How to Determine the ROI on Your Social Media Accounts
When I'm wearing my marketing consultant's hat, I'm focused on the return on investment (ROI) for my clients. After all, most are small to mid-sized business owners, entrepreneurs and artists - folks who absolutely need to understand how, when and where their marketing investment is paying off.
Social media often seems like the big question mark in the marketing mix, but it doesn't have to be. You can track your company's return on investment in social media marketing just as you would any other digital campaign. The trick is to have the data available from your website, as well as from the social networking website you're using, and to put into place some smart best practices to help you move ahead.
I've written a new article for the website, Routing, detailing just how to do that. I've included three simple steps you can take to enact social media ROI tracking and analysis, but of course there are other ways. I'll share more in the future on this blog and other article.
Read: Three Simple Steps to Measure Social Media ROI
Content Marketing for Small Businesses
If your business doesn't have a robust content marketing strategy in place, you might be losing out on the biggest innovation to hit marketing since the internet. I read a statistic this morning that made me really sit up and take notice. According to the article on Inbound Writer, 78% of chief marketing officers think custom content (articles, white papers, blogs, etc.) is the future of marketing.
Content Marketing Defined
What is content marketing? According to the Content Marketing Institute,
"Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action."
Why Content Marketing Matters
Traditional advertising's effectiveness is fading. The more people are bombarded with ads, the less effective the ads become. Consumers have grown wise to the tricks of the advertising trade, and eschew ads for information. And that's where content marketing comes in.
Content Marketing In Action: An Example
Most custom content produced as part of a content marketing strategy seeks to inform consumers, providing them with facts to help them make a purchasing decision. The other day, I was searching for background information to write a client's blog post, and found a treasure trove of woodworking project how-to sheets online. The major retailer producing this excellent content had uploaded a complete project library that anyone could access and download without having to jump through hoops. Each sheet had a simple format and clear drawings that showed the novice how to complete everything from a deck to a new pantry shelf system, with a shopping list of hardware, lumber, paint and supplies needed to complete the project. The idea, of course, was that once you found the project sheet, you'd download it and take it into the store as your shopping list.
Think about this content for a moment. Not only can it be printed and handed out in-store, but it acted as a search engine marketing tool, appearing on the first page of the search engine results when I typed in my search term. It was a potent marketing tool helping the company's website attract new site visitors, and by using clear, simple instructions, perhaps transforming the casual visitor into a buyer in the store.
Starting Your Content Marketing Strategy: The First Question to Ask
Any size business, from a sole proprietorship to a major corporation, can use content marketing to build their brand and acquire, retain and create loyal customers. The first step is to identify your content marketing strategy.
Why do you want to enact a content marketing strategy? Is it to boost your visibility on the search engines and attract website traffic? Is it to build your brand? Is it to increase sales for a specific product category or engage better with a specific group of customers?
Any and all of these are great reasons to begin your content marketing program. A good content marketing strategy begins by knowing the answers to these questions in detail. Take your time to develop your responses. Knowing WHY you want to begin a content marketing strategy is even more important than understanding the HOW of carrying it off.
If you'd like to begin work on your company's content marketing strategy, I'd be delighted to help you. I've created great content strategies for many industries and products, and for companies ranging from small start ups to major established firms. Contact me through Seven Oaks Consulting, and let's talk about how we can harness the power of content marketing to boost your website visibility and sales.
About the Author
By Jeanne Grunert, President and Founder of Seven Oaks Consulting. Jeanne is an award-winning writer, blogger and marketing manager with over 20 years of experience. She personally works with every client at Seven Oaks Consulting and creates expert content marketing strategies and written materials to build brands, attract site traffic, and acquire new customers. Contact Jeanne.
Pricing for Profit: What Is Your Time Worth?
What's the number one question that consultants, coaches, writers, entrepreneurs and anyone offering freelance services ask? The answer: How to price their time wisely so that they can acquire customers and turn an honest profit. Knowing what your time is worth is the starting point to determine your prices.
How to Determine Prices
Ask yourself...
- How much do I need to earn annually to live on? Divide that by 50 weeks (assuming 2 weeks for vacation each year) and then by 5 days in a work week. That gives you a rough idea of what you need to earn weekly. Now divide that by 5, and you've got your daily wage....divide it again by a 7 or 8 hour working day, and that's a rough estimate of your hourly rate.
- Do you have any specialized education, skills or experience that sets you apart? That increases your hourly rate. Those who can provide they have additional knowledge that would be hard for the average person to acquire can charge more for their time, because hiring someone with specialized knowledge SAVES time and money in the long run.
Specialized Skills Are Valuable
One mistake many entrepreneurs make is launching their businesses as jack of all trades. The problem with the jack of all trades approach is that you end up being so vague about what you can do for others, or you pile on so many skills on your resume, that people are reluctant to trust you. How can anyone do so many things well? It's true that many people CAN do a lot of things well. However, by focusing your business pitch on a few highly specialized, rare, unique or highly-sought after skills, you add value to your work. When you add value, you can charge more.
People Pay What They Believe You Are Worth
If you keep getting offers to pay you far less than you value your time, ask yourself this: are you proving your values to your clients?
People are always willing to pay more for:
- Results: Do you share with potential clients the results you have achieved on past projects? Why or why not?
- Value: Do you add something special to your services? A special touch, something that sets you apart from others? If not, what can you do to add value?
- Quality: Quality always sells. Are you offering the very best quality of services you can possibly offer? If not, how can you improve your quality level?
[pullquote align="left|center|right" textalign="left|center|right" width="30%"]Pricing is both an art and a science[/pullquote]. The scientific part is figuring out the nuts and bolts of your hourly rate. That you can do through deductive mathematics, or working backwards from an annual benchmark figure you have in mind. But from that point on, pricing your services become more of an art. Adding value through specialized skills, knowledge and experience, adding quality and specialization to your service offerings can all help you add value to your customer relationships and charge prices that are both fair to your customers and profitable for you.
These and other tips are based on Pricing Your Services: 21 Tips for More Profit by Jeanne Grunert. The book is available from Smashwords, Amazon and your favorite ebook retailer.
Jeanne is the president of Seven Oaks Consulting and offers marketing consulting, coaching and seminars, and marketing writing services for businesses and marketing agencies. Visit her marketing writing website for more information.
Quick Ways to Build Your Email List Now
Don't you just hate websites that make you sign up first and give away your email address just to peek at their stuff? I know I do. I thought I was alone. A friend shared a photo of colorful Converse sneakers today on Facebook. I wanted to see how much they cost because you know, you can't have too many pairs of purple shoes. So I clicked on the link. What popped up? Not the sales page for the sneakers, but the home page of the site with a mandatory pop up box that demanded I reveal all my contact information and opt in for their emails. No, thank you. I left without even looking at the sneakers. I'm sure I'll find them elsewhere, and more easily find the price.
So I left without shopping or sharing, and guess what? Looking at the comments on Facebook, a lot of other people were equally displeased.
Engaging readers using Pinterest, Facebook and myriad other social media tools is only part of the equation. Once you've engaged your audience, you must welcome them once they get to your website. By not welcoming new customers and in fact putting up a hurdle to jump before you could even see their wares, this website lost business.
Why do companies put up those annoying pop up boxes that demand email sign ups, anyway? Because somewhere along the line they've either discovered or were told that such boxes can help them boost their email list. Many of these companies are using email marketing very heavily to promote their products, and clothing companies love email marketing. Hey, I love their email marketing, too; this morning, I clicked on two emails in the 40+ in my person in box just to see the sales.
But that's really the point, isn't it? There were 40+ emails from my "favorite" clothing companies, and I had time to click on just two of them. I didn't sit down and read every single one. So I may be on their email lists, but I'm not particularly engaged with their brand.
Build up an email list takes time and hard work. Forcing customers to join your email list just to look at your products is a no-no in today's world of internet marketing. It's off putting and will do more to hurt your social media and digital marketing efforts than many other mistakes.
The Do's and Don't of Email List Building
DO....
- Offer customers an incentive to join your email list, like a free book, coupon or something else great.
- Send only emails out on the promised schedule; don't bombard customers with emails.
- Publish a privacy policy and terms, and follow them carefully.
DON'T....
- Make people disclose an email address just to look at your site. Most people won't bother.
- Share your list with other vendors UNLESS you have revealed you may do so in your terms when customers sign up.
- Send emails too frequently. How frequently is too frequently? Check your list stats. Declining open rates and high opt out rates may indicate list fatigue, a term which means you are sending too many emails out.
Improve Your Business Blog for More Sales
One of the hallmarks of my unique "strong sales through gentle marketing" program is the use of writing, especially blogging, to help businesses promote their products and services. Does blogging work? Yes, it can -- but like any marketing activity, you must be prepared to invest time and effort into your blog. If you don't want to (or cannot) invest time and effort, then be prepared to invest money in someone who CAN invest time and effort for you. It's a trade-off. If you can write, and you can devote a half hour to an hour per day to content marketing, then blogging may make sense for you.
Blogging is more than just spewing out your ideas and information online. A good blog engages readers and retains their loyalty in the future. A good blog is search engine optimized; it attracts the popular search engines, who like the original posts they find on the blog, archive and index them, and provide them to online searchers. A good blog has personality and style. It is original. It speaks from the heart, person to person, and shares information not easily obtained elsewhere.
Sounds like a tall order, doesn't it? Fortunately, there are alternatives to creating a blog entirely from scratch.
- Hire a freelancer: You can hire a freelance writer to create you blog posts for you. Be prepared to search for a good writer and pay him or her a fair rate. Rates for good bloggers start at $25 and go up from there per blog posts. Where can you find bloggers? Craigslist, Guru.com, Elance.com are three places that immediately come to mind. Be sure to include the topic of your blog and your expectations in your advertisement. The topic is important. You want a writer who has experience in your area, and who is eager to contribute. A fashion blogger may e ill at ease writing financial advisement tips, and a legal blogger unsuited for home and garden topics. Ask for their resume, three writing samples, and see if you like any writer who applies.
- Work with a third party site: Post your request to a corporate site such as Writer Access: Writer Access allows companies to post writing work for hire on their site. Writers apply with their ideas and you hire, through the Writer Access site ,the best writer for the job. The catch? They take a cut out of the fee, so you have to pay a little bit more in order to attract a good writer. But it may save you time and effort screening applications and some good writers can be found there.
- Buy rights: You can purchase already written content through Constant-Content.com. Writers (including myself) write and post articles with a price tag. When you buy the article, you purchase certain rights, depending on the level you buy. Read the contract carefully. You can also find writers for hire through their site.
- Work with a company: Marketing agencies provide writers who can craft excellent blog copy. They also have on staff researchers, SEO experts and others who can help you get your content out there. They are probably the most expensive option among these four, but if you are working with an agency you like, why not ask about blogging services?
Some pundits claim that blogging is dead, but I don't believe that for an instant. A good blog, one that engages, entertains and informs, offers readers another venue to obtain useful information. If blogging is part of your marketing plan this year, try boosting your blog's quality through one of these resources.
What Is Quality Content?
What is quality content, and why is it important for your digital marketing efforts? Quality content is the key to attracting positive attention from search engines, and, more importantly, for attracting PEOPLE to your website. The people coming to your website are actual flesh and blood customers, people with a distinct set of wants, needs and desires. By producing quality content that speaks to the heart of their problems, and offers real, compelling solutions, you'll build attention, trust, and engagement with your audience.
But the first step is to bring them to your virtual doorstep, and that's where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
Google's Hummingbird Update and the Search for Quality Content
Google is the mighty king when it comes to search engine marketing. I think the last statistic I read on the topic indicated that Google maintains something like 80% of the search market, with Bing and Yahoo! coming up a distant second and third, and a handful of other search engines behind them. As Google goes, so goes the other search engines, so when I write or speak about search engine optimization, know that I am basing much of what I'm sharing on Google's trends.
Google's search engine algorithm was updated last year to focus more on "quality" content. What is quality? Quality means:
- Original content, not regurgitated or reproduced text from another source
- An original expression, idea or twist on a topic
- Content written by an expert
- Content shared on an authoritative platform
Search engines reward quality content by placing the URLs of these pages higher in the search engine results pages. We know that people tend to click on links higher in the results, and especially near the top of the first page. That's why companies strive for those coveted positions in the search engine results. The higher your page appears, the more potential site visitors you can attract, and the more people you attract, the more money you can make.
That's why people focus on SEO. Get it?
Originality or an Original Spin on a Topic?
I don't know if there really is anything original online anymore. I suppose there are pockets of information out there that still need to be shared, but if you want to know how to change the battery on a 2001 Buick LeSabre, knit Dr. Who's trademark scarf or clean the windows in your house with an organic cleanser, there's a blog, website, video or picture to show you how to do it.
Originality, then, must be something more. The search engine companies certainly know that there's a ton of content out there on the same or similar topics! I read somewhere that 2 million blog posts are published every 24-hours on the internet. Out of those 2 million posts, how many do you think are about Google's Hummingbird update and quality content? How many are about making the perfect chocolate cake, or planting snapdragon seeds, or any of the other myriad topics that have already been covered to death? Plenty. So then what is originality?
It is being yourself online. It is having a unique voice, style and method of presentation. No two people are alike, and no two expressions of the same thought are alike.
Authority and Credibility
Are you an authority on your topic?
Are you a credible voice on it?
I am authority on marketing. I have an advanced Masters degree, various certifications, and 20+ years of experience in the trenches, on both the agency and client side of the marketing desk. My writing tends to be credible on the subject because I write what I know.
I would be neither an authority nor a credible voice when writing about, say, astronomy. It's not that I don't like astronomy; I do. Every night when I walk my dog, I look up at the velvety night sky and try to identify constellations. I know Orion and Taurus, Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper and the Dragon, and that's about it.
If I tried to write about astronomy, it would quickly become evident that I do not know a lot about it. I could write credibly as a seeker of knowledge, as someone trying to learn astronomy. But I probably couldn't pull off ghost blogging for Carl Sagan or the Hayden Planetarium.
Niches Can Build Credibility
Content produced consistently about a particular niche area tends to build credibility. Why? Because it proves that you are serious about the topic. Finding and sticking to a niche can help you build credibility in a particular content area.
Are you locked into a niche once you build it? No, you can branch out, but be careful how you branch out. Branching out from a central niche must make sense to your readers. If it's too far out, you'll lose credibility.
Exploring the World of Quality Content
Quality continues to become more and more important to all who produce online content, whether that content is written, audio or video. To learn more about producing quality content, see:
- Blog Talk Radio - Podcast on Quality Content by Seven Oaks Consulting
- Google-Friendly Sites, Webmaster Tools
- Hubspot: Quality Content
Does Your Content Stand the Test of Time?
Standing in the entrance hallway of my home is a grandfather clock. But it's not just any grandfather clock. It has passed down through three generations of family on my father's side. My grandparents purchased it in Germany sometime around 1930, and had it shipped back to the United States. It is a beautiful old round-face clock with a walnut cabinet. It no longer chimes, but when it did, the mellow Westminster chimes sound doleful, a deep baritone singing the hours against the heartbeat of the tock-tock of the pendulum.
This clock has withstood the test of time. Its mechanical mechanism continues to mark the minutes and hours with only a minor resetting each week. Its classic design is pleasing, the dial easy to read, the carvings beautiful but not over-the-top.
I thought of the clock today as I was musing about whether or not the myriad of blog posts, articles and content generated every day will pass the test of time. A year from now, will anyone read my blog posts? Will anyone care about Google Hummingbird, or will we be onto the next Google update, the next latest and greatest thing?
Whenever you think about quality content, ask yourself whether it will pass the test of time. Quality content, like my grandfather clock, is timeless.
Reuse Existing Content
You can reuse existing content.
Creating killer content - shareable, sticky, viral, groovy stuff - takes time. And effort. Lots of effort. By the time you've finished brainstorming your wonderful blog idea, researching it, writing it, proofreading it, finding an image and publishing it, hours can whiz by. Yet the public's appetite for expertly written content is insatiable. So what's a content queen to do?
Use the mantra my Depression-era parents taught me: Reuse, Re-purpose, Recycle.
In other words: Mine your gems for a new diamond to share.
Reuse Existing Content
Content doesn't just mean the written word. It can mean info graphics, shareable images for Pinterest and other social media, a slideshow, a video or a podcast. What content do you have that was popular with your readers? Can you recreate the same concept in another media to share it?
Re-purposing an Idea
You don't need to reinvent the wheel every time you sit down to write. If you have a great idea and a lot of research on a topic, you can spin it into multiple articles, blog posts or pieces.
I've done a lot of research on honey bees and Colony Collapse disease, as well as on native plants for gardens. I've been able to write at least a dozen fresh, original articles based on that research by choosing a different slant or viewpoint on the topic each time.
What research do you have that you can re-purpose into a new idea? Perhaps research on choosing the best printer can be used to write articles about printer maintenance, saving money on ink and toner, and using recycled ink cartridges. Think about the ways in which you can reuse existing content.
Recycle
You can recycle your original content, but do so cautiously. Make sure that you own all the rights to the content you wish to recycle, and avoid recycling similar phrasing online (it can hurt your search engine optimization efforts). I've successfully recycled articles I retained the rights to be combining them into an eBook I share with my clients. I've also used blog posts to springboard into longer content pieces, recycling the original post but adding to it for a fresh, long form essay. You can do the same with original content.
Content Curation
Lastly, content curation offers a new way to share information with your readers when you want to add to their experience without creating your own content. Content curation means finding and sharing links to the original source material that enhances your brand or shares useful information with your readers. Don't upload anyone else's original content to your website, but instead share a link back to the source of the material. Content curation is popular on social media websites and blogs, but you can use it on a number of different platforms, too. Just be sure to read the entire piece (or watch/listen to the entire media) before sharing it. You must make sure that the entire piece is on topic and on brand, and won't reflect negatively on your company or on you if you share it.
Content Marketing Defined
Content marketing is the art and science of using original, creative, branded content - blog posts, writing, images, articles, stories, case studies and more - to acquire, retain and create loyal customers.
That's what we do here at Seven Oaks Consulting - content marketing, and all that goes with it, like SEO web page writing, website writing, copywriting, and teaching on this and related topics. But what the heck is it?
The Content Marketing Institute has a great definition here: What Is Content Marketing? (Come back here when you're done, okay?)
The Importance of Content Marketing
A recent survey reports that interest by digital marketing managers in content marketing is soaring. And do you know why? Because consumers are sick and tired of ads. They're tuning them out, scanning past them, ignoring and blocking them. Brafton, a fellow content marketing firm, claims that 75% of all consumers prefer informative articles to ads. I'd actually put that number higher. People want information, not advertising, in today's ad-saturated world.
People are hungry for facts. Information. And that's where content marketing comes in.
Content marketing:
- Helps brand your company as THE expert in your area, whether it's dog grooming or nuclear medicine.
- Informs, entertains and engages readers, which encourages them to stick around longer on your website.
- Gets SHARED virally on social media sites, thus increasing its reach.
- Sells as it tells an engaging story.
If you'd like to begin your content marketing strategy, schedule a free 30 minute telephone call with us today.