Content Marketing Today

Solopreneur Firm Understands How to Engage, Educate, and Entertain

There are dozens of electrical firms in Southwest Florida. Many of them have lots of employees. But, one of those firms stands out on Facebook: Martin McMurtrie's Grace Electric with 601 Facebook friends.

Making Vivid Visual Points to Engage Facebook Fans

This photograph from his Facebook page shows the kind of scary electrical fixes customers often attempt , sometimes with disastrous results. It typifies the kind of engaging content he provides regularly and that has enabled him to accumulate those hundreds of Facebook friends.

By contrast, the only local competitors I could find on Facebook provided very little useful information and managed to accumulate fewer than 10 Facebook friends.

For example, one well-known national franchise with numerous Florida locations manages a Facebook page for its Southwest Florida franchisee. But, it has only 9 fans. And, the only content on its Wall is spam from a provider of Acai berry services. 

Grace Electric: Lots of Real Content from a Real Person

Martin proves that you don't need an MBA from Harvard to create an effective presence on Facebook. What comes through on the Grace Electric Facebook page is Martin's natural friendliness and sense of humor, as well as his obvious knowledge of his profession.

What Am I Marketing Chopped Liver?

If you are one of the millions of iTunes fans, you appreciate the brilliant work they do in aggregating music creatively.  But, they squander the opportunity to connect with me by focusing on what their database knows about the music I buy and that lives within my iTunes account.

Normally, I now just delete without reading, but this week’s eNewsletter was so off target I had to write about it.

iTunes Does It Right. But Their Marketing Does Me Wrong.

Not only does iTunes enable you to do infinite organizing of your music, the iTunes store takes it many steps further. The store includes pre-constructed sets of music from different eras, different artists or different styles in the iTunes store. With iTunes itself, I particularly love the ‘Genius Bar’ which enables you to create new playlists from your stored music or to discover new tunes that you’re likely to love based on a song that you have chosen from your own iTunes collection.

George Bowers Grocery Makes a  Fun 1 to 1 Connection That's Impossible for the Big Chain to Match

The right niche and the right approach enable a two-person company to outshine a retailing giant on Facebook. That's true of George Bowers Grocery in Staunton Virginia where owners Katie McCaskey and Brian Weidman have created a delightful grocery store that focuses on high-quality foods and other specialty products.

The couple knew they could not compete head-to-head with the local Kroger supermarket in their community. Instead they have captured the spirit of the original 19th-century owner as a provider of "staple goods & fancy groceries."

They offer wonderful local meats, cheeses, wines, and craft beers as well as a variety of specialty items. They target the diverse mix of neighborhood residents, local food enthusiasts, and culinary tourists each with their own distinctive interests and needs. The atmosphere of the store itself is an eclectic blend of the old-fashioned and the modern.

And, they have a lot of fun with their marketing, in person and online.

Learn What Not to Do from One Very Boring News Release

Press releases still pack a punch for marketers.

With content rich releases, smart marketers engage not only the press, but thousands of customers as well. But, ineffective press releases benefit neither a company nor its customers.

As with so many things, it's probably easier to explain what's important in a press release than it is to execute effectively. Fortunately, it's much more common sense than it is rocket science.

Effective press releases incorporate core content marketing concepts:

• Understand your customers' information needs
• Create content that responds precisely to those information needs
• Explain how you can solve their problems whether personal or professional
• Make that content immediately engaging with a strong, benefit-laden
  • headline
  • subhead
  • first paragraph
• Be certain that the lead-off content is all about the customer and not all about your company.
• When it's time to talk about your company, make sure your unique benefits shine through.

Much of this may seem obvious. But it's surprising how many marketing professionals seem to get it wrong. This makes for an awful lot of ineffective press releases that sit around mostly unread, cluttering the Internet.

Lessons to Learn from a Snooze-Inducing Press Release

The good news is that we can learn from both great press releases--those that are not quite so great. In the latter category, see if you can figure out what you might take away from the following, real-life news release headline:

BDD Corporation Plans to Utilize Twitter Research 

Unfortunately, this headline gives us almost no reason to continue reading further. And, it doesn't get much better as the press release proceeds.

Pair of Seattle Personal Injury Law Firms Prove the Content Marketing Point

Marketing on the web is just like the old saw from the real estate world: "It's all about location, location location."

On the web, there are two important meanings when it comes to the word "location."  They both relate to the importance of marketing focus.

First and foremost, a fabulous location is being at the top of Google search results. There is only one way to make that happen--by creating a niche for your business that precisely targets the information needs of your best customers.

Enter the second meaning of "location." Physical location is still important in strengthening your niche. Why? Because, by emphasizing your location, your site is much more likely to do well versus national or global competitors. This can give you a significant competitive advantage.

When you get both of these location elements just right, your website pops to the top. That's the benefit of relentless focus.

This fact rears its marketing head in the world of law firms--and especially in the realm of personal injury attorneys.

Five top takeaways from "Killer Web Content" by Gerry McGovern

Your business attracts potential customers online who are pursuing tasks that are truly important to them. When they arrive at your site, they want to find what they need as quickly as possible so they can complete the set of tasks that they have in mind.

According to content strategy guru, Gerry McGovern, your site will succeed or fail based on its ability to let your prospects complete their tasks quickly and completely. In his classic book, Killer Web Content, he offers a clear roadmap to delivering exactly what your customers need in the way that they need it.

If you haven't read his book, order it immediately. It's that good. He models his content commandments. He doesn't waste your time and manages to deliver the goods concisely, compellingly and completely.

There's plenty to take away from his masterful book but, until your copy arrives, here are five that I found most valuable for content marketers.

External links to your site from high quality, relevant websites are one of the best ways to generate great search results.

Why? Because, from Google’s perspective, your site ranks better if lots of your well-respected peers consider your site worth linking to. It's like being friends with all the cool kids in high school. That makes you popular, too.

Unfortunately, the importance of generating quality links to your site opens the door to nefarious SEO practitioners who send out mass, evidently automated comments to a range of sites that have nothing to do with your company or your online presence.

A perfect example arrived in my e-mail this morning as a link to my article, "Six Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool."

The SEO spammer left this absurd and ungrammatical comment:

"I've implies looked at it by way of that point of view and happen to be enlightened.  I will have to obtain some extra information and report it back again. Thank you."

I don’t know about you, but that sure doesn’t motivate me to connect with the ‘commenter.’

How to Avoid Falling for This Kind of Black Hat SEO Spam Link Building Technique

Simply Combine the Two Online Personalities to Get a Very Happy Ending

The frightening story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde wove the tale of a saintly doctor whose alter ego was an evil murderer. Sadly, there was no happy ending.

In a parallel but more modern context, I found a company that suffers from a similarly split online personality.

If you first meet the good half—the blog, you will want to spend more time getting to know them. But, if you first meet the bad half—the website, you're likely to head off as fast as you can.

The company in question has a website with very little content. At the same time, it has an excellent but completely separate blog, that lives, like Dr. Jekyll, under a different name.

By integrating the two separate content components, this company could deliver compelling content that immediately engaged visitors. The result: a happy ending.

If You Don’t, You’ll Be Just Another Generic Acme Corporation Whose Content Marketing is Doomed to Fail

Mission and vision statements may be important to your company internally.  They may even deserve a place on your website once your visitor begins to drill down to learn more about your company.  But they don’t belong on your homepage.

Why? Because they are all about you. They rarely have anything to do with your customer.  To capture your visitors’ attention, you must make your homepage content all about them from the first instant. 

Here’s an actual example of content marketing getting clobbered by the prominence of company-centric clichés.

Really Bad Real-world Mission/Vision Statements Scuttle Home Page of ‘Acme’

The following example makes the case better than I can. I swear that I didn’t invent these two paragraphs.  Nor did I use the automatic mission statement generator from NetInsight. Read these and weep. (I owe the company pseudonym to the always victorious Roadrunner who outwits any Acme products.)

The brand-new and very revealing study from Junta 42 and Marketing Profs reinforces the growing dominance of content marketing in the business-to-business arena. 

Not only are the vast majority of business-to-business marketers employing content marketing but most will also be increasing the amount they spend.

Here are some highlights to give you a flavor of why you need to get a copy of this free study:

• 90% of respondents are using content marketing in 2010
• Content marketing is 26% of the total marketing budget
• 51% will increase content marketing budget in next 12 months
• Average annual content marketing spend: $379,600
• Small companies spend more of their budget on content than large companies
• Most companies combined in sourcing and outsourcing
• Social media ranks right at the top of tactics

The three following charts illustrate vital content marketing and social media trends within the B2B market segment: