It's hard to say exactly when people first started using the phrase "Quality, not quantity," but it has stood the test of time. And for good reason! There are few circumstances in which you want more of something shoddy in place of a couple really solid things.
This old standby holds up even in today's shiny, modern world of digital marketing. When it comes to content - be it images, copy, or anything else - it really is all about quality, not quantity.
No more jam-packing your copy with keywords til your sentences are incomprehensible, no more overloading your readers with irrelevant, nitpicking details, and no more blurry photo after blurry photo and widgets and sections and forms. It's time to think critically about what you're filling your pages with, and whether it's really driving the results you're looking for.
Content
Great content comes with great strategy. It's important to develop a plan first and foremost so you establish a guideline by which all your content is created. Once you know where you're headed, you can start to make your way there.
People are busier than ever, and have both short attention spans and a need for instant gratification. With precious little time to catch a visitor's eye, it's important to make every word count. Your strategy should start and end with a clear understanding of what people want when they get to your website. Chances are it's one of three things: 1) basic business information 2) yes or no answers to whether you do what they're looking for, or 3) requesting further details. Design your content to address these 3 needs right up front, with a hierarchical system to delve deeper as required.
Don't make visitors hunt for your phone number or how to get in touch, or dig through piles of irrelevant information just to find out if you offer something common. Keep it simple with the most important pieces first; don't get bogged down in technical specs up front - that's what your other pages are for!
Keywords
Gone are the days of keyword stuffing, jamming "car service in Boston, Mass, Boston Mass car service..." into as many lines, corners, and code of your website as possible to drive organic search traffic. That kind of SEO is bad for your visitors, bad for Google, and bad for you.
What are you supposed to do instead? Write like a human. Consider your audience, not only for what you write but how you write it. Ask yourself who your typical website visitor might be, what words and phrases they use to describe what you do, and what tone they're likely to respond well to. If you write it, they will come, so let your content do the legwork for you by naturally including key terms where they make sense. Google will reward you, and so will your customers.Write unique, informative, descriptive content and people will find you.
Photos
What's going to sell you on a business' merit: 30 low-quality, poorly lit photos of random work, or 3 high-resolution, professionally-lit and framed images of their top, representative projects?
It doesn't take a genius to recognize that it's more important for your images to accurately reflect the standards of your work than it is to have as many pictures as possible of everything you've ever done. When a picture is worth a thousand works, you need to make sure it's saying the right things.
The age-old idiom of quality over quantity has plenty of worthy applications these days, and it's never been more true than in this era of digital marketing. It's all too easy to get overwhelmed and overloaded with unnecessary information, when all you really need is short, sweet, and too-the-point content that tells people who you are.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Content's Not King: The Customer Is
Content is king of the castle no more.
In this social media world we live in, the lines become blurred as to who is running the show. Are you in charge of your business' social pages, or are your customers? You may be the one plugging in fun facts and scheduling witty posts, but it all comes back to the end user. The customer's in charge on social networks.
As Barry Feldman over at Social Media Today so eloquently put it, "The customer is the king. The customer has needs. You serve them with content."
Does this mean your content is no longer important? Absolutely not! If anything, your words - from Facebook to Twitter to your website - are more important than ever! It's also more important than ever to use them wisely, speaking to your audience with the information they want, the way they want it.
How do you write content that serves your customers?
Content is meant to resonate with people, not just talk at them. Your customer is king - be sure your content serves them well, and they will reward you!
In this social media world we live in, the lines become blurred as to who is running the show. Are you in charge of your business' social pages, or are your customers? You may be the one plugging in fun facts and scheduling witty posts, but it all comes back to the end user. The customer's in charge on social networks.
As Barry Feldman over at Social Media Today so eloquently put it, "The customer is the king. The customer has needs. You serve them with content."
Does this mean your content is no longer important? Absolutely not! If anything, your words - from Facebook to Twitter to your website - are more important than ever! It's also more important than ever to use them wisely, speaking to your audience with the information they want, the way they want it.
How do you write content that serves your customers?
- Determine who your audience truly is
- Are you marketing directly to your end user? A higher level decision maker? The language, tone, and strategy you use could be drastically different for one group than for another.
- Establish your value proposition
- What makes your product/service/brand worthwhile to that audience? What problem are you solving for them?
- Keep it simple
- No matter who you're speaking to, they're busy and their time is precious. Recognize the value of their time and get to the point quickly, making your message succinct and clear.
- Be relevant and informative
- What do people really need to know about your business? Don't waste time with extraneous information - keep it relevant to what your customers are interested in and give just enough detail for them to make their decision without overloading them.
- Keep in mind - on Social Media, Facebook in particular, the 80/20 rule still applies! Only 20% sales or promotion, 80% other content - somehow related to your business, of course.
Content is meant to resonate with people, not just talk at them. Your customer is king - be sure your content serves them well, and they will reward you!
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Tis the season... for oversharing
This time of year, it's easy to go overboard with social media and newsletters and email campaigns. Tis the season for sales, after all. But it's important to remember not to overdo it.
Sending constant promotional emails about next week's big sale, tomorrow's preview days, and the next day's pre-sale sale can get a little annoying. As a consumer, it can get exhausting going through (and deleting) that endless flood of emails and social posts. Remember, you're not the only company your customers are following.
The #1 Tip? Keep a healthy mix of engagement and promotions. Don't bombard your followers with exclusively sales-focused messaging. It's the holidays! There are tons of festive things to post, questions to ask, and photos to share to keep your brand interesting, engaging, and personal.
A good rule of thumb is to maintain an 80-20 ration: 80% engagement-focused content, and only 20% promotional. This might sound extreme, but it's an ideal way to keep people interested in your brand. When you share fun and interesting content, customers remember you and look forward to your posts. They might even re-share your content to their own followers. Building brand awareness is a big win any time of year.
Tip #2: Consider your audience. More specifically, consider their personal preferences when it comes to holiday-themed messaging. Granted, Christmas cheer is everywhere, but it's wise to be cautious when posting content that is overtly religious. Be sure your posts appeal to a wide audience.
Obviously, Christmas is a religious holiday at its heart, but you don't want to alienate those followers who are not so into it. Keep it fun and casual. Focus more on the festive season and things we can all appreciate, like twinkling lights and hot chocolate on a snowy day. Unless your business is Christian in nature, save baby Jesus and the wise men for your personal social accounts.
Tip #3: Be thankful. A great way to engage with your customers without being overly promotional is to say thank you! Sending an email to all your customers or sharing a blog post with your social media followers is a thoughtful and authentic way to remind your audience of your brand, and your human side.
Write up a couple of paragraphs reflecting on the past year. You can marvel at how far your business has come, laugh at silly things that happened, and make predictions for what you hope will come next year. But most importantly, make it clear that you appreciate the support of each and every customer that has walked through your door, made a phone call, or clicked the "follow" button. Your customers are the reason your doors are still open. Let them know how grateful you are!
At the end of the day, the best strategy for your business this holiday season (and throughout the year) is to be genuine! Show your personal side, and remind customers of the people behind the brand. And don't forget to have a happy new year!
Sending constant promotional emails about next week's big sale, tomorrow's preview days, and the next day's pre-sale sale can get a little annoying. As a consumer, it can get exhausting going through (and deleting) that endless flood of emails and social posts. Remember, you're not the only company your customers are following.
So how do you keep your brand top of mind during the holiday rush without going too far?
The #1 Tip? Keep a healthy mix of engagement and promotions. Don't bombard your followers with exclusively sales-focused messaging. It's the holidays! There are tons of festive things to post, questions to ask, and photos to share to keep your brand interesting, engaging, and personal.
A good rule of thumb is to maintain an 80-20 ration: 80% engagement-focused content, and only 20% promotional. This might sound extreme, but it's an ideal way to keep people interested in your brand. When you share fun and interesting content, customers remember you and look forward to your posts. They might even re-share your content to their own followers. Building brand awareness is a big win any time of year.
Tip #2: Consider your audience. More specifically, consider their personal preferences when it comes to holiday-themed messaging. Granted, Christmas cheer is everywhere, but it's wise to be cautious when posting content that is overtly religious. Be sure your posts appeal to a wide audience.
Obviously, Christmas is a religious holiday at its heart, but you don't want to alienate those followers who are not so into it. Keep it fun and casual. Focus more on the festive season and things we can all appreciate, like twinkling lights and hot chocolate on a snowy day. Unless your business is Christian in nature, save baby Jesus and the wise men for your personal social accounts.
Tip #3: Be thankful. A great way to engage with your customers without being overly promotional is to say thank you! Sending an email to all your customers or sharing a blog post with your social media followers is a thoughtful and authentic way to remind your audience of your brand, and your human side.
Write up a couple of paragraphs reflecting on the past year. You can marvel at how far your business has come, laugh at silly things that happened, and make predictions for what you hope will come next year. But most importantly, make it clear that you appreciate the support of each and every customer that has walked through your door, made a phone call, or clicked the "follow" button. Your customers are the reason your doors are still open. Let them know how grateful you are!
At the end of the day, the best strategy for your business this holiday season (and throughout the year) is to be genuine! Show your personal side, and remind customers of the people behind the brand. And don't forget to have a happy new year!
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
National Punctuation Day!
Happy National Punctuation Day!
Now, once you've finished celebrating with the appropriate use of commas and exclamation points, I'll turn your attention to spelling and grammar on the web.
Somehow, in the era of tweets and pins and likes, we've lost our way on the road to good writing. And I'm not talking about lofty, eloquent phrasing or Jeopardy-worthy vocabulary. I mean the simple use of proper grammar, good spelling, and (of course!) appropriate punctuation.
1) When did it become acceptable to CAPITALIZE EVERYTHING? So you want to emphasize a feature, or point out an important detail. Okay, great. But when everything is emphasized, nothing is. Also, it's just, plain incorrect.
- Use capitalization only where they're meant to be used - proper nouns and the start of sentences.
- Use bold or italics to make something stand out in your text.
Every Word Of Your Sentence, or EVERY LETTER IN YOUR WORDS makes your content hard to read, not to mention it comes across as yelling. Don't yell at your customers. Nobody likes a yeller.
2) Who decided that commas and semicolons were interchangeable? They're not. It seems like suddenly semicolons are the new commas when it comes to writing out lists of products or brands or services. It's strange and, again, just incorrect.
- Commas represent the natural pause(s) in your sentence, or breaks between list items
- Semicolons separate distinct, but related sentences, or can technically be used between items that also have commas (i.e. between addresses, like Boston, MA; New York, NY; etc)
3) Spelling. Oh my goodness, spelling. In these post-AOL dial-up days, we've come so very far from "c u nxt wk" and "omg ttyl." Or have we?
In an era of digital content and spellcheck, there's no excuse for bad spelling. And yet so very many people, and businesses, still publish poorly written, terribly spelled content to their websites!
- Read your own content. Read it early, read it often. Have a friend read it to catch what you miss.
- Use spell check! Technology is amazing; take advantage of its helpful tools. That red squiggly line is there to help.
Just because words have gone digital doesn't mean that using them, and all their accessories, is no longer important. In fact, I'd argue that it's more important than ever! With unlimited resources available to you to check, double-check, and question the writing you publish to the web, there's no excuse and no good reason to put bad spelling and grammar on your website, social media, or any other medium of online presence.
This National Punctuation Day, help a poor, struggling writer in need. Correct their dashes, dots, and symbols today!
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Small Businesses and their Social Phobia
Day in and day out, the marketing industry deals with customers who don't understand the digital space, are afraid of it, or just don't know how to use it properly. From websites (they are not like yellow page ads - you should only have one) to search campaigns (no you can't use that keyword - you don't even offer that service), there's unending misinformation and confusion surrounding online marketing tools.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Social Media.
Now social, even the big guys still can't quite get this one right sometimes. Small business owners have an even harder time understanding the whats, whys, and hows of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the multitude of other platforms available.
Some SMB owners have never used Facebook before in their lives. Others have 18 different social network accounts and all are managed badly. Still others have or want accounts, but are just completely unsure of how to post, what exactly they should say, and where their audience is looking.
The rules can be confusing, the mediums constantly changing, but the fact remains that local business owners, in general, are completely overwhelmed by social media. My friend (and former colleague) recently wrote a post all about why, and, more importantly, how to tackle those fears:
It's a really great summary of the most common comments and objections we get from clients from all industries as to why social media is too hard, too confusing, or too -something- for them to handle.
Overcoming those objections, and presenting reasonable solutions to address their main concerns, puts your average small business owner at the head of the pack, engaging with their customers and driving traffic through their door - completely digitally.
Social media is the new word-of-mouth. It's time to get on board!
Nowhere is this more evident than in Social Media.
Now social, even the big guys still can't quite get this one right sometimes. Small business owners have an even harder time understanding the whats, whys, and hows of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the multitude of other platforms available.
Some SMB owners have never used Facebook before in their lives. Others have 18 different social network accounts and all are managed badly. Still others have or want accounts, but are just completely unsure of how to post, what exactly they should say, and where their audience is looking.
The rules can be confusing, the mediums constantly changing, but the fact remains that local business owners, in general, are completely overwhelmed by social media. My friend (and former colleague) recently wrote a post all about why, and, more importantly, how to tackle those fears:
It's a really great summary of the most common comments and objections we get from clients from all industries as to why social media is too hard, too confusing, or too -something- for them to handle.
Overcoming those objections, and presenting reasonable solutions to address their main concerns, puts your average small business owner at the head of the pack, engaging with their customers and driving traffic through their door - completely digitally.
Social media is the new word-of-mouth. It's time to get on board!
Monday, September 9, 2013
Apples and Apples: Match your voice to who you are
I've talked a lot, both on this blog and in other venues, about developing your brand's tone of voice and messaging personality. However it's crucial to understand that you can't just pick whatever you feel like.
It's important to know, when you're choosing your brand's voice, that it has to match your actual personality, who you are.
For example, even in the early days of the Mozilla Firefox browser, their messaging was clear about the personality of their business. It was fun, humorous, and human. When a page wouldn't load, you'd get a clear error message saying "Well, this is embarrassing."
It's shows humor, humility, and brings out the humanity behind the big, shiny, digital world. It's easy to think of the internet as a big machine, so this message is a nice reminder to users that there are real, live people behind it all. It also makes it immediately evident that Firefox is a friendly, low-key business.
Now, would this same message work for the bank or financial organization supporting your IRA or big, serious investments? Probably not. As the world changes and becomes a little more laid back about business interactions, there might be a place for this, but for now, these witty, fun tones of voice just don't jive with certain companies or industries. Would you trust the funny, bumbling "oopsies!" guy with thousands of your dollars? Probably not.
It can be a jarring experience to expect one thing from a business and get another. It turns people off and makes you lose potential (and maybe current) customers. If it doesn't feel right or you don't know who you're dealing with, you'll bounce and go to someone who better communicates their values.
If your company culture encourages fun and humor, make that come through in the way you speak with your customers. If you're in a serious business where everything is very structured and to-the-point, your tone of voice should reflect that.
Pair apples with apples, not apples with oranges. Be true to who you are in all your messaging and communications, and it'll all flow naturally!
It's important to know, when you're choosing your brand's voice, that it has to match your actual personality, who you are.
For example, even in the early days of the Mozilla Firefox browser, their messaging was clear about the personality of their business. It was fun, humorous, and human. When a page wouldn't load, you'd get a clear error message saying "Well, this is embarrassing."
Now, would this same message work for the bank or financial organization supporting your IRA or big, serious investments? Probably not. As the world changes and becomes a little more laid back about business interactions, there might be a place for this, but for now, these witty, fun tones of voice just don't jive with certain companies or industries. Would you trust the funny, bumbling "oopsies!" guy with thousands of your dollars? Probably not.
It can be a jarring experience to expect one thing from a business and get another. It turns people off and makes you lose potential (and maybe current) customers. If it doesn't feel right or you don't know who you're dealing with, you'll bounce and go to someone who better communicates their values.
If your company culture encourages fun and humor, make that come through in the way you speak with your customers. If you're in a serious business where everything is very structured and to-the-point, your tone of voice should reflect that.
Pair apples with apples, not apples with oranges. Be true to who you are in all your messaging and communications, and it'll all flow naturally!
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
What's in a name?
Everything.
From naming your products to naming your blog post, the title you choose can make or break your success.
Take, for example, a tv commercial for some medication. I sat at home one day, enjoying some lazy couch time, when an ad came on detailing the typical struggles and strife of being a woman. Oh the pain, the moodiness, the this, the that. They finally get to the end of this seen-it-before commercial, and what's the product called? Previfem.
I can't even make this stuff up. Who decided that was a great brand name? I can only imagine some group of men sat around thinking "Okay, we've got this birth control, right? Ok. It does what all the other ones does... it prevents, uhhh, female stuff. Like, feminine business. Let's call it Previfem!"
Granted, it's memorable, I'll give you that, but Previfem? The last thing a lady wants to do is ask her doctor for something to prevent femininity. It sends the completely wrong message. Why not focus on the positive - something about strength? About taking control over your body, your life? Now, pharmaceuticals may not be the best case study, but you see my point:
With one, simple mistake - like naming your product something that ridicules your target audience - you edge yourself out of the market.
Your product name should speak to its purpose, but you need to be careful with being too detached from how it makes people feel. Say it out loud, check how it sounds and what feelings/images it evokes.
Beyond individual products, naming your blog posts and articles is almost more important than the information you put in it. A well-crafted title draws readers in. It entices your audience and makes them want to learn more.
While you may want to be clever or funny, or think something off-the-wall will intrigue people, your title isn't something to play with. It should be eye-catching, maybe include numbers, be engaging enough to make people want to click, but straightforward enough for them to know what they're getting into.
Whether it's a single product, and whole line, or a title of an article, the name you choose can have serious repercussions. Consider your audience! Will it speak to them? Does it make sense? Will they want to take positive action from it?
Have you found any blatant naming missteps? Any examples of great names?
From naming your products to naming your blog post, the title you choose can make or break your success.
Take, for example, a tv commercial for some medication. I sat at home one day, enjoying some lazy couch time, when an ad came on detailing the typical struggles and strife of being a woman. Oh the pain, the moodiness, the this, the that. They finally get to the end of this seen-it-before commercial, and what's the product called? Previfem.
I can't even make this stuff up. Who decided that was a great brand name? I can only imagine some group of men sat around thinking "Okay, we've got this birth control, right? Ok. It does what all the other ones does... it prevents, uhhh, female stuff. Like, feminine business. Let's call it Previfem!"
Granted, it's memorable, I'll give you that, but Previfem? The last thing a lady wants to do is ask her doctor for something to prevent femininity. It sends the completely wrong message. Why not focus on the positive - something about strength? About taking control over your body, your life? Now, pharmaceuticals may not be the best case study, but you see my point:
With one, simple mistake - like naming your product something that ridicules your target audience - you edge yourself out of the market.
Your product name should speak to its purpose, but you need to be careful with being too detached from how it makes people feel. Say it out loud, check how it sounds and what feelings/images it evokes.
Beyond individual products, naming your blog posts and articles is almost more important than the information you put in it. A well-crafted title draws readers in. It entices your audience and makes them want to learn more.
While you may want to be clever or funny, or think something off-the-wall will intrigue people, your title isn't something to play with. It should be eye-catching, maybe include numbers, be engaging enough to make people want to click, but straightforward enough for them to know what they're getting into.
Whether it's a single product, and whole line, or a title of an article, the name you choose can have serious repercussions. Consider your audience! Will it speak to them? Does it make sense? Will they want to take positive action from it?
Have you found any blatant naming missteps? Any examples of great names?
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