Digital Marketing Consultant

Creating a Content Blueprint

It is easy to fall into the trap and just start adding content to your website and syndicate it to social media sites. People can confuse “article marketing” with content marketing. Article marketing is mainly used to create links to your website and to attract search engine traffic. In many instances, these articles are of low value to the reader and although they bring attention to your brand, they don’t always contribute to your conversion goals.

The first step in implementing a content marketing strategy is to create a content blueprint.

Step 1: Define your business goals

What do you want to achieve in the following 12 months in your business? Goals to consider are:

• Revenue targets
• Increase customer base by 15%
• Upsell to existing customers

Step 2: Identify your ideal website personas

Who are the ideal personas that you would like to visit your website? These are normally the decision makers or evangelists of your products or services:

• Chief Executive Officer
• VP of Marketing
• Chief Financial Officer
• Housewives, etc.

Step 3: List the types of information they require?

For each of these personas, create a list of:

• Questions they typically ask
• Information they seek about your company, products or service

Step 4: Determine the action you want your persona to take

• Download white paper
• Download case study
• Listen to podcast
• View company video
• Subscribe to your newsletter

This information should help your visitor solve their problem, build your credibility and ultimately persuade them to engage with your company.

Step 5: Research search keywords

Use keyword research tools such as Wordtracker, SEO Book, Market Samurai or similar tools to:

• Identify the list of questions used in search
• Identify niche topics that you can create content for
• Look for Top 10 lists, Best of, etc. ideas

Step 6: Create your blueprint

Sort your content by persona and create a sitemap and navigation plan to channel your content effectively to your visitor. For each content piece, decide which Internet channels you will syndicate to:

• Website
• Blog
• YouTube video
• Podcast
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Squiddoo
• And others that your persona would frequent

Create your online marketing plan

Schedule regular dates on which to create and publish your content. Publishing regular content will increase your online visibility and create an online asset for your business.

Measure your business objectives

• Install Google Analytics to monitor your website and blog performance
• Set the business goals that you need to measure
• Review goal achievement and keywords used to get to your site
• Brainstorm creative ways of providing content related to your industry

Every word of content placed upon a website is important and should be designed to attract both the visitor and the search engines.   Article marketing is another way in which the power of words can be used to bring profitability to a website.

If you are looking to increase your earning potential, then you cannot overlook the power of words when effectively used in an article marketing campaign.   Well written articles published on the internet frequently are sent from reader to reader gathering attention as it makes the circuit around the Internet users of the world.  Articles that provide quality content with links and reference back to your products and services act as a moving marketing tool making its way from Internet user to Internet user. 

As your article is passed between users and read by many, the user attention also attracts the attention of the search engines.  This is SEO at work for your online business.  Quality articles and website content are effective marketing tools on the web today.

The first step in article marketing is to provide high quality informative content.  After you have provided quality content with the power of the word, it should be published on the Internet and then you should be able to sit back and watch as your products and services become known across the Internet by both potential customers and the search engines.

What do you need to mobilize your website?  The power of the word can take your website to the next level and beyond.  Don't hesitate to read more on our wisdom book.

Is your article marketing program as good as it could be?   It pays to take a good look at all of your Digital Marketing campaigns including articles. 

7 Tips to Enhance Your Articles

1.     Know your market.  You need to understand who your market is in order to write articles with content that will reach out to them.  You can learn more about your market by use of blogs, forums and social networking.  Find out what their needs are, what questions they have, what their preferences are, and, more specifically, what you have that they need or are interested in.  The answer to these questions will provide you with visitor-relevant topics for your articles.

2.    Optimize your articles with keywords.  This is for the search engines, but the search engines are delivering the results to your potential visitors.  Effective use of keywords in quality content articles can produce high rankings on the search engines.  To please both your visitors and the search engines, make sure your keyword flow naturally within the content of the article.

3.    Maintain fresh content in your articles.  At all cost make sure your content is not the product of plagiarism or duplication.   Fresh unique quality content articles will build credibility and trust with your readers.

4.    Article marketing is a way for you to connect with your visitors.  The more conversational your writing is the more your readers will feel a personal connection.    They will place value on your expertise and advice.  Rather than just words in an article, the words will pop off the page in a conversational manner.

5.    The resource box of your article must be written to entice and draw the reader to click to your website.

6.    Develop an effective Call to Action.  In other words, have the text ask the reader to do something.

7.    Submit your articles to article directories and sites.

Probably the most important tip I can give you for your Digital Marketing success is to create and maintain a consistant blog of articles.  Oh, and do check out our Wisdom Book.

Woo your target market...don't try to Wow them.

Internet marketing requires grooming your business website for effective attraction marketing.

Grooming your website is all about making your website appealing to your target market, and to the matchmakers.  Attraction marketing does not focus on sales tactics.  When a young man meets the girl of his dreams, he doesn’t usually pop the big question, "Will you marry me?"   He will take her on dates, buy her gifts, take her out to dinner...all a part of making himself attractive to her.  This is best known as courtship.  Attraction marketing is business courtship.  

Attraction marketing starts with listening to your target market and finding out what its problems are and then providing solutions to its problems.  It is about finding out what prospects like, what they need, and then supplying it to them.   Exceptional listening skills are needed when it comes to attraction marketing. 

Some tips to groom your website for attraction marketing includes:

•    Make sure the links on your site work.  Broken links are like broken promises.

•    Make sure your links guide your visitors to where you intend them to be.  Links on your website that misdirect your visitors from what they were expecting to find is the best way to turn off your visitor and loose them forever.   Take the time to check all your links to make sure you are not misdirecting your visitors.
•    Start blogging.  Blogging is an excellent way to get feedback from your target market.  You can then use the information gained in developing a marketing plan with the power of attraction.
•    Use the tools your target market uses, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter.  Using the social media sites that your target market is using gives you the opportunity to meet them on their ground and then you can lead them to your website.  This is attraction marketing in action.
•    Start using articles to provide information to your target market.  The use of articles has the power to establish yourself as the expert for your target market.  As you build your expert reputation, your target market will began to have confidence and trust in you and your business.

Attraction marketing has the potential to build long term relationships with your target market.  As an added benefit you will also receive improved ranking on the search engines.  Google and Yahoo are attracted to sites with relevant information which flows in a natural manner.  They are your matchmakers.

See our wisdom book on How to Succeed in Business Dating.

If you need online marketing, you need Search Engine Marketing(SEM).   Search Engine Marketing, my vocabulary, covers all the tools you will need for online marketing.  It is the marketing that will make you a success or failure in online marketing.

Originally there were two basic areas of search engine marketing

•    PPC (Pay Per Click)
•    SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

What is SEM?

It is a rather broad term referring to the multiple ways of marketing a site to all of the search engines available on the internet.    If you have a business with a website, you will need search engine marketing.

Search engine marketing as a lot of different specific area and identifying the areas you need to use for your online business can be difficult.  An expert in this field can provide you with guidance and assistance so that your work is focused on areas you need to focus on and not on other things that would have little benefit for your marketing efforts.

The purpose of search engine marketing is to get as much targeted traffic as possible to your website.

The primary components of search engine marketing still include pay-per-click marketing and search engine optimization, but now include social media marketing, email marketing, PR and press, video, and article marketing (or blogging).  The search engines are attracted to each of these methods and proper use of them with result in higher ranking for your site on them.  There are specific rules of how to implement each of these into your online business for lasting results.

Most websites will use all three of these components of search engine marketing at one time or another.   The goal with search engine marketing is to obtain high search engine ranking and then measure the traffic and sales flow into your online business.  We cover most everything in our Wisdom Book.

And here is our lastest White Paper and Free Seminar.

Be careful not to underestimate the power source that is available with article marketing

. 

Articles that are informative, easy to read, and have a natural flow of keywords within the content are like illuminating a major league ballfield with lights during a night game.  Yes, the power source of articles will illuminate your website on the Internet for your audience to see. 

The Internet has become crowded, especially in some niches, so to stand out from the competition, your business needs to literally pop out from among the crowd of similar sites.

Writing and posting excellent informative articles can drive up your site traffic in a relatively short amount of time.   The good thing is the articles will continue to draw in more traffic each day.

You can elect to write your own articles or, as I recommend, you can outsource to a company or individual skilled in article writing.  There are also publishing sites that have articles available for use as you just have to include the author’s resource box in with you posting of the article.   You also can submit articles you have written to these sites and, if others use your articles, your resource box with website identification will also be published on their website providing more opportunities for putting your site information in front of various users of the internet.

It is becoming easier to publish as new software platforms help both publishers and writers.  I will try to illuminate a few of these as they arise.

And don't miss our Free Webinar and Free Whitepaper on PR.

Over the past 10 years or so we have seen the online market place transform into a vibrant area of business.  The growth has been astronomical with new targets and goals surpassed each year.

In fact, there has never been a business concept that has experienced such substantial success and expansion.

But, and it is a big but, how does a buiness leadership keep up with the competition?

Some of the technologies used in internet marketing are already beginning to be replaced with new technology.   Failure to keep up with these continual changes will be the reason for many business failures in the future.  Personal email is quickly being replaced with various social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.  If you don’t include these new avenues of internet marketing in your internet marketing strategies, you just may find you and your business have been left behind in the dust of internet marketing. 

With the growing concerns of spam, identity theft and phishing scams in regards to email marketing, you would think that many users are switching to the other forms of connecting with various social media technology.  You would be right that other forms are growing, but they are not replacing email marketing; they are simply adding to the power of email marketing, which remains the most powerful marketing media...when done right.

Pay-per-click advertising and SEO (search engine optimization) remain strong models of internet marketing.  SEO will be needed as long as there are search engines in our world for users to search the internet. SEO does not offer a lot of opportunities for fraud, making it a great and safe way to generate website traffic.   Pay-per-click does have some opportunity for fraud and, as a result, some changes or modifications may occur to this form of marketing in the future.

It is expected article writing will continue to be a strong internet marketing concept as we move forward into the future of internet marketing.  
In addition to SEO, Pay-per-click, email marketing, and article writing, there very easily could be new platforms in the future of internet marketing that are not available today. 

But what I see as the biggest problem for businesses is the leadership mindset and how businesses are going to keep up with the changes.  Some leaders in their field are always out there ready to dominate a market segment faster than lightning.  As an International Digital Marketing Consultancy, we find it a full-time job to keep up and to transfer that knowledge in pratical terms to our clients.

If you think would would like to beat out your competitors, you probably want to thumb through our Wisdom Book.

A lot of individuals (and too many businesses) focus on just the aspect of building a great website.  While that is of importance, businesses should have a business plan and design for internet marketing.   Internet marketing is a unique form of marketing designed to effectively market your business in the digital world of the Internet and Telecoms.

Effective internet marketing tools

A tool to help identify phrases based upon a keyword (or ten) used by people searching the internet for your products and services is one of the most important internet marketing tools you can utilize.   Wordtracker is one of these tools.

This tool will provide assistance in determining the traffic or market for a product or service.  This tool will also help you effectively identify a niche and specific products in a niche that will provide you with the best opportunity of attracting specifically interested customers and of making some real money.

But what about non-English key words?  Or even different cultures in the same language?  There are so many tools that can aid in your battle to optimize your business website that each one of these tools could be an article in itself and would cost you a fortune.  But one tool has great power...article directories.

Article directories are another great Internet marketing tool that can kick start your online business.  Notice we said article directories because there are an incredible number of directories available.

Obtaining free traffic to your website is essential to making your website become a profitable weapon.  One of the most effective ways to attract free traffic is to exchange or trade links with other internet businesses.  It can take some time to build up sufficient links to attract a fair amount of traffic and increase your search engine rankings.  The use of article directories can accomplish link building in a very short amount of time.  

How do the article directories work?

1. You write or have a high quality content article written that is relevant to your website.
2. You submit the article to one of the many article directories.
3. Webmasters worldwide look to these directories for website content.  

As your article is selected for their use, your name associated with the article is then published on their website.  In the author area of the article, you can provide links to your site and these will be published on the website of those using your article.   One article can generate between 50-2000 links for your website. 

Do you think this is much better (with a lot less effort) than what you can obtain by trading links?

Other ideas?  See our Wisdom Book.

Enough cannot be said about the importance of writing articles for search engine optimization.

But the difficulty often is having the time to write articles that are effective.  But there is an innovative way to accomplish this task and save you some time.

One of the most effective methods of traffic generation for a website is writing effective content articles and submitting them to the article depositories.    Others pick up your articles from the article depositories and publish your information on their website agreeing to mention your website and link the article back to your website at the bottom of the article.  You now have just obtained great website

As you start to write articles, you will quickly realize that writing articles to promote your website takes a considerable amount of effort and time.
But don’t throw up your hands too quickly; there is a way to get high quality content articles for your website without all the work and effort.  The secret to accomplishing this is to use freelance writers to do this job for you.  You can find freelancers eager to provide quality writing for your niche.

Many freelancers work part time just for some extra money and some others have made freelance writing their livelihood.   Freelance writers are available from all walks of life, levels of expertise, and from countries all over the world.  Connecting with these freelancers is easily done online.  I have found the best website to find such talent in any language is Elance.com.

I highly recommend that you request and pay for a few trial articles to determine the quality of the writer before establishing your article writing work with a freelancer. 

Having a quality freelance writer provide you with high quality content articles will save your both time and effort.  Be sure to read the work carefully for errors and try to personalize it with your touch.  Outsourcing your writing will mean you have more time to work on other important facets of your business.

Blogging correctly (and linking your blog to your website the right way) is probably THE most important marketing activity you can produce.  Here is a connection to all of the marketing activities you should be doing.

It is a known fact without decent exposure your web enquiries will not increase much if any.  There is so much information and advice regarding this, but just where do you even start?  

Take a look at these effective methods to get more online visibility.
•    Blogging
•    Article Marketing
•    Online Press Releases
•    Social networking sites
•    Email Newsletters

Blogging: Recently there has been an increase in the number of business blogs which are great for adding fresh content to your website.  The search engines love this. Blogging also is a good method to obtain feedback on your ideas and plans from your visitors directly.  Blogging opens the door for engaging conversation online.  Indexing by the search engines is performed quickly on blog posts resulting in increased site traffic and higher visibility.

Article Marketing: Submitting articles you have written to major article directories is also effective in driving traffic to your website in addition to increasing links back to your site.  It is important that the articles address a problem for your target market in a format that is easy to understand. A resource box with strength including the bio for the author and links to your website or blog is important.

Press Releases: Press releases are a marketing strategy that has been proven through the years by broadcast and print media.   These can be used to increase your visibility online and drive traffic to your website.  The press releases should be newsworthy and also should be keyword optimized.  Even though there are press release sites that are free, it is to your advantage to use a site that is fee based such as PRWeb.com to make sure your release receives some serious recognition.

Social Networking: Social networking sites have become a powerful method to get the attention of visitors to your website and to establish your credibility online.   Identify a couple of sites used by your target market and set up connections as you join groups, providing answers to questions, participating with conversations, and sharing resources.  Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are considered some of the most popular.  But make sure they are popular with your target market before diving in.  Spending some time daily on these sites can provide results.

Newsletters: Keeping in touch with visitors potential customers by way of a newsletter can be very effective in placing your business at the top of the list when they look for solutions to their problems that are in the area of your expertise.   Basically your newsletter is a great way to educate your readers of your specific skills, services, or products.  Your website should focus on a call to opt into your email newsletter.  This will provide an ongoing list upon which you can build.  If you provide information your visitors want or need, they just may reference others to your website.

These five effective marketing strategies can provide the foundation for your marketing efforts online.  All of these methods are reliable and have been proven over time.   They will increase the traffic to your website and at the same time provide increased quality links to your website.  This will result in increased search engine standings for your website.

If you would like a specific evaluation of your marketing situation, see http://www.squidoo.com/Website_Audit.  And look for my free gift.