On Wednesday night,  I was at the Web Marketing Wednesdays Meetup in Ottawa, a pretty cool event for the professional online marketer. The meetup is organized by the Ottawa Web Marketing Meetup Group - Jackson Lo of Cardinal Path, Tyler Gibbs Director of Operations at Cardinal Path, and Ben Myers . They want to be able to bring together the Ottawa online marketing community and share information "...on better ways to work with online traffic generation to monetize business for your clients or your company."

Each month, they have a guest speaker and the other night it was Jen Butson, Marketing Director at Select Start Studios. She spoke about how they were revising their marketing strategy and discussed the raison d'etre behind it. 

For those who love to travel, looking for the best deal can be extremely frustrating with all the travel operators, airlines and hotels on the internet. With the prevalence of group deals and hundreds of tour operators, there is stiff competition to  grab the consumers' attention. With sites like TravelAlerts, consumers can comparison shop and look for the best rates and cheapest deals in one location. 

TravelAlerts.ca is what you call a travel affiliate site, where they aggregate the deals by their travel partners and deliver it by email or listing it on their site. Although they are riding on the coattails of the Daily Deals and group buying sites, their business model does not revolve around group buying. 

Trends in the travel industry

Travel has always been an extremely competitive; however, TravelAlerts have largely succeeded because of their focus on Canadian travel deals. Now that the Canadian daily deals space is getting crowded, they need to build a stronger brand and adjust their lead generation strategy to take advantage of new consumer trends in the travel industry.
Some trends that are being seen are: 

• Consumers do not respond to highly discounted deals anymore. They are looking for great value. 
  
• Travel is becoming more social. 
  
• Mobile technology is becoming more prevalent, with tourists looking for local reviews and apps to search for great places to visit or eat. 
  
• Social media is hugely prevalent in helping tourists make decisions to where they should go and visit. 
  

Due to the high cost of PPC advertising for travel, it makes sense to focus on SEO and content marketing as a way to build value and their brand at the same time.  One of the best tactics to do that is to create frequent content in the form of an online magazine.  This not only grabs the attention of search engines but also engages prospects...

Here are some more reasons why creating an online magazine can help TravelAlerts: 

• Cost of reaching multiple audiences is low - they can expand their reach through multiple niches topics with great content. Google has improved their search algorithm resulting in niche sites being given more visibility. 
  
• Building credibility - By creating valuable travel content that helps readers have a better vacation is something that people will come back to over and over. This helps build TravelAlert's brand and credibility.
  
• Prospects are more receptive to marketing messages - In creating an online magazine, you have many opportunities to build a member database, from online contests, promotions, surveys and even email newsletter. The variety of interactions increases and so does their revenue opportunities. 
  

Creating a magazine isn't just about making a new website and posting content on a regular basis. You have to do your planning and understand that it meets the needs of your readers while achieving your marketing goals. Here is a list of things you need to do in order to set up a magazine. 
 
1. Do your research
 
Research your competition and potential topics on what you will write about. Understand your readers and get answers to these questions: 

• What would potential readers look for? Develop an audience persona so you know who you're targeting. 
  
• What are they having problems with that you can solve through the magazine?
  
• What are the most commonly searched keywords or keyphrases that are related to travel? Are you able to create content revolving around them? 

Once you have enough research information, you can use the data for your content plan. 
 
2. Create a content plan 

Like a business plan, a content plan allows you to focus your content towards achieving your marketing goals. Your content plan components will include: 

• Content Format - Understand the format your content will be in - i.e. videos, articles, pictures etc. 
  
• Content Type and Distribution - Decide the primary platform you will post your content on - social media, video channel, website, podcast etc..
  
• Content Acquisition - Know where you will source your content. Who will be producing it, and what kind of tone do you want it at.  This means knowing what type of content you want to post on your site, such as news, deep features, interviews or videos.  
  
• Content Scheduling - Create an editorial calendar and list how frequently will you be posting with the topics you want to post.  Once you have an understanding of the type of content you want, list how often you want to post each type of content. For example, news could be more frequent than a feature, and you could have an interview at least once/month. 
  
• Reader Engagement Metrics - Understand what will define the success of your magazine. Is it traffic, number of leads converted, number of comments left, or the number of shares through the social media icons per article. Whatever, it is, make sure the that you have the means to track your success. All engagements between the reader and your magazine should lead the reader forward to either purchase now or purchase later. 
  

Although print magazines may be dying, the online versions are not...By creating one, not only will you be able to achieve your  marketing goals from:

• Lead generation
  
• Brand awareness and reader engagement
  
• Lead nurturing
  

Creating an online magazine is more than just producing a few articles and posting it. You need to that the content you create is focused and relevant for the specific audience you want to attract. Like a marketing campaign, content is used for a purpose, to either get sales or make your prospect perform an action that you can convert to a sale in the future. 

Doing anything else is a waste of time.

A lot of people argue that of the goals of an online content marketing strategy is to support your link building efforts.  However, content marketing should be more than just a way to get link juice for SEO purposes. You should consider it as a way to build your brand - increasing your reach within your target market.  Here is why guest posting should be a part of your online content strategy. 

1. You get more brand exposure

If you have a popular blog, you know the speed in which buzz can be created from publishing a great post - controversial or not. When you write as a guest blogger on another site (or even have someone write on your site), not only do those readers get an unique point of view, they have access to new expertise that they couldn't have found themselves. 

Readers always look for fresh information and once they realize that they get great content, it's more likely that they will share the blog to others. By writing on other blogs as a guest poster, you are taking advantage of expanding your network and brand exposure by showcasing your expertise. You will have access to new readers and by engaging them, they will perhaps become your fans.    

2. Improving your website's SEO 

It doesn't matter if you guest post on another blog, or have someone post on yours, guest posting is not only a way to get more varied and interesting content but also helps with your own site's SEO. By posting on popular blogs, you get the opportunity to get your name on authority blogs, whose backlinks will provide you with some great link juice from search engines. Additionally, when readers find content that is interesting and informative, they tend to share it with others.  With traffic from guest postings, plus shares amongst readers,  you will receive targeted organic traffic.  Many SEO experts mention that receiving a high authority backlink from a guest post carry more weight from Google than the thousands of links received from article marketing or directory submissions. 

Remember that writing for your own blog is quite different from writing guest posts for others. You must not only be aware of the writing style of the blog but also make sure that your topic is related to readers' interests.  Take the time to write a great guest post as this will be your calling card to increasing your own blog's visibility. 

The CONFAB 2012 conference is one of the leading events focused on content strategy. It's purpose is to create a forum "...to drive the content strategy conversation forward.."  Marketers have come to realize that it's not web design or technology only that drives success - it's fresh and original content. This conference brings in people who are in UX, online marketing, search who share ideas and techniques that help drive user interaction and conversions. 

Take a look at the list of attendee recaps for the last CONFAB conference: http://confab2011.com/blog/permalink/confab_is_over_but_the_ideas_live_on 

Some of our favorite recaps are here: 
The 4 Truths on Content Strategy
The Skinny on Groupon's Content Strategy by Joe Pulizzi
Content Rules

We always get asked by our clients as to how often they should post content on their blogs... Our answer is that you should post frequently and consistently. Here is a great article with great data to back us up...  What is the best blog frequency...

How not to make your press release boring..

A well written press release attracts the attention of not only the press, but your customers as well. An ineffective press releases benefits neither your company nor your prospects, but fortunately, it is easy to create a press release than the complemuch more common sense than it is rocket science.

Although you may have heard of the upside down pyramid method of creating an effective press release, there are other concepts that you should be aware of: 

• Understand what your prospect wants/needs from you
  
• Create content that responds precisely to their needs
  
• Explain how you can solve their problems through the information you provide in the release
  
• Make sure your headline has strong benefits and is engaging
  
• Create the sub-headline just as strong  
  
• Be certain that in your first paragraph, it is all about the customer and not about you.
  
• Talk about your company in the following paragraphs but make it so that your company's unique benefits come across.

Due to the brief nature of press release, it’s not surprising how many marketing professionals seem to get it wrong as they don't put a high importance to the process. 

When it comes to creating content for your website, there are a lot of myths out there. If you ask online marketers, webmasters, and bloggers about their opinions on creating content, you’ll receive so many different answers it'll be hard to separate fact from fiction. We'd like to set the story straight. In no particular order, here are six misconceptions on creating online content so you can avoid making mistakes that may kill your website...

Writing for SEO doesn't mean that you must sacrifice on quality. 
Why would you want to drive users to your site, only to push them away with poor content? It is wasted effort and becomes expensive for the long term. 

Using a plagiarism detection service or rewriting an article makes it unique.
Putting an article through a plagiarism software only checks to see if it's a duplicate article. It doesn't mean that the article is unique and can't be found elsewhere. If your article is considered to be a duplicate, even when it's rewritten and passes Copyscape you could still be penalized by the Big G. 

Article marketing works, sometimes.
When Google changed it's algorithm to include the Panda update, it dramatically affected spam article directories such as EzineArticles.com, ehow.com and others. Don't worry, it doesn’t mean that article marketing no longer works, it's that you'll have to make sure that your articles meet stricter quality standards. Poorly spun and private label rights articles won’t do well. However, original, well-written, and informative articles helps, especially when other websites link back to it for their readers. Be careful when posting junk because it will affect your website's brand..

Keyword density is king.
While keywords are important, stuffing your article with a particular keyword is frowned upon by Google. The best way to get great organic search rankings is by:

• using the keyword phrases strategically, including variations of the keyword,
  
• creating anchor text,
  
• considering basic SEO tactics such as headlines, bolding etc.,
  
• and encouraging incoming links. 
  

Work ends once the content is uploaded. 
Once your content is uploaded, your work does not stop there! Not only must you continue to add fresh, original content to your site on a frequent basis, you must also start promoting it. This will keep the search engines and, most importantly, your users coming back.

Web content writing is the same as writing for print.
Writing for the web requires a different skillset than writing a print publication. Not only must you be aware of who you're writing for, you should also have knowledge of SEO, article structure and readability.  You have to remember that readers do not read online, they scan material quickly following a triangular path on a web page. 

Creating online content isn’t easy and as an online marketer,  you must be aware of how these misconceptions can cause more damage than good.

Creating content on a regular basis can be challenging, especially when, you as a marketing director have other deadlines and responsibilities. In another post, we've discussed how you should create a content plan  as a way to organize and generate content. We've provided a few tips to generate content ideas if you're struggling for blog topics.

Another great way to add to your portfolio of blog topics are interviews... Here is why:

1. Connecting with the experts: By interviewing experts, you are networking with the best in your industry. You get to pick their minds and provide your readers with interesting content.
2. More content for your blog: This is a great way to create content quicker than writing one.
   
3. Being associated with top industry players: By interviewing the top experts in your industry, your website would be considered a trove of information for your readers.
   
4. Search engines love it: Simply put - search engines love original content. 

Planning the interview

Understand that there is a purpose to your content. Know that your readers are here to learn more about solutions to their problems through your blog. Ask yourself:

• How can your interview provide value to your readers?
  
• How you can offer a unique perspective and a takeaway.
• Is there a niche subject that your expert can speak about?

Your answers would help you find the right expert and focus your interview questions...

Doing the interview

Make sure that you are prepared before the interview. Do your research on your subject, it's always good to over-prepare. Read their articles, blogs and anything that they have published. The more you know about them, the easier it is to ask insightful questions. Write out the questions ahead of time, and leave enough leeway for side topics during the interview. Prior to the call, prepare the interviewee on who the audience is so that he is aware on how to present the message the right way.

The success of  your interview would depend on the technology you're using. If you're doing an audio interview over the phone, a great tool to use is Skype. With Skype you can not only call your interviewee but also have the option to record the audio. You can then transcribe it afterwards into text for your blog...

Let us know who you want us to interview...

We would like to provide you with the best information possible in regards to content marketing or online marketing. Let us know who you would like us to interview in the comments and we'll do our best get their expertise.

Let's analyze an existing website to determine the how effective a landing page can be. Athlean-X is a fitness brand started by Jeff Cavaliere, a former Men's Health writer. He promotes his own fitness program - guaranteeing results for his clients in achieving their fitness goals. At a cost of $67 per 3 month program, which includes:

• 90 day fitness program at the gym
  
• 90 day program for home workouts
  
• an exercise guide
  
• 90 day meal plan with recipes
  
• home gym blueprint, which provides instructions on how to build your own gym at home
  
• a 1 hour mp3 audio interview with Jeff Cavaliere on his nutrition strategies
  

His landing page was created to get his target audience to convert from multiple traffic sources. A large part of his traffic comes from social media such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. His YouTube channel has the most views and drives most of his traffic to his website. 

Any landing page should provide relevant, focused, and detailed information about a specific product or service. It is most effective if this can be included on a single page - this information should be visible above the fold. According to various web optimization agencies this can increase conversion by 55 percent.

Planning the landing page

The first step in developing a landing page would be to consider the end goal. Ask yourself: 

• What are you hoping visitors will do when they get there?
  
• Is your goal to sell a product, help visitors learn more about a service?
  
• Do you want them to provide you feedback? 
  

You have to remember that once a browser lands on your page you have to get them to perform an action you want. By understanding what your goals are, you can create the right landing page. An effective landing page helps convert visitors by providing them with information that answers all their questions and quells their fears. Remember, they may not know your brand, and they want to trust that their problems will be solved through your product or service...  What you would want to do is provide them all the information that they need without having to go anywhere else for answers.....

The 6 Components of a great landing page

There are 6 components that each page must have to increase conversion rates: 

1. Headline
   
2. Offer
   
3. Lead
   
4. Benefits
   
5. Images
   
6. Brand/Design
   

1. Headline - The headline is the first line that visitors will read, it offers the biggest opportunity (about 80% of the opportunity) for improvements in conversion rate. Use headlines that clearly state the biggest benefits that your product offers - mentioning exactly what they can get on the landing page. 

In the screenshot above,  Jeff has listed 3 clear benefits on the headline. His headline is placed beside the video providing a constant reminder to the benefits of his program. What Jeff has done is create an introductory video on the top right which plays automatically as soon as the page loads. In it, he describes his program and has client testimonials about his product. The browser has no choice but to listen and watch. 

2. Offer - Your offer is the "call to action" that asks your visitors to act (purchase, sign up, opt-in). Jeff's first call to action in this case is the "Add to Cart" that he has placed below the lead section in the white box. 

Remember to place your offer right after each lead as your browser may be convinced enough to buy immediately. Make it easy for them.  

3. Lead - The “lead”  is one of the best  opportunities for capturing the attention of your prospect and helps in increasing your conversion rate. Jeff's video lead tantalizes the prospect to learn more about his program and scroll down towards the supposed training secrets of professional athletes and how his readers can achieve results through his program. However, he has inserted a lead paragraph that includes strong benefits that capture his visitor’s attention and make them want to continue reading on. 

4. Benefits - By listing the benefits of your service or product in bullet points is another way to encourage conversions. As many people want to look like professional athletes, Jeff has listed the benefits that cater to his audience's need to train and perform like pro athletes. His readers want to know what secrets pro athletes have that they can emulate and achieve the same results. With that in mind, he has listed his benefits in the order of his service's "value hierarchy" to his target market. In other words, state your product’s strongest benefit first, and its weakest benefit last.
 
5. Images - As Athlean-X's product niche is related to fitness, images play a key role here. Jeff has designed his site to be very visual, presenting before and after pictures, including using videos and showcasing the bodies of his successful clients. This supports his credibility and having a big impact on his conversion rates.

The best practice is to use images that clearly portray the biggest benefit your product or service offers your customer (in this case the ripped bodies of successful clients - rather than generic imagery like unknown logos and clip art). Studies show that product images usually work best when placed to the left of your product description (or lead paragraph) since it makes it easier to read your copy from left to right. Also, do not forget to put captions under your images. So, add powerful captions and make your images click-able to the order/sign up page if needed.
 
6. Testimonials - According to a recent study by Stanford University, 46% of online sales are lost when websites do not have the critical elements that build value and credibility with visitors. A major reason browsers indicated why they wouldn't buy from a website was because it lacked credibility. Having a great design and third party credibility (such as VeriSign and BBBOnline certifications) will help convert more of your website's prospects into new customers.

Athlean-X's website has been designed to lead the online visitor to convert. The key features and benefits are easily listed, while allowing the prospect to go over the client testimonials.  By placing the emphasis on visual statements and videos,  Jeff includes his client testimonials in his story providing a powerful one-two punch to help convert prospects.

According to wikipedia, a landing page is built to convert leads from an email, social media, ppc or search campaign. They are an important tool in any online marketing campaign and are effective in converting browsers into clients. The landing page contains detailed information about the specific product or service that is mentioned, especially benefits and features. It should be considered part of the marketing campaign and shouldn’t just be another page on your website.  

Using landing pages can significantly impact your conversion rate. A survey by MarketingSherpa  asked marketers the effectiveness of dedicated landing pages. 43% of marketers found it extremely effective with 49% finding it somewhat effective. 

Another survey by Atlas Onepoint, found that the average conversion rate when companies used their homepage as the destination for an advertisement or link was only 6 percent. However, companies that used targeted landing pages had almost double the conversion rate, with 12 percent of their visitors converting.  

The following chart on the right indicates the effectiveness of a landing page by website objective. Almost across the board,  it has been found that landing pages are valuable for all types of actions, including ecommerce purchases.  

So, if you want a solid argument to create a dedicated landing page to convert your browsers, look no further than these stats. 

At the least, you should optimize your core service pages on your website to target and convert browsers - either for lead generation or transactional opportunities. 

You have been staring at your computer screen for hours, stumped. 

As a small business owner, you have to deal with unpaid invoices, inventory checks, vendor issues and on top of that, you have to promote your business and build relationships with your clients. So that's why you blog. 

But why is it so hard?! 

As an expert in your field you should know what topics are important for your clients...what their pain points are. But in the last hour or so, all you're doing is staring at a blank, white screen of your microsoft word document. 

Makes you want to throw that laptop through the window....Just take comfort that you're not the only one with this problem....

Learning to be chatty...

No, it's not from relaying the neighborhood gossip online... although it can help. 

It's by planning your editorial strategy and calendar weeks in advance. As real estate agents say, it's all about the location. Likewise, for content marketers  it's about planning, planning, planning. Here are the steps that you must take to never run out of things to write about: 

• Research your customers and your competition
• Know your sources
  
• Create an editorial calendar
  

Start with the research

But don't just start listing random topics that come to your head...You wouldn't create a sales or marketing plan without doing some market research. So why would you do the same for a content plan?  Use the research to know:

• your customer pain points, 
  
• which sites do your readers goto for information,
  
• compile a keyword / or keyphrase list that your clients type into search engines to find answers to their problems and keep it updated (more on this later).
• research your competition - what topics are they writing about, is it popular? Are too many people writing about it?

Use Google trends and IceRocket to determine the popularity of certain blog topics, keywords and if they repeat over time. Armed with this information you will be able to know what interests your readers, how they get their information and what they are doing to solve their problems. Are there competitor sites that are not focusing on a particular topic? Learning about your competitors determines whether a particular topic would get lost in the noise or would get some visibility. 

Research your competition and readers. 

As you can see, an important part of the editorial process is research. And a large part of the research is the information/search habits of your readers. If you are an experienced online marketer, you already know what tools you would use to compile a list of search terms that your readers use to find solutions to their problems. 

There are hundreds of tools out there but the simplest one is the Google keywords tool which will allow you to determine the keywords used by a particular site. So, if you want to quickly find out some of the keywords that your competitors are using, simply type in their domain and you would get a list of their keywords and phrases. Use these keywords to use as a foundation for your blog posts. 

Know your sources

You need to find an issue that hasn’t been beaten to death already by competitors or experts. If there’s only really one main issue at stake, give it a novel spin; zoom in on a detail; zoom out to put it in context – anything to keep things fresh and make people want to know more about. Spend the time to create a source list that will allow you to keep track of breaking topics:

• Use Google Alerts: Get alert emails on key terms to find out who’s talking about what out there on the web. Using the keywords/keyphrase list that you have created earlier, run a few google alerts (blogs, news, websites) and see what comes up on a daily and weekly basis.
  
• Use Twitter Search tools: Twilert, Trendistic, Twitter Search and search features built into Twitter tools like TweetDeck let you find out what’s tweeting.
  
• Follow the top bloggers and news feeds: They know what’s happening in the industry. Interview the best experts and post them on your site.
  
• Check out the competition: Not to copy them but to better position your content.
  
• Commenting: See which of your blog posts get the most comments.
  
• Use association websites: Take a look at various industry association conferences and see what topics the experts touch on.
  
• Interview your customers: Ask your customers for stories and how they solved their problems using your service. Better yet, interview your customers' customers. 
  
• Create an online survey: Use the data from surveys to create whitepapers and posts..

Creating the editorial calendar

The editorial calendar is a great way for you to beat writers block.  There are other benefits to creating an editorial calendar such as:

• Increasing post quality
  
• Time efficiency in posting research
  
• Developing your content properly
  

Andy Wibbels has provided  an editorial calendar template that can help you keep track of your daily topics. Having a written plan also allows you to recognize and find potential topics whenever you come across interesting news and feel that you can add to it. 



 

One topic that comes up regularly to our attention for our small business clients is creating a long term content strategy that will consistently deliver results. Now this can be a very daunting task as not only do they have to do their market research, but also create and execute the strategy. With all the other hats that they wear in running their business, you can understand how challenging it can be! 

Content marketing allows you to build relationships with your clients and get them to perform an action that will lead to revenue. As a marketer, you must be able to define the kinds of content that will appeal to your customers during different times of the purchase cycle. Each step must encourage the user to perform an action - either clicking on a link,  provide some information or purchase something. 

Here are the rules you must be aware of when creating a content strategy plan for your company.... 

   
Know your users - what are their pain points?

When determining what type of content you need to create, you must do your market research. Know your users. Understand what their pain points are, then revolve your content around those issues. Understand what keywords they use to find solutions to their problems. Use this information to create a keyword list that you can constantly reference to when you do your blog posts or creating case studies.  

Know who you are - what is your USP?

Not only should you know who your customers are - you should also know your company. What makes your service or product unique? How do you solve your users' problems? Your Unique Selling Point (USP) is what you have to offer that no one else does. Understand your key benefits and the be able to communicate that with examples to your customers. 
  

Keep it fresh 

The more frequent and up-to-date your content is, the more the major search engines will love you. Not only that, this will give your users a reason to keep coming back and bookmark you or sign up for the RSS feed. Create a plan to consistently produce content on a bi-weekly basis at the minimum. Make sure that the content is relevant, current and useful.  

Be where your clients are 

In other words - make sure your content is on all the relevant platforms that your customers are on. Imagine as if you are a spider sitting on the center of your web. Each strand of the web is a content channel driving the user back to you, be it a facebook page, twitter, video, email, direct mail or a blog post. Each content channel will allow you to approach the user in a different way and with a different incentive.... Some may be receptive to a contest, while others want more information such as an ebook... The bottom line: Content is only useful when your clients see it.

Know your metrics

The most important part of content planning - understand if you're getting results. Don't just look at basic analytics such as how much traffic are coming in from organic search or your SERP. Take a look at metrics such as: 

• the number of comments left on your page or blog for each post
• what search terms are driving traffic
• bounce rate 
• conversion rate
• funnel visualization - fancy way of saying where do users bail out in the registration process
• referring sites (twitter/facebook/other blogs/search engines)
• top exit pages/entrance pages

For more detail into other metrics, take a look at the Content Marketing Institute's post on content metrics. 

The end result of content marketing is to create a conversation between you and your customer. User engagement is what creates results - your customers will remember who you are and what you do if they feel they need to perform an action on your website. 

Content marketing is extremely effective in building relationships with your clients and promoting your business. However, if you do not plan your content strategy, your attempts at building relationships with your clients will fail as your actions are not coordinated and are not targeted.