Content Marketing Today

  It’s been a very good year for content marketing. In fact, visitors searching our site for the phrase “content marketing” increased by 85% in 2009 over 2008.

Social media certainly loomed larger in the past 12 months but interest in content marketing strategy accounted for the majority of the most popular posts.

Here is the Cliff’s Notes bullet point version with more detail and links to the full articles following:

• How To Create the All-Important Elevator Speech For Your Presentations and for Your Content Marketing
• 5 Reasons an eBook Should be a Core Component of Your Content Marketing Strategy
• 5 Twitter Tips to Strengthen Your Content Marketing Strategy
• Want to Attract and Retain Great Customers? Become Their Online Content Concierge!
• Six Steps to a Successful Small Business Content Marketing Strategy
• 6 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool
• Why Being Visual Can Bring Beautiful Business Results
• 6 Reasons to Embrace Social Media Today
• Top 10 Lessons Small Businesses Can Takeaway from Smart Content Marketers
• 6 Secrets to Making Online Video Work for Small Business

A more detailed look at the top 10 with links to each complete article is just below.  Kick back and enjoy.

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Dean Piccirillo Makes a One-Person Blog-powered Website Look like a Major Corporate Presence Online

Building a solid business blog-powered website is challenging for all of us. But it’s even more difficult for anyone who lives in the financial services universe.

Because financial services professionals must adhere to strict compliance regulations, they must be very careful about what they say and how they say it.  Dean Piccirillo a principal in HBK Sorce Financial, LLC, manages to convey relevant and compelling information while maintaining essential compliance.

Even more impressive is the quality of his own site's design which manages to be simultaneously newsy and professional. To build DeanPiccirillo.com, Dean used a WordPress theme called Live Wire that can be significantly customized for the needs of an individual business.  Perhaps most impressive of all is the fact that Dean did almost all the work himself. Although this may be beyond the capabilities of many of us, it shows what a non-technical businessperson can achieve using the power of a tool like WordPress.

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Effective content marketing online drives LifeinBonitaSprings.com to number four on search rankings.

You might think that Realtor.com, Yahoo real estate, the Yellow Pages, either of the two local newspapers or all of the big area real estate companies would trample an individual realtor on Google. But, you’d be wrong.

In fact, when you search for "Bonita Springs real estate" in Google, you pull up a total of 557,000 results. But, standing at an impressive #4 is LifeinBonitaSprings.com. That's the blog powered website of Chris Griffith, a realtor with Downing Frye real estate. It's worth noting that, although Downing Frye is a successful, well-established local realtor, their company website doesn't show up until page 3 of the listings.

Although Chris gets a terrific ranking, does that translate into business for her? You bet it does.

Chris says that she currently gets more than 90% of all of her real estate business directly from the Internet. Just five years ago only half of her business came from the Web.

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You must be clear on what you do and how your customers will benefit

I became aware of the Metwell website as a result of a promotion they had sent me via Twitter. Their website is full of unintended ironies as they offer online marketing advice which the website appears to ignore.

It's also a good example of a website with a pretty good layout that is undercut by a lack of focus and a serious shortage of relevant and compelling content.

I found it hard to understand exactly what Metwell does or how they could help me after a quick--and then a more in depth--visit to their website The company seems to know content is important because their site attempts to provide a lot of content, at least on the surface. But they misunderstand the essence of content marketing by failing to make their content relevant and compelling to prospective buyers.

Here's what I find to be most problematic:

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How to go from clueless to compelling to transform prospects into buyers

In 2007, the mention of content marketing brought as many blank stares from small business owners as the mention of a website did 10 years before. In fact, in 1997 when we started our small business magazine in Southwest Florida, few owners had websites, let alone an online marketing strategy. In 2009, most small businesses do have websites and the term, ‘content marketing,' has gone from obscure to fashionable. When I say fashionable, I mean that the usage of the phrase has skyrocketed in the past two years. For example, the number of visitors to our website who arrived because they had done a search for 'content marketing,' has increased by a factor of 10. I'm delighted that content marketing has come out of the shadows and into the spotlight. Even so, for most small businesses, developing a content marketing mindset and a strategy to follow just does not come naturally. Fortunately, the fundamentals of a successful small business content marketing strategy are much more commonsensical than you might think.  In fact, they build on what have long been best marketing practices.  Even those content marketing elements that require a new mindset have a simple and compelling logic that even the smallest business can grasp and adopt.

Here are the six steps that can put you on the path to an effective content marketing strategy:

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Influence them with information well before they are ready to buy from you.

I have written before about the many differences between a traditional website and a blog.

Your website typically provides timeless information, while your blog provides timely information. Moreover, your blog becomes more important as you keep adding more and more content that is relevant to your prospective customers.

But a case study about a consulting company, De Novo Strategy, from Bernie Borges' new book, Marketing 2.0, suggested a new nuanced but critical reason for the power of a business blog.  It boils down to the fundamental difference between the purpose of your website and of your blog.

Your website must necessarily be designed so that when your customers are ready to research the purchase of products and services, they will find everything they need to know to make a positive buying decision on your site.

Your blog has the opportunity to reach those prospective customers earlier in the process. The best blogs provide a continuous stream of information about topics, issues, and problems that are specific to a well defined market niche. This would apply equally to content marketing or a segment of the banking industry.

As we begin an initial search for information in a particular niche, we probably have no intention of buying anything from anybody. At that moment in time, we simply want to become better informed in areas that matter to us, either professionally or personally. We are looking for information. We are not looking for a vendor.

A banking market website without a blog--loser. With a blog--winner.

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Content Marketing Pioneer, Tim Berry of Palo Alto Software Tells You How to Build Your Business Before He Charges You a Nickel

In 1994, I read the first edition of Tim Berry's wonderful book, Hurdle: The Book on Business Planning without realizing that it was a perfect example of content marketing. Of course, back then, nobody was calling what he did content marketing. Essentially, Tim's book gave away all of the information you needed to build your own successful business plan. This might seem odd since his real business then and now is selling software that automates the process of building business plans and marketing plans. Why would we want to buy his software after we've read his book? I believe there are two reasons: Read More

That's the key word from veteran SEO expert Heather Lloyd-Martin

SEO is not about creating a website sausage overstuffed with key words and phrases. It’s all about creating relevant and compelling content that transforms you into a thought leader who can become a trusted provider That is ultimately how you convert visitors into buyers

Of course, this is gospel for me and many content marketers. But, it is still poorly understood by many marketers and SEO practitioners who swear that cramming a ton of “search engine friendly” words and phrases deemed into every nook and cranny of your website will place you high on the results page.

So, I was both encouraged and inspired by Heather Lloyd-Martin's recent post. She has been helping clients get great search results for more than a decade. Since Heather does search engine optimization for a living, it's wonderful to hear her say that it's ultimately all about the content.

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Visitors to two new client websites are spending a lot of time learning about their teams on pages devoted to team members. Why? Because your visitors understand that they must count on your people to deliver solutions to their problems.

When I recently reviewed the Google analytics data from two recently launched websites, the amount of time visitors spent on pages devoted to their team members reinforced the value of showcasing each organization's team. Although, in both cases, a dozen or more pages got a solid level of traffic, their people pages ranked very close to the top.

Your customers want to know that you have the right people on the bus and that you truly value them.

When top corporate executives featured in Good to Great were asked to provide reasons for their success, they focused more than anything on their people. Author, Jim Collins, talked about the importance of getting the right people on the bus. Every leader understood that having the right team in place enabled them to manage almost any situation.  In effect, those leaders indicated that leadership was a heck of a lot easier if you had the right people to lead. 

Your customers know that, too. Sure, they will decide to do business with you in large part because of how you are positioned, on your ability to provide appropriate products and services that solve their problems, and on the competitiveness of your pricing. But, in the end, their trust in your team will take them from strong prospects to solid customers.

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The best small business solution is to eliminate a separate blog and website.

Unfortunately, typical small companies often misunderstand the power of a business blog--and cannot envision how it can and should be the driving force behind your online presence.  Your best bet is to leverage the power of blogging software to create an online presence which is, at once, timeless and timely.

Most of us began with a website that contains static content that was never intended to change much over time. Your static website will be an essential source of product, service, and company data to the majority of buyers that now relying on the Internet as their primary repository of information for potential purchases. Your static website is a vital beginning.  But, it's only a beginning. 

To compete for the attention of both search engines and buyers, you will need to add more and more dynamic content over time.  That's where a business blog comes into play.  If you already have a blog--or are considering one--you probably think of it as a completely separate entity with limited functionality.  That may be true for large organizations.  But, for a small business, your blog should be the engine behind a full fledged website that delivers much more clout than your old-fashioned static version.

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