Well the first thing you should understand is that there is no one-way to write a blog. Like writers, bloggers each have a unique still and voice they bring to a blog and each have a different format to how they write their post. To get an idea of some different styles of blogs, I suggest you check out the following:
Each of these very successful bloggers use a different approach and style to blogging.
So, your probably wondering “well, where do I start”? As I said there is no right or wrong way to go about it but here are some key things to consider when writing your own blog.
Make sure your posts title is something that is going to grab people’s attention. The post title is the first thing potential readers are going see and if they don’t find it interesting they are not going to read it.
Make sure your fist sentence really hooks the reader. Having a good title means nothing if you cant get them to read past the first line. Make it interesting. Make them want to read more.
Your second paragraph is when you want to start answering the question you raised in the beginning. You want to start giving you readers the details that they are looking for. Tell your readers why you made your statement and the information you have to back it up. You want to make sure your satisfying their curiosity to keep them interested.
Create a list of your key point. People like list because they standout and they can easily see the points you want them to take away from your post. A list helps readers easily see what it is you are trying to say/prove in your post and bring emphasis to important points.
Try to find a picture or video that supports or relates to the content of your post. The addition of a visual element adds personality to your blog.
Make sure that you are encouraging interaction with your readers. Close your blog with a question. This invites and encourages people to comment on your blog and answer your question. And always make sure to respond to all your comments so as to help build a dialogue between you and your readers.
Hopefully these tips help you in your own blogging adventures. Thank you all for reading. On that note I leave with a question. Are there any other suggestions you have for writing a good blog? Please post below if you have any.
Gone are the days when Social Media was a choice. In today's world if you do not have some sort of Social Media presence then you may as well be invisible in the consumer’s eyes. Now, that may be a slight exaggeration, but Social Media has defiantly become a must have when developing a Marketing Plan. So how do you make sure you get the most out of your Social Media? Well, according to an article written by Susan Ganeshan, CMO of newBrandAnalytics, for www.marketingprofs.com, there are 5 ways to ensure you get the most from your Social Media:
Look for brand impact: First, look at your brand mission. More than anyone else in a company, the marketing team knows the brand mission best. After all it is there job to sell that mission. So use your Social Media to see if you are hitting the mark. Are people’s comments supporting your brand’s mission? If not, use the comments to amend your current strategies.
Share the wealth: Don’t hoard your information gathered through Social Media. Share it with other departments/partners in the company. Often times the data you collect could offer valuable insights that can be useful to some other section of the company. For example, if say you notice that a lot of customers are talking about how much they really want your product but it’s always out of stock, pass this on to your distribution team/channels so they can perhaps find a solution.
Redefine your approach to marketing strategy:Social Media has made it easier then ever to tailor campaigns to fit each geographic location. People vary from place to place and what works in one region may not work in another. By looking at the feedback you get from Social Media you can discover trends in different regions that can help you adjust your marketing accordingly. An example could be that you realize that a particular ad is more popular in Ontario then it is in Québec.
Don't just listen—act: It’s not enough to read the comments your consumers post on your Social Medias. Have a conversation. If they post how much they like your product or an ad you did, say thanks. By simply acknowledging their comments, it makes them feel like they are part of the brand. More important is responding to negative comments, and quickly. Offer solutions to the problem they are having. Ask how you can help change their experience form bad to good. If left unchecked, it could escalate from a nasty tweet to a full-blown song and dance about how bad your company is. For example, check out what one passenger did when United Airlinesbroke his guitar then gave him the run around when he confronted them about it.
YouTube has changed the way people consume content. Before YouTube, all companies had to think about when developing a commercial is “will it get people to go out and buy the product? Will it make us money?” When YouTube hit the scene, suddenly you had to factor in “Will someone share this with other people?” And not only that but it opened the door to creating video that you couldn’t do with T.V. For example, Old Spice did a campaign where they had their Twitter Followers tweet in questions for The Old Spice Guy and then created video responses for some of them that they posted to there YouTube channel. Here are some of those videos.
Turn New Viewers Into Subscribers With a Trailer Video: This is your chance to make that first impression to potential consumers. When a viewer shows up to your channel and isn’t a subscriber, you can have a trailer video appear for them. This is your chance to tell them about your brand and what to expect from your channel.
Share Stats That Matter to Benchmark Yourself: People love statistics and they love them even more when it’s in a video instead of a spread sheet. And they really love to SHARE statistics with others. Gather the facts about your industry, make it visual and eye popping, overlay a catchy tune and your sure to have a hit on your hands.
Share a Customer Success Story to Establish a Good Reputation: If your brand has helped impact someone’s life for the better, share it. People are more willing to trust a real consumer then a paid actor. Share the good you do with your audience. These don’t have to be studio quality videos. You can take them with you phone or even record them on a Google Hangout.
Answer Questions to Demonstrate Your Knowledge: If you can help answer a question someone has, you will become their best friend. Find out some of the commonly asked questions in your industry and create some videos that answer those questions. If you do this well you can become peoples go-to source for questions they need answered.
Teach People Something to Create Top-of-Mind Awareness of Your Services: For example, if you are a company that sells ties, then a good thing to do would be create a video on how to tie a tie (like the one below). This shows your viewers that you have foreseen some problem/difficulty they could experience and given them the tools to solve it. This shows you care enough to help. Always do a video how to over a written one because people prefer video, on average, to written ones.
On that note, here is a video recap by James Wedmore on these 5 types of videos.
Thanks for reading and be sure to check back next week for the latest Social Buzz.
Recently, one of my teachers,
Lindsey Fair, gave a lesson on Mobile Marketing and within that lesson, she
mentioned that often times when customers download an app, they often only use
it once, and then it’s forgotten about or deleted. But why is that? Well, as
Lindsey put it, if the only thing on your app is store hours or locations,
people already have an app for that. It’s called the Internet. People want an
app to fill a need that your mobile website or Google can't (Not an easy task).
And this isn’t even the BIG problem. Research shows that people prefer apps to mobile sites. The number one reason people leave your app is some sort of
in-app problem.
Research conducted by Compuware
showed over 56% of users stopped using or deleted the app because of some sort of problem in the app itself. What’s more is that most users delete 90% of the
apps they download. One small hiccup that causes us even the smallest
inconvenience and it’s into the virtual trash with that app and we move on.
Gone are the days were people tolerated inconvenience. We want everything five
minutes ago. So how can companies make sure their app doesn’t hit the virtual
trash heap?
Get into the shoes of end-users: You can’t just look at it from the perspective of the developer or business owner. Get in to your consumers head and find out if meets their needs. Are they going get the information they came to the app to get? Does it do what they thought it was going to do?
Experience is also very important: As I mentioned above, 56% of people delete an app do to a problem or negative experience. If the app loads to slow (see the cart below for peoples expectations on load time), or crashes or some other negative experience occurs, you wont get a second chance. You need to give the users the best experience possible.
Many years ago, when the Internet was still young and had
yet to ensnare the world in its ever expanding web and a cellphone was a big,
old, clunky device that only function was to make a phone call. A time when
people actually ventured out in to the world to experience nature. Back then it
may have been enough to have a billboard ad and maybe a few posters up at some
bus stops and that may have got the job done. But in today’s world, a billboard
or bus poster will get you about as much attention as parent gets from their
teenager. That is to say that they acknowledge your presence, but unless they’re
hungry or need money, your just something that’s there but seldom engaged with.
In today’s world, Social Media is the new billboard. But
it’s so much more that that. It allows you to engage actual conversations with
your customer. Create custom content that speaks to each individual, something
you could never accomplish with any traditional advertisement. But how do you
make it work for you. There is so much clutter out there that its easy to get
lost in the crowed. So how do me make sure that the Content we make get the attention
of our consumers?
First off, what is Content in context to marketing and why
does it play a key roll in your Social Media strategy? And how does Content
Marketing differ from traditional marketing? Well, as Robert Rose puts it “Traditional marketing and
advertising is telling the world you’re a rock star. Content Marketing is
showing the world that you are one.” Content marketing is creating something
(whether it be video, picture, words ect…) that is going to resonate so much
with your consumers that they want to help you share it with the world. A great
example is the Real Beauty Sketches campaign launched by Dove that had such an impact
people spread it like wildfire through their social media. Below is the
video.
Step
Two: Learn What Is Important To Your Audience
Step
Three: Create Useful Content
Step
Four: Make It Easy To Share
Here is a little of my insight on each step.
Step
One: Have attainable goals: Everything we do has a goal attached
to it. We make food because we are hungry. We get a job and work so we have
money. Every successful marketing or advertising campaign has some sort of goal
(typically along the lines of making a boatload of money). But when it comes to
Content Marketing, our goals have to be more direct in nature. It’s a little
unrealistic for the goal of one tweet to be increase sales by 10%. That’s a
nice campaign goal but not for a single tweet. A better-suited goal would be
have 20 people re-tweet you. Just keep in mind that if you set your goals to
high, you’re doomed to fail. Here are some template goals as listed by Kuenn in
his article 4 Ways To Create Successful Social
Media Content:
Have x number of social
media mentions in a week
Increase Facebook likes by
x
Have x number of people
fill out our contact form in a month
Have x number of people
download our content piece each week
A x increase in traffic from social media networks
over 3 months
Step
Two: Learn What Is Important To Your Audience: If
you make your content all about you, then the only person that’s going to care
about it is you. You have to make it about the customer. What is it that
resonates with them? Once you have that figured out you can now create content
that is going to connect with them on a personal level. No one does this better
then Apple. You never see Apple talking about Apple in their videos. They show
how their product can better improve the customer’s life by showing them just
that. Here is an example.
Follow the trends out their to find out what people
are talking about to get ideas of what your content needs to address in order
to be successful.
Step
Three: Create Useful Content: Once you know what you audience
wants, you need to create your content and make it useful for the consumer.
More often then not, when one finds it useful others will to, which makes them
share it. For example, if you see that on of the trends people are talking
about are how it’s annoying to have to use multiple apps to maintain all their
social media profiles, you could create and app that acts as a hub that brings
all of those social platforms to one easy to use app.
Another great way to make your content share worthy
is to make it funny. Humor is something that resonates with everyone and is
arguably some of the most shared content is funny stuff. But it still has to be
helpful or else you may get a quick laugh but then nothing else.
Step
Four: Make It Easy To Share: Keep it simple. The easier you make it
for people to share your content the more likely they are to share it. Sure, we
could copy the URL to Facebook or Twitter and so on, but that’s too much work. And
it would be a shame that you put in all that work to get us to your content,
made about me and made it useful, just to have me not share it because it
required to much work. So make sure you have a social media toolbar that has
like buttons for Facebook and a tweet button for Twitter and so on. People like
simple, and as marketers our job is to make it so.
Check out what other have to say about creating
Content for Social Media:
So there you have it. Now you have the guidelines
for creating Content for Social Media. Thanks for reading and be sure to check
back Wednesday, Oct 9th for the latest Social Buzz.
Well the first thing you should understand is that there is no one-way to write a blog. Like writers, bloggers each have a unique still and voice they bring to a blog and each have a different format to how they write their post. To get an idea of some different styles of blogs, I suggest you check out the following:
