. The law firm’s Web site (to circle back to our earlier clothing example) must be professional and credible. No screaming or clutter allowed, because that would be akin to showing up in their office wearing nightclub attire. As with the clothes, the examples are endless.

Your home page is that initial meeting, it is your first impression, it’s your one and only chance to tell people “you’re in the right place” before they click the back button and go elsewhere. Which they will in a matter of seconds if they don’t think your site is what they want. If you landed at a law firm’s home page and it looked like a computer parts Web site’s home page, would you stick around long enough to read the Web content and make an informed decision? Nope, you’d click back in a jiffy.

So if you’re marketing to professionals, be professional. If you’re selling an expensive product, look expensive. If all your audience cares about is the cheapest price, you’re fine with a cheesy home page. And this is the whole package: the design, the Web writing, the headline, the navigation choices, what you put above the fold vs. what you put below…all of those pieces are like your shoes, your pants, your jacket, your hair style, your jewelry. All those pieces add up to the all-important first impression that is your home page.

No one ever looks at a home page? Not if it sucks.