5 things to be doing during the quiet times to stay useful and relevant

I daren’t utter the dreaded C word that has taken over all of our lives these past couple of weeks, but taken over it has.

Gyms? Closed. Pubs? Closed. Businesses significantly winding down operations and entering survival mode. Workings parents now home-schooling their children. Right now, the world as we know it is a pretty strange and uncertain place.

One thing we do know is that this is only temporary.

This virus won’t be out of control forever, things will improve and the world will return once more, perhaps with a few well-needed changes – more true recognition for the NHS and its staff, public sector workers, teachers, supermarket workers and all those other ‘low-skilled’ roles deemed so unimportant just a few weeks ago. I think a lot of people have already recognised how important gyms and other health facilities are. Here’s hoping to positive change when this is over.

Using your time wisely

As a business-owner, manager or self-employed grafter, one thing you need to do is use this time wisely. Of course, you will have other priorities on-going in your life, especially if you have children or are living with a key-worker, but if you’re not going into work everyday and have more time on your hands than usual, put it to good use.

Do not batten down the hatches completely as now is not the time to stop marketing. Silence will be a big downfall for a lot of businesses. If you stop all outbound communications now, what are people going to think? Largely that you’re done with. The physical business world may have been put on hold for now but the online world is busier than ever.   

It’s true that people may not be spending on non-essentials right now. Let’s accept this and not try and force things. What people are doing is considering and biding their time. It’s more important than ever to speak to your audience, build up a base and provide useful, quality content, because when it’s business as usual, the floodgates are going to open and there’ll be a whole lot of competition. At the minute, people are highly receptive to information and education. Now’s the time for a good marketing.

Here are five marketing tips you can be working on now

1.       Blogging

With vlogging very much the marketing word of 2019, you may think good old blogging is a thing of the past. Do not be fooled by this, blogging is going nowhere. In fact, it’s the cornerstone of pretty much all internet content. An evergreen marketing pathway if you will. Voice search requires written content as a basis to provide the answer and many videos are also founded on the premise of the written word. Google reads text to derive the meaning and uses search, technical and behaviour algorithms (clicks, time on page, bounce rate etc) as a measure of how useful that content is.

Yes a lot of things may already have been written about in your field, but things change all the time and there’s always new science and new information reaching the surface. Find it and right about it. The crucial aspect of blogging is to provide useful, educational or interesting content. Use it with a purpose and watch your audience grow. If you are going to write about a topic with plenty of content, make yours bigger, better and more informative.

2.       Create long-form content

This may take the form of website blogging as mentioned above or another form of written content, such as an e-book, downloadable PDF or perhaps some kind of paid-for course. All of this is high value content and takes time to create.

Long-form content is great and seen favourably by search engines. In short, long-form content ranks better in Google.

At the back end of 2016 Backlinko found the average word count of the page occupying number one spot in Google to be 1,890 words. In 2019, Backlinko’s content study found that long-form content over 3000 words gets considerably more backlinks than shorter content. And it’s backlinks that elevate authority, which leads to better Google rankings. An Ahrefs study from 2018 found the ‘true’ median length of a top-performing article to be at least 800 words.

With a bit more time to play with, now could be the perfect moment to create highly informative, in-depth pieces that will rank better in Google.  

3.       SEO

Search engine optimisation is often not at the top of fast-moving businesses who are at full-tilt on delivering now. The reason why? It takes ‘too’ long to see results and the skill involved requires someone in the know.

Partly true. It’s not a quick win. But what successful business is built on quick wins?

SEO does take a couple of months to truly kick in and see proper results by way of clicks, traffic and action but once you hit this point there’s no turning back. The quick wins that some businesses prefer such as PPC, paid ads and influencer marketing only go as far as the bottom of your money pot.

What do you get when you turn the money off? That’s right, piss all. You go back into oblivion until you put the next lot of money in the pot. Don’t get me wrong, PPC and influencer marketing do have a place and can really help to get initial traction in the market but unless you have an unlimited budget, it’s not completely sustainable.

SEO is not like this. It’s a sustainable, organic strategy. It’s not a quick win, it’s a long-term win. The good business brains amongst you should value long-term success over short-term triumphs. It’s not to say don’t utilise the short-term avenues, but they need to be integrated into long-term thinking for the future.  

Now is a superb time to get your website optimised for google search. That’s your homepage, main navigation pages, landing pages and keyword focussed blog content. Read up on SEO and put the actions into place. If you can’t get your head around it, drop me a message and we can work something out. You’ll be incredibly happy you did once your business is up to full speed again a few months down the line and your traffic is streaming in organically with no additional spend.

4.       Email marketing

Email is a great way of communicating directly to your audience. This isn’t a new-found pearl of wisdom, but the truth still holds in 2020. Many business owners shy away from email as it can be seen as a bit spammy and a bit annoying. It also seems quite a personal way of contacting someone. And it is, or at least is should be.

Write an email to your audience as if you were writing to just one person on that list. Personal emails are so much more effective than generic, bulk sales messages. You want people to look forward to your emails, what you’ve got to say and what you’ve got to show them, and this only happens when you communicate effectively. A person on your list who isn’t receptive and not bothered will unsubscribe. And that’s fine. This way you get a core audience who are interested in what you’ve got to say and who you know are potential customers. 

5.       Social media profiles

Let’s be honest, a lot of business social media profiles can be quite dry. Rather than a communications and engagement tool, social media is often used as an extended advertisement platform shouting about boring offers and giving uninteresting updates. Look back at your messages and see what you’ve been posting. If it’s all boring sales pitches, then you’re doing it wrong.

Social media is your place to show a bit of personality and engage directly with your audience (yes, do respond to people). Although it is useful to post offers and other necessary updates on there, these need to be intermingled with useful content, informative updates and entertaining posts. Basically non-sales things. The 80:20 ratio is a good rule of thumb. 80% useful/entertaining content to 20% directly promoting your business.

This is the way to build an audience and build trust. If you’re pushing sales all the time, you’re not going to build trust as people will see you are in the social media game for one thing. It won’t work. The sales will come later.

Now’s a great time to put an information, engagement and entertainment action plan into play. These three points are in the mission statement of the BBC, and you won’t go far wrong if you adopt this tactic on social. Focus on providing useful content, especially during this largely non-buying phase we’re in.

This is not to say go mad and start posting 5 times a day. Not needed and probably not useful. Quality is key. If it’s one post a day, or one post a week, get it started and keep it ticking over. You also don’t need to focus on every social media platform, choose 1 or 2 and put your efforts into this. Make it sustainable so you can keep it up when you get busy again.

The overarching message here is stay relevant and visible during these quiet times. Just because we’re all isolating doesn’t mean you should isolate your business and stop in your tracks until all this is over. Other priorities may take precedent at this very moment, but make sure you don’t stop completely. This will only make it harder once things do pick up again. Use this time wisely and don’t stop talking about your business and the usefulness that you provide.

What does Google’s new BERT update mean for your website content?

Panic stations – Google has released a new algorithm update!

Well, let me enlighten you early doors. If you’ve got good quality content on your site, you needn’t worry.

If you know your content’s a bit rushed, ropey in places and generally not up to scratch, you’ll probably want to get it updated and improved. If you’ve actively tried to out-Google Google, then maybe it’s about time to change tact. 

Here’s my second enlightenment: this really isn’t anything new. Google’s focus on ‘high quality’ content has been the case for a while. This new algorithm update just highlights the importance further.

What’s high quality content I hear you say?

It’s a number of things but mainly comes down to your words and pages being unique, specific, well-written and giving the reader the information they want. 

So, back to the update. Being honest, that’s the most important information you need to know. However, leaving it there would be slightly remiss of me, so let me explain a little further for those of you who’ve made it this far.

Google and it’s algorithms

Google updates and tweaks its algorithms. All. The. Time. But now and again they release an update that does have the potential to cause a major impact in the organic search world.  

Enlightenment 3: some people with a bit of SEO intellect will perhaps try and bamboozle those in the shadows with their ‘google algorithm’ knowledge.

“You better watch out for the Panda and Hummingbird Google update or your site might be penalised and banned from the indexed. Forever.”

Or some other bafflement.

The truth is, the majority of Google algorithm updates aim to make the search engine a better place for the user. Better experience equals more users for Google. Sometimes they do this by rewarding those sticking to the rules, sometimes they do it by penalising the bad guys. For example:

• Those who’ve been ‘over-optimising’ websites (keyword stuffing, unnatural links etc) > Penguin update

• Those who with quality issues and too many ads > Quality update

• Those with low value content that goes against webmaster guidelines > ‘Fred’ update

• Those content farm type websites > Panda update

The website owners who run good, unique, content-rich sites who haven’t been looking for quick wins or cutting corners along the way needn’t worry about most of the updates as their sites are not the focus of the Google gods trying to clean up their house.

Alas, we get to the BERT Google update, which as you’ve probably guessed from the tone, is a little different. This update will actually affect one in 10 searches in US English and will be rolled out to all locales shortly.

What is the Google BERT Update?

In the most basic terms, it’s a language model. It’s all about Google trying to understand the context of a search query. I won’t tell you what BERT means as it won’t mean anything to you*.

We know how nuanced the English language can be, and how one little word can make a huge difference to the whole context of a phrase or question. Even just where that word appears in the phrase can change the meaning completely. And it’s this alongside more conversational language which Google is aiming to better understand. The better Google understands context, the better the search results they’ll be able to provide.

From the Google press release:

“With the latest advancements from our research team in the science of language understanding–made possible by machine learning–we’re making a significant improvement to how we understand queries, representing the biggest leap forward in the past five years, and one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of Search.”

You can read more from the proverbial horse’s mouth over on the Google blog.

An example they give is a search for ‘2019 brazil traveller to usa need a visa’. The word ‘to’ here is crucial to understand the meaning. Previously, the algorithms wouldn't understand the importance of this connection and would return results about US citizens travelling to Brazil. The BERT update allows Google to understand this nuance and provide much more relevant results for this particular query.

What does this update mean for the content on your website?

According to Google’s search spokesman Danny Sullivan, there is nothing specifically to optimise for with BERT. Instead, it’s all about the general quality of your content – written content, images, layout, readability.

If you have poor, unstructured content that’s difficult to understand and not user friendly, you might be negatively affected. It’s never been more relevant to write for humans rather than the Google robots. Old hack techniques like keyword stuffing is no longer a thing. If you’re still trying to get four instances of the same keyword phrase in your text, stop it.

If you’ve suffered a loss in traffic after the update you will want to look at your content and improve your site’s content. You may have lost rankings for irrelevant phrase, which in that case isn’t a bad thing, just that your search visibility was probably misleadingly high.

One thing you might be looking at in the future is expanding the amount of content on your site, be this blog posts or webpages. If you’re wanting to increase this type of content then it might be a good idea to create more specific content.

What the update reinforces is the need for website owners is the need to write for people rather than algorithms. As we’ve seen, algorithms change all the time but people generally don’t. Good quality content transcends the algorithms and will hopefully be favoured by each tweak the search engine makes.

Yes you still need the SEO basics – on-page optimisation, backlinks and technical set up – but it’s no longer possibly to try and trick Google to rank your site higher as it’s far far more advanced that it was even a few years ago.

If you are in the search for top notch written content with the SEO basics packed in, give me a shout.

*Ok, I knew you’d be curious. It means Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. I told you it wouldn’t mean anything to you – me neither!

How to write brilliant blog titles with 3 simple tips

The power of enticing headlines has been known, and exploited, since newspapers began to print. Since the digital explosion, a headline is created every time you hit publish on a blog, create a new landing page or share a link on social.

The big question is - are you making the most of your title?

Copywriting legend David Ogilvy once stated that five times as many people on average will read the headline as will read the body content – perhaps even more now with the number of places a piece of digital content can be found.

Yet many bloggers still treat the title as an after-thought and go with the first thing that comes into their head - not advisable!

Creating a bad title can let down your great content

A common problem amongst fledging blog writers and small business owners is creating an info-packed blog post that no one reads because of a badly worded headline. The internet is a cut-throat world of skim-readers – no prisoners are taken. If you’ve got this far, you’re doing well! 

If the title doesn’t grab someone (metaphorically), or the first paragraph falls short of the interest mark, ALL users will be grasping for the back button no matter how good the rest of the piece is.

How do I know what a good headline looks like?

A quick Google search of “best headlines ever” tends to bring up a variety of funny, absurd and slightly bonkers titles.

Example - hmm interesting

Example - tongue and cheek

Example - too far?

A slightly deeper look into headlines unveils the examples that have categorical worked for a business, returning a measurable result - be it revenue or inbound enquiries.

In Victor Schwab’s fantastic book, ‘How to write a good advertisement’, he shares 100 examples of good headlines, containing some of the most successful ads in history.

Here are a few of the best headlines from Schwab’s book:

• The secret of making people like you – surely you want to know what the secret is?

• How to win friends and influence below – how to’s have a strong appeal and entice people to read on to get knowledge promised.

• Six types of investors – which group are you in?

• They laughed when I sat down at the piano – but when I started to play! – this example turns a negative into a positive, creating a before and after angle.

Now, all the above headlines are decades old and were written way before the internet was even conceived (the piano headline was written in 1926!). But they all contain evergreen learning points for you to incorporate into your blog post titles to get users to read on.

Written in 1926 by John Caples - one of the most famous advertising headlines ever written

3 tips to create an enticing title

1) The 4 U Formula (try to include at least 2)

Sharpened in the advertising heartlands of the USA by Michael Masterson, these 4 elements will help you to produce a powerful headline. Treat this almost like a checklist the next time you come to write one.

• Useful – how is the article going to be useful to the reader should they invest the time in reading it? What do they get out of it? It might address a problem or help to solve a customer pain point. This will compel the reader to carry on reading.  

• Ultra-specific – this is about giving the details. If you’re are too general, your headline isn’t going to attract anyone. This may be a number of steps to do something or specific insight related to the content. It’s going to make your headline more believable and help to urge the right type of reader (not just any) to read on.

• Unique – a unique approach offers a surprise factor. It makes the reader sit up and take note. If they’ve seen the same headline somewhere before, it’s going to look tired and uninteresting. Try adding a bit of emotion or something unusual. Instead of 10 top tips, how about 9?

• Urgent – usually used more in advertising or email subject lines, urgency can still play an important role in headline crafting. It might be used to persuade the user to solve their issue faster or take action sooner. Imagine your content is the pain relief to the problem – who doesn’t want to get rid of the headache sooner rather than later? Do you want to Increase Your Traffic by 30% or Increase Your Traffic by 30% Right Now?

Be sure to include at least one of these U’s in your headline. The more you can fit into your headline the more compelling it’s likely to be.

2) Make sure your headline contains a benefit

This relates to the useful element of the 4 U’s. If there isn’t some kind of benefit to the user – knowledge, information or value – what’s the point in reading it?

By promising a benefit in the headline you’re urging the reader to take action. If they don’t carry on reading they might be missing out on something, and everyone hates FOMO (the fear of missing out).

Sometimes a benefit may be implied within the headline. This only works if your audience is knowledgeable and in sync with the type of services or products you deal with.

Going further, it’s vital that your content delivers on the benefit-driven promise of your headline. If not you risk being branded as a ‘clickbait merchant’, which can have negative consequences for your trust and authority in the eyes of potential customers.

3) Write more than one version

Create multiple versions of a headline to see which sounds the most effective. Test it on a few people. What sounds genius to you might not be your target audience’s cup of tea. Don’t just go with the first title that comes into your head. As Hemingway once said (allegedly), “the first draft of anything is shit”.

Some of the best copywriters in history would spend hours, even days, coming up with the greatest possible headline. You may have heard about the 50:50 rule – this suggests spending the same amount of time on your headline as you do on writing the main body content.

Wordsmithing also includes trying to get the keyword closer to the start of the title. This helps with your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and can also make it more specific. You might want to start with a verb to stimulate action and tick off the urgency box. Assess your other headlines to see which ones have worked well in the past.

Wrap up

Crafting an irresistible headline certainly takes time, focus and effort - but it will pay off. It will get more people to actually read the content you’ve spent so long working on, as well as helping your business to resonate more successfully with the prime audience of the piece.

Featured image credit, also quite a funny read - https://www.joe.co.uk/life/british-local-news-headlines-that-are-just-sensational-76865

Why your company really should be doing content marketing - plus 6 key benefits!

People are fed up of advertising and shady sales tactics that come across as not very genuine - you can spot them a mile off. What customers now want is information, value and transparency.

Content marketing generates over three times as many leads as the pushy, promotional advertising messages and costs 62% less. In short, content marketing can become your most productive channel. 

What is content marketing?

“It’s blogs and articles. Maybe a bit of social. A few selfies and that.”

Correct, content marketing does often include those things (selfies may depend on your field). But it does go further, especially if you want to do it right.

Content marketing for a small business is a long-term approach to your audience. A courtship if you will. It’s used to build trust and develop a strong relationship by being the go-to source of valuable information in your field.

Blogging is the most popular form of content marketing and there's a very good reason for that - it works.

When it's done right and approached strategically, you’ll be consistently solving issues and addressing problems of a well-defined, targeted audience through relevant, quality content.

Content can take all sorts of forms. As long as it’s communicating a message, that’s content. It can be blogs and articles (you knew it!), social posts, infographics, e-books and downloadable guides, videos, emails, webinars and probably a few more. Actually, as many as 105 types of content have been identified!

My advice is to type it simple. You don’t have to go all quantum field theory.

The best way is to focus on a handful of content marketing routes (depending on your audience preference) and do them well. Very well.

What are the benefits to my business?

You may have noticed the word ‘audience’ appear a few times already. This isn’t by chance. It’s probably the most important aspect. If you’re providing very useful content to your target audience when they’re in need, they’re going to like you.

Over time they’re going to trust you and have confidence that you do actually know what you’re talking about. This is when it starts to turn in your favour.

So, what are the benefits of having a good content marketing plan?

1.       Increase the amount of traffic to your site

2.       Improve your search engine visibility for your site as a whole - websites with blogs have 434% more search-engine indexed pages. 

3.       Better online presence and exposure for your brand

4.       A boost in authority – you’ll be seen as a fountain of knowledge

5.       Engaging your target audience and building that all important trust - this results in not just more leads, but more relevant, quality leads.

6.       Budget friendly with a healthy ROI - lower up-front costs and deeper long-term benefits.

Will it actually work for my small business though?

You might’ve started a blog once. Talked about what you do, what sort of things you’ve been up to. Your top post might have got 27 views, 10 from family members (I know I’ve been there).

When done with a plan – yes – it will work. Almost categorically. 

Good content marketing will provide true value to your target audience in a non-pushy or salesy way.

A good content marketing strategy takes two key things into account: your audience (they don’t really care what you’ve been doing) and SEO (search engine optimisation).

Having these two aspects means your writing efforts won’t go to waste. Why?

Because you’re providing value to your audience and your post is optimised to be found on Google (get a bit more information on Google and SEO content writing). Doing content marketing means you're creating lots of little pathways spread across the internet that lead back to your site. 

This is what brings in long-term traffic and not just a spike in views after you’ve shared in on LinkedIn and Twitter.  

People love reading content that answers their problems and solves their issues, if not completely, then at least helps them on their way with increased understanding and information. 86% of people will make a search before making a buying decision. You want your content to provide the answer for these search queries relevant to you. 

What about if this content marketing stuff doesn't work? 

Ok, a user might read a post and click off your site. In fact, most users will do this. It's natural. 

“Eh Ben, this content marketing is a bit crap isn’t it?”

Remember, it’s a long-term play. When the reader (potential customer) is in the mode to buy or make a decision, it’s you they might come back to. They might visit your site five times, 10 times even, before they do anything, but when the time is right you’ll start to get contacted.

It’s all about bringing people to the top of your sales funnel (apologies for the marketing speak). In basic terms, this is the first step to becoming a customer and it’s what Hubspot describes as the attract phase. Once you have ‘attracted’ a viewer to your content, they can be shuffled down the funnel to the converting phase.

This is inbound marketing. Rather than direct advertising and traditional ‘selling’, people actively contact you. Create the content and the people will come as a wise man once said. 

But it’s not just about creating more and more content, it’s about creating better quality content.

How do I start?

By all means get started straight away. There are marketing strategy templates you can download and plenty you can read about. But it needs to be taken seriously and it will work much better with a strategy. As a business owner, you’ll have a lot on your plate already so give it a real thought before you personally take this on as well.

Your other options are to hire someone to do this for you or outsource to a person or agency who can work with you to get your content marketing plan up, running and working. Around 62% of businesses now outsource their content marketing. 

Wrap up thoughts

I don’t think there are many businesses out there who won’t benefit from content marketing: more website visitors, more targeted traffic, better brand recognition and the building of trust with your audience.

It won’t cost you the earth either. Paid advertising stops the second you turn the money tap off. Great content doesn’t.

In fact, the longer it sticks around, the more traffic it tends to generate and the more people you get enquiring. You don’t have to take my word for it, here’s a Hubspot study.

Especially for small businesses, there is no better long-term marketing strategy than content marketing.