Is Content Marketing a Trend?

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I start today’s post off with another question:  Is content marketing a trend?

My answer:  No.

“Content Marketing” is the latest marketing buzz word that is being thrown around amongst marketers, entrepreneurs and digital strategists.  According to Wikipedia, “Content marketing is any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers.”  In today’s digital landscape, this is being done through the use of infographics, white papers, social media, ebooks, blogs, etc.  Wikipedia goes on to say, “Content marketing is focused not on selling, but on simply communicating with customers and prospects.”

Because of the recent explosion of content across digital mediums and platforms; it may feel that content marketing is a trend or fad that has just cropped up.  However, I would argue that content marketing strategies have existed for a long time in traditional marketing mediums.  In print, companies have distributed helpful literature in the form of pamphlets, leaflets and guides.  The literature did not directly sell anything to the consumer, but was helpful information.  It also kept the company top of mind for that consumer when they needed the services offered by that company.  In media, we have seen public service announcements that provided helpful information to the public and were sponsored by enterprises.

Technology has helped to change the marketing landscape and a traditional marketing strategy has now made the leap into the digital age.  So no, content marketing is not a trend.  It has just been repurposed to work in an ever changing, fast moving, and digital world.

Content Marketing: Is Blogging Dead?

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I have seen the question come up of whether or not blogging is dead fairly often recently.  For many, blogging is a part of their content marketing strategy.  For most that are using content marketing as a strategy, blogging is the only method that they are employing.  Blogging has been around for a long time, but in my opinion, only started becoming “popular” and the “thing to do” within the last five years or so.

I believe that it has become the popular thing to do for many reasons:

• The successful careers that have been launched by popular bloggers like Perez Hilton, Bryan Boy and many others.

• The potential to earn passive income/revenue from ads on a blog.

• The SEO benefits that bring traffic and new potential clients/customers to a business.

• The relatively low cost and ease to implement and maintain a blog.

Add to this an increased desire for many to become entrepreneurs or the next big thing, and we have seen an explosion of blogs and bloggers.  Everyone has one.

So, do I think blogging is dead? No, I don’t.

While I feel that the blogosphere and internet are saturated with blogs, I feel that it has turned into a trend that will die.  Wait, didn’t you just say that blogging is not dead?  Yes, that is what I said and believe.  It is the trend itself that I believe will die.  When the next big marketing concept hits, everyone will clamor to jump on that trend and many blogs will be forgotten and will die.  What will remain, will be blogs that were never about just pushing out content for the sake of pushing out content.  What will remain and continue to thrive, will be blogs that were in it because they loved to produce whatever content they were producing, they were passionate about it and believed it was worth while to publish.

Landing Pages: The What & Why

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landing-pages

If you are an e-commerce business or you are a small business focusing on an online marketing strategy; you have probably heard the words “Landing Page.”  What are landing pages?  They are single web pages designed to get the visitor to commit a very specific action or to deliver a very specific set of information.  They are pages with a specific purpose that usually help to drive sales in some way.

The Why

The premise behind why these types of pages are needed, is to cut down the amount of noise and distractions a visitor to your site might face in order to get a specific message across.  For instance, if you owned an olive oil company and wanted to push sales for a new flavored olive oil, you might want to create a landing page for that specific purpose.  Yes, you could create internal sidebar advertisements or banner advertisements throughout your site that called attention to this new product, but it will not be as effective as combining this strategy with a landing page specifically for the new product.

If you are advertising online and in traditional media to drive traffic to your site to buy this new product, your visitor may become distracted once they reach your site.  Even if the direct link they followed brought them directly to the product page, they may become distracted by other suggestions, advertisements on your site, or just the design of the site and navigation buttons.  While they are touring your site, they may forget why they came there in the first place and leave without making a purchase at all.  This is where a landing page built specifically for the new product can come into play.

If instead, a landing page was design that focused only on that product and included great and high converting sales copy, you could potentially land that sale.  Instead of driving traffic to your home page, product page or general store area of your site, drive the traffic to the landing page.  Visitors that followed your direct link to the landing page, will be more satisfied because the content they are seeing is directly related to their reason for the visit.  Landing on your home page may put them in the general category, but it does not relate specifically to what they were looking for.  The more relevant their “landing” on a “page” is to what they want or are looking for, the higher the chance is of you making a sale.  Relevancy is key.

Characteristics of a Great Landing Page

High converting landing pages utilize minimal graphic elements, are “clean” in their design presentation, simplistic and present information in an easy to digest format.  A visitor should arrive on the page and know exactly what you want them to know and what you want them to do.  Going back to our olive oil company example, the new product’s landing page should tell them the what, and the why.  The why needs to also be relatable in terms of why they need the product to begin with.  An easy way to do this is to combine using the AIDA (attention, interest, details, action) concept with the visitor’s need to know “What’s in it for me? Why do I need this?”

Avoid adding to many “actions” that the visitor may become distracted by and try to perform.  For example, navigation links, social media links, newsletter sign-ups, ebook downloads, etc should not be included unless that is the focus of the landing page or is pertinent to the call to action (CTA) on the landing page.  Make sure that it is very clear what you want them to do and as much as possible, keep that particular action “above the fold.”  In design speak, anything a visitor sees when they land on a page without the need to scroll, is considered “above the fold.”  When a visitor has to scroll down to see the rest of the content, that information is considered below the fold.

When designing your landing page, assume that everyone has ADD or a short attention span.  In our go-go-go society, people often do not have the time, patience or attention span to read long, boring copy or wait for you to get to the point with your copy.  Think PowerPoint presentation and keep it short, relevant and use bullet points.  Use big buttons and CTA text that stands out and calls attention to the action that you would like for them to commit.

Including testimonials, user reviews, and social proof (tweets and status messages on social networks from others) are also great ways to help reinforce why the visitor needs to buy your product or commit the action you are trying to get them to commit.

By removing a lot of the noise and distractions a user might face on your main site; you have a better chance of getting higher conversion rates from your visitors. Streamlining things and putting a laser like focus on what you want them to do, keeps them more focused on that task than they would be if you directed them to a more generalized area of your site.

This is especially helpful and beneficial if you use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platforms like Google’s Adwords.  Link those ads directly to your landing page and you will see better results and conversions.

Social Media Day

Social Media Day is Sunday, June 30th

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Social Media Day

Social Media Day is being celebrated on Sunday, June 30, 2013 and there are a ton of events scheduled to happen on this day to celebrate social media.  Yours truly will be co-hosting a TweetChat with Janeen Geary Violante of Hudson Valley, a graphic design and web design firm.

We will be asking and answering questions on “Image Curation & Creation” and I have decided to put together an eGuide to show you how to use your mobile device to create visual content that you can share across your social media profiles.  Fill out the form below to receive your complimentary copy!

Why You Should Blog | Freelance Graphic Design Blog

Your Business Needs A Blog :: Part 2

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Why You Should Blog

Last week I talked about why your business needs a blog; and because I was fearful that if I made the post too long, you would get bored, I broke it into two parts.  This post will focus more on the increase in traffic aspect of why you need a blog.

How does a blog increase website traffic?

I mentioned last week, that if the content was informative and helpful to the reader, it could result in a purchase.  What I did not mention was that the content is the reason why the visitor landed on your blog post.  They searched for something on a search engine site like Google, and your blog post was one of the relevant search results that they clicked on.  With a little search engine optimization (SEO) help, your blog post may have been in the number one position on the search results page of their query.

Another reason why your blog post was where the visitor could see it in their search results, instead of being buried on page fifty-seven, is because you have been consistently blogging.  In the eyes of search engines, your website is considered relevant not just because that particular post was relevant to the visitor’s query, but because your site is “updated.”  Search engines take into account whether a website is being maintained or updated with fresh content.  Consistently blogging from your site adds new content, and new content is updated content in the eyes of search engines.  If you are not blogging, adding new products or updating the content on your website in any way, then search engines see your site as being stale.  Stale sites get buried on page fifty-seven.

Many businesses have a website designed, and because the information does not need to be changed very often, they only update them once or twice a year.   Normally this is only done to change the copyright year in the footer of the site or remove a staff member’s name that is no longer with the company.  Consider this scenario:  Company A sells pecans, has competitive prices and offers excellent customer service, but only updates their website once or twice a year.  Company B sells pecans that are priced above average and has a couple of complaints with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), but blogs weekly.  Customer C searches the internet to find pecans for sale and Company B shows up in Customer C’s search results on page one.  Company A is on page fifty-seven.  Although Company A is the better choice for buying pecans, Customer C will likely never find that out.

If you created a web site so that you could have a web presence, take it one step further and add a blog.  By doing so, you will increase your web presence and your earning potential.