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Your website copy is responsible for more than just presenting your visitors with basic information. In fact, your words alone have the ability to influence how visitors feel about your brand, what they choose to click (or not click), and how your site ranks in search engines. How can you ensure that it's working the way you want it to? Testing. Sometimes the tiniest change in word choice can have a major impact on your conversion rates. While the difference between a checkout button that reads “Add to Cart” rather than “+Cart” might seem insignificant, it can significantly alter your website's performance. Still not convinced? Check out these 13 case studies that prove word choice does indeed matter when it comes to optimizing for conversions....
Yes, content marketing is all about telling your existing and potential customers how your product or service can make a big difference in their lives without sounding like a desperate door to door salesman. It is not just about jotting down a few lines on how to use something or what it does but building strong relationships with your growing audience.
But what does it take to make content that really does click with people? Our industry fondly calls them ‘buzzwords’. Buzzwords are basically marketer fascinations that last for a couple of months; basically until they find another interesting way to sell their products and services. The most difficult thing to do here is keep a tab on what’s trending, the buzzspeak as well create a content strategy and execute it on a regular basis.
Yes, we understand running from pillar to post is what you’re being paid for but let’s make that a little easier for you so you can tread at your own speed.
Here are 10 buzzwords and content marketing definitions to watch out for this year....
You really need to stop using these phrases.
Some are blatantly self-inflating, some are too vague for their own good, and others just sound downright disgusting.x
We’re all familiar with those wrung out, miserably overused industry terms that have been leeched of their original potency.
They’re the ones repeatedly (and often inaccurately) applied to such a broad variety of subjects and situations that they’ve taken on undesirable connotations as a result.
And they’re the words I’m now promoting replacements for in an effort to abolish their exhausting reign over modern marketing discourse....
This is a tale of memory, truth, technology, and, well, the future of humanity—but it starts in high school.
If you went to high school in America, there is a pretty good chance you learned to write essays using the dreaded five paragraph method. For those who don’t remember, the structure is this: Introductory paragraph (wherein you lay out your thesis), followed by three supporting graphs (each one making a different yet complimentary supporting argument), finished with a conclusion (essentially your introduction restated and a final conclusion drawn).
What I want to point out here is the amount of data being offered up. While it’s called a five paragraph essay, the argument itself hinges on three main data points. Three core ideas. Because of this, the five paragraph essay is also known as the “hamburger essay” or “one, three, one,” or, occasionally, a “three-tier essay.”...
If you work in an SME you are always looking for new ways to increase your sales and grow your business. Gone are the days of cold calling – now small businesses can unashamedly take advantage of digital marketing and the newest kid on the block: content marketing.One of the great ways to attract new prospects and solidify your brand is to communicate your offer effectively and reach out to communities that might be interested in your services. But how do you make sure the content you create meets the standards of the industry and beyond?...
Five Steps to Multimedia Storytelling Is a valuable, free course offered through Poynter News University.
TITLE:Five Steps to Multimedia StorytellingTYPE:Self-Directed Course T IME ESTIMATE:This course takes about one to two hours to complete.
ABOUT SELF-DIRECTED COURSES
In a self-directed course, you can start and stop whenever you like, progressing entirely at your own pace and going back as many times as you want to review the material.
Want to spread your wings beyond print reporting, but don’t know where to start? In this course, you’ll learn the basic steps of telling your story with multimedia. You’ll discover ways to map out your story before you head out to do your reporting. And you’ll learn when to use such tools as audio, video and graphics.
WHAT WILL I LEARN? - Upon completing this course, you will be able to:Identify the elements in a multimedia story. - Understand which stories are more suitable for multimedia - Sketch a concept for a story - Identify tools needed to gather content in the field...
If you run a media company (and you do--you publish regularly on all sorts of social media, don't you?) then it's worth two minutes to consider some basic ground rules, listed here for you to embrace or reject: Establish your standards...
While the inverted pyramid has been the tried and true structure for news articles, it may not be the best for your marketing content. Here's why....I had a realization … I have never written a blog post in the style of the inverted pyramid. Does that make me a bad writer or bad marketer? Or is the inverted pyramid format an outdated storytelling format for business bloggers and marketing content creators today?To tackle this dilemma, I did some digging, and here’s what I found. Before we start accusing writing formats of being entirely right or wrong, let’s take a look at the history of the inverted pyramid....
Medium wants to be the next-generation self-publishing platform for bloggers who write.... Enter Medium, a simple self-publishing platform launched last October to serve the next generation of bloggers who write. In the words of founder Evan Williams, who also co-founded Blogger and Twitter, "Medium is a beautiful space for reading and writing — and little else. The words are central. They can be accompanied by images to help illustrate your point. But there are no gratuitous sidebars, plug-ins, or widgets. There is nothing to set up or customize." "Images are great, too," Williams wrote in response to an emailed question about whether Medium is positioned as 'the anti-Tumblr.' "But we're building a platform that helps words shine, because it seems like that's what's needed now. Obviously we were aware of what Tumblr's done, but Medium was inspired by many things — including ideas I had wanted to implement in Blogger over a decade ago."...
You may have heard that content is king, but the truth is that informational content is king. It’s estimated that approximately 50-80% of search queries are informational in nature (pdf).... In previous articles, I’ve written about the importance of theming content – developing a strategy that truly plays to your customers’ search intent. But usually, very little of that is informational content. The average website has a ratio of 80/20 navigational or transactional content to informational content — the opposite of how people are searching. If you have a blog, the ratio usually doesn’t get much higher than 60/40, and even then, most of that content is either not keyword rich or it’s what we call “time-limited” content. Types of Informational Content There are two primary types of informational content: “time-limited” and “evergreen.” The former describes the category that most blog posts fall into: a summary of some industry event, a commentary on recent news, or an opinion piece that will be outdated in a few months. Evergreen content, on the other hand, will continue to be relevant for many years. The most popular of the latter type is “how to” content; but, that content has unfortunately earned a bad reputation due to sites like ehow and wikianswers, where you are as likely to find content on how to tie a shoe (not particularly useful) as you are on how to tune a guitar (useful). If a how-to is useful, then by all means, you should write it and include it on your website....
You'll never believe Peter Koechley's OUTRAGEOUS headline writing tips. For most of us in the online journalism business, writing headlines basically amounts to guesswork. Will people click on this? Are there enough nouns in here for Google to find it? Does this line break look weird? Should I use a question mark? An exclamation point? For Upworthy, it’s more akin to a science — and not one of those mushy sciences like anthropology or psychology, either. We’re talking straight-up particle physics. For every article they publish, its writers come up with 25 headline options. They then A/B test the four most promising before settling on a winner. The result: In just 11 months, with a smallish staff and not much original content, Upworthy has built a sizable audience (8.7 million monthly unique visitors as of last November) for its socially progressive message, plus a Facebook following of more than 1 million fans....
If you don’t know who you’re talking to, then how do you know what to say? Even though you already know who your target market is (oh, God, I certainly hope you do), did you know you are still writing for three distinct audiences? What I’d like to do today is explain these three audiences to you and give you tips for how to write for each one. That way, your blog posts will reach the right people and have a greater impact on them (and on your bottom line)....
Writing a good blog post isn’t just about great content… Writing truly engaging and exciting blog posts and marketing is an art for that involves storytelling, emotion, and creating an immersive experience for your readers. How you structure your marketing techniques in terms of storytelling, and connecting with readers, can often leave more of an impact than the content itself (think about how a song or story touched you more because of the emotional impact than the details of the story itself). In this post I want to share 3 tips you can use to enhance the appeal of any post you write, and make it incredibly engaging to your readers....
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Today, you’ll learn 9 strategies that’ll help you create highly engaging content that’ll draw your target audience in.
To create a richer experience for your audience, your content needs to impact their lives and answer their questions. It also needs to be strategically planned. Don’t be like the 70% of marketers who lack a consistent or integrated content strategy.
Let’s take a look at the 6 content writing strategies that’ll help you acquire more organic traffic....
If you're a marketer, copywriter, or business owner, then you might be sick and tired of hearing the words "content marketing" by now. Without a doubt, this term has been one of the most frequently used buzzwords of 2014 and it doesn't look like there's any end in sight.
And, it's not only the undeniable overuse of the words "content marketing" that has grown tired to some people; certain aspects of the practice are starting to wear. We often see the same old blog posts, clickbait headlines, and unintelligible Vine videos popping up in our feeds and it can make us wonder if this is what the future of advertising looks like.
Despite the growing exhaustion with the buzz word, there are still creative, entertaining, and ultimately profitable ways to go about using content for the sake of advertising or marketing. However, in order to do so, you have to make sure that you're avoiding these four things....
Many people have found headlines that work wonders, consistently, time after time. And they go well beyond the saturated listicle or clickbait. Why not take so…
Bloggers are always “on deadline.”
No matter what the posting schedule is like (daily, weekly, monthly), there is always another deadline looming. It can feel like one of those hamster wheels where you can’t get off.
With several years of blogging under my belt, I have accumulated some tricks that keep me from losing my mind. Keep These Blogging Tricks Up Your Sleeve...
Across the twenty or thirty I’ve scoured in the past day or so, the usual suspects appear. In 2014, we are going to see brands “do more native ads”, “Editorial homepages” and curiously uninformative infographics.
To be blunt: the future of content marketing in 2014 looks exactly like content marketing did in 2013. And 2012. And 2011.
Boring. Bloated. Samey. Uninspiring. Lumpen....
Does Medium want to be a platform for writing of all kinds, or does it want to be a magazine-style curated experience for readers? The two are very different, and the potential for conflict is great.
The headline will greatly influence your website traffic, bounce rates, conversions and trust. Millions of new blog posts, billions of new emails and thousands of hours of videos are uploaded online each day....
When each of your readers is following hundreds, or thousands, of other twitter accounts, you need your tweets to stand out and get their attention in the split second it takes to read a headline. This is why headlines are so important. This is what will draw your readers in to actually see what you have written. If your headline isn’t compelling enough, it won’t matter what your article has to say. No one will ever see it....
Do you want to learn how to increase blog traffic?
It’s easy—use these five simple steps each month to grow your blog to new heights.
Recommended reading for all bloggers...
Use these examples and key points to convince your clients and your peers to rise above the sea of jargon we all navigate every day... . .. So before you reach for jargon when you create content, ask yourself questions like, “What message am I trying to communicate here?” “Will my target audience find it both relatable and compelling, or am I resorting to jargon as a crutch because I don’t honestly know what I’m attempting to say?” Or, even worse, “Am I inventing made-up language to create what can be promptly dismissed as pseudo science?” If the answer to that last question is “yes,” then you’ll risk allowing jargon overload to defeat the purpose of the content by undermining the messaging campaign. An influential teacher inspires desired outcomes from students (i.e., acquired knowledge) by demystifying the unknown. As content marketing professionals, we should push ourselves — and our clients — toward this same standard....
Storytelling is absolutely essential whether it be traditional paid media, owned media like social networks and blogs, or earned media where someone else is telling your story. It’s critical to connect your story of how you solve the customer’s problems at each step of their journey. The key in storytelling though is to recognize that people are going to enter your story at different chapters and pages along their journey. It’s Their Story, Not Yours So as you think of telling your story you must visualize it through their eyes. You should ask, where is the customer in the buying cycle, where are they in the learning cycle, and how does it relate to their job’s role as it relates to that stage of the process? That way the story is relevant to their needs, their issues, their requirements....
The web was dominated for a decade by two key elements. Search engines and content. Then social media turned up. Content creation on a smarter and social web requires intelligent and creative thinking. ..Google will always have good user experience as their primary goal, and each update they make will be in the direction of better understanding of the content from a human perspective. If you guide your copywriting to provide what your readers look for, not only that you’ll get more loyal audience that loves to come to your website and read what’s new, but Google will also award your actions with a higher ranking in their search result pages. So how should you write? Here’s what you should ask yourself before you publish your writing on the Internet...
Despite the image of a lone person typing by the light of their computer, bloggers have a lot in common with a Super Bowl Championship football team. Just as football players work hard and prepare through on-going practice and games, bloggers need to continually publish and engage with their audience. Here are seven lessons bloggers can learn from football to take their game to the championship level....
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Check out 13 case studies that show why choice matters when it comes to optimizing for conversions.