Integrated Digital Marketing – Video, Social, Blog, & Email

CTA : ISP – We can help announce your community, build trust, credibility and authority

In today’s ever-changing world if you are serious about growing your business, it is critical to have a clear understanding of the different types of content that make up your content strategy. Not all content is equal, for example, social media content usually caters to a more general audience, while content on a blog or videos tend to be more specialized to a central topic. Finding your audience where they already are, and then providing valuable content in different formats will help you attract your ideal target market.

Not all content is equal, for example, social media content usually caters to a more general audience, while content on a blog or videos tend to be more specialized to a central topic. Click To Tweet

4 Types of Content To Build Your Brand & Attract Your Tribe

1.) Social Media Content Creates Awareness

Once someone hears about your business from a friend, and they find value in your content, they will seek to view more of your content through your social channels. This is why it is imperative that you actively participate and engage in various social media channels.

Again, the goal is to start conversations, build awareness around what your business is about, and then invite your followers to your site. Social media creates awareness through social proof and tells people “these people believe me and like me.” – Maybe you will too! Sharing links to your high quality and informative content on social channels “invites” people to look closer into topics they are already interested in.

Sharing links to your high quality and informative content on social channels “invites” people to look closer into topics they are already interested in. Click To Tweet

While social media is important in assisting you in your efforts to build your brand and community, keep in mind that it is not a good idea to solely build your community on a social media platform. Starting a Facebook group or LinkedIn group community is a great strategy, but your purpose should always be to guide group members to your blog or site.

Social media networks often change the rules, update privacy policies, and the changes could threaten the existence of your community. Also, as reliable and dominant as some may seem today, who knows what the most popular network will be 5 years from now? Therefore, it’s important to start in social, but not stay there.

2.) Blog Content Creates Trust

You need to consistently create and publish value-driven content that gives your tribe a compelling reason to visit your website and stay on it long enough to create an impact, and convince them to come back later to check out what is new. This is the most important part of your content strategy for your blog that you need to focus on, to create content consistently, and build trust.

This is the most important part of your content strategy for your blog that you need to focus on, to create content consistently, and build trust. Click To Tweet

The design, content, and interaction on your website will either say ” I am an expert, and I know exactly what I am talking about,” or not. Give people a reason to stop everything else they are doing online and listen to what you have to share with them.

This is a low commitment step that you are asking them to take, once they read your content, they make they will either decide to read more, and subscribe, or go somewhere else. Be aware that once someone leaves your blog or website without subscribing to ongoing content, the chances that they will return later on their own, are close to none.

It’s a great practice to have various types of content on your blog, like evergreen content that is always relevant, personal stories, new trends, industry news, and how-to guides. This will keep users engaged, and seeing a variety of content may spike their curiosity and keep them on your blog for longer periods of time.

This will keep users engaged, and seeing a variety of content may spike their curiosity and keep them on your blog for longer periods of time. Click To Tweet

Pay attention to topics that people engage with a lot, and tend to share more, and write more content like it. Listen to what your readers are asking and saying, and give them the information that they are already interested in, no need to reinvent the wheel.

This is also where SEO comes into play and allows you to laser target your audience by choosing the right keywords, tags, phrases, and other related content that could spark more interest and conversations. No matter what your frequency is for blogging, daily, weekly, or monthly, over time, this content will help you build trust and enrich your relationship over time.

3.) Video & Audio Content Create Loyalty

Video and audio are powerful channels to build a relationship with your community. Sharing valuable content through live video streams, podcasts, and YouTube, or other major video platform builds your brand and loyalty. People love video and audio because it is personal, and more personal and engaging than other types of media. Audio and video are surefire ways to grow your followership at lightning speeds, since nobody else has your personality and voice, you stand out from the crowd.

People love video and audio because it is personal, and more personal and engaging than other types of media. Click To Tweet

Video is the fastest growing medium of online content consumption. Over time it has become so much easier to create and share, and it will continue to be a dominant factor in the upcoming years. As more users have access to smart phones and access to tools that make creating and sharing videos fun and easy, it will continue to be a key player in online marketing. Having a strategy around video, and what content you will share through video, will help you find more ways to grow you brand and build your business.

Alternatively, if you completely dislike the idea of being on video, podcasts are great alternatives that provide many of the same benefits as video, with less technical knowledge required. Podcasts are increasingly becoming more popular, and producing a podcast is a great alternative for those who wish to share their expertise, but not necessarily interested in being on video. More and more people tune in to podcasts on a weekly basis, and studies show that people who tune in to podcasts are highly educated, have relatively high disposable incomes and tune in for one hour or more. Podcasts are often overlooked, and are a great medium to become a well known expert, without the need to get in front of the camera.

Podcasts are often overlooked, and are a great medium to become a well known expert, without the need to get in front of the camera. Click To Tweet

4.) Email Content Nurtures & Strengthens Relationships

After reading the content on your blog, and seeing that you are active on social networks, the next level of commitment would be to ask your visitors to sign up for your newsletter / updates. They are already aware of your business, they already like and trust you, now they are ready for a more one-on-one connection.

E-mail marketing is that one-on-one personal touch, that makes your readers feel like you are just talking to them directly. Nurturing and strengthening your relationships for long-term business sustainability is possible through e-mail. That is why capturing names and emails, and building your email list is where the money is at. People are much more likely to buy something from you after 7 touch-points, and this is easy to achieve, through email marketing.

People are much more likely to buy something from you after 7 touch-points, and this is easy to achieve, through email marketing. Click To Tweet

The golden rule here is to always provide highly valuable content that is relevant and helpful to them in some way. Over time, after they like you and trust you more, then you can recommend products or services that are meant to help them or guide them in their goals. It is always important to keep their best interest in mind, not just yours. As soon as people subscribe it is not a good idea to start sending them emails with sales and offers right away.

Just as easy as it was to subscribe to you, it takes visitors only one click for them to unsubscribe. Another thing to be cautious about is frequency, it’s usually not good practice to send an email every single day, people will easily get turned off and annoyed. Every industry is different but once a week or twice a week can be subtle, and efficient at the same time. Staying top of mind is easy and can be automated with email marketing. Make sure your email marketing content is clear, concise, and relevant to what you promised when they signed up for your list.

Make sure your email marketing content is clear, concise, and relevant to what you promised when they signed up for your list. Click To Tweet

Having people’s contact information is a privilege, and if you abuse it, it will take you much more time and effort to grow your community. Focus on delivering value, and contributing to their lives, always give before you ask for something in return. Keeping in touch with your subscribers consistently, and answering their burning questions is a tried and true way to strengthen your bond and grow your business.

Consciously And Actively Tuning In To Your Audience

Make it a point to stop and listen before speaking!

There’s a tried and true saying that reads ” there is a reason why we have one mouth and two ears.” It is because we need to listen twice as much as we talk, and more importantly, we need to tune in to our audience before we begin to talk, and engage with them. Getting clarity on who our specific audience is and what type of content we need to create for them is key. It’s important to remember to focus on delivering value and connecting effectively to create continual business growth. Being in business means that we have a specific problem we are trying to help others solve, but listening first makes us better helpers, and better solution providers.

Being in business means that we have a specific problem we are trying to help others solve, but listening first makes us better helpers, and better solution providers. Click To Tweet

First and foremost, it is important to discover who your target market is, why, and where they hang out. Then focus on learning more about their pain points, questions, and possible objections they could have to your products or services. Listening before you suggest a solution will ensure that you’re not just taking shots in the dark, but that you are genuinely interested in helping them. The very best way to do this is to show interest in them as individuals, have compassion and fully understand the problems they are having, and why they are so invasive in their lives. Over time, intuitively, you will come to know the most common reasons why people are interested in the solution you provide. The best way to develop this “knowing” on what they want is to truly listen without judgment, and without trying to get something from them right away.

When researching your audience, you want to do it from the perspective of a friend, someone who actually cares, and isn't just trying to get something from them. Click To Tweet

Find your target market in their environment

Get up close and personal with your audience, and blend in with their environment, where they are already at. Get to know them, here are some questions that could help you research your target market with more curiosity.

What language do they use to describe their problem?
What frustrations are they are experiencing?
What do they need advice on or help with?
What human need are they looking to meet?
How invasive is the problem they are having?
What is their urgency to solve the problem?
Which things have they already tried and failed at?
How long have they had this problem?

Tune in to what they are not saying

When researching your audience, you want to do it from the perspective of a friend, someone who actually cares, and isn’t just trying to get something from them. This approach will give you space to learn what their hot buttons are and to talk to them directly. Remember that your marketing efforts need to be tailored and directed towards your specific audience and not just sound like a canned sales letter that came from a how-to template.

When you listen close enough you will also hear the things that they are not saying directly. What they are NOT saying is very important to listen for. They may not express their direct need, but through their behavior and language you could discover things about them that they didn’t even know about themselves! This kind of information will help you stand out from the crowd and make your content seem more credible and trustworthy. This is also how you can uncover needs that people didn’t even know they had, giving you a competitive edge over people who just sell and don’t listen first.

The more you listen, the more you grow

The more time that you spend listening, the easier it will be to create content, products, and services, catered specifically to their specific needs. Listening will give you more content ideas and make it easier to find topics to cover, that really speak to them. You will discover certain patterns and trends over time, and learn easier, faster, and better ways to serve them. It is imperative to not stop listening, as most people do once they already have a following. Forgetting to listen, and getting too product or service oriented is a big mistake. By not listening, engaging, and conversing, you will see less engagement from your followers, as well as take more time to build trust, relationships, and sales.

The more time that you spend listening, the easier it will be to create content, products, and services, catered specifically to their specific needs. Click To Tweet

Here is a list of the top ways you can listen to your audience. This will vary widely by industry but overall these resources and ideas will be easy to find online and are completely free for you to use.

Where do they hang out?

Google Hangouts
industry specific forums
YouTube videos / channels
Places they go to for fun
Places they shop
LinkedIn Groups related to your topic / industry
Facebook groups and events
Twitter lists
Meet-Ups

Who is already influencing them?

Friends
Books
Podcasts
Competitors
Colleagues
Events
Movies

For this particular phase of researching your market, forums are a great resource because people feel more open sharing with other people in their same field or with their same interests. Often forums feel like more tight communities than other mainstream social media networks.

Often forums feel like more tight communities than other mainstream social media networks. Click To Tweet

Finding your client in their natural environment and simply stopping to listen will enable you to deliver greater value and connect with them easier and on a deeper level. Knowing what inspires them and how to get them to take action is golden. This will help you easily grow a sustainable business that is focused on innovation and profitability, through staying attentive and flexible.

5 Keys to Build An Effective WordPress Business Website

WordPress is amazing, because it enables you to have a website done in a single day, but having a site, and having an effective site, can be very different. Effective WordPress sites will have the following 5 keys:

1.) Credibility – Building Trust With Your Audience The first step to a good WordPress Website is establishing credibility through using testimonials, social proof, or videos. If you have a shopping cart or e-commerce on your WordPress site it is a good idea to have an SSL Certificate. This will make people feel comfortable making transactions on your website.

2.) Usability – Don’t make people think Is your site easy to use? If you are using flash, chances are that a lot of people will never be able to use your site. Make sure that your Menu is easy to see, and use. Having a clean WordPress theme, and doing your updates should take care of that.

3.) Sell-ability – Are you asking for the sale and making it easy? If your customer can’t find the “Order” button, and if your call to action is not SPECIFIC and CLEAR, you will lose sales! Focus on the product or service you are offering, and ask for the sale, WordPress has many plug-ins and themes, use them to highlight your offer or service.

4.) Visibility – SEO and social media shares raise brand awareness Make your site visible to people and Search Engines, make sure you use an SEO plug-in like the All In One SEO Pack, Platinum SEO pack, or any other SEO Plugin. Also make sure your permalinks are set to %postname% or category, whatever is best for your service.

5.) Share-ability – Make it super simple for them to tell their friends Make sure website content is EASY to share, and share-worthy. Do your research and come up with good content that people will want to share with others. Ask people what they want to read about, and provide useful content. Using a Plugin like share-this, is a good practice. Also share different kinds of content, use blog posts, videos, audio, PDF’s, and come up with creative ways to engage your readers, so that they share your content and keep coming back for more.

Is your business website problem or solution focused?

Is your business website focused on solving a problem or on providing a solution? Although it may seem that both lead your visitors to the same road, their actions may be completely different based on your chosen approach.

People will go to longer lengths to avoid pain

The main difference here is that people who are looking to solve a problem are wanting to avoid pain, while people who are interested in a solution are doing research and weighing their options. It has been proven that we will go to longer lengths to avoid pain, so while it may be a good idea to split test for this, chances are that you are much better off solving a specific problem on your website versus simply providing a solution.

This is much easier to do when you really know your audience and their “hot buttons” or pain points. Are they business owners? Gold players? College students? These three kinds of people have different pain points, that you can highlight and use as triggers for them to take action. A really simple way to transition from a solution based website to a problem based one is to ask the right questions. For example look how similar yet very different these two questions are: Are you tired of your website going down and constantly losing money? B. Are you ready for superior web hosting that will minimize your downtime? Both questions lead to the same end goal, which is a new place to host your website. The difference is that the first one addresses their pains and frustrations, while the second one promises “superior web hosting” which is highly unlikely that this will tick anybody’s clock! Being tired and losing money are both negative results, so people want to avoid them. Superior web hosting seems like a good idea but at this point it is only a great option.

Problems = Encourage people to take action

In order for your website visitors to take action you will need to create a sense of urgency, highlight their pain and provide a way to eliminate it or minimize it. Problems usually have urgency behind them, the sooner they are gone the better. If you can help your visitors, deliver value, and deliver on your promise, they will be thankful and loyal customers.

Solutions = Encourage people to weigh their options

On the other hand, when you provide a solutions it sounds good, and makes your offer a good option. Offering a solution is more like making a suggestion, showing them a road they could take now or later. Even after you highlight benefits, without first painting a clear picture of their pain, the benefits will not be as impactful. Options give people time and the opportunity to look at other possibilities, they don’t address a pressing need, so the likelihood of them taking action decreases dramatically.

The Power Of Using Social Media Marketing To Grow Your Business

Using Social Media Marketing to Grow Your Business and boost your visibility

Growing your business will always be one of the most important aspects of being an independent business professional. Because the dynamics of business and the economy in general are constantly changing, it is more important than ever for you to take advantage of every opportunity you have to make individuals aware of the products and services that you offer through your business. The ability to grow your business effectively, even in difficult economic times, may be the only thing that separates the successful business owner from those who have tried and failed. Therefore, learning to use social media marketing to your advantage is one of the most effective ways available of ensuring that your business will continue to grow. There are a variety of social media marketing websites that you can use to successfully increase consumer traffic for your business. These include Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, and You Tube. All of these social networking sites are relatively easy to use, especially after you spend a little bit of time working with them. You can also effectively utilize all of the sites without spending any money or by spending a very small amount of money, and you can reap huge financial benefits. If you have an exceptionally small budget that can be used for advertising, using these social media marketing websites to promote your business is one of the most cost-effective ways to drive new customers in your direction.

Facebook helps you gain exposure fast

Facebook is one of the largest and most trusted social networking sites. It is extremely effective in helping individuals to grow a business, in large part due to its ease of use and to the exceptional amount of exposure that is available when you advertise your business on the site. Facebook has an enormous following and simply having the opportunity to get exposure on the website is likely to drive a high number of customers to your business. Due to the large number of people that spend a lot of time on Facebook, it has become one of the most effective marketing tools available on the Internet.

Twitter keeps your business fresh

Twitter is another social networking site that is extremely popular and can be successfully used to grow your business. Gaining exposure on Twitter keeps everything about your business fresh, and because individuals use Twitter only to talk about what is going on in the here and now, maintaining a presence by associating your business with a Twitter account keeps it on people’s minds and continuously drives traffic toward your business.

LinkedIn connects you to other business people

Another popular website that individuals can use to grow their business is Linkedin. Some of the best benefits of using this website involve the ability to develop close business to business contacts and to join different groups that allow you to gain unique exposure in circles that otherwise may not be aware of the products or services offered by your business. This is a great way to expand your clientele and bring your business to individuals who otherwise may not spend money with your company. Using this website helps you to constantly evolve your business, which is one of the keys to building and maintaining a successful business.

Pinterest helps you gain that visual appeal

One of the newer social media networking websites that has gained a great deal of popularity is Pinterest. The visual appeal that exists on this website has caused it to gain much popularity as a means of growing a business. It is very simple to use, as you merely have to take pictures of the products that you sell and post them to the website. Once this is done individuals from all over the world have a chance to see what your business has to offer. This website is especially effective for attracting sales from affluent women. Therefore, if you are marketing products directly to that group of clientele this is a website that may be of particular interest to you.

You Tube helps you deliver powerful and memorable stories Last but certainly not least, You Tube is one of the most effective ways to grow your business regardless of the products or services that you are offering. You Tube offers a unique way to share powerful and memorable messages with the general public. With the technology that is available today it costs little or no money to produce a video that is of good quality which can be posted to You Tube as a means of increasing business. It is truly as simple as shooting a video with your smart phone and then posting it to the website. The more people that see what your business has to offer, the greater the chances are that you will receive additional business traffic as a direct result. Growing a business is always a challenging and rewarding experience. However, methods of advertising have changed a great deal in recent years. Individuals who operate small startup businesses who could not afford expensive advertising in the past can now get the word out about their business to an extremely large and diverse group of people in a matter of minutes. Maintaining a powerful presence on these social media marketing websites is one of the most effective ways of ensuring that your business will be profitable for years to come.