Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

How to Amplify Your Blogs

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

October 30, 2012

Blogging can be an essential way to inform and educate your prospects on their wants and needs (that your products or services may help them with). Because building a business empire takes an extraordinary amount of time and effort, and blogging is just one aspect of it, most busy professionals neglect updating their company blogs.

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If you want to lengthen the life of your blogs, and you don’t have the time to update your blogs on a consistent basis- what should you do? Here are six strategies you can put into place right away:

  • Make sure that your blogs are search engine friendly. Always double check your title and description tags, categories and keywords to be certain that they stay relevant to your post. Make sure you don’t stray from the guidelines set forth by search engines, otherwise your blog will be penalized.
  • Inter-link your posts. Make sure that when writing your post, you link relevant keyword phrases to previously published articles. It will help in your search engine optimization.
  • Send your subscribers emails about your post. Include a brief summary of your blog and communicate the value of why they should read your blog by telling them how it can help solve their problems. You can also encourage them to subscribe to your blog so that they don’t miss out on the important updates. By doing this, you will build a stronger relationship with your email subscribers.
  • Be certain that your blogs have CTAs (Call-to-Action). This directs your readers on what they need to do next, and so they will know where to reach you.  CTAs are important because, in most instances, people need to be told what to do and typically respond well when there’s a clear step of what to do next.
  • Repurpose your blogs. By sharing someone else’s information that would also be beneficial for your network, you can repurpose a blog or article that’s an old post (that’s still relevant) or use as a theme for one of your upcoming webinars. By using other’s content, you now have an entire mini-package comprised of useful information and tools to share with your prospects or clients.
  • Use social media sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter. These are a popular and valuable platform to showcase your blogs and articles. Link your post to your social networking sites to spread your content across all platforms, and allow your readers to “share” these resourceful posts.

Blogging will be a major asset for your business to reach your targeted prospects as long as you stay relevant and true to your prospects needs. Offer realistic and timely solutions in every post, in order for your customers to feel value and to help gain their trust. Blogging allows you to interact and engage with your audience, and to get immediate feedback regarding their concerns. Engaging them in discussions to gather comments and suggestions regarding your company’s brand will help your business grow profitably and professionally.

The most important thing you should remember in blogging is consistency. Even if you can’t regularly post blogs, make sure you continue to communicate with your prospects and clients through your blogs to strengthen your relationship with them.

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Topics: Blogging, Inbound Marketing, Social Media, Conversion


How to Blog Effectively for Your Business

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

October 20, 2012

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Marketing has become an art form that continues to be perfected over time, and your business’ success depends on how creatively you position yourself in the marketplace. The success of your marketing messages is dependent upon how relevant, interesting and appealing you can make them connect with your audience.

You may know that blogging can be one of the best ways to promote your business, but are you actively and consistently doing so? Business blogs can open doors for communication and interaction between you and your potential customers and/or clients. Though your blogs, you can engage in forums and join community discussions to understand the wants and needs of your prospects and at the same time, offer them knowledge and information regarding your offered products and services. This helps promote brand awareness and will make you a trusted brand by understanding your potential customers and clients’ desires.

More importantly, a relevant, interesting and creative blog can help boost more traffic to your website and help you generate more leads by engaging prospects looking for answers and information.

An established online presence can also be accomplished with the help of blogging. If you post content that is relevant and purposive for your audience, you can capture their interest, which can lead to a considerable amount of followers. The more popular your blogs become, the more they will be shared, and the more they will be “relevant” to Google – thus helping more people to be aware of your business and your brand. This can help you be seen as a trusted brand and a company that can surely address their problems and needs.

Here are four basic points to remember if you want to blog effectively for your business:

  1. Be creative. Think of topics that are relatable to your business and make them interesting and entertaining for readers to actually want to read them. When an idea pops into your head, make sure you write it down so you can eventually write about it later. You can use online tools such as Evernote or Google Docs to help you accomplish this. Keep in mind that creativity is the key, and an epiphany can happen when you least expect it, so when you have an idea, make sure to write it down.
  2. Be punctual. Always write in a schedule. You don’t have to write a 600 word blog in one sitting, just be certain that you take time for just an hour or two a day. This will help stimulate your mind so that you will feel inspired and ideas will eventually keep flowing.
  3. Be open-minded. The best thing about blogs is the interaction you can generate from them. Encourage comments, questions and suggestions so that you’ll have a point of view on what your prospects and clients need, want and desire.
  4. Be consistent. Your efforts won’t bear fruits over-night so be patient. Blogging is a continuous effort, so be unrelenting in your strategies for blog topics, and consistent in your campaigns if you want to be successful.

With great content that informs, educates and empowers and with the help of social media and other online tools, your business blogs can reach your targeted buyers across multiple platforms and begin a lead generation process for your business.

Photo Credit: Flickr

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Topics: Blogging, Inbound Marketing, Content Marketing


12 Useful Research Tools for Content Marketing

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

October 19, 2012

 

 

As you know, content is an essential part of your inbound marketing strategy, and with great content, you can position your company’s website or blog to success. Fortunately for you, there are many online tools that can help you in your content marketing research.

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The quality of your content will determine the success of your marketing campaigns, so to get the attention of your targeted prospects, your content should be useful, relevant, educating and interesting for them.
To achieve this, you’ll need creativity and a little research. You’ll want to utilize the resources you have available online at your disposal to come up with the topics, concepts and intriguing content for your marketing that is appealing for your prospects while maintaining  the brand  your company embodies. There are many online tools that can help with your content marketing research such as Google AdWords, Keyword Tool, LinkedIn, Yahoo Answers and Bottlenose.

Since all searches begin with keywords, Google AdWords is the best tool to help you determine what keywords are more searched than others. Google AdWords can also be useful in the optimization of your content marketing strategies.

With 175 million members, LinkedIn is the largest networking community for business professionals, making it the best place for discussions and forums for people of all industries and all backgrounds. These forums and discussions are very helpful for ideas with your content marketing research.

Yahoo Answers is one of the largest online answer sites with millions of questions and answers from people all over the world. All topics are categorized and ranked according to what’s best for the users.

As you can imagine, social media has had a major impact on today’s content marketing campaigns. If you want to search for trending articles and social commentaries, Bottlenose is the best tool for you. It allows users to view social media information in clearer and simpler ways.

Arnie Kuenn wrote an article, “12 Content Research Tools You Should Be Using”, which contains important tools that can help in your content marketing research. Use them to your advantage and save yourself time by being smarter and not working harder.

Use these research tools as guides to help you get to the right starting point for your content topic or message. Having these tools to immediately find the questions to what your prospects are asking, is an efficient way to build your content marketing strategy.

 

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Topics: Blogging, Inbound Marketing, Social Media, Content Marketing


6 Tactics for Combining Content with Email Strategies

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

October 18, 2012

Inbound Marketing and Email Marketing

Email marketing continues to be one of the most cost effective ways to communicate with your audience of clients, prospects, partners and vendors. It continues to be a great medium to help you establish brand awareness for potential customers while encouraging trust and customer loyalty for your current clients. But how do you make your marketing messages stand out amongst your competitors in the market? The answer is to integrate your content with your email strategies.

Resourceful, educational and relevant content is the most vital part of your email marketing. In one way, you can use content to give your prospects an idea of what your business is all about, from the products and services your company offers, to the news and updates regarding the company and the industry it revolves in. You can also use content to educate the consumer about a need they didn’t know they had, or to “reset their buying criteria” to methodically inform and educate your target market on how to make wise purchasing decisions. Of course, these organized messages demonstrate how and why they should buy YOUR products and services, but in an educational and resourceful way. Having relevant content that is helpful is also one of the best ways to nurture leads through a communication process that provides you a sales force that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Chris Baggott is Chairman and co-founder of Compendium, a content marketing company. He gave some tips about incorporating your email and content strategies for successful email marketing, and perceives email marketing as a three-legged stool comprised of technology, data and content. He understands that sophisticated and easy-to-use software tools create efficiency in email marketing, but in order to take advantage of these tools, marketers need a database of eager prospects to send to, relevant content that will inform and empower them.

Chris believes the greatest marketing tactic in the history of mankind is the ‘similar situation’ story. You can learn more about that and other email marketing tactics in his l article  entitled, “Email Marketing: 6 Tactics on Combining Content and Email Strategies”

Your content marketing and email strategy go hand in hand. For your email marketing to be successful, you will need helpful content that positions you as the market expert and industry resource. They should be able to quickly relate to your information and know that you can help them solve their problem – even the ones they didn’t know they had.

Photo Credit: Stock.xchng

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Topics: Blogging, Inbound Marketing, Sales & CRM, Content Marketing


7 Easy Steps for Creating Buzzworthy Content

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

October 9, 2012

If you’re using education to reach your targeted audience, you know that quality content is vital for online marketing. But your prospects are constantly being bombarded with distracting content that clutters their attention, so what are you doing to make yours relevant and outstanding amongst your competitors online?


You’ve probably heard that “content is king”, yet so few marketing professionals seem to understand how to create useful content that isn’t overly promotional. For your blogs, articles or landing pages to be read and shared, you need to be relevant, informative and entertaining enough to capture the attention of your prospective customers. Your content can be promotional, but in a highly educational way - enough that it is passed on by your readers

Erica Swallow said that most business owners and online marketers find it hard to create useful content that isn’t overly promotional for the brands supporting it. There are seven steps that can be your basic guide to kicking off content creation for any business. She wrote an article entitled, “7 Easy Steps for Creating Buzzworthy Content” that will guide you in creating buzzworthy content.

How has your company gone about the content creation process? Let us know in the comments below.

There are many benefits in producing buzzworthy content: 1) it will drive more traffic to your website 2) it can help you rank higher in search engines results 3) it will get your pages shared more often. It can also be used as a platform to interact and engage with your audience, making you more open to business opportunities.

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Topics: Blogging, Inbound Marketing, SEO, Conversion


Case Study: Creativity vs. Clarity in Email Subject Lines

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

October 8, 2012

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Are your emails getting the attention of your targeted audience? Let me ask the question another way, do you recognize what emails coming into your inbox get YOUR attention? According to The Radicati Group, a technology market research firm, the typical corporate email user sends and receives about 105 email messages per day. Is your message getting through in this overcrowded and cluttered media space, and how can you make sure your email headline stand out?

There are many inbound marketing strategies you can use to set your company above the rest, but are you working on making your subject lines creative or clear?

Business owners and marketing professionals often find confusion in choosing between clarity and creativity to get their message across. In an article written by Amanda Gagnon, she mentions consumers are most likely to open emails that have a clear subject line than that of the creative ones as proven in a test conducted by The AWeber team. She notes an email’s subject line should have three objectives:

  1. To get the brand in front of consumers
  2. To get the email opened and
  3. To communicate a key message from the brand to the subscribers.
Read her full article, “Case Study: Creativity vs. Clarity in Email Subject Lines” to find out more about it.

Leave your comment below to let us know your opinion when it comes to clarity vs. creativity in email subject lines.

It’s important for any marketing email to have an appealing subject line. Since the subject line acts as the email’s introduction, if it deflects attention, the rest of the message may never get seen.

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Topics: Blogging, Inbound Marketing, Sales & CRM


How to Make B2B Content More Shareable

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

October 1, 2012

Content marketing (or education-based marketing) is essential for your business if you want to be found in your crowded field. Not only is it one of the best ways to promote your business, it is also a strong strategy to draw in your audience. With the help of social media, you can now spread your content across all platforms.

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If you’re a savvy business owner, C-level executive or marketing professional, you need to be taking strong advantage of the benefits of social media. Since both the young and old are actively using and communicating with social networking, it is the best place for your business to be to educate your prospects about the advantages of your businesses.

Through social media, you can interact and engage with your potential customers. This is a tremendous platform to find out what your prospects and customers like and don’t like about your industry’s products and services. You’re also given the opportunity to educate and inform people about your business as they search for answers and engage in discussions. With your content’s availability to be easily shared by the click of a button to their entire network - you increase your exposure online, giving you chance to be “endorsed”, recommended and introduced to a new base of prospects.

Social media is also a way of advertisement – if done correctly. It can help increase brand awareness for your company, help build a stronger relationship with your loyal customers and can improve your ranking with search engines. Your business blogs help boost your company’s integrity and reputation, making it more visible and trusted. A good social media strategy will definitely help level the playing field for you amongst all the larger “bigger budgets” you may have to compete with.

Be aware that each social media platform has different rules and traits. Don’t make the mistake that you can generalize, or consider Facebook to be the same as LinkedIn, for example. Familiarize yourself first with each of the social networking sites you plan to engage in. Spend some time researching on these sites – ask questions, post comments, invite to connect with others first. Become part of the community before you decide to just “figure it out as you go”!

Janet Aronica wrote an article entitled, “How to Make B2B Content More Shareable”, which will give you an idea of what you can do to make your content more “sharable” to each social media platform. She included five social media sites namely, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn. So if you are using (or plan to use) any of these social media sites to share your website’s content, I recommend reading her full article to learn how to use these sites to their fullest potential for your business.

Social media is the best way to champion your business. Keep in mind that whether or not you use social media for your business, achieving success boils down to the quality your website’s content. Always make sure that your content is relevant, informative and entertaining. Business blogs reflect the products or services your company offers, so it is imperative that you produce helpful quality content.  Most importantly, make sure that it is easily accessible so that your information can be read and shared by your targeted audiences.

 

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Topics: Blogging, Inbound Marketing, Social Media


Blogging for Business: How Content Improves Your Sales

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

September 30, 2012

The right educational content can do wonders for businesses. How about your business? Do you regularly write and promote helpful content that motivates and educates your prospects?

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Corporate blogging not only allow companies to showcase their products and services, but gives them the leverage to inform and engage with their employees, prospects and customers.


The business that educates consumers on how to buy, dominates that marketplace. It is always an advantage for the savvy business to know what it’s targeted audience wants, beginning with the level of service - down to the quality and selection of the products and services offered. Having resourceful blogs on your business’ website provides a common ground for interaction between the company, their employees, their customers and their prospects. This way, everyone concerned will share a voice in the conversation.

By blogging for your business, your employees can contribute their viewpoints - which give them a sense of “ownership” and respect, and that can be a real asset for your company. Your potential and existing customers are able to share their thoughts, comments, questions (and yes, objections) that could help your business improve and grow. Blogs give room for a transparent and honest communication, and a forum to directly communicate and engage with you or parts of your team. These are ingredients you must have in order to increase your sales and making your business a success.

Michael Stelzner published an article on how content can help your business grow. It is a summary of an interview for the Social Media Marketing Podcast. They talked about how you can produce great contents, use it on your blogs and share it through social media outlets like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter. There are many helpful takeaways from this article, so  to learn more about this, read his full article which also includes a video of the interview, entitled “Blogging for Business: How Content Can Improve Your Sales.”

Always keep in mind that blogging boils down to the quality of content you have. It is imperative that you only produce quality content that educates, “resets the buying criteria” and is a resource that’s worth reading and sharing. Your content should embody knowledge, entertainment, creativity and relevance. You should be able to capture the attention of your audience, and influence their minds through your words.

It is also essential that you share your content to all relevant platforms possible. Utilize all resources, such as article directories, social media groups and online forums to spread your contents. Great quality content that’s well administered, can improve your online presence and SEO rankings - which in turn can give you more leads and more sales for your business. By accomplishing successful business blogging, you are demonstrating to your industry and to your marketplace that you are an honest, trusted and reliable brand worthy of their business.

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Topics: Lead Generation, Blogging, Inbound Marketing, Sales & CRM


Web Writing Advice, Strategy and Tips for Everyone

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

July 6, 2012

Writing is self-expression in its simplest form. Still, you may find it hard.

For people to read your article, your content should be creative and relevant. According to Stephanie Mcgrath, anyone who can read can definitely write.

In her article, she tackles strategies and shares tips for web writing. She cited that you just have to remember the mantras of writing, like thinking about who you are writing for. 

Writing gives you the benefit of conveying your message to your readers, and, it's surely the best way to introduce your products and services. Just keep in mind that what you are writing should always be interesting and relevant to your readers.

Are you stuck with your writing? Here is another great article to help you get your thoughts together. Read Clarke Bishop’s Business Blogging: What to do about "Writer's Block.

What stops you from writing more? Leave a comment. Yes, I know that means you have to write a sentence or two!

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Topics: Lead Generation, Blogging, Inbound Marketing


How I Became A Business Blogger

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

July 3, 2012

 

After college, you need to find the perfect place for you to grow and become a better person. Lucky for me, I’ve found just that.

It's a competitive world. Finding your niche is very difficult. Having proper education is never enough to land you a job. It takes a great deal of determination and patience to find the right one for you.

Though I have finished College, it wasn't easy to find a job. 

I’ve always had the passion for writing, evident in the fact that I joined campus publications since I was seven. I would’ve taken Journalism, but my parents wanted me to study nursing.

However, after I graduated, I realized that writing is what I want to do for a living.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity I’ve been long waiting for. I got my first full-time writing job, being a part of Inbound Team. I thought this job will be easy for me, but, I was wrong!

I read somewhere a quote that says: “Find a job that you love and you’ll never work one day in your life.” I finally found the job I’ve always wanted. But, I was feeling uncertain if I’d be able to do it right.

Business Blogging is nothing like I’m used writing. I’ve been writing feature articles for campus publications, but now, I have to write blogs to help people make their business more successful. How can I ever achieve that?

It wasn’t easy at first. I was struggling. But then, I was lucky to get all the help I need from my mentor. With his patience and perseverance, plus my dedication and hard work, I finally learned how the whole process works.

I’ve realized that it’s easy to write about anything, but what’s hard is to write about something! At least something you have to learn about first. Here are a few tips which helped me finally become the Business Blogger I aimed to be:

Discover and Know your Marketing Personas.

Before you start writing, you need to know who you are writing for. You need to discover who your readers are. Once you achieve that, the next step is to empathize. Put yourself in their shoes. Who are they? What are they feeling? What questions do they have? Once you’ve got that figured out, you know you’re on the right track.

Create Great Content.

Always write something worth reading. Create content which is interesting and informative. Your content should answer all the questions your readers have and more importantly, it should keep them reading. Moreover, when you create your content, make sure it will trigger a response from them. What do they need to know? What have they learned? What do you want them to do? Once all these questions are answered, you know you’ve done a good job.

It’s not impossible to find your spot, even in the most unexpected of all places. After all, you can be whoever you want to be.

Who would’ve thought? I became a Business Blogger. All it took is my computer, great ideas, and bit of practice.

How did you start blogging? Leave a comment and tell your story. 

Image Credit:stuck4ideas

 

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Topics: Blogging, Inbound Marketing, SEO