Content marketing is the creation of valuable content that has a marketing purpose. For example, Preation creates an awesome special report, and we exchange it for your email address and your permission to educate you further about our stuff. Examples are blogs, white papers, and viral video.
Copywriting is designed to get the reader to take a specific action. Sometimes that’s making a purchase, but it can also be confirming an email opt-in, calling for more information, or going into a store to check out the merchandise. Examples are sales pages, infomercials, and direct mail.
Content without copywriting is a waste of good content.
There are some blogs out there with seriously good content, and few readers. (Maybe yours is one of them.)
If you’re writing great stuff that people would love to read, but you’re not finding the traffic you want, the problem probably lies in ineffective copywriting.
Your headlines are boring and they don’t give people any reason to click through.
Or your headlines might be too cute and clever, showing how smart you are without communicating any reader benefit. Either way, if you’re not putting much thought into your content headlines today, you need to fix that before you try anything else.
You haven’t explicitly thought about how your content benefits readers. Just like a product has to have a benefit to the buyer, your content has to be inherently rewarding to readers, or they won’t come back. Here’s an article that talks about how to do that.
Your content isn’t building any rapport or trust. You can always get social media attention by being a brat, a pest, or a train wreck, but attention doesn’t translate into subscribers or customers.
You haven’t leveraged any social proof to show readers that your blog is a cool place to hang out. This is tricky when you don’t have lots of readers yet, but we have a few tips for you.
You don’t have a clear, specific call to action that lets people know what you want them to do next. (That might be to subscribe to your blog, sign up for your email newsletter, or share your content on social sites like twitter and Facebook.)
Remember, copywriting is the art of convincing your reader to take a specific action. (And yes, it’s still copywriting if it takes place in a podcast or video … if you’re doing it well).
The thoughtful use of copywriting techniques on your blog will get readers to subscribe to your content, opt in for more from your email newsletter, and share your great stuff with other readers. That’s how you build a large, loyal audience.
Copywriting without content is a waste of good copy.
So is copywriting everything? Will effective use of copywriting technique propel you automatically into the ranks of the world’s most popular blogs?
Sadly, no.
If you do a brilliant job packaging and marketing crap, all you do is efficiently get the word out about how bad your crap is. Not the result you’re looking for.
Smart marketers still need to keep these cornerstones of great content marketing in mind:
Generosity is sexy. When your free content is so valuable that it makes you a little uncomfortable, you know you’ve got the mix right.
Only ad men like advertising. If your content looks like an ad, it will be overlooked or thrown away. Make your “advertising” too valuable to throw away by wrapping it in wonderfully beneficial, readable content.
Content marketing makes for great SEO, but don’t make the mistake of writing for the search engines. Always write for people first, then go back and make your content search-engine friendly so new readers can find you.
How about you? How are you using content and copywriting on your site to build more traffic, and to convert that traffic into fans and customers?
Today we’re highlighting a great resource for entrepreneurs here in our home state of North Carolina. If you’re starting a tech startup and you’re based in North Carolina then you should take a look at the NC IDEA grant programs. Together with their sister company IDEA Fund Partners, they provide much of the early stage cash funding that goes on in our state. And it’s not all about the cash, they provide mentoring and a rigorous application process that will require you think through your new idea to depths that you probably hadn’t before.
But, when you’re a new startup, a few extra bucks to build the right product the first time can go a long way and can increase your chance at success. NC IDEA’s charter is to produce more jobs in North Carolina. So if you’re going to be doing a lot of hiring as you grow, you’ll be able to quickly return the favor as you hire smart North Carolinians to fill those empty desks. A handful of great local companies have received NC IDEA technology grants including StatSheet and Argyle Social. And guess what, they’re hiring!
And to make it even more convenient, NC IDEA is actually right down the hall from the Eden Platform office in the American Underground in downtown Durham. So, come see us some time, and while you’re here you can head down the hall and meet the great folks at NC IDEA and take your new company to the next level.
Did you know that you can instantly send an email back to any person who submits one of your Eden forms?
It’s really easy. First, you need to make sure that you’ve added a text field to your form that collects email addresses and added a merge label such as “email” to the text field. Then, you’ll create a new Email handler by clicking the “+Add Handler” blue button and then clicking the green “+” button.
Add the merge label into the “target email address” field. This will ensure that an email is sent directly to the person who submitted the form. Make sure you add a subject line and a message in the “message body” area that let’s the user know that you’ve received the submission. Finally, put in an email address into the “sender address” field that corresponds to your company. Otherwise, the email that the user receives will be from “noreply@noreply.com”.
This is a great way to keep in touch with your visitors and let them know that you’ll be contacting them quickly!
This blog post was brought to you by The Eden Platform.
The awesome thing about Eden is that it analyzes your website visitors AND your website content and shows you what your visitors are looking for and what you’re not providing them. Have you been paying attention?
Back in March, we released our new Optimization module that contained the unique keyword report feature. This feature shows users every keyword that Eden is tracking for their website. These keywords come from a variety of places including your website’s real visitors and content.
Each keyword is ranked by its importance to your business. Green highlighting indicates keywords that are currently receiving the proper level of attention and optimization. Red highlighting indicates high value keywords that you’re currently neglecting. Every live Eden site should have at least one high value keyword within the Optimization module at this point. These red keywords have more than likely resulted in a conversion (form submission), and that is why we rank them at the top. We want your visitors to not only find you for the keywords you’re optimizing your site for, but also convert into leads.
What does it all mean? It’s simple. Create and optimize new pages for each of your red highlighted keywords weekly and your website will receive more visitors who will become customers. Every new page on your site results in 64 unique monthly visitors! Make sure to add forms to your pages so your visitors can contact you and so Eden can register the conversion and calculate your visitor quality score. If you’re not creating and adding content to your site on a regular basis, then you will not see any improvements in your marketing strategy and lead generation.
Content marketing is an incredibly effective strategy for small businesses that want to find new customers online. You can think of it sort of like fishing. When you’re fishing in the ocean, you can catch more fish by putting more fishing lines in the water at the same time. Each piece of website content (articles, blog posts, product descriptions, etc) that you add to your website is like a new fishing line to hook new visitors and pull them in for a visit to your website. It’s time to put your fishing boots on!
When you get a reputation for creating high quality content pages on a specific topic the search engines recognize your authority and they boost your position in the search engine results page for your specific topic. In order to rank highly for a specific topic (for instance: locksmith in New Jersey) you have to create at least a few new website pages on that topic each week for several weeks or months. But, that sounds like a lot of work, is it all worth it?
Yes! We’ll show you why.
Creating your first few pages of optimized content (optimizing pages using Eden Platform) will get your website ranked somewhere in the search engines. Probably 100 or so positions down from the top. Not great. You’re in the virtual dark ages down there. But, as you produce more content and become a recognized expert, your website’s search position will begin to climb toward #1.
Increasing your search engine rank just one or two positions can have an incredible impact on the number of visitors and customers your website produces for your business. A recent study conducted by the SEO services firm Slingshot SEO has brought new light to how quickly your website traffic will increase, on average, as you move your website’s ranking from a #10 position up toward the #1 position.
For instance, if your website was receiving 475 visitors each month for a single keyword that had your website ranked in the #4 position in the search engine results pages, an increase of one position, to #3, would drive 712 visitors to your website each month. That’s a traffic increase of nearly 50%.
In a even cooler example, if your website was receiving 475 visitors each month for a keyword that had it ranked in the #10 position, achieving the #1 position would deliver 8,313 visitors to your website each month.
And I’m just doing the math for a ranking improvements for a single keyword. If you’re adding high quality content to your website on a regular basis you should expect to see your rankings for 250 or more keywords increasing at the same time. So you could multiply the potential traffic results I mentioned in the examples above by 250 for a big traffic number!
Some other great news from the graph is that organic search engine listings (content pages on other websites like yours) still get in total over 50% of the clicks on the search engine results pages. That means that the high-paid big-company budgets buying those paid search ads that display in the right column aren’t gobbling up all of your potential visitors. In fact, for all they pay, you still have the opportunity to take 50% of the available traffic for free.
So, how do you become an online authority on the topics that are most important to your potential customers? It’s simple, you need to create a content schedule and regularly launch new website pages that are optimized for a tight list of 2-3 keywords that are relevant for your business.
What are you waiting for? Go create and optimize a new page on your website right now! If you can’t do this in less than 15 minutes with your current website tool, you should consider using Eden so that you can stop wasting your time and you can get to work growing your business online!
Congrats to @Dylan Bost of @Ulanguzi for winning the Eden Platform $50 Amazon.com Gift Card giveaway. Thanks for keeping up with us Dylan!
We hope that all of our fans and followers continue to stay up to date with the latest and greatest Eden news. If you’re not already connected, here are links to our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts.
Now the only questions is, what will Dylan buy with his $50 gift card?
Content marketing is the creation of valuable content that has a marketing purpose. For example, Preation creates an awesome special report, and we exchange it for your email address and your permission to educate you further about our stuff. Examples are blogs, white papers, and viral video.
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