Marketing Answers Blog

Having bought in to the benefits of inbound marketing, you’re ready to apply them to your business. However, when you sit down to start planning, the reality of creating an endless stream of content washes over you, freezing you like a deer in headlights.

You have probably heard how central content creation is to an effective inbound marketing strategy. Without it, you are missing the essence of what drives visitors to your site and helps them convert into leads and customers.

Web-logging or as it has now become 'Blogging' was a trendy thing to do in the 1990's when people did it as a way to interact online. We wrote about hobbies and philosophies, recipes and the like - it was a way to socialize on line.

It doesn't take long to figure out that a successful SEO positioning strategy is rooted in the development of content that is optimized for keywords of interest. But, interestingly, the process can easily become muddled and results hampered when this strategy is not cleanly aligned with a well defined keyword plan.

Oh no, here we go again, I’ve got to write another blog. The reality is that I have no time for content creation because:

Clients are often asking me for ideas on content creation that will pique the interest of their prospective customers. They are stuck after writing the first three or four blog posts and feel like there just isn’t anything else they could say about their business that would interest their following. Many say they just don't know how to write good content. Here are some typical questions and remarks that I hear:

We work with many people on their internet marketing strategies, and one of the most important things we emphasize is the importance in avoiding being sued for copyright infringement. Most of us wouldn’t dream of taking something that isn’t ours, but somehow, when it comes to content on the internet, people’s eyes gloss over and the picking begins. Snatching images or blocks of well written text from someone else’s site is very easy to do and can be irresistible to some folks. Given the enormity of the internet, many feel that the likelihood of the true author finding out is akin to finding a needle in a haystack but with web crawlers and the development of complex search engine algorithms, it is far less unlikely than you may think.

Often, when discussing the need to start a small business blog with my newer clients, they will respond enthusiastically with something like “oh! That’s great because I can write really well”. Indeed many do write well, but I’ve found that it takes considerable guidance to get them to create content that actually  works well for them from an Inbound Marketing standpoint. I am, in part, writing this blog for my clients as the first and most important step in their content creation efforts.

If you are a regular reader of our blog, then you should already be aware of the importance of developing content for your site – particularly if you want to generate more traffic and leads. While there are many things you could put on your site (blog posts, white papers, general content about your business), nothing helps your traffic to engage with your site more than video. This is because if it’s done right, it presents an opportunity for you to very quickly transfer a lot of information in a rich and experiential manner. Writing is fine, but studies show that when given the choice between reading the narrative of a short informational video, and clicking the play button, 95% of people prefer to run the video.

We know that on-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important part of the story when it comes to generating traffic to your web site. The objective that we must all strive to achieve is to convince the major search engines, primarily Google, that our sites are worthy of their attention so that they will then serve up links to our sites when people search on particular keywords.