6 Steps for Successful Content Marketing

The Following is a guest post by John McTigue, the co-owner of Kuno Creative, a Certified HubSpot Partner agency based in Avon, OH.  You can read more from him on his blog or follow John on Twitter.

Unless you are consistently feeding your inbound marketing machine with good, creative content, chances are you’ve seen a slow-down in traffic, search engine results and leads. Why? Because getting found online is about competing for peoples’ attention and consistently delivering the goods. There are very few one-hit wonders surviving on the Internet these days. Let’s do a brief reality check, then work on our content creation strategy.

How many blog posts or videos can you remember within the past 30 days? A handful? Out of the hundreds you probably read or viewed, most of them have either disappeared into the ether or you’ve tucked them away in a bookmarking site, never to read them again. How many tweets grab your attention? Most of us probably ignore 99.9% and retweet the rest, never to be seen again. Why are we so fickle online? As Emily Yoffe writes in a Slate article,

“…we actually resemble nothing so much as those legendary lab rats that endlessly pressed a lever to give themselves a little electrical jolt to the brain. While we tap, tap away at our search engines, it appears we are stimulating the same system in our brains that scientists accidentally discovered more than 50 years ago when probing rat skulls.”

So we’re fighting this instinct we all have to just tap, tap, tap looking for visual or auditory stimulation. When we find something interesting, we usually scan it, then throw it away. How do we overcome these zombie-like impulses and grab someone’s attention? Even if we get the hallowed click-through, how do we keep them in their seats? What about videos? Aren’t they the key to viral marketing? According to TubeMogul, “ten seconds into a video clip a little over 10% of viewers have abandoned it, rising to over half at 60 seconds or more.” So, content must not only attract your eye, it must also have the power to interrupt what you’re doing and keep you transfixed. To most of us this is a huge challenge. Here’s my content marketing strategy.

1. Figure out who you are trying to attract. Chief Marketing Officers? Soccer Mom’s? First-time homebuyers?
2. Figure out what makes these folks tick. Go to their social media sites and blogs and see what they’re talking about. Socialize with them by commenting and asking questions. Become a regular.
3. Create blogs, videos and webinars that address your target market’s concerns. Do this as often as you can, ideally three or more times per week.
4. Ask for comments by asking questions, and respond to the comments you receive. Ask for your readers’ involvement. What would you guys like to see in my blog? This engages and rewards your readers and gives them an incentive to follow you.
5. Mix it up. Your content should not be monotonous. Alternate serious with fun, helpful with commentary, research with reviews. Use creative titles, images and short video clips.
6. Be your own worst critic. If you’re getting stale, change the subject. Find some new way to communicate your ideas. Expand your own thinking, and you will expand theirs. If content creation becomes a chore, it will read that way. Step away from the keyboard and brainstorm some new ideas.

Remember, you have a few seconds to get someone’s attention, and getting there is only half the battle. You must reward their attention with good, creative content that keeps them engaged. It’s a tough nut to crack, but if you’re reading this post, you’re no doubt up for the challenge.

What are your content marketing strategies and experiences?

Posted by Kipp Bodnar on Wed, Apr 28, 2010 @ 12:30 PM

How Important is Social Media?

Hey Women Entrepreneurs. If you are not receiving emails from Hub Spot, you need to. They are my personal favorite source for social media up-to-date information. We can’t be experts on everything, so we have to rely on experts on various subjects. Hub Spot is our favorite for social media.

We are experts on face to face marketing with The Heart Link Women’s Network and we are truly excited about how we can help small businesses optimize their presence on the Internet with Trova Business Directories, Trova Small Business Directory and Trova Women Small Business Directory, but social media is a complex beast and we want to provide you with information from many sources to help you keep the business you love in front of your customers. So enjoy the information below.

The fastest-growing private U.S. companies have discovered something that’s taking larger, more traditional companies some time to figure out – social media matters.

Research conducted by the Center for Marketing Research , shows that the Inc. 500 recognizes the critical role social media plays in an online world. One hundred forty-eight companies responded to the late 2009 survey of companies named by Inc. Magazine to their list.

In fact, an incredible 79% of respondents to the nationwide telephone survey indicated social media was very or somewhat important to their business and marketing strategy. Indeed, 43% ranked social media as very important, compared with only 26% two years earlier, a 65% increase.

Clearly, these successful, smaller companies have discovered that leveraging social media tools and technologies plays a valuable role in their business and marketing strategies.

How about your business? Do you consider social media important? What results have you seen from using it?

Women Definitely Warm to Social Sites and Online Purchasing

Women Warm to Social Sites and Online Purchasing

Social networking has become a must for women this year, according to a new edition of the SheSpeaks “Annual Social Media Study.” Social networking profile penetration climbed from 58% of Internet users in 2008 to 86% in 2009.

Asked about brand-related activities on social sites, 80% of female Internet users said they had become a fan of a product or brand on a social network. In addition, 72% had learned about a new product or brand, or joined a group around one. Web users were less likely to participate on Twitter in all the product- and brand-related activities. SheSpeaks chalks this up to women being more active on social networking sites overall than they are on Twitter.

67% of women reported they actually commented about products and 50% of women interview reported that they actually purchased a product online.

Users seemed more receptive to social network advertising than they were in 2008, with 9% saying that they always look at ads and often click through, compared with just 2% last year. Thirty percent look sometimes, versus 13% in 2008, and fewer users felt annoyed by ads or actively ignored them.

Dawn L Billings is an the author of over 20 books and hundreds of articles on parenting, relationships, entitlement and networking, and an ardent advocate for women’s and children’s issues.  Dawn is the CEO and Founder of The Heart Link Women’s Network, Trova Women Business Directory and Trova Small Business Directory and The Heart Alliance.com international women’s networking organizations and communities.

Dawn is the creator of the NEW Parenting Tool called Capables, a revolutionary parenting tool and Toddler toy that ends whining and tantrums for good. In 2008 Dawn was selected by Oprah Magazine and The White House project as one of 80 emerging women leaders in the nation. Find out more and buy Dawn’s books, Dawn is also the architect of the Primary Colors Personality Test

Also check out - TROVA NOW Women Business Directory, and TROVA Business Directory for all small businesses. TROVA in Italian means “Find”. Would you like for your business to be found easily both locally and nationally? That is what our new business directories TrovaBusinessDirectory.com and TrovaWomenBusinessDirectory.com are all about. For more information about how to get your women owned business listed for FREE visit: TrovaNow

11 Ways to Become a Great Listener

11 Ways to Become a Great Listener

by Dawn Billings

Want to really accelerate AND sustain your career success? Listen up.
In order to be a successful and effective communicator, you’ve GOT to be a highly effective listener.  As a leader, LISTENING skills are MORE IMPORTANT than your speaking skills …. No question.

Here are 11 ways to become a great listener…

1. Shut up! This sounds rude, but I do not mean for it to be. It is simply a fact that if you want to develop into a great listener you must first learn to shut up to make a space for you to listen.
2. Listen for ideas and central themes. Whether you are listening in church, class or someone you are speaking directly to, it is a good idea to listen for the speaker’s central theme or main points instead of getting lost in, or reacting to, confusing or provocative  details. I used to tell my sons, “Mine for the gold nuggets.” If you are a great listener, you should be able to mine at least one great nugget from every encounter.
3. Judge content, not delivery. This is a challenging skill to develop. But if you teach yourself to focus, to your best ability, on what a speaker is saying and try not to get bogged down by their way of saying or delivering the message, you will find that every encounter will carry with it a gift for you.
4. Challenge yourself to be engaged and engaging. It is extremely easy to tune out from a speaker. Challenge yourself to stay engaged, but even more importantly to use the speaker’s content to make you more engaging. Examples: “Oh my goodness that must have been a surprise to you. Do things like that happen to you often?” or“I understand. I certainly have been in a similar situation. What is the biggest take-away you learned from that experience?”

5. Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s easy to assume that you know the rest of a sentence or message after hearing the beginning. Much of the time we are formulating our come-backs in our minds before someone has completed their full sentence. But if you teach yourself to avoid prejudging a message, you are a much better equipped listener if you wait and take time to evaluate the whole message.
6. Take notes. If you are learning something new, attending class, or at a conference, it is often a good idea to take notes that you can refer to later. By taking notes you enhance your memory and recollection skills, sharpen your reception, understanding, and, of course, retention of the information.
7. Concentrate and resist distraction. Distraction plays an enormous role in our inability to be great listeners. External distractions include non-related things you can see or hear, or which may be impacting your other senses, or you could simply be distracted by your own “too-busy” mind.  Internal distractions occur when your mind wanders into unrelated memories or shifts its focus to worries, plans, or anticipations. Practice staying focused.
8. Work to summarize the message being received. Most people can think three or four times faster than they speak.  Don’t let your quick mind indulge in all sorts of thoughts unrelated to the conversation.  Capitalize on your thinking speed by actively sensing, interpreting, evaluating, and summarizing the messages being received.
9. Control your emotions. First of all, take time to become truly aware of who you are and notice when things trigger your emotions. It has been said that the intellect is the slave to emotions.  Be sensitive to things that trigger your emotions and increase your efforts to focus on a clear reception and understanding of what is being said.
10. Exercise your mind. Like your body, your mind must be exercised in order to be strong. Listening is a skill of your mind as well as your hear. You must care enough to listen, but you must use a disciplined mind to learn to listen well. It is good for you to intellectually wrestle with complex information so that you will have a chance to grow and strengthen your own intellect.
11. Work at listening.  Be an active listener. Remember, listening is a skill and like any skill, we must focus on strengthening a skill with discipline, effort and heart. Follow the above suggestions.  Ask questions and seek clarification.  Actively share in the speaker’s efforts to improve your level of understanding, whether or not you think you agree.

Dawn L Billings is an ardent advocate for women’s and children’s issues, the author of over 20 books and hundreds of articles on parenting, relationships, entitlement and networking.  Dawn is the CEO and Founder of The Heart Link Womens Network, Trova Women Business Directory and Trova Small Business Directory and The Heart Alliance.com international women’s networking organizations and communities.

Dawn is the creator of the NEW Parenting Tool called Capables, a revolutionary parenting tool and Toddler toy that ends whining and tantrums for good. In 2008 Dawn was selected by Oprah Magazine and The White House project as one of 80 emerging women leaders in the nation. Find out more and buy Dawn’s books,  Women Lifting the World inspirational videos to uplift the hearts of those you love, and the NEW Toddler Teaching Toys called CAPABLES Dawn is also the architect of the Primary Colors Personality Test

Got Insomnia? Get Up and exercise.

Hey Women Entrepreneurs, imagine my surprise when I was looking for information on the web that might help me sleep. If this is an article about sleeping better, why do I have a picture of a woman jumping in a ridiculously perfect toe touch jump about 6 feet off the ground? Well let me explain. Here I was rollin’ around in my bed exhausted and the only thing falling asleep were my feet, and I learn that if you want to sleep deeply you need a few sets of deep knee bends?

The article said that for most people who are having trouble sleeping, there’s a simple cure: exercise. In fact, when researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine asked sedentary adults with insomnia to exercise 20 to 30 minutes every other day in the afternoon, participants reduced the time required to fall asleep by half, and increased total sleep time by almost one hour. I’ll trade a half hour in my exercise tees for an extra hour sawing Z’s any day. It was difficult for me to believe until I actually tried it for myself. Yep, they are right. If you exercise, you sleep better. I sure do. Not only do I sleep better, I need less hours in bed because I am actually using the hours sleeping instead of rolling around.

Working out regularly has been shown to reduce episodes of insomnia, and improve sleep quality by producing smoother, more regular transitions between the cycles and phases of sleep. What’s more, exercise offers many other mental benefits:

• Reduces stress
• Sharpens your brain (Now this I definitely need. My brain isn’t sharp enough to cut soften butter sometimes)
• Eases tension
• Produces “feel good” brain chemicals (endorphins)
• Releases epinephrine, the happiness hormone (Wohoo, as women small business owners, we all need more of that one don’t we?
• Increases deep sleep

Moderate exercise lasting 20 to 30 minutes three or four times a week generally results in better sleep and more energy. You may have to find your own exercise rhythm–some people can exercise any time, while others do better if they work out in the morning or afternoon. But, vigorous exercise during the day and mild exercise before bedtime will not only help you fall asleep and stay asleep more easily, but will increase the amount of time you spend in the deepest sleep phase. Now that would be sooooo nice.

Well, there you have it. Go out and exercise and if any of you can jump like the women in the picture above, send me the picture and we will figure out a great way to reward you.

Dawn L Billings is an ardent advocate for women’s and children’s issues, the author of over 20 books and hundreds of articles on parenting, relationships, entitlement and networking.  Dawn is the CEO and Founder of The Heart Link Womens Network, Trova Women Business Directory and Trova Small Business Directory and The Heart Alliance.com international women’s networking organizations and communities.

Dawn is the creator of the NEW Parenting Tool called Capables, a revolutionary parenting tool and Toddler toy that ends whining and tantrums for good. In 2008 Dawn was selected by Oprah Magazine and The White House project as one of 80 emerging women leaders in the nation. Find out more and buy Dawn’s books,  Women Lifting the World inspirational videos to uplift the hearts of those you love, and the NEW Toddler Teaching Toys called CAPABLES Dawn is also the architect of the Primary Colors Personality Test

[Offtopic: by the way, have you had the opportunity to attend a local Heart Link Women's Network networking event? If not, check out our locations and find a gathering near you! You will be so glad you did. Also  TROVA NOW Women Business Directory, and TROVA Business Directory for all small businesses launched in April 2010. TROVA in Italian means "Find". Would you like for your business to be found easily both locally and nationally? That is what our new business directories TrovaBusinessDirecory.com and TrovaWomenBusinessDirectory.com (launched April 1, 2010) are all about. For more information about how to get your women owned business listed for FREE visit: TrovaNow]

Everybody reading this blog can write a blog. Or can they? Or should they?

Hey women entrepreneurs. It’s Dawn Billings with The Heart Link women’s Network. So many of us have heard how important blogging is and that we should all write a blog, but should ALL of us write a blog? Maybe not.

This is a guest post written by Dave Clarke, editorial director for Hologram Publishing. Dave is an award-winning writer and editor with more than 25 years of experience writing consumer and marketing content. He also does business blog-writing projects.

Everybody reading this blog can write a blog. Or can they? Or should they?

As social media marketing proliferates and permeates consumers’ consciousness, marketers, business owners, and tech-savvy entrepreneurs wrestle with the ‘content thing‘ more and more each day.

C’mon, everyone can string together a few coherent sentences, right? We’ve all been writing since kindergarten; by now it should come as easy and natural as, say, sitting on the ‘throne.’ So, how come it’s not?

The Write Stuff

Asked if good writing skills can be taught, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and Stanford University creative writing professor, Wallace Stegner replied, “Yes, but not to everyone.”

Some folks can write stuff people want to read, and some can’t.

Sometimes your business needs a professional writer, other times it doesn’t. How do you know which is which? Equally important, how do you know a good writer from a bad one?

Consider hiring a writer if:

• You just don’t like to write. Some people shun exercise, some the dentist, others writing. For them, it’s tedious, troublesome.
• Time is money. Yes, you have the skills and knowledge to pull together a blog post, but it may take you hours to do it and you’re already pressed for time. What’s your time worth?
• It’s all Greek to you. People who are multilingual rock. But even the most fluent speakers of foreign tongues often have difficulty writing in them well enough to be clearly understood.
• Your writing skills are so-so. You could do a serviceable job, but business circumstances dictate that “so-so” doesn’t cut it. You’re not just competing for readers’ time and attention against your competitors, but against thousands of other media trying to do the same thing with the same people. Your stuff better be good enough to grab their attention, hold it, and get them to act on what they’ve read.

Consider writing it yourself if:

• You know the topic inside and out. You’ll have no trouble coming up with blog article ideas on a regular basis — weekly, biweekly — for as long as you intend to maintain the blog.
• Spelling counts. Grammar too. Your knowledge of spelling, punctuation and grammar are good enough that you won’t embarrass yourself or tarnish your organization’s reputation by appearing amateurish due to misspelled words or grammatical errors.
• You can step away from the story. You can distance yourself from your writing to critique and edit it objectively or you have a friend or colleague who can.
• Good job! People comment favorably on your writing or you have been published (and not just on your own website).

How to recognize good writing and good writers:

Beyond looking at a writer’s technical skills — spelling, punctuation, grammar — also look at whether their thoughts follow a logical progression in telling the story.  Look at the softer, yet in every sense more important, skills a writer demonstrates.

• Does the writer’s writing engage you? Good writers know they have but a few, scant seconds to grab your attention. If you’re hooked from the first sentence and you’re not tempted by distractions along the way, the writer is doing their job. If the writing bores you, it will bore your audience, and they will click to another site in a nanosecond.
• Experience counts. Does the writer have experience in the subject matter and type of writing you need? Writing effective marketing collateral is not the same thing as writing a press release; writing advertising copy is not the same as writing a white paper or a product page. Good writers, like good singers or dancers, are versatile in numerous topics, formats and genres, and are not just one-trick ponies.
• Less is more. Good writing isn’t written, it’s rewritten. More specifically, it’s edited. Good writers prune their prose to be sure there are no extra words or phrases; that two words aren’t used when one will do; that redundancy, other than, say, product names or search keywords, doesn’t exist in the document.
• Success breeds success. One way to gauge a writer’s success is the number of clients they work with. See how many companies are using any writer you consider. There’s a reason some writers have many clients: They consistently do a better job.
• Good writers are invited back. One of the best measures of successful writers is whether or not they are hired back. If you see someone whose work consists of one or two assignments at dozens of clients, walk away. If a firm likes a writer’s work and working with that writer, they’ll invite them back time and again.

Dawn L Billings is an ardent advocate for women’s and children’s issues, the author of over 20 books and hundreds of articles on parenting, relationships, entitlement and networking.  Dawn is the CEO and Founder of The Heart Link Womens Network, Trova Women Business Directory and Trova Small Business Directory and The Heart Alliance.com international women’s networking organizations and communities.

Dawn is the creator of the NEW Parenting Tool called Capables, a revolutionary parenting tool and Toddler toy that ends whining and tantrums for good. In 2008 Dawn was selected by Oprah Magazine and The White House project as one of 80 emerging women leaders in the nation. Find out more and buy Dawn’s books,  Women Lifting the World inspirational videos to uplift the hearts of those you love, and the NEW Toddler Teaching Toys called CAPABLES Dawn is also the architect of the Primary Colors Personality Test

[Offtopic: by the way, have you had the opportunity to attend a local Heart Link Women's Network networking event? If not, check out our locations and find a gathering near you! You will be so glad you did. Also coming soon - TROVA NOW Women Business Directory, and TROVA Business Directory for all small businesses. TROVA in Italian means "Find". Would you like for your business to be found easily both locally and nationally? That is what our new business directories TrovaBusinessDirecory.com and TrovaWomenBusinessDirectory.com (launched April 1, 2010) are all about. For more information about how to get your women owned business listed for FREE visit: TrovaNow]

Next Page »

RSS Feed

• Categories

  • Business for Women
  • Funny
  • Health & Wellness
  • HLN Spotlights
  • Inspiring Articles
  • Marketing Tips
  • Networking
  • News & Events
  • Parenting
  • Relationships
  • Social Media

• Archives

  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • July 2008
  • April 2008

• Links

  • Attend Professional Networking Locations
  • CAPABLES Parenting Tool for Toddlers
  • Experience the GOD CAN
  • Heart-Notes Garden
  • Networking for Professional Women
  • Parenting/Discipline Tool, Toddler Toys
  • Take the Primary Colors Personality Test
  • The Heart Link Women's Network Community
  • The Mind of a Man Blog
  • The Success Link Online Business Community
  • Women Lifting the World Inspirational Videos
  • Women Networking
  • Womens Professional Networking

• Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • WordPress
  • XHTML

Comments

• Recent Posts

  • Why Everybody Shouldn’t Always Get A Trophy
  • How to Be Productive: Stop Working
  • What was your favorite toy and what did it mean to you?
  • Nominate The Heart Link Network
  • 3 Reasons Why Business Books Are Bad for You
  • Women Networking Gifts – BIRDS of a FEATHER
  • Professional Women Networking Tip: 4 from The Heart Link Network
  • Professional Women Networking Tip: 3 from The Heart Link Womens Network

Connect with Us