Content

When and when not to gate your content

Generating leads and demand is a key function for many B2B organizations. Building a meaningful pipeline of interest in a product or service is an always-on activity and impacts nearly everyone across the organization, both customer and non-customer facing. As digital has become increasingly prominent within B2B over the last decade, sales and marketing teams have been using content to build awareness and interest. As a result, the use of content marketing more specifically has seen strong growth: Whilst there is widespread agreement that high quality, valuable content can produce positive results, there are different perspectives on how online content should be used to generate leads and sales. On the one hand, content marketers with a strong background in SEO believe that if content is made open and available, search engines will reward…

Content marketing that converts was created to help differentiate your brand from the others and help you achieve your business objectives

Have you ever found yourself trapped in a conversation where you’re talking to a self-absorbed person, almost doing a monologue about themselves, not caring what you think and feel? Your readers could be feeling the same thing when they read your content. There’s a misconception among marketers that content marketing should make them stand out. While there is a truth to this - after all, content marketing that converts was created to help differentiate your brand from the others and help you achieve your business objectives - it’s not meant to position you as the hero of your own story. Why? Because your customers are the heroes of the story. Not you. [si_guide_block id="34016" title="Download our Premium Resource – Evaluating content marketing ROI guide" description="This guide is aimed at helping you improve…

Anything that affects the performance of content should be a content creator’s business (even if not directly)

Content makes the digital world go around. It helps drive greater traffic to businesses, generate lead growth, and improve conversion rates. But content that can achieve all that requires great planning and strategizing. En route content creators run into several roadblocks. By content creator, I mean anyone who creates content. That could be a dedicated team, a freelancer, or a new business owner who does all the digital marketing themselves, of which content creation is a part. [si_guide_block id="5651" title="Download our Premium Resource – Content marketing strategy guide" description="Less than half of businesses have a content marketing strategy, meaning they're missing out on the opportunity to plan, manage, and optimize their content marketing."/] With that in mind, I’m presenting a wide variety of challenges that content creators face. Some are specific to content creation, while others may…

Guidance and examples for Buying Guides relevant for other sectors too

‘Buying Guide’ or 'Buyer's Guide' content are a common SEO tactic particularly amongst retailer ecommerce sites, but they can be used in other types of site too such as financial services. They're popular since they tick many of the boxes for effective on page SEO. They're naturally rich in keywords, dense in character count and recognisably original, it’s an easy target to hit on your SEO checklist. They also enable you to link to your main target category and popular product pages with relevant anchor text, so boosting their effectiveness.

Potential customers also love Buying Guides, since, done well, they’re a great research resource in the early ‘information gathering’ stages of the purchasing decision process.

If they provide great advice and a good experience in navigating them,…

Do magic words exist or are they a copywriting myth?

I recently received a copywriting advice email  from Yale University describing the ‘the most powerful words in the English Language’. Here they are: 1. You 2. Results 3. Health 4. Guarantee 5. Discover 6. Love 7. Proven 8. Safety 9. Save 10. New Although I agree that these are powerful words, I doubt Yale really conducted any rigorous research – and if they did, it’s certainly not something that the University chooses to share on its official website. What is interesting is how long these types of list have been "doing the rounds". It taps into the insatiable demand for instant solutions. Human nature finds the notion very appealing that all you need do is sprinkle a few magic words into your writing like fairy dust and, Hey Presto, an instant increase in sales pops out of the hat. Using magic words in the right place in your copy and in the right order…