Free Business Management report “Insider Pricing Strategies” looks into: Know Your Audience, The B.L.S Formula, Set Yourself Apart, Value Stack Strategy, The GAP Strategy, Loss Leader Strategy, Qualify Your Customers, Incorporate Social Proof, Provide Top-Notch Support, Final Thoughts and Resources. Click “Insider Pricing Strategies” to download (502 KB pdf) this Business information report.
The entire reason you have affiliates is to create a way to duplicate your efforts in order to sell more products and make more money. In order to do this you need to run a fair and honest affiliate program that focuses on your return on investment (ROI), the needs of your affiliates, and the pain points of your customers. This can be quite a balancing act. Here are eight ways to achieve just that.
1) Create Awesome Products – No matter how great everything else is, if you don’t have fabulous products that your affiliates can proudly support and get behind, you will have trouble making sales. Spend the time, effort and money up front making the best products you can so that you can sell them for top dollar and thrill your clients in the process.
2) Choose Your Platform Wisely – The affiliate software you choose is very important. It’ll be how your customers purchase your products and how your affiliates are able to get the tools from you to promote your product, as well as how you and they will be able to analyze what is working and what is not. Take the time to study the different platforms available before choosing.
3) Price Your Products Right – The best way to do this is to price based on perceived value that the product offers your customer, giving them a price they are happy to pay. You want them to pay enough to make it worth it to an affiliate to promote it, but not so much that they feel ripped off when they get the product. Under promise and over deliver.
4) Provide a Fair Commission Rate – In most cases you need to provide at least a 50 percent commission on digital products, if not more. Remember that with digital products your price of development goes down with each sale, not up as it would with a physical item. So, you can afford to offer higher commission rates for digital products.
5) Give Your Affiliates the Right Tools – To keep good affiliates, make it easy for them to promote your products by providing them with the right tools. That might be branded content, landing pages that convert, art work, apps and more. Give them what they need to promote your product and they will work harder.
6) Train Your Affiliates – Even though some affiliates will show up that already know what to do, it’s a good idea to offer training to your affiliates such as videos that show them how to cut and paste your art work, add in their affiliate code, promote your products, and more.
7) Incentivize Your Affiliates – Run sales contests with bonus commissions, or other prizes for high sales over a certain amount. The more you give encouragement and incentives, the harder they’ll work.
8) Reward Great Affiliates and Weed Out Non-Performers – It’s hard, but sometimes you just have to clean up your affiliate list. If someone has joined but has been inactive for a year or more, try asking them why and point them to your training. And if that doesn’t work, remove them from the program.
By focusing on your product, providing excellent customer service, and following the rest of the ways to improve your affiliate program ROI, you’ll make more money than before because you will be more focused on the things that matter most.
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Running a great affiliate program requires you to provide awesome tools for your affiliates. There are some really fabulous ways to create and develop affiliate tools for your program. You’ll need tools like an affiliate platform, landing pages, creatives and more. You will be successful if you follow these tips.
1) Chose a Great Affiliate Platform – There are many platforms to choose from, but the better platform you choose, the easier it will be for you to provide the right tools to your affiliates to use to market your products and/or services.
2) Ask Affiliates – If you already have in mind a few people who would probably want to be affiliates for your products or services, ask them to help you evaluate the types of tools they would need to become a success. Do they need great art work, brandable content, or other tools to use during marketing?
3) Consider Your Audience – Who do you plan for your affiliates to market to? Who is the audience that will buy your products and/or service? Knowing these answers will help you create better tools that are focused toward the buyer for your affiliates to use.
4) Think about Your Niche – The sort of tools you provide your affiliates with depends a lot on what your niche is. The niche, combined with audience knowledge and awareness, will help you know what tools your affiliates need to market your product and/or service.
5) Give More Receive More – The fact is, most affiliates aren’t going to bother with programs that don’t offer them lifetime cookies, creatives like banners and buttons, well-written content, videos, landing pages and more.
6) Hire Experts – Whether you like it or not, you can’t do everything. You are likely going to have to hire an expert, whether they are graphic designers, coders, or other professionals to help you create tools that work for your affiliates.
7) Provide Training – When you create a tool, don’t assume your affiliates will understand exactly how to use it. Create training for your affiliates on how to use the various tools that you make for them. You can do this in PDF reports with pictures, or with video, or both.
8) Consider Your Budget – Creating affiliate tools can be an expensive endeavor. You need to determine if it will pay off and what the benefits are to doing so. Run a cost benefit analysis. You’ll need to know how much you will need your affiliates to sell to cover the cost of creating the tools.
Using affiliates to help you market your products and services is a great way to bring in a larger audience, increase sales, and create an empire. But you can’t do it without providing great tools for your affiliates to use, and the training to ensure that they understand the right way to use them.
Many times affiliate networks close down, or you outgrow them and it’s time to move to a new improved version. But the idea can seem daunting. The thing is, it’s really not any harder than when you first started your affiliate program; you just need to remember to plan accordingly and keep in contact with the affiliates you have now so that the transition goes smoothly. Follow these eight steps for a smooth transition to a new affiliate network.
1) Do Your Due Diligence – Study the network thoroughly before deciding to switch. You obviously aren’t happy with the one you have now or you would not be thinking of switching. Take the time to ensure your next choice is a long-term choice that will work for your needs. Make a list of functions you need, along with your budget, and put your answers into a spreadsheet so that you can eventuate better.
2) Get Help– Migrating to a new affiliate network from another can be a busy and complicated procedure. You might consider getting help. If you don’t have an affiliate manager, hiring one who is experienced using the new platform would be a good choice to make at this juncture.
3) Communicate in Advance with Affiliates – It’s important that you open the lines of communication with your affiliates so that they will be ready to move with you to the new platform with the time comes. If you make it an exciting transition that promises more tools for your affiliates, they’ll be excited. But don’t spring it on them. Give them time to prepare.
4) Get Rid of Dead Weight – You probably have affiliates who don’t produce, so this is a great time to only move over people who have made sales in a specific period of time. You can even run a contest in advance of the move to help create more excitement. Don’t forget to look at holidays if you have a product that sells more during holidays. You might have a super affiliate who only promotes your product then and it would be terrible to lose them.
5) Know Your Top Producers – Get to know the affiliates in your network who are your top producers and make a special effort to reach out to them about the switch. You may even want to seek their feedback prior to choosing a new affiliate network to help you make a good decision. Some top affiliates have systems they refuse to work with. You don’t want to make that mistake.
6) Create New Marketing Collateral – You have to switch anyway, so it’s a great time to make, or have made, fresh new creatives. It’ll excite your affiliates and revitalize your brand. They’ll be excited to see new graphics, apps, landing pages and tools that will help them sell even more and make more money. Plus, it’ll give you something to email them about as you send reminders about the migration.
7) Tell Your Customers – While a new affiliate program may not directly affect your customers, it could if you usually allow them to sign into an account (that will now be different) to download the items they’ve purchased repeatedly. If that’s the case, keep them informed just like you will your affiliates.
8) Follow Up – Even after the transition, be sure to talk to your affiliates on the old platform for a while, making sure that all the people you wanted to move over know. You’ll need to send them frequent reminders to stop old creatives, ads, and promotions and to not forget to get enrolled in the new program.
Moving to a new affiliate network can be a great way to increase sales, have access to new and improved features, and give more to your affiliates so that they can market your products and/or services more easily. Don’t shy away from doing it just because you have to go through a trying process.
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Sometimes email feels like more burden than it’s worth. But the truth is, email is a valuable tool that has revolutionized the way that we work. When used correctly, email is a terrific time saver and productivity tool. For many of us, without access to the type of email we’re used to using today we would not have the careers that we have. But, for it to remain a tool of productivity and not a drag, it’s important to learn how to manage it better. Here’s how:
1) Use Labels and Folders – Every email software comes with the ability to automatically put emails in to particular folders or add labels to them as they come through. It will greatly reduce your stress if things go into folders as they come in, so you can take one look and differentiate what is an emergency and what can wait until later.
2) Check Email Regularly – Don’t allow too much time to pass by before checking your email. You don’t want to be tied to your email but you don’t want thousands of emails piled up either. Check your email on a regular schedule, and then deal with each email accordingly. Shoot for having no more than 10 to 20 unread emails in your inbox at any given time.
3) Respond Promptly – When someone has sent you something in your email such as paperwork, forms, important information or something, be sure to quickly hit reply and say “Thanks! Got it.” It’s that simple. You do not always have to respond about the item they sent immediately, instead you can download the item, put it in a dated file and/or tag it as a task to deal with later.
4) Read, Respond and File – Before there was email, there was snail mail. We all learned that the best way to check the mail was at our desks, near the file cabinet as well as the trash can. Nothing has really changed. When you check your email you should read, respond and/or file it away depending upon the email. You can even, in most email programs, turn an email into a scheduled task.
5) Reduce Incoming Emails – Turn off notifications from social media; unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read but that you did sign up for. You can use a service called Unroll.me to get it done fast. The service will return a list and you can then just choose which ones you want to keep and which ones you want to unsubscribe to. You add the things you want to see to your daily roll up, which enables you to view them when you want to, but not clutter up your email.
6) Create a Disposable or “Burner” Email Address – If you like to read a lot online, choose a free email address from Google or Yahoo for anyone who doesn’t require a business email address and for whom prompt reply will not be needed. You can always delete that email address and create a new one as needed. This can reduce what you receive in your work email exponentially.
7) Learn Your Software – A great example is the ability to “un-send” emails in Google email programs. Many people do not know this exists. You only have about 30 seconds to realize you should un-send it and click “undo send,” but it’s possible. If you use Google, make sure that you use this. If you use something else, find out whether or not you really know how to use your software to its fullest potential. If not, then you’ll want to train yourself on how to use all the features your email program offers.
8) Outsource – If you have a lot of customer service emails, don’t handle them yourself. It’s important to understand that since it’s your business, many of those customer service issues can take you a long time to deal with due to your emotional attachment to the issues. Instead, hire someone to take care of customer service. They will alert you to the most pressing issues that only you can deal with and handle the rest.
Getting control of your email will enable you to become more productive, organized, and more effective at doing your job or running your business. You will feel more free and accomplished if your email is organized and not out of control.
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Do you think you can have too much creativity? Creativity is the ability to turn an idea into something real and tangible. So, if you find yourself stuck in the idea rut and haven’t actually found a way to turn your ideas into reality, you are likely really not suffering from too much creativity but instead a lack of focus. This can be the result of a lack of understanding of your goals.
Some people mistake the ability to generate ideas with creativity. But, the fact is, to be creative you have to be able to do two things; think and produce. Without the production part, you’re not being creative – you’re just dreaming. To move from dreamer to creator you have to act.
If you’re having a hard time getting to the action part, try refocusing your objectives. Write down what your goals are for even trying to come up with a project. Make a list of the ideas you’ve come up with thus far and see how they align with your objectives.
Ask other people to give you feedback about some of your ideas by sharing them along with your objectives for the idea. If you ask your clients and customers what they think, or colleagues what they think, it will help you narrow down your ideas.
Now that you’ve focused your ideas to meet your objectives, pick one idea to see through to completion. Remember, without completing an idea, you’ve not really fully participated in the creative process. You have to think and produce to really truly be involved in creation.
Now that you have chosen an idea, it’s time to develop your goals into actionable steps to see the entire idea to fruition. A goal is not truly complete until you know exactly what steps you need to take to realize it.
When you know what you’re going to create and what steps you need to take to get there, figure out what resources you have and what resources you lack. Identify ways to fill the gaps. Maybe you need to learn something new, or perhaps you need to outsource a few of the actionable steps to reach your goals.
Once you’ve put into order the steps necessary to develop your idea into a true creation, you need to give each step a deadline. A great way to do that is to determine when you’d like to “launch” your new creation – the day you want it finished and ready for the world. Then work your way backward through the steps until you arrive at today, your beginning.
The very final step toward truly being creative is to not give up. You may have setbacks and your time line might even be off a bit, but you need to do what it takes and complete all the steps so that you can experience the final results of your creation: a finished project. Only when you have something that other people can see, hear, smell, taste or touch are you done.
Creativity is about the creation process, and if you’re doing it right, you simply cannot have too much creativity. If you’re having problems, you need to focus yourself on both sides of the process of creation: thinking and doing.
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A webmaster is usually an individual responsible for keeping one or more online sites up and running. This individual is often a member of an organization or network that grants them access to webmaster tools. These tools include such things as software that enables the administrator to post web pages and edit them as well as software that allows them to submit web pages to the major search engines. In general, this position requires that the individual understand how the various components work together and what role they each play within the larger framework of the site. This can be overwhelming for someone who is new to the world of webmastering.
There are a number of ways to become a webmaster. Most webmastering organizations will either pay you a fee to use their tools or provide you with a free service that does most of the work for you. Many free services will perform basic functions such as checking your HTML codes and approving or denying new pages. Once you become a paid member of a webmastering organization, you will typically be given the opportunity to take advantage of advanced features such as analytics and reporting so that you can better understand your traffic levels and which keywords are converting the best. When marketing your site, it is a good idea to have a full understanding of these tools and the importance of them in making your Internet marketing efforts successful.
The primary job of a webmaster is to keep all of the websites he hosts up to date and search engine optimized. The content on the pages of these websites needs to be top notch and conform to the standards of the search engines so that they will be easily found when people perform searches. Having the correct information on these websites is important so that they attract visitors and keep them, which is the entire point of having a presence on the Internet.
One area of responsibility that all webmasters need to be aware of is social media marketing. There are many different ways to promote websites these days and the majority of them involve social media. A good webmaster will work on optimizing his websites for social media as well as optimizing his websites for SEO. He should have a thorough knowledge of SEO, so that he can rank his websites well with the major search engines. In order for a webmaster to accomplish this, he will need to hire an SEO expert that has the knowledge of which keywords are most likely to draw in customers and which ones will convert into paying customers, as well as the know-how of content management system solutions.
A professional website webmaster should also make sure that he implements a good strategy for link building and social bookmarking. Many of these tactics are very difficult for a layperson to understand, especially when it comes to implementing them. A professional website webmaster will have several people working on these tasks, and he will have a strict strategy in place for how he is going to implement each one. SEO is not something that a novice can master in a short amount of time. In fact, SEO can be quite involved and intricate and it takes a trained eye to be successful at it.
Another area of importance in SEO is how webmasters handle their backlinks. Google looks particularly keen on links that are coming from quality sources and if they see that a webmaster is simply linking to cards from one directory to another, then it is highly likely that the links are broken and that Google will mark that directory as a spam site. This is why it is crucial for a webmaster who is serious about his SEO to take his time to build and properly maintain his backlinks. Cardenas SEO is an excellent webmaster tool for both serious and beginner webmasters.
Think about the people and companies you buy from. You buy from people and companies you like. You buy from people and companies that represent credibility and authority. You buy from people and companies who have created a strong image in your mind.
Your customers buy for the same reasons. They buy from companies that have a strong online brand. Here are five strategies to establish a strong online brand:
#1 Publish off site
Publishing is a wonderful way to establish a brand. Each piece of content you create represents who you are and what you stand for. Your personality carries through in your content. If you publish on other websites, you’re able to reach out and attract more customers. You’re able to develop a strong brand. Publish on:
* Blogs
* Article directories
* Other websites
* Newsletters
* Syndicate your content
And don’t forget offline publications too, including:
* Magazines
* Newspapers
* Journals
#2 Network
Networking, both online and off, helps establish you as a real person. It helps you connect with others in your industry and your community. The more people you connect with, the stronger your brand will grow.
And don’t forget social networking sites. Each interaction, post and comment is an invaluable opportunity to strengthen your brand. In fact, social networking is one of the most effective tools you can use to strengthen your brand.
#3 Be consistent
Consistency establishes a strong brand. If your personality changes from communication to communication, your prospects and customers can become confused. However, if you’re consistently thoughtful, funny, controversial, or serious then your brand will get stronger. This includes social networking interactions, email, articles and content, video and interviews.
It’s one of the most important reasons why you should be your authentic self when branding your business. If you brand your business to be controversial but that’s not your personality, it will be difficult to hold onto that brand image. A small business owner’s brand is most often their personality. It may be emphasized but it’s still uniquely you.
#4 Share
One of the best ways to strengthen your brand is to share. Share a photo or video of yourself instead of a logo or a graphic image. Share stories and experiences as they relate to your topic. Also share your knowledge. Host workshops and seminars. Host online classes. Share information that’s important to you as well. The more people get to know you and who you are, the stronger your brand will grow.
#5 Give stuff away – especially content
Finally, consider giving things away. Everyone likes to get something valuable for free. And you can brand your giveaways. Encourage people to share your freebies with others. For example, you could write an e-book and brand it to you and your business. Give it away for free and encourage others to share it and the information inside. Each person that reads your amazing information will gain a positive image of you and your brand.
There are many strategies to strengthen your online brand to attract customers. Remember that we buy from people we trust and we like. Embrace your unique personality as your brand and apply it to everything you do. You will attract customers naturally through your brand personality.
Email marketing is the act of transmitting a promotional message, usually to an extended group of individuals, via email. In its most broad sense, email marketing actually refers to the use of email to send commercial messages, solicit donations or promote sales. Internet marketers use this medium to market their companies, products and services. One can easily get email marketing leads by conducting simple searches in any of the major search engines. You need to have your own email marketing plan to be successful.
It is possible for anyone to get started with an email marketing campaign. You just need to be able to write good promotional emails that will be effective to your targeted audience. There are many ways on how you can start to market your company successfully. Below are some great tips to get started with your email marketing campaigns:
o Create an informative email course. Inform your customers about your product line, new products, promotions, and special offers. This is also a great way to attract new customers because most of the time, customers who are new to the industry would like to learn about things as they grow and become more familiarized with it.
o Send out free newsletters. You can send out newsletters informing them about your company and what you can offer them. This is another great way to inform your subscribers about your company as well as keep them updated with what’s going on. Make sure to add your company’s contact information to all the newsletters.
o Create email templates and design tools. It is important that you have the right email templates and marketing platform to make marketing easier for you. Most marketers today use email templates that look professional yet simple to use. Email templates come in varying formats and features like auto responders, personal messages, threaded conversations, etc. Make sure to include any of these features when creating marketing material for your readers.
o Set up a tracking system. Tracking your email campaign is crucial in determining better results and maximizing your profits. You can easily track your campaign metrics through your website or a Google Analytics account. With this tool, you can track the number of subscribers, open rates, bounces, click-throughs, and even sales and leads. The better metrics that you’ll be able to track will enable you to see where you are excelling and which areas you need to work on to achieve better results. You can use the tracking system to set goals for yourself and help you pinpoint which areas might need improvement.
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It’s easy to forget that content isn’t just a blog post or an article. There are many different types of content marketing that gets results. One type of online content marketing that works is presentations such as slide shows.
There are different places where you can put a presentation or a slide show, such as YouTube and SlideShare.com, as well as your own website.
Online presentations are a good way to:
* Demonstrate your authority
* Get backlinks
* Promote your brand
* Encourage engagement
If you create high quality slide shows and presentations, users will share them with other people – helping you get more traffic back to your website. Plus, the fact that you are presenting as an expert will grow your “expert status” among your followers. It’s a great way to promote your brand and get name recognition. Not only that, people love to participate and comment on presentations.
Host a Webinar and Repurpose
A great way to produce a presentation or slide show is to actually plan and host an online webinar or Google Hangout. Record it, then repurpose it as a presentation or slide show. Then you get to use it more than once to produce results and get more traffic to your website.
Use What You Already Have
To get ideas for presentations and slideshows you can actually use some material you already have. If you have any tips, or how to blog posts, you can easily turn that into a presentation. You can also purchase PLR eCourses to use for your presentations if you want to. Simply edit to make your own, market it, and give the presentation online via Google Hangouts or another medium where you can record the event.
Put Presentation Recordings on LinkedIn
A very effective way to use your presentations is to put them on your LinkedIn profile. You can introduce yourself in a very personal way with a well- designed presentation that includes you talking to your audience as well as narrating a slide show. Today, with the quality software available right on your computer as well as free and paid tools online, you can create professional looking presentation recordings with hardly any skill. If you’re nervous you can even hire someone to help you.
Make Your Presentations Stand Out
It’s important that you make your presentations stand out by ensuring that they are targeted to your audience, show something interesting and new, teach your audience something they need to know, and engage them to act. Really, if you simply do two out of three of these you’ll be ahead of the game. Go to SlideShare.com and take a look at what types of presentations are getting the most views. Then, make yours a little better.
Creating presentations and slideshows is a great addition to your other content marketing tactics. It’s a really effective method for getting your message out to your audience, as well as a good way to attract new viewers to your business.
Video has become a driving force in content marketing. One only has to look as far as YouTube’s success to see that video content is a thriving entity all on its own. In fact, you can create a thriving business using mostly video as your main type of content. But, if you normally just use textual content, the thought of using video can be daunting.
Get the Tools
You really don’t have to spend tons of money on the right tools for creating entertaining and engaging videos for your content marketing needs. However, at least spending enough to be able to provide adequate lighting and sound is important. You can even use your iPhone or iPad to create outstanding videos.
No One Hit Wonders
Videos don’t stand alone. If you create one, you really should create more than one. Having a regular video series as part of your blog is a good idea. It will encourage more viewers to take the time to view your videos if you have more than one. At first it may feel as if no one is watching, but take the time to stick to doing them during a time period and see what happens.
Shorter Is Better
You don’t want to make a video super long. More than three minutes and you’re pushing it unless you have really high quality images and sound to match the length of your video. If you do have something long to say, try breaking them up and do a series with one point on each video over time.
Repurpose Content You Already Have
For your first video you don’t have to reinvent the wheel; instead use some content you already have. If you have a “how to” blog post, why not do a quick video demonstrating how to do “it”. If you have a blog post with five tips on doing something better, do five videos talking about each tip for two or three minutes. Using visuals outside of your face is a good idea, to make it more interesting.
Leverage Events (Online and Offline)
Having an event such as an in-person interview, conference, or an online webinar? Why not record it, then edit it and repurpose it to use later. You can break up longer events into shorter videos with a little bit of editing and adding in visuals, and you could have a series of videos from one hour-long event.
Outsource
If you’re not sure about how to edit the videos or create them in a format that is usable by most browsers including mobile devices, consider outsourcing the editing process. Usually you would provide them with the raw video and they’ll cut it down and edit it to make it a more professional production.
You can actually even hire local people to record for you. It’s up to you how much money you want to spend. But, it costs a lot less than you think to produce very professional sounding and looking videos for your content marketing needs.
You don’t have to worry about being perfect. Take a look on YouTube at the popular videos in your niche. They are probably not perfect. There may be a few exceptions but more than likely the really popular ones aren’t perfect. As long as viewers can see something interesting, hear the audio and trust the value and truth of the information being shared, you’ll see success using video as one of your content marketing tactics.
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Search engines are more powerful and intuitive than ever. While the changes in search engine technology have been generally good for the user, it can be more difficult for a content marketer to get to their audience. Today, a content marketer has to think outside the box in order to conquer the fact of personal search.
What personal search technology does is create different search results for each individual who is conducting a search for any keyword or keyword phrase. The technology bases the results on pages you’ve found useful in the past, your profile if you have one, and other factors such as your location and even your assumed political affiliation.
Personal search can be a roadblock for a content marketer who isn’t paying attention and planning content around the knowledge of personal search technology. Google in particular has made a point of producing more personalized results for users. They are essentially indexing your life – all on Google.
As search engine technology changes (and it will continue to change), it’s important for the savvy marketer to go with the flow and seek to understand how the changes affect them. In addition, it’s essential for marketers to rid themselves of outdated traffic-generating methods. It’s also important for marketers to take Google at its word and use the tools they provide webmasters to improve your page rank.
Content Is Still Powerful
The most powerful weapon in your arsenal to continue to attract your audience in spite of personalized search is content. Continue to create well-written, authoritative content for your audience and you’ll continue to show high page ranks. Avoid trying to trick the search engines, and instead focus on providing a good user experience for your audience with the content you choose to promote.
Search Engine Optimization Still Works
If you have a locally focused business, search engine optimization works even better. But, if you have a strictly online business where location doesn’t matter, it will still work well for you – provided that you focus on creating a lot of content, and understand the value and importance of using keywords properly.
You don’t want to keyword stuff, and you don’t want your content to look unnatural, but you do want to use keywords for your page titles, subtitles, headers and within your content in the most natural way possible.
Use Social Media to Drive Traffic
Some marketers are not listening and are not paying attention. You don’t want to replace your website with social media. Social media is simply another tactic to help you drive traffic to your website (and if you have a bricks and mortar store, into your store). You don’t want your audience to go to your social media, and that’s it. You want them on your website.
Pay attention to new tactics such as in-person events, webinars, and more to stay on top of traffic-generating technology. Focus on creating the best business for your audience that you can. If your products and/or services are focused on your audience, and your content is also focused on your audience, you will conquer search engine personalization without missing a beat.
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The most important type of content for marketing your business today is arguably the content you put on your website’s blog. This is the content that will attract visitors via the search engine traffic that the keyword-rich content will generate when your audience makes a search.
Studies show that blogging about your business, products and services at least twenty times per month will allow you to get five times more traffic than if you don’t. This is according to a study done by HubSpot.com. You can literally double your website traffic in six months if you keep it up.
But, if you want the visitors to stick to your blog and read it more than once, it’s important to make your blog posts visually pleasing. Putting images in your blog posts will break up the text to make your blog more attractive. In addition, it can help further explain the meaning of the content that you place on your blog. Taking the time to choose a relevant image will make your blog look more professional, too.
There are many ways you can find appropriate images.
Take Photos Yourself
You can produce perfectly good images by using your iPhone to take relevant pictures. If you have a digital camera, that is another way to take pictures. If you want to take pictures of products, make yourself a portable light box or try taking the pictures outside in natural light.
Get Creative
An image doesn’t have to be a photograph; it can be an attractive arrangement of a quote from your blog post made into a .jpg file with a beautiful and colorful background. This is a great way to add interest as well as call out an important point within your blog post. It looks attractive and helps explain meaning to your readers.
Hire Someone
There are plenty of graphic designers on sites like Fiverr, as well as other sites that you can hire to help you come up with appropriate graphics for your blog posts. They may be better at coming up with ideas than you, and it’s perfectly okay to hire someone. If you outsource your blog posts, ask your writer if they can help you with images.
Look on Stock Photo Sites
There are quite a few stock photo sites, like iStockphoto.com, SXC.hu, Morguefile.com, and RGBStock.com, that you can use to find appropriate images to use on your blog. Some of the sites are free, and some are paid. Just check the license rules to ensure that you have a right to use the image. It’s also good practice to give credit for images.
You want to use images, but don’t go overboard with them. Remember to consider loading time, so use smaller images. As well as that, remember to use the “alt” tags on the images so that if the image doesn’t show up for some reason it will tell the reader what the image is. This is also another way to alert search engines about the subject of your website.
As you develop a content strategy, it’s important to start thinking of yourself as a publisher. Publishers have everything planned out in advance based on the yearly cycle as well as their product cycle. They know in advance exactly what type of content they need to create and produce for the month of February and why. If you think more like a publisher, you’re going to be much more successful in your content strategy implementation.
Ability to Create a Theme
By creating an editorial calendar, you can develop an overall theme for the year or the quarter based on the products and/or services that you’re promoting, as well as the time of year. Planning it all in advance makes it easier to be prepared and come up with the ideas, content, and images that you want to use to promote.
Makes It Simpler to Find Your Voice
By planning out your marketing year in advance, it means you’ll also be planning your product creation. If you provide services, you’ll already know in advance which services you’ll be focused on. This will make it so much easier to know what kind of content to create and in what tone you need it to be, because you’ll understand in advance when you need it, and what it’s for. When you have a plan, finding your voice comes a lot easier.
Makes It Easier to Diversify Content
If you know in advance what the topic of your content needs to be, it’ll be easier to create different forms of content for your needs. You can plan in advance to create blog posts, vlogs, videos, reports, and more, based off a particular subject or theme designed to market a particular product or service. By not doing it “on the fly,” your content will be more cohesive and diversified.
Keeps the Content Ideas Flowing
By making an editorial calendar, you actually create a situation where you make it easier to keep content ideas flowing. Some people think planning makes content boring, but the truth is, planning makes content effective, appropriate and enjoyable for your target audience. It gives you time to create appropriate titles and outlines, to ensure that you get the message out that you want out.
Enables You to Create Quality Content
By planning your content in advance, you have more time to make the content true quality content that speaks to your audience. Whether you’ll be writing it and editing yourself, or hiring others to do it for you, it’s important to plan in advance what type of content will be needed in order to produce the highest quality content that you can.
Keeps Your Website on Topic
It’s easy to get off topic sometimes if you haven’t planned your content in advance. By writing down what content you’ll be creating before you create it, you’ll have time to nix ideas that go off topic, or move them to the right time and place. If you try to produce content at the last moment, you may end up with irrelevant content that has no purpose.
Acts as a Map to Help You Reach Your Goals
Your editorial calendar is just like GPS or a map. You can look at it in one glance and see where you’ll be in the future, and you can look more deeply into it and find out what you’re supposed to be doing right now. You won’t go into each day without a clue of where you’ve been or where you’re going.
Helps Increase Collaboration
Having a publication calendar that you make visible to the public can also help increase collaboration. If you allow for guest writers and bloggers, they can look at your publication calendar and it will be easier for them to decide what to write about within your guidelines. In addition, it will help your outsourcers and people who work with you understand the direction you’re taking the business.
Attracts More Visitors
Having a set calendar will make your content appear more regularly, thus increasing the rate of visitors to your website. Your audience will learn to expect certain content from you at certain times and will appreciate knowing when, what and where to go to see it and view it.
Sets Expectations and Deadlines
Even if you are just setting deadlines for yourself, it’s important to do so. If you have no expectations of yourself or others it will be difficult to build a truly profitable business. For instance, if you are building a furniture business, but you cannot ever tell anyone when the furniture will be finished, you won’t ever be able to sell anything. Set expectations and deadlines for yourself and anyone you outsource to; this will help you meet your goals.
Finally, by having a publication calendar you’ll ultimately have a more organized and planned business that will make more money in the long run. Content that is distributed and marketed according to your editorial and/or publication calendar will see a lot more success than content that is haphazardly put out without any notion of a goal or a plan.
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