Consider this your ultimate guide to scaling content. We’re diving deep into strategies, tools, and real-world triumphs that will empower you to create content that resonates and dominates. AI-assisted brief creation, batch production, and content management systems are just the beginning. 

Prepare to break free from the mold and make your content unstoppable.

What Is Content Scaling?

Content scaling is the strategic process of amplifying your content so it reaches more people. Let’s look at two core concepts:

• Multiplication: A single, well-crafted piece becomes the seed for a network of interconnected and repurposed content, maximizing its impact and longevity.
• Diversity: Content scaling embraces the full spectrum of content formats — blog posts, social media snippets, videos, podcasts, and infographics — to engage different segments of your audience and keep them hooked.

Content scaling is the future of content creation. It’s a strategic, data-driven approach that empowers you to reach wider audiences, build stronger brand awareness, and drive meaningful results.

Why Is Content Scaling Important?

Let’s look at the benefits of scaling content output:

• Expand reach: Scaling content allows you to reach a wider audience across various platforms and channels.
• Build trust and authority: Consistently delivering high-quality, relevant content positions your brand as a trusted resource and thought leader in your industry. This essentially establishes your company as a go-to expert in your field — the one people turn to for advice and solutions.
• Boost visibility: Optimizing your content for search engines can significantly improve your website’s ranking in search results, leading to increased organic traffic. Think of your website as a storefront on a busy street — a high ranking on search results is the equivalent of a prime spot on Main Street.
• Generate leads: Compelling content acts as a magnet, drawing potential customers to your brand. Offer valuable information and insights to capture their interest and convert them into qualified leads.
• Increase revenue: Content scaling drives tangible business results. Nurturing leads using targeted content throughout the customer journey accelerates conversions and boosts your bottom line.

Content scaling empowers you to connect with your audience on a deeper level, build brand loyalty, and ultimately drive sustainable growth. Work smarter, not harder, to amplify your message and achieve tangible business results. 

Leverage Scalable Content for Brand Amplification

Scalable content acts as a megaphone for your brand’s unique voice. Consistently deliver high-quality, relevant content across various channels to increase visibility and reinforce brand identity. Having a consistent presence solidifies your brand in the minds of consumers, making you the go-to source for information, products, or services. 

Still, beware of falling into the trap of producing quantity over quality. Losing the magic touch that made your content so engaging in the first place would be catastrophic. 

How to Maintain High-Quality Content at Scale

Scaling content must never mean sacrificing quality. Maintaining — or, ideally, elevating — your standards is pivotal for long-term success. Here’s how to create a content engine that seamlessly delivers quality and quantity:

• Thorough intent and audience research
• Quality briefs
• QA, subject matter experts, and editors
• Personalization
• Clear expectations
• Diverse content mix
• A style guide

Thorough intent and audience research

Before writing a single word, learn about your audience’s needs, desires, and pain points. What questions do they ask? What information do they seek? This tells you about audience intent. Aligning content with intent ensures every piece resonates and delivers genuine value. Go beyond keyword research and think about connecting with your audience on a human level.

Quality briefs

A well-crafted brief is the blueprint for successfully scaled content. It sets clear expectations, outlines key messages, and provides direction for your content creators. Use your project brief to guide your team toward your goals and help them understand and capture audience intent. Invest time and maximize the use of technology to craft comprehensive briefs that leave no room for ambiguity.

QA, subject matter experts, and editors

Even the most talented content creators are prone to human error. That’s where quality assurance, subject matter experts, and editors come in. They’re a safety net to ensure content is error-free, factually accurate, and polished to perfection. Consider implementing a multi-step editing process, including automated checks and several layers of human review.

Personalization

Personalization is a marketing superpower. Tailor messaging to specific segments of your audience based on their interests, demographics, and stage in the buyer’s journey. Use dynamic content on your website, segment your email lists, and design ultra-personalized social media campaigns. Personalization should apply to audience segments — but you must also personalize content based on the platform you’re using. 

Clear expectations

When working with a team of content creators, establishing clear expectations and deadlines is essential. This helps everyone stay on track and ensures that projects are completed on time and to a high standard. Utilize project management tools to assign tasks, track progress, and maintain open communication.

Diverse content mix

Don’t rely on a single content format. Experiment with different types of content, such as blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, and social media posts. This not only keeps your audience engaged but also allows you to reach different segments of your target market that may prefer different formats.

A style guide

A style guide is a document that outlines your brand’s writing style, tone of voice, and formatting guidelines. It ensures that all your scaled content production is consistent and adheres to your brand’s standards, regardless of who created it. This is especially important when working with multiple content creators or outsourcing content creation.

Maintaining quality is paramount, but it doesn’t have to be a Herculean task. You can leverage tools and technologies to streamline the content scaling process without sacrificing an ounce of excellence.

Techniques and Tools That Enhance Content Scaling 

Ready to transform your content strategy into a well-oiled machine? These techniques and tools help you scale up content production, streamline your workflow, and maximize efficiency:

• Content management systems
• Batch content production
• AI writing assistants 

Content management systems (CMSes)

Think of a CMS as your content’s air traffic control tower, orchestrating the seamless flow of information across your digital channels. It’s a centralized platform where you can:

• Store all your content assets — blog posts, articles, images, videos — in one easily accessible location.
• Enable your team to work together seamlessly, no matter where they are located. Say goodbye to endless email chains and version control nightmares.
• Schedule posts in advance, manage revisions effortlessly, and track content performance with built-in analytics. Let the machines do the heavy lifting so you can focus on the big picture.
• Implement search engine optimization best practices to amplify content to the right audience at the right time.

According to Alan Gleeson, CEO of Contento, 68% of the top 25 B2B SaaS companies in Ireland use WordPress as their CMS. While WordPress is a popular choice, research shows that options such as Contentful or Contento deliver a performance advantage in terms of site speed, which is a crucial factor for user experience and SEO.

Batch content production

If you’re overwhelmed by the sheer volume of content, batching is a productivity lifeline. Instead of jumping from task to task like a frantic squirrel, batch content production involves focusing on one specific type of content at a time.

This approach allows you to:

• Enter a state of flow and complete tasks more quickly and efficiently.
• Create a backlog of content, ensuring a steady stream of publications even when you’re juggling multiple projects.
• Dive into the subject matter, research thoroughly, and craft your message with precision.

Many successful content creators swear by batch content production. For example, content marketing expert Clint Mally recommends creating multiple long-form pieces of content in a single week, then repurposing them into social media posts, email newsletters, and other formats. With this technique, you maximize the impact of your best content while saving time and energy.

AI writing assistants

Artificial intelligence isn’t here to steal your job; it’s here to streamline and enhance your workflow. Generative AI is a sophisticated tool that can:

• Brainstorm new topics, headlines, and angles for content.
• Analyze keywords, identify content gaps, and enhance your content’s discoverability.
• Personalize your message to specific audiences based on their interests and demographics.

Technology is a powerful ally in your quest to scale content creation. From AI-powered brainstorming tools to templates, the right technology streamlines your workflow and enhances your creativity.

How Can Technology Help in Scaling Content Production?

Crafting top-notch content at scale isn’t a walk in the park. It takes time, creativity, and, typically, a whole lot of caffeine. The following tools are poised and ready to streamline your workflow, amplify your reach, and help you unleash your creative genius. 

ChatGPT

Ever dreamed of having a writing partner who never sleeps, never complains, and always has a thesaurus handy? Meet ChatGPT. 

Use it to:

• Quickly generate first drafts of content briefs, blog posts, or social media captions.
• Transform existing content into different formats, such as turning a blog post into a script for a short video.
• Analyze keywords and suggest improvements to enhance your content’s discoverability.
• Quickly create structured outlines and detailed briefs for your content team.

Pros of ChatGPT:

• Increased efficiency: Drafts content quickly, freeing up your team’s time for other strategic tasks.
• Versatility: Use it for various content types and formats.
• Scalability: Helps you generate a high volume of content without sacrificing quality.

Cons of ChatGPT:

• Requires human oversight: Always review and edit ChatGPT’s output to ensure accuracy and maintain your brand voice.
• Potential for generic content: Often produces content that lacks originality and can require extensive additional refinement.
• Ethical considerations: Be mindful of potential biases and limitations of AI-generated content.
• Cost: Free for basic use, with paid plans offering more advanced features.

Crowd Content’s Templates 

Crowd Content’s content brief template and blog post templates enable you to consistently create content that’s structurally sound and visually appealing. Use them to:

• Save time and mental energy by following a proven formula for content creation.
• Ensure content aligns with your brand voice and messaging, creating a cohesive brand experience across all channels.
• Glean expert tips and insights on how to craft content that captivates and converts. 

Pros of using CC templates:

• Simplified content creation process: No more staring at a blank page, wondering where to start.
• Improved content quality and consistency: Create content that adheres to your brand standards and resonates with your audience.
• Cost: Free to use, making it a valuable resource for content creators of all levels.

Cons of using CC templates:

• May not be suitable for all types of content or industries: Some customization might be necessary to adapt the templates to your specific needs.
• Requires some level of knowledge and experience: While the templates provide a helpful framework, you still need to bring your own expertise and creativity to the table.

Be sure to conduct regular maintenance checks to keep your content machine well-oiled. Let’s explore the metrics that help you calculate the success of scaled content and ensure it’s making an impact.

How Do You Measure the Success of Scaled Content?

Here’s how to measure content performance:

• Website traffic
• Engagement metrics
• Lead generation
• Conversions

Website traffic

Are more people visiting your site? Are they lingering longer and browsing your pages with interest? Tools such as Google Analytics tell you which web pages are most popular and where visitors get lost or leave too soon.

Let’s say you run an online store selling eco-friendly products. Tracking website traffic might show a spike in visitors after you publish a blog post about sustainable living tips. This tells you that this type of content resonates with your audience and gets them onto your site.

Engagement metrics

Engagement metrics reveal whether users are actually getting value from your content. Are they reading, watching, listening, sharing, and commenting? Are they hooked on your every word, or do they tune out after the first few lines? Metrics such as time on page, bounce rate, social shares, and comments are real-time representations of how engaging your content is. 

Perhaps you create a series of videos demonstrating how to use your product. If viewers watch all the way through and leave positive comments, you know you’ve struck a chord.

Lead generation

Your content is a magnet for potential customers. Lead generation metrics tell you how many people are drawn to your brand. Are they subscribing to your newsletter, downloading your whitepaper, or filling out your contact form? Leads are the seeds of future sales, so nurturing them with valuable content is key.

Conversions

Conversions are the ultimate goal of any content marketing strategy. It’s the moment when a prospect raises their hand and says, “I’m in!” Whether it’s subscribing to your socials, making a purchase, signing up for a free trial, or requesting a demo, conversions are the proof that your content is performing as it should.

You’re practically an expert in scaling content by now. Let’s look at some real-world case studies of brands that successfully scaled their content efforts. 

Successful Content Scaling Examples

These brands didn’t just dip their toes into content scaling — they dove in headfirst and emerged victorious. Their brand stories offer valuable insights for anyone looking to amplify their content’s impact:

BoConcept

Here’s a glimpse at how Danish furniture brand BoConcept, enhanced content scaling using AI and centralized marketing.

The challenge: BoConcept faced the formidable task of creating and adapting marketing campaigns for numerous products, channels, sub-brands, markets, and languages. Local production agencies struggled to maintain consistency and meet the brand’s high standards.

The solution: BoConcept centralized its brand marketing efforts and partnered with an AI-powered agency to streamline content production. This allowed the brand to create master campaigns that could be scaled and localized across 64 different languages, ensuring consistent messaging and brand voice across all markets. An extraordinary level of accessibility and global inclusivity are two of AI and content scaling’s true superpowers, helping brands reach customers around the world. 

Paris Mechanical

Let’s look at HVAC company Paris Mechanical’s approach to scaling up using AI and automation. 

The challenge: Paris Mechanical was experiencing rapid growth but struggling to keep up with the increasing demand for services. Its sales and marketing processes were largely manual, leading to bottlenecks and missed opportunities.

The solution: Paris Mechanical partnered with a consulting firm specializing in AI and automation to develop a scalable marketing strategy. It implemented a suite of tools, including HubSpot Marketing Hub, Unbounce, and Google Ads, to automate lead generation, capture, and nurturing. What’s more, it tapped into the power of AI tools to generate personalized content and streamline the quoting process.

What Strategies Can Manage Increased Content Volumes?

With great content comes great responsibility. As output ramps up, you need a strategy to keep scaled content organized, efficient, and aligned with your goals. 

Here’s your roadmap to content scaling success:

1. Assemble a strong content team
2. Craft a content calendar 
3. Streamline your workflow
4. Integrate into existing campaigns

1. Assemble a strong content team

Assemble a strong team of content specialists, each with their own unique skills and expertise, including:

• Content strategists: The masterminds behind the overall content vision and direction.
• Writers: The wordsmiths who bring your ideas to life with captivating prose that sings with your brand voice.
• SMEs: The frontline industry experts who edit for technical accuracy and enhance your content’s authority.
• Editors: The grammar stalwarts who ensure content is polished and error-free.
• Designers: The visual wizards who create eye-catching graphics and layouts.
• SEO specialists: The search engine whisperers who optimize your content for maximum visibility.
• Social media managers: The social butterflies who amplify your content across various platforms.

2. Craft a content calendar 

A content calendar is a visual representation of your planned content, including:

• Topics: What are you going to write, record, or film about?
• Formats: Will it be a blog post, video, infographic, or something else?
• Channels: Where will you publish and promote your content?
• Deadlines: When will each piece of content be ready?

3. Streamline your workflow

Streamline your workflow by:

• Automating repetitive tasks such as scheduling social media posts, sending email newsletters, and delivering analytics reports.
• Creating reusable templates for different content types to save time and maintain consistency.
• Using project management tools to track progress, assign tasks, and collaborate with team members seamlessly.

4. Integrate into existing campaigns

Integrate content into your broader marketing campaigns to maximize its impact. This means:

• Sharing it across your social media channels, email newsletters, and other marketing channels.
• Repurposing your blog posts into videos, podcasts, and shareable infographics to reach different audiences.
• Using content as a way to guide potential customers through the buying journey.
• Creating a cohesive and powerful brand narrative that resonates with your audience, building a community and driving them toward action.

Content Scaling Limitations and How to Address Them

Scaling content isn’t always a smooth ride. There are a few bumps in the road you might encounter along the way. But don’t worry. With a little foresight and strategic planning, you can overcome these challenges and keep your content engine purring:

• Maintain quality at scale: As output increases, it can be tempting to cut corners to save time and resources. However, this is a recipe for disaster. Quality should always be your top priority. To maintain high standards, invest in skilled content creators, implement rigorous editing processes, and use tools to automate time-consuming tasks.
• Avoid content fatigue: Publishing a large volume of content doesn’t guarantee engagement. If your content becomes repetitive or irrelevant, audiences tune out. To avoid content fatigue, create diverse content that appeals to different segments of your audience. Experiment with new formats, topics, and angles to keep things fresh and engaging.
• Measure ROI: Content scaling requires an investment of time, money, and resources. Make sure you track ROI carefully to ensure your efforts are paying off. Use analytic tools from Google and social media to measure your content’s impact on engagement metrics such as website traffic, time on page, and conversion rate.
• Adapt to algorithm changes: Social media algorithms are constantly evolving, and that can impact your content’s visibility and reach. Stay up-to-date on the latest changes and adjust your strategy accordingly. Experiment with different posting times, formats, and content types to find what works best for your audience.
• Stay ahead of the competition: The content landscape is constantly evolving. To stay ahead of the curve, you must constantly learn and adapt. Follow industry trends, experiment with new technologies, and keep an eye on what your competitors are doing.

Proactively addressing these challenges ensures your content scaling efforts are sustainable and aligned with your business goals. 

See How to Scale Your Content Now

If content scaling sounds like a lot of effort and expense, that’s because it is. Even large brands with huge marketing budgets can struggle to manage each step of the process in-house. Let’s look at the pros and cons of outsourcing versus in-house content scaling. 

The Creation Process: In-House versus Outsourcing Scalable Content

Should you build your content team in-house or outsource to the pros? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. The best approach depends on your specific needs, budget, and existing resources.

First, let’s explore the pros and cons of in-house content scaling:

• Pros: More control and the ability to iterate and experiment quickly if you have an existing in-house content team.
• Cons: It’s extremely expensive and time-consuming to build a team of skilled strategists, content creators, editors, quality assessors, AI experts, and SMEs from scratch.

Now, let’s study the pros and cons of outsourcing content scaling:

• Pros: Access to a wide pool of talent and expertise, making it a cost-effective solution for businesses. Outsourcing also offers the flexibility to scale up or down as needed.
• Cons: Less control over the creative process and potential for communication challenges.

Many businesses opt for a hybrid approach, combining in-house expertise with the flexibility and scalability of outsourcing. This allows them to leverage the strengths of both models while mitigating the weaknesses.

For guidance on how to find the right content creators for your needs, check out our article: How to Find Content Creators [LINK TO FORTHCOMING ARTICLE].

Your Content Scaling Strategy

Content scaling is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires a strategic mindset and a relentless commitment to quality. Following the strategies and using the tools outlined in this guide will get you on your way to creating a powerful content engine that drives results, fosters brand loyalty, and propels your business to new heights. 

Always keep in mind that increasing quantity must never compromise quality. Prioritize providing helpful, insightful, and actionable content that exceeds your audience’s expectations.

Don’t just take our word for it. Go forth and experiment. Test different approaches, track your results, and refine your strategy over time.

The post Content Scaling Strategies to Amplify Your Content Production appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Distribution is a powerful step of a well-constructed content strategy. After developing a solid plan and a clear understanding of your audience, distribution is the final touch that amplifies your reach and fuels success. 

As you continue reading, you will find valuable information in this guide that will help transform your content into a powerful business asset.

What Is Content Distribution and Why Is It Important? 

Content distribution is the process of sharing content across relevant online channels to maximize its reach. It’s the final step in your content’s journey, connecting your brand with your audience at the perfect time. 

Benefits of an effective content distribution strategy

Content creation is a labor of love. We get it. And a well-executed distribution strategy makes certain your efforts deliver results.

Meaningful engagement: Quality content sparks conversations. Getting people to talk about your content fosters brand loyalty and establishes thought leadership.

• Content distribution example: Say a marketing agency publishes an article on the evolving landscape of influencer marketing. Sharing it on LinkedIn starts discussions and debates in the comments section. This engagement establishes the agency as a thought leader and provides readers and potential customers with useful information about the industry.
  

Increase website traffic: Effective distribution strategies drive qualified traffic back to your website, ultimately bringing in more leads and sales.

• Content distribution example: An e-commerce company creates a comprehensive guide on “Essential Winter Hiking Gear.” Distributing it on outdoor enthusiast forums, with a clear call-to-action prompting users to visit the website for the full product range, can significantly increase website traffic. 
  

Enhance brand visibility: A well-curated and consistent distribution strategy across various channels keeps your brand top-of-mind with your target audience.

• Content distribution example: A bakery creates recipe videos showcasing its signature desserts. Distributing these videos on the brand’s YouTube channel as well as relevant food blogs and subreddits builds brand awareness and recognition. The engaging format and targeted distribution channels ensure the content resonates with specific customers who are actively searching for baking inspiration.
  

Better SEO: Distributing your content across authoritative websites can improve your website’s search engine ranking and drive organic traffic.

• Content distribution example: A legal firm publishes an informative blog post on “Understanding Common Clauses in Employment Contracts.” Uploading this content to legal resource websites and sites such as Quora and Reddit can generate backlinks. These backlinks act as signals to search engines that the content is valuable and trustworthy, potentially boosting ranking for relevant search terms.
  

Establish thought leadership: Consistently sharing valuable and insightful content across relevant platforms establishes your brand as an authority in its industry.

• Content distribution example: A financial advisor creates a series of educational videos on personal finance tips for young adults. Posting them on YouTube and Reddit positions the advisor as a credible source of information. As a bonus, it attracts potential clients who are actively seeking financial guidance.

Content distribution transforms content into a powerful tool for growth. It ensures your content reaches the right audience, sparks meaningful engagement, and drives real business results.

What Are the Three Types of Content Distribution Strategies?

Your content’s reach hinges on three distribution channels: owned, earned, and paid.

Owned channels: These are your digital properties, such as your website, social media pages, and email newsletters. They’re your content’s home base, where you have full control over the messaging.

Earned channels: You gain visibility organically on these channels. Picture your content being shared across social media, mentioned in industry publications, or linked to from other websites. This buzz of engagement builds credibility, boosts reach, and helps you establish a community.

Paid channels: Propel content using strategic investments such as paid ads on search engines, social media platforms, and sponsored articles. These channels guarantee visibility to a highly specific target audience.

Understanding the three distribution channels is essential for designing a content strategy that maximizes your content’s impact.

Maximize your content’s impact by refining your approach with Crowd Content’s Strategy Services. We highlight the crucial role of planning and creation before distribution, ensuring your content strategy is as effective as possible. Let us help you widen your reach, meet business goals, and engage your audience more deeply.

Click to review and enhance your content strategy now.

Let’s expclore the major distribution channels in depth.

Owned channels

Owned channels are your digital properties. You have complete control over the content, messaging, and distribution. They include your website, blog, social media accounts, email lists, and any other platforms you manage directly.

Here are some examples of how businesses use owned channels:

• Digital marketing agency: Blogs packed with industry insights and case studies solidify a digital marketing brand’s expertise. 
• Chain of retirement homes: Websites and blogs feature heartwarming resident stories, advice for families, and details on amenities.
• Freelance SEO specialist: An optimized website with compelling blog content is vital to demonstrating a freelance SEO expert’s prowess. 

How owned channels differ from earned and paid:

• Control: You decide what gets published, when, and how it’s presented. This allows for consistent brand messaging and targeted content.
• Audience: Owned channels tap into your existing audience of followers, website visitors, and subscribers, strengthening relationships.
• Sustainability: While requiring ongoing effort, owned channels often provide the best long-term return on investment compared to reliance on paid tactics.

Who benefits the most from owned channels? 

• Businesses of all sizes: Owned channels form the backbone of any digital marketing strategy.
• Brands building trust: Consistent, valuable content nurtures a loyal audience that views you as reliable and credible.
• Audience engagement: Direct two-way communication through comments, social media interactions, and email fosters a sense of community.

Pros of using owned channels:

• Shape your brand voice and tailor your message without leaning heavily on external platforms or algorithms.
• Build direct relationships with your audience, fostering trust and brand advocacy.
• The initial investment in content creation pays dividends over time compared to continuously buying paid advertising.
• Owned channels have rich analytics on audience preferences and content performance, enabling you to refine your future strategy.

Cons of using owned channels:

• Success requires an ongoing passion for content creation, community management, and audience growth strategies.
• Building reach on owned channels usually takes significantly longer compared to the immediate reach of paid advertising.
• Understanding SEO principles, effective content creation, and social media engagement is essential for maximizing results.

Owned channels are the foundation of a well-rounded content distribution strategy. Investing time and resources in these platforms establishes a firm brand presence and generates insights for long-term growth.

Earned channels

Earned channels come from others organically promoting your content through shares, mentions, and backlinks. This type of distribution hinges on building relationships, establishing credibility, and creating genuinely valuable content that resonates.

Here are some examples of how businesses use earned channels:

• Addiction recovery center: A blog post about overcoming addiction could gain traction on social media and get shared by influencers in the recovery community.
• SEO agency: Active participation on relevant subreddits, providing insightful advice, builds trust and attracts clients. 
• HVAC company: Helpful videos on furnace maintenance from YouTube get shared in home improvement Facebook groups, leading to a spike in calls.

How earned channels differ from owned and paid:

• Trust and credibility: Earned distribution often carries a greater sense of trust, as it comes from an impartial source, serving as social proof. Over the past couple of decades, social proof — as demonstrated in online reviews and testimonials — has emerged as a leading factor in purchase decision-making. Think of it like digital word-of-mouth. 
• Amplified organic reach: Content can gain exposure to new audiences beyond your existing network.
• Cost effective: While it requires time and effort, earned distribution is cost effective, with the potential for long-term impact.

Who benefits the most from earned channels:

• Brands seeking credibility: Endorsements from external sources strengthen your reputation.
• Companies targeting new audiences: Earned channels open up opportunities to reach beyond your existing followers.
• Organizations with a limited budget: Earned channels work well for creative brands with budget constraints for paid advertising.

Pros of earned channels:

• Opens your content up to a wider audience, maximizing reach.
• Third-party validation strengthens trust and positions your brand as an authority.
• Quality backlinks from authoritative websites attract new audiences and boost search engine rankings.
• Exceptionally shareable content has the potential to “go viral” and spread rapidly, reaching a massive audience.

Cons of earned channels:

• You can’t dictate if or when others share your content, so earned channels require a focus on quality and relationship building.
  
• Cultivating relationships and creating share-worthy content takes time and persistent effort.
• While tools offer insights, tracking the direct impact of earned distribution can be more complex compared to owned or paid channels.

Earned distribution is a testament to the value of your content. While less predictable than other channels, it offers the potential for significant gains in reach, reputation, and authority.

Paid channels

Paid channels are paid investments that guarantee visibility. There are a vast array of options to choose from, allowing you to target your ideal audience with laser focus. From pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to sponsored content partnerships, paid channels deliver shockingly precise targeting.

Here are some examples of how businesses use paid channels:

• Pest control company: Targeted Google Ads ensure services appear at the top of local search results for keywords such as “pest extermination near me.” Social media ads showcase positive customer testimonials and promotions to a geographically focused audience.
• E-commerce brand: Retargeting ads on social media remind users of products they viewed, encouraging them to return and complete a purchase. At the same time, sponsored search results drive traffic to specific product pages. 
• Content writer: Paid guest posts on niche industry blogs offer valuable insights and backlinks to their portfolio. Meanwhile, targeted Google Ads appear for searches such as “freelance copywriter for [industry] in [location].”

How paid ads differ from owned and earned:

• Guaranteed visibility: Paid channels offer immediate exposure, unlike owned and earned, which largely rely on organic growth.
• Hyper-targeted reach: Advanced targeting options let you pinpoint your ideal audience by demographics, interests, location, and behaviors.
• Faster results: Paid distribution can drive traffic and conversions more quickly compared to strategies focused solely on organic growth.

Who benefits the most from paid channels?

• Businesses seeking rapid growth: Paid channels accelerate reach and boost conversions, especially when entering new markets.
• Anyone targeting a niche audience: Precise targeting options are ideal for reaching specific demographics or segments.
• Those looking to measure results: Paid ads usually come with analytics that allow you to track ROI and optimize future campaigns for maximum performance.

Pros of using paid channels:

• Reach your target audience instantly and bypass the slow build of organic methods.
• Detailed analytics allow for continuous refinement and improvement of your campaigns.
• Easily increase or decrease your investment based on your goals and budget.
• Track conversions and leads to determine the exact return on your advertising spend.

Cons of paid channels:

• Depending on your industry and keywords, paid advertising can become expensive.
• Successful paid campaigns require planning, targeting, and optimization.
• Users can become desensitized to ads, potentially resulting in lower click-through rates over time.

Paid channels are a major boost, helping you reach your ideal audience and achieve desired outcomes. Using strategic execution and exploring advanced options such as native advertising and programmatic buying can propel your content toward widespread success.

How Do I Create a Content Distribution Strategy? 

This section will guide you through the essential steps of creating a content distribution strategy that propels your message to the right people, at the right time.

1. Understand your audience and their expectations

A deep understanding of your target audience is the cornerstone of any successful content distribution strategy. Moving beyond basic demographics, craft detailed audience personas outlining pain points, goals, preferred content formats, and the online platforms your visitors frequent. 

Next, map out how your audience interacts with content. Where do they go for information? What type of content influences their decision-making? Social media is a gold mine for these insights. Extensive research is nonnegotiable for this step. 

2. Identify the ideal content types for your brand and audience

With your target audience firmly in mind, identify the ideal content types that align with your specific marketing goals. Are you aiming for brand awareness, lead generation, or boosting website traffic? Different content types excel in different areas.

For instance, informative blog posts nurture leads and establish brand expertise, while visually engaging videos capture attention and drive social media shares. A successful content mix caters to various learning styles and keeps your audience engaged.

Important note: Don’t get stuck in a single format. Explore the diverse landscape of content options, including blog posts, infographics, videos, social media updates, podcasts, ebooks, and webinars. Allowing your audience to engage with your brand in various formats helps them connect deeply with it, while catering to a variety of tastes.  

3. Plan

A content calendar acts as your roadmap, outlining the content you’ll produce, the distribution channels you’ll use, and your publication dates. This structured approach ensures consistency and aligns content marketing efforts with your broader marketing goals. 

Be sure to map out a purposeful distribution strategy, whether you use a content calendar or not. Carefully considering which channels best suit each piece of content is vital. Not every format is ideal for every platform. Customize and tailor your distribution approach accordingly.  

Finally, keep in mind that timing is everything in the world of digital marketing. Knowing when your audience is most active online and thoughtfully scheduling your content distribution helps maximize engagement and reach.

4. Ensure uniform branding and brand voice across channels

Developing clear brand guidelines is foundational for online success. Your brand’s ingredients include voice, tone, and visual style. They’re the secret sauce for maintaining consistency across all platforms.  

Customize your content for each platform while remaining true to your brand identity. Ultimately, a cohesive brand image across channels builds immediate recognition and solidifies your brand’s reputation in the minds of your audience.

5. Test

A willingness to experiment is vital. Test different content formats, distribution channels, and messaging to analyze what yields the best results for your specific audience and goals.

Pay close attention to analytics. They’re your north star. Monitor insights such as time on page, bounce rates, and click-through rate. Use these insights to refine your strategy, making data-driven decisions to optimize your content distribution efforts. Finally — and very importantly — don’t be afraid to pivot. If something isn’t achieving the desired results, be agile.

6. Execute

Sticking to your content calendar is vital for maintaining steady momentum and a reliable presence in your audience’s eyes. Why? Because consistent publishing signals dedication to potential customers and helps you ride that elusive algorithmic wave. 

Just keep in mind that you must always prioritize quality over quantity. Two high-quality content pieces per week will always outweigh 20 pieces of low-value content. Each asset you publish should provide true value to your audience. 

7. Measure

Focus on the metrics that directly align with your established goals. And whatever you do, be sure to utilize the wealth of analytics tools at your fingertip. These insights tell you exactly what your audience likes and dislikes.

Platforms such as Google Analytics, social media ad tools, and email marketing reports provide detailed data. Creating regular reports helps you analyze performance patterns and highlight areas for improvement.

8. Optimize and iterate

Optimize your strategy by making data-driven decisions and avoiding guesswork and assumptions at all costs. Continuously tweak your content formats, distribution channels, and messaging based on the insights derived from your analytics. 

Poise yourself to experiment with trends and adapt your approach as technologies and audience behaviors shift.

Best Practices to Enhance Your Distribution Strategy

What are the key elements of content distribution? Let’s look at the most critical best practices.

Tool 1: Multiple Formats

Go beyond a blog post. Transform your content into various formats to cater to diverse learning styles and preferences. 

Tool 2: Brand Assets

Create high-quality on-brand visuals such as infographics, images, and videos to elevate content, connect deeply with your audience, and strengthen brand recognition.

Tool 3: Smart Repurposing

Extend your content’s lifespan by adapting it for different platforms. Repurpose infographics into social media posts and video clips into Reels or TikTok content.

Tool 4: Thoughtful Interlinking

Connect your content with internal links to improve user experience and boost SEO, while encouraging exploration of your website.

Tool 5: Guest Posting and Interviews

Tap into new audiences by contributing content to relevant websites and interviewing industry leaders.

Tool 6: Search Engine Optimization

Optimize content with relevant keywords, language that’s relatable to your audience, and meta descriptions to improve search ranking and organic traffic.

Tool 7: Social Media Mastery

Cater content to each social media platform, leveraging features like Stories, Reels, and live streams to maximize engagement.

Tool 8: Email Marketing

Nurture leads and drive conversions with targeted email campaigns featuring your best content.

Top Content Distribution Platforms

Now that you understand the “why” and “how,” all that’s left is “where?” Here’s a breakdown of the four best content distribution channels. 

1. Social media distribution

Social media platforms are where your audience spends time online. Strategize for each platform to meet your audience where they are. Let’s take a closer look:

Overview: Social media is unparalleled for building community, amplifying brand voice, and targeting content to specific audiences through organic posts and paid ads.

Best for: Each platform has its strengths.

• Facebook: Wide reach, versatile for B2C and B2B
• Instagram: Visually focused for lifestyle brands, strong with younger demographics
• X: Live updates, trending news, and niche conversations
• LinkedIn: Excellent for B2B, networking, and thought leadership
• YouTube: Great for video tutorials, product demos, and in-depth content

Time to see results: It can yield a quick engagement boost, but long-term success requires consistency and audience understanding.

Why it works: Social media fuels discovery and taps into the power of social sharing for extended reach.

2. Email marketing

Your email list is a direct line to a highly engaged audience. Nurture your audience with compelling content, and they’ll become your biggest advocates and most loyal customers.

Overview: Email marketing is ideal for nurturing leads and driving conversions. Directly reach your most engaged audience: those who opt in to receiving your content. 

Best for: Businesses with an established email list, regardless of industry.

Time to see results: Immediate delivery, open rates, and click-throughs are trackable right off the bat. Nurturing campaigns show results over time. Just be sure to factor in the time and effort it takes to build an engaged email list.  

Why it works: It allows for audience segmentation and provides valuable analytics on content preferences.

3. Content syndication networks

Supercharge your content’s visibility by republishing it on high-traffic websites. Content syndication expands your reach and builds brand awareness.

Overview: Publish content on third-party websites and platforms to expand reach and build brand awareness among new audiences.

Best for: Businesses aiming for high visibility across various reputable sites.

Time to see results: Quickly boosts traffic and reach when done right.

Why it works: Leverages the established audience of external platforms and may boost domain authority for SEO benefits.

4. Online forums and communities 

Become part of the conversation on Quora and Reddit to subtly build your brand’s reputation. Offer genuine advice and insights to establish yourself as a go-to source of information.

Overview: Actively participate in discussions related to your industry, offering helpful answers and subtly referencing your own content where relevant.

Best for: Businesses aiming to build a positive brand reputation by demonstrating expertise and engaging directly with potential customers.

Time to see results: It’s a slow burn, but consistent participation yields trust and brand loyalty, directing interested users to your resources.

Why it works: Leverages the power of conversation and social proof, organically highlighting your brand as a problem solver.

Additional Content Distribution Services 

Digital content distribution services are more far-reaching and targeted than DIY efforts because they lean on broad databases packed with insights. They provide expert support in crafting and implementing a comprehensive distribution strategy. 

Crowd Content can deliver custom content distribution solutions that align with your unique goals. Our team of marketing experts can leverage data-driven insights to optimize your content’s visibility and engagement across various channels.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Content Distribution appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

What’s the Difference Between Content Strategy and Content Marketing?

Content creation is no longer as simple as blogging once a week. What qualifies as valuable content has evolved, and businesses now rely on content as a powerful tool to differentiate themselves from competitors and reach new customers.

When businesses publish content, they engage current audiences, attract new customers, establish authority, and drive growth. But, to deploy content successfully, it’s essential to understand the nuances between content strategy and content marketing.

While these terms are often used interchangeably, they represent distinct components of a comprehensive digital strategy. Both are geared toward achieving business goals, and they work synergistically together. 

Content strategy acts as a roadmap that guides content creation, laying the foundation for creating and managing your content assets. The strategy guides the purpose, direction, and execution of the content you create, just like a map tells a driver the direction they need to go. 

On the other hand, content marketing leverages your content so it actually reaches the audience. The idea is to use your content to establish authority, foster trust, and ultimately drive customers to choose you when they’re ready to act on their needs. 

Defining Content Strategy

Content strategy guides effective content marketing efforts. Creating a content strategy provides a plan for how your business can use content to achieve specific goals.

Four steps are typically used when creating a content strategy template:

1. Conduct research to understand your audience. Identify your target audience and create buyer personas. Analyze their pain points so you can address them. Understand what your audience needs at each stage of the buyer’s journey.
2. Define the purpose and messaging for the content. Establish clear objectives based on your business goals. Define the key messages and themes you want to convey and ensure your messaging aligns with your brand’s values.
3. Use the information you gather.  This research can guide decision-making about what types of content to produce, when to publish it, and where to distribute it. Identify the channels and platforms where your target audience is the most active. 
4. Establish metrics to measure the success of your content efforts. Note a baseline of current activities, so you know when there’s a positive or negative change. Continuously revise and adjust your content strategy based on performance data and what your audience asks for.

Content strategy comes before content creation. Developing the strategy first ensures that your content serves a purpose — it should contribute to the overall success of the business.

A strategy should encompass short-term and long-term goals. Decide what you want to achieve in the next month, 6 months, year, and beyond. Content isn’t something you can forget about once you’ve published it, either. A successful strategy also incorporates long-term content management. Your content needs to be updated as time goes on to ensure consistency and relevance across all channels and platforms.

The building blocks of a solid content strategy

Okay, so you’re convinced you need a strong content strategy, but how do you actually build one? Start with a plan that aligns your content efforts with your business goals so your published material drives results. 

A robust content strategy typically includes the following elements:

• Content mission and goals: The mission provides the overarching purpose for why your organization is creating content. These reasons for content creation should align with and support your business objectives. 
• Audience research and persona development: Who uses your services or buys your products? Create personas with as much detail as you can. Include ages, genders, locations, income levels, education, and personal values and interests. 
• Style guide: Create guides covering brand voice and tone, how to use logos and colors, and basics like grammar. 
• Content audit and gap analysis: Identify areas where your competitors have content that you don’t. When you start publishing content, you can later identify areas where your competitors have content that’s similar to your content but performs better.
• Content monitoring and processes: Establish workflows and oversight processes to ensure quality and consistency across every piece of content you create. Decide how you plan to evaluate and approve your content and define a procedure for revisions.
• Content types and formats: Specify the mix of content types that best suit your target audience. This may include blog posts, social media posts, videos, infographics, e-books, podcasts, or webinars.
• Content creation and curation plans: Once the content types are defined, decide how to ideate and produce new content.
• Content distribution and promotion strategies: Outline when, how, and where to distribute and promote your content. Establish your company on YouTube and social media platforms, but also consider paid promotion through ads or influencers. On-page SEO should also be considered as an important part of the strategy.
• Content measurement and optimization: Define which metrics you’ll rely on to determine success once your content is live. Track conversions and analytics so you can spot what’s working and what isn’t. Then, refine your plan as needed. 

Aligning Content Strategy With Business Objectives

Producing content for the sake of producing content is like setting out on a road trip without knowing where you’re going. First, define your business’ purpose, values, and goals. Then, shape the content strategy to support those. 

Every piece of content you create should be a stepping stone that leads your audience where you want them to go. Your content strategy provides the roadmap for your goals, whether that’s to increase brand awareness, generate leads, nurture customer relationships, or drive sales.

Content can deliver tangible results, so your organization’s goals play a crucial role in defining your content creation and content marketing tactics. You can spend time and energy creating all sorts of content, but with a little forethought, that time and energy can lead to your desired outcome.

Content Strategy Examples

Let’s say you’re the owner of a software company looking to develop a content strategy. A majority of your audience needs user manuals and other product documentation. To answer this need, you develop a comprehensive content strategy for creating and managing product documentation. First, you should conduct user research to determine what information your audience needs. Then, define the content types that make sense for your audience. This may include short video tutorials or an expanded FAQ section on your website. 

As another example, you might be revising the corporate website for a manufacturing company to enhance its online presence. Define your target audiences, identify the key messages, and create a content calendar for regular updates. To help search engines easily find and rank your content, implement SEO best practices.

What about a content strategy to develop thought leadership? First, you’d need to identify relevant topics. Then, develop a mix of content formats. This would likely include blog posts, white papers, and webinars. Develop a plan to distribute these formats and establish relationships with other websites where you could contribute. 

Regardless of the types of content you settle on, there should be an established voice and tone. An oversight plan helps to ensure accurate, relevant, and up-to-date information for consistency across all access points.

Understanding Content Marketing

A content strategy provides the recipe, but content marketing is when you really start cooking. Creating, distributing, and promoting content brings your content strategy to life.

Remember, the strategy defines the goals of your content marketing efforts. Unlike traditional advertising, in which a potential customer might walk by a billboard or see a few seconds of one of your TV ads while channel-surfing, content marketing is targeted and focused. Because you’ve developed your audience personas, you know who you’re trying to reach and what their buyer’s journey looks like. 

Effective content marketing tactics

What do you want your customers to do? Create a separate plan for each outcome. Do you want your existing customers to make a new purchase or to purchase an upgraded product to replace one they already have? Do you want people who are new to your brand to subscribe to your newsletter? Or maybe you want to increase your social media followers. Define the goals as part of the strategy, then create an effective content marketing tactic to achieve them. 

Effective content marketing tactics include:

• Storytelling and brand journalism: Share customer stories and case studies that demonstrate success with your products or services.
• Educational and informative content: Knowledge-based content can take many forms. Showcase step-by-step tutorials or data-driven research that addresses your audience’s needs.
• Thought leadership and industry insights: Weigh in on and share transparent information about anything that impacts your industry. 
• User-generated content and social media engagement: Encourage and reward your customers for engaging with your brand. Acknowledge their comments and reshare. Giveaways or other rewards can help your customers know they’re appreciated.
• Content repurposing: Get the most out of your content by using it in different ways. For example, turn a video script into a blog post. Convert a webinar into a series of social media posts. Extract key insights from a white paper to create shareable infographics.
• Cross-promotion: Cross-promote your content on your social media channels, on your website, and in your newsletters. People interact with your brand in different ways and through different means, so this gives them multiple touch points.
• Lead nurturing and email marketing campaigns: Keep the conversation going once someone has engaged with your brand by sending them information that helps them learn about and grow with your products or services. 
• Influencer collaborations and guest posting: When people see influencers or other brands they respect using or promoting a product, it often reinforces trust and credibility.

Choosing the right channels for content distribution

Where does your audience spend time online and consume content? A brand that appeals to young people may want to optimize interactions on TikTok. A DIY-oriented brand would likely find success on a highly visual platform, such as YouTube or Instagram. Steer your content toward the platform that’s right for your audience.

Different distribution channels appeal to different demographics, interests, and behaviors. Research your audience’s preferences through surveys, social listening, or analytics. Find them where they’re already active.

Content Marketing Examples

Imagine you’re developing a content marketing framework for a clothing company. Your marketing may start with a TikTok account featuring fashion tips. A lookbook on your website could show different ways to style the outfits. You could share behind-the-scenes stories of how your clothes are made and how you decide on your styles. Finally, you might share photos of actual customers wearing your clothes to build brand loyalty. 

Content marketing examples for a software company, on the other hand, might involve creating a podcast featuring interviews with industry experts and customer success stories. You might share regular product updates through a newsletter. You could foster engagement with existing users on social media channels and attract potential customers by contributing content to other popular sites with industry-leading blogs. 

In both examples, the created content could be promoted across your social media channels and through email newsletters.

Synergizing Content Strategy and Marketing for Impact

While content strategy and content marketing have distinct roles, they rely on each other for success. A well-defined content strategy provides the foundation for effective content marketing. If you’re creating content that doesn’t take your organization’s goals into account, or if you’re creating content that doesn’t align with your values as a company, your content efforts will likely be ineffective. For example, if your brand relies on a message of sustainability, you should avoid creating content that inadvertently promotes environmental harm.

Integrating strategy and marketing for enhanced impact

When content strategy and marketing work together, it creates a cohesive experience for your audience. When the efforts are aligned, messages are consistent across all platforms, and your content resonates with the people you’re trying to reach. This integration is important to ensure your content drives desired outcomes. 

Adapting content strategies in dynamic markets

If there’s one thing any content creator will tell you, it’s that the digital market is an ever-changing target—but there are ways to ensure you can still hit it. In addition to being flexible, keep an eye on the overall market so you’re aware of when you need to adapt. Ideally, you’ll figure this out before the need arises instead of responding to something you didn’t anticipate. 

Successful organizations understand effective content strategies and marketing efforts are adaptable. Consumer behaviors change, trends emerge, and technologies evolve. By combining best practices with a flexible approach, businesses stay responsive.

Measuring Success

Consistently measure your content’s performance through well-defined key performance indicators. Identify the key metrics necessary to determine the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts. Without knowing what numbers you’re tracking, it’s impossible to understand what’s working, what’s not, and how to optimize for better results. Use a range of analytics tools and techniques. 

Key metrics for content success

In general, there are several broad categories of metrics content teams should measure.

• Website metrics: Page views, unique visitors, traffic sources, engagement, conversion rates
• Search metrics: Organic search traffic, keyword rankings, technical SEO factors
• Social media metrics: Reach, engagement, shares, mentions, audience growth
• Email metrics: Open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribe rates, conversions
• Lead generation: Lead volume, marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads 
• Sales impact: Opportunities influenced, deal value, customer acquisition costs
• Return on investment: Content costs for your efforts compared to the profit your efforts generate

Overcoming Challenges in Strategy and Marketing

Even with the best content strategy and marketing, challenges inevitably arise. As mentioned above, the market changes quickly, which means goals change too. Organizations often face obstacles when it comes to adapting and executing. 

To ensure success in the face of difficulties, it’s essential to understand your audience and your market in as much depth as possible. Continuously monitor how you allocate your resources to be sure you’re using them wisely. Assess the messages you’re sharing and why. Determine if you’re reaching enough people to achieve your goals. Empower your team to communicate with you about any concerns, challenges, or opportunities they encounter. This knowledge should help you stay on course.

Navigating common content strategy and marketing challenges

One common challenge arises when teams are working on different aspects of a single goal without the knowledge of what the other is doing. You can prevent this by fostering cross-team collaborations. Ensure everyone in your organization knows what the overall goals are and what part they play in reaching those goals.

You should establish shared goals and metrics that keep everyone working toward the same objectives. Clear guidelines and responsibilities for everyone on your team may help support this. Delegate an individual or a group to review the content for consistent and appropriate messages. 

And don’t forget to stay agile. It’s imperative you develop a plan that’s also flexible with changing market conditions or audience needs. 

Bridging Strategy and Marketing for Content Excellence

Remember, excellent content follows naturally from an excellent plan. A harmonious relationship between your content strategy and your content marketing brings your strategy to life. Whether your goal is to increase sales or establish yourself as a leader in your industry, fuel your growth by creating a plan and using it to create compelling, goal-driven content.Tap into Crowd Content’s content strategy expertise to boost your digital impact. See how our content strategy services can revolutionize your marketing efforts and elevate your brand. Start planning your content strategy now.

The post Key Distinctions to Know About Content Strategy vs. Content Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Using editorial calendar templates is the only way to make it happen. It creates structure, enabling you to publish consistent, quality content and keep your brand at the top of customers’ minds. 

Consumers’ thirst for content is limitless. If you deliver value and know your audience, you can reach them. But if you don’t publish enough to keep them hydrated, they quench their curiosity elsewhere. Here’s our guide to creating, implementing, and maintaining an editorial calendar. 

Components of an Editorial Calendar Template

From evergreen articles to seasonal campaigns, you can tailor an editorial calendar template to back your brand’s goals. Let’s look at the essential components:

• Content type: From blog posts to social media updates and email newsletters, editorial calendars accommodate various content types. This versatility ensures you attract a broad audience.
• Publication dates: Stay on track with scheduled publication dates to maintain engagement and visibility for all team members. Flexibility is key here, allowing you to adapt to shifting priorities and seasonal trends. 
• Channels: Specify where each piece of content should be published to ensure a cohesive schedule across all platforms.
• Viral opportunities: Anticipate and capitalize on viral moments by aligning your content with industry events and trending topics. Forward planning prevents last-minute scrambles.
• Responsible team members: For complex projects, incorporate a simple RACI chart detailing roles and responsibilities. This streamlines collaboration and creates accountability within your team.
• Status: For straightforward projects where designated roles are established, use status columns to indicate the production stage of each order. As the statuses shift, collaborating team members are notified it’s their turn to step in. 
• Content brief: While the project brief’s instructions apply to the content type as a whole, each piece typically pairs with a content brief. Content calendars simplify the review process, so why not provide all the resources in one spot? 
  

Why every content team needs a template 

Proactivity delivers better results than reactivity. Planning content a week ahead of time doesn’t leave wiggle room for shifts in your marketing strategy, which is likely to change occasionally. But there’s more to it than punctuality. Here are more benefits of using an editorial calendar:

• Improved organization: Centralizing content planning and scheduling helps your team stay on track with content goals.
• Enhanced collaboration: Clear assignment of roles and responsibilities fosters better collaboration among team members, reducing confusion and doubling-up of efforts.
• Consistency: A structured editorial calendar ensures a consistent publishing schedule, which is essential for maintaining audience engagement and brand credibility and surfing the elusive algorithms.
• Strategic alignment: Editorial calendars enable teams to align content with marketing objectives by providing high-level overviews of how each piece of content contributes to business goals.

An editorial calendar brings order to chaos. If you’re always chasing your tail, going from ideation to strategy to publication, you need a template. Download our editorial calendar template, and breathe a sigh of relief.

How to Craft an Editorial Calendar Template

If only content creation were as easy as hiring a skilled writer and asking them to create an article for you. Your brand strategy, business goals, ideation, and content strategy must be watertight long before pen meets paper. This requires relentless attention to detail and a deep knowledge of your audience’s pain points. 

Brand strategy comes first 

Your brand must have a clear identity, including unique personality, tone, values, and objectives. Next, craft a brand story that speaks to your audience’s desires, fears, and aspirations. With a brand strategy firmly in place, you never run out of content ideas or post articles that misalign with business goals. 

Step-by-step guide to crafting an editorial calendar

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating an editorial calendar:

1. Define goals and objectives. Nail down your goals and objectives, whether they’re boosting brand awareness or driving leads. Your editorial calendar should be laser-focused on your targets.
2. Research your audience. Get to know your audience inside and out. Dive deep into demographics, preferences, and pain points to tailor your content accordingly.
3. Ideate and plan the content. Brainstorm content ideas for the upcoming year that hit the mark with your audience and brand messaging and nod to potential viral moments. 
4. Map ideas onto your content calendar. Once you have a pool of content ideas, map them out on your editorial calendar. Consider seasonal relevancy, industry trends, and key events that may impact your audience’s interests.
5. Be specific. Allocate dates for each piece of content, ensuring a balanced mix of topics and formats each month. This helps you maintain engagement and motivates your audience to return for more.
6. Initiate content creation and collaboration. Assign tasks to your team and ensure everyone knows their role and deadlines. Collaboration is key here — writers, designers, and stakeholders should all be on the same page.
7. Start to publish and distribute the finished product. It’s time to get your content out there. Determine the best channels and timing for publication, maximizing your reach and engagement.
8. Maintain flexibility. Allow space for spontaneous content opportunities and last-minute adjustments to accommodate changes in your marketing strategy or the industry landscape.
9. Monitor your content’s success and optimize early on. Keep a close eye on your content’s performance using tools like Google Analytics. Track metrics such as impressions and organic traffic to fine-tune your editorial calendar.

SEO integration within your calendar

As Google’s algorithm grows ever more sophisticated, SEO becomes increasingly important. You’re not just optimizing content to meet a few criteria anymore — search algorithms expect high-quality, people-first content that delivers value. 

Here’s how to weave SEO into your editorial calendar:

• Keyword mapping: Make sure each piece strategically targets specific keywords to enhance its visibility in the SERPs. Use keyword research tools and allocate relevant phrases to each piece on your editorial calendar. Consider search volume, competitiveness, and how the phrases fit into the marketing funnel to pinpoint search intent. 
• Content mapping: Harmonize your editorial calendar with content mapping exercises. Identify topics and themes that resonate with your audience and integrate them into your calendar for a cohesive SEO strategy.
• Content gap analysis: Identify gaps in your content coverage using SEO tools and analytics. Schedule content ideation sessions to address gaps so you can capture untapped search opportunities.
• Topic clusters and pillar content: Consider organizing your calendar around topic clusters and pillar content. Identify core topics and supporting subtopics to create a cohesive content ecosystem that strengthens your website’s topical authority.
• Seasonal planning: Capitalize on seasonal trends and search queries when crafting your editorial calendar. Embed timely themes related to seasonal events, holidays, and industry trends to leverage spikes in search traffic.
• On-page optimization schedule: Incorporate on-page optimization directly within your editorial calendar. Assign specific time slots or deadlines for optimizing metadata, headers, and other on-page elements.

Infuse your editorial calendar with SEO best practices so your content attracts more organic traffic and solidifies brand authority online. 

Best Practices for Implementing Your Editorial Calendar

Looking for ways to level up your editorial calendar game? Follow these editorial calendar best practices to drive organic traffic and establish your brand as a force to be reckoned with. 

Collaborative excellence 

Forge strong cross-functional partnerships within your team to drive collaborative content planning. Reward experimentation and creativity whenever possible to demonstrate you embrace bold ideas and innovative approaches. 

Data-driven insights 

Regularly cast a keen eye over key performance indicators to determine areas for improvement. Use these insights to guide future content decisions, prioritizing initiatives with the highest ROI. 

Experiment with A/B testing to gauge perception and optimize engagement. Keep refining your approach based on this type of solid evidence, focusing on strategies that deliver tangible results. 

Content repurposing and amplification

Breathe new life into content through strategic repurposing. Locate the timeless gems within your content library and reshape and revitalize them to reach fresh audiences. You can even repurpose content for different social platforms to extend your content’s reach.

For amplification, play with diverse multimedia formats, such as videos, infographics, and podcasts, to cater to varied preferences and consumption habits.

Crowd Content’s Downloadable Editorial Calendar Template

Designed to streamline your planning process and maximize efficiency, our template is your ticket to organized and strategic content creation. 

How to use your downloadable template

Getting started with our editorial calendar template is a breeze. Navigate to the resources section of our website or scroll to the bottom of the page, where you’ll find the template available for download. Once downloaded, open the file using your preferred spreadsheet software, and you’re ready to roll.

The template is intuitively designed, with clearly labeled sections for content type, publication dates, channels, viral moments, responsible team members, and more. Input content ideas, deadlines, and team assignments, and marvel as your content strategy comes to life.

Customizing Crowd Content’s editorial calendar template 

What sets Crowd Content’s template apart is its flexibility and adaptability to various content strategies. Whether you’re a solopreneur managing a blog or a marketing team overseeing multiple campaigns, you can tailor our template to suit your needs.

Customization options abound, allowing you to add or remove columns, adjust date formats, and personalize categories to align with your brand’s unique requirements. Need to incorporate SEO keywords or track content performance metrics? Our template can accommodate it all.

Say goodbye to scattered content planning and hello to a results-driven strategy.

The post Master Content Planning With Editorial Calendar Templates appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

What exactly is this essential tool? A content brief is a set of instructions that lays out what your team needs to accomplish with a piece of content. It outlines details such as objective, word count, keyword placement, formatting, and tone, all backed by solid audience research and data. Follow along as we show you how to create an effective brief to maximize the impact of your content strategy. We’ll also share a downloadable content brief template that you can customize for your own needs.

How to Write a Content Brief to Guide Content Creation

A content brief is like an instruction manual, summarizing the requirements for building each piece of content. Everyone on your team, including writers, editors, subject matter experts, SEO specialists, and designers, should be using this reference document to guide them in the content-production process.

It might feel like a time-consuming and unnecessary step; after all, can’t you just give your writer a topic and some keywords and call it a day? In our experience, the time spent building a content brief pays off handsomely down the line. You’ll get closer to your goals on the first draft while also ensuring your content strategy is properly implemented.

A thorough content brief:

• Establishes the goal of a piece
• Defines the target audience
• Ensures your content stays on brand
• Reduces uncertainty and time spent clarifying issues
• Summarizes important points to be covered
• Boosts productivity by allowing writers to focus on execution
• Reduces editing and the need for rewrites
• Speeds up approvals, because stakeholders have signed off on the brief
• Supports content outsourcing, allowing anyone to step in and immediately understand project requirements

Tools for content brief creation

You can accelerate the creation of your content briefs by leveraging some of the AI-powered tools on the market. These platforms automate tasks like keyword research, audience analysis, and ideation, freeing up your time to focus on storytelling, creativity, and ways to make your content stand out.

A few different tools are worth having at your fingertips:

• Content creation tools: AI content creation tools can help generate ideas for blog posts, develop outlines, and lay the groundwork for content briefs. The key to these platforms, however, is to use them as a launching pad. To make your final product unique, you’ll still need to take the time to customize your brief for your particular audience and business goals.
• SEO tools: Keyword research tools are critical for creating the content your audience is searching for. Use these platforms to generate keyword ideas, analyze competitor strategies, and clarify user intent. Some tools can also generate outlines and recommend target keywords, word count, and readability scores based on top-ranking pages.
• Audience analytics: Segment your audience to tailor your content more precisely. Google Analytics provides aggregate information on who’s visiting your website, where they’re located, and what their interests are. You can also see which pages they’re engaging with on your site — and which ones they’re not — to help you better address your audience’s needs and preferences. 
• Content brief generators: Platforms such as Thruuu and Keyword Insights analyze search result pages to generate briefs for your content. Use these to get a head start on your brief and supplement them with your own expertise and knowledge to ensure your content is valuable and unique and meets Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines.

Step 1: Define Your Project Goals

Now it’s time to write a content brief. The first stage of the process is to set your content marketing goals, which should be guided by the needs of your business.

Many brands use the SMART framework to clarify what they need to accomplish when setting goals. SMART stands for: 

• Specific: What do you want the content to achieve? Why does it matter?
• Measurable: What does success look like? Make sure it’s quantifiable.
• Attainable: Do you have the resources available to meet the goal?
• Relevant: Does the goal matter? Is it aligned with your brand’s priorities?
• Time-bound: What’s the time frame for achieving the goal?

You might decide your objective is to increase website traffic. Use the SMART framework to break down the goal and give yourself a clear sense of direction: 

• The specific goal is to increase website traffic by 20%.
• It will be measured through metrics such as keyword position, click-through rates, and traffic.
• It will be achieved by scaling the production of helpful, optimized blog content.
• The goal is relevant because it supports lead generation and revenue.
• The time frame for the goal is six months.

Realizing your goals through purpose-driven content

With your objectives in hand, determine the type of content needed to achieve them. Each piece of content should have a clear role in your overall strategy. 

Many businesses focus on blog posts, but you can use a variety of formats, depending on what you want to convey. We’ve highlighted some common content types below, organized by why you might use them for audience engagement.

Generating leads

• White papers
• E-books
• Blog posts
• Landing pages

Establishing authority

• Thought leadership
• Guest blogs

Building brand awareness

• Social media posts
• Informational blog posts
• Infographics

Retaining customers

• Product tips
• How-to guides
• Tutorials
• Email newsletters

Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience 

Your audience is at the heart of your content strategy — they’re the reason you craft and share content. They influence the type of content you create, the way you express your message, and the content distribution channels you use. Your content must be authentic and engaging. The more insight you have into your audience’s motivations and preferences, the better you can tailor your content.

Audiences aren’t uniform, so begin by segmenting them according to shared characteristics such as age, gender, location, or interests. You can then use these segments to customize their user experience. For example, some customers may prefer shopping directly on social platforms while others like product recommendations in their inbox. Make sure you’re marketing in the right places with content that speaks directly to your customers’ interests.

Incorporating audience personas into your content brief

Audience personas are extremely powerful tools for guiding your content marketing strategy. When it comes to content briefs, however, the challenge is making this information useful for writers. Rick Leach, our VP of Content Operations, elaborated on this in a Crowd Content podcast. He notes that vague audience demographics don’t help writers tailor their content in an impactful way: 

“What I’ve started to do in the briefs we create is to give audience insights rather than a persona,” he says. “What are our audience’s pain points … What resonates with this audience as it relates to this content? That type of information in the hands of a writer is very valuable.”

He goes on to say that pain points change, depending on the topic, so you should revise this section in every content brief to sufficiently equip your writers. “Now it’s informing how they write that article,” he explains. “It helps [the writer] empathize with the audience’s specific pain points on the subject matter and present solutions that should resonate.”

Advanced techniques for audience research

So how do you go about gathering these insights about your customers? Here are a few suggestions:

• Communicate directly. Use surveys, interviews, and focus groups to understand their priorities, frustrations, and concerns.
• Listen in on social networks. Learn what customers are saying about your industry, brand, and competitors in online communities and on blogs and social platforms.
• Leverage market research tools. Build in-depth profiles of your customers using audience intelligence platforms such as SparkToro or Audiense.
• Conduct behavioral analytics. Understand how your customers engage with your marketing channels through web analytics tools, heatmaps, and session recordings. You can see where your content successfully engages them and where you may need to improve.

Step 3: Outline Content Specifications 

When you’ve determined the type of content you want to create, it’s time to drill down to the details. Your team will need certain information to execute the content, so use the list below as a checklist for your content brief. The more precise you can be in the brief the better, so include any additional resources or notes you think may be helpful. 

• Content type: Specify the type of content you’re creating, such as a blog post, white paper, landing page, or case study. 
• Summary: Describe in a few sentences what the content should cover to guide the piece and ensure it stays on track. For example, the summary for the article you’re reading right now might be “Explain how to write a content brief, covering steps such as audience research and SEO.”
• Objective: Explain what the piece should accomplish and the key takeaways.  
• Content outline: Detail the topics to cover, including suggested section headers.
• Target audience: Provide insights about audience pain points and the type of problems they want to solve.
• Style: Establish stylistic requirements such as formatting, point of view, abbreviations, and comma usage. These should be consistent across your content inventory.
• Voice and tone: Elaborate on how the writer should communicate to your readers. Voice and tone affect how audiences perceive and relate to your brand. 
  

Defining your content’s voice and tone

Let’s talk a little more about voice and tone, because the way you express your message is critical to how audiences react to your content. Two elements come into play here — your brand voice and the content’s tone.

• Brand voice is the overall personality of your business. It’s tied to your organization’s mission and values and helps distinguish your brand from others. For example, your voice might be sophisticated, humorous, socially conscious, or bold. Voice should be consistent throughout your content so audiences know what to expect and can begin to build a relationship with your brand.
• Tone is the mood or feeling you set within a specific piece. Tone often changes, depending on the purpose of the piece or distribution channel. You might use a playful tone on social media to capture attention and a formal tone in a white paper to establish authority.

Writers need to know your voice and tone because it affects:  

• Word choice
• Sentence structure
• Point of view 
• Vocabulary level
• Descriptiveness or storytelling techniques

For example, to achieve a professional tone, a writer might use third-person point of view, longer sentences, and a formal vocabulary. Conversely, acasual tone usually consists of shorter sentences, colloquialisms, and rhetorical questions. You can also specify these requirements in your content brief.

Step 4: Structure Your Content 

You can give writers the freedom to create content as they see fit, but the more structure you provide, the more likely the final product will satisfy your goals and audience needs. 

Research your topic and add value

The key to ranking well is to tackle a topic better than your competitors. Review the pages that are ranking for your keyword — not to copy your competitors’ content but to find ways to improve on the content. A content gap analysis can help you gain ground on the competitors. During your research, gather ideas, statistics, examples, and case studies that will help you create a useful, valuable piece. 

Crafting an engaging and coherent outline

Organize your ideas into sections. Use your main points as headers and add supporting points in the relevant sections. Try to build a logical structure for your content.

Use an inverted pyramid style of writing to present the most important information first, working your way to the details. This approach works well for the overall structure of a piece as well as for individual sections. It helps create a logical flow so you can lead your reader through the content seamlessly.

Each section should tie back to the purpose of your article. If it’s not relevant, it should probably be removed to ensure your article is cohesive. For example, if the purpose of your article is to explain how to make the perfect cup of coffee, a recipe for coffee cake likely isn’t relevant — no matter how delicious it sounds.

Integrating UX design principles into content structure

Consider implementing a user-friendly structure for each type of content on your website. You might have one structure for blog posts, for example, and another for service pages. Writers will know right away how to structure the relevant piece of content.

Browse through the Poppy & Peonies website, and you’ll see that they use the same structure for all of their product descriptions — a descriptive paragraph, followed by bullet points. This structure is easy for readers to consume. 

MoneyTips, which writes on complex financial topics, structures each article with an introduction followed by a three-bullet summary. “The Short Version” helps surface key information right at the top of the article.

Step 5: Incorporate SEO and Keywords 

Your content marketing strategy should be guided by keywords to ensure audiences can discover your content in search engines. List your target keywords in your content brief so your writer can incorporate them according to SEO best practices. 

Typically, you’ll focus on a primary keyword and a few secondary keywords that are variations of the primary keyword. According to best practices, you should use your primary keyword in:

• The title
• Introductory paragraph
• One H2 header
• URL slug
• Meta title and description

Secondary keywords can be used once in the body copy, but use keywords only if they fit easily into your copy. You can adjust awkward keywords to make them sound more natural.

Keywords should just be a guide for your content. Writers should focus on creating helpful content that engages readers, not on search engines. That’s where you’ll find the most success. For example, while there are tools that check your content for keyword density, relying on them often means you’re writing to satisfy Google and not your human readers. Search engines are sophisticated enough to understand your content if you address a topic comprehensively. There’s no need to stuff it with keywords.

Mastering the art of keyword research

Keyword research tools help you find search terms related to your product or service, along with data such as the number of times users search for it and how hard it is to compete for the top spots in the SERPs. Strike a balance between search volume and keyword difficulty when choosing keywords to target.

Start your research with a broad keyword related to your product or service and then sift through to find other relevant terms. You might use “backpack” as a starting point and then discover audiences are also searching for “work backpack” and “best backpack for hiking.” Decide which keywords are relevant to your business and use these to guide your content creation.

Remember that search volume usually drops as keywords get more specific, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Customers further along in their research usually use more precise keywords and are easier to convert.

Step 6: Finalize and Provide Feedback

Before finalizing your brief, invite your stakeholders to share their thoughts. Depending on your company’s organizational structure, you may want input from:

• Content strategists
• Editorial directors
• Marketing directors
• Product managers
• SEO specialists
• Subject matter experts
• Senior leadership
• Creative team (for design elements)

You can draw on your colleagues’ expertise to refine your outline and enhance the value of your piece. This step also helps manage expectations: If your stakeholders sign off at the beginning of the content production phase, there should be fewer revisions during editing and approvals.

Revise the document based on the feedback and then put the brief into the hands of your content creation team for implementation.

Embracing agile feedback loops in content strategy

Publishing your content and sending it into the world can feel like the conclusion of your content strategy, but it’s just one part of an ongoing process. To maximize your content’s impact, you need to gather feedback and data, adjusting your tactics over time to improve performance and respond to shifts in audience behaviors.

• Ask your content creation team for feedback on the brief. Was it helpful? What additional information do they need to do their jobs better in the future?
• Invite your stakeholders to share thoughts on the final product. Did it meet their expectations? How would they improve on it?
• Determine how audiences engaged with your content. Analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics such as page views, time on page, bounce rate, social shares, and conversions.
• Adjust your strategy. Based on the insights, refine your content strategy. Experiment with messaging, format, and content distribution channels, or perform testing to see how audiences respond to variations of headlines and other elements. Then use your findings to inform your next set of content briefs.

From Blueprint to Breakthrough: Download Our Content Brief Template

An effective content strategy can help convert audiences, but each piece of content you publish needs to pull its weight. A content brief helps you keep each piece tightly focused, summarizing details about content goals, audience, keywords, messaging, tone, and style. Backed by solid research and analytics, this document is a valuable reference for everyone on a content team and will ensure your final product aligns with your target audience and business goals.

Are you ready to elevate your content strategy to engage audiences and drive results more effectively? Discover how this essential tool streamlines your workflow, ensures consistency, and improves outcomes. Download Crowd Content’s expertly designed content brief template and get started today.

The post How to Write a Content Brief: A Comprehensive Guide for Effective Content Planning appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

A content strategy is a detailed plan laying out how your business plans to engage customers using digital assets, such as online articles, videos, case studies, or podcasts. Think of it like a professional map pinpointing destinations from the top to the bottom of the funnel — a guide that delivers value, creates brand awareness, and carries your customer through every stage of the buyer’s journey. 

Core Elements of a Content Marketing Strategy

Just like you can’t make grilled cheese without bread, a content marketing strategy has nonnegotiable ingredients that pull everything together. You need to know who you’re targeting, the channels you’re using to reach them, and the goals you need to hit.

Identifying and understanding the target audience

Good content marketing revolves around your customers. You must know your audience and empathize with their needs to create content that resonates. After all, you can create a fascinating article or slick video. But if your customers shrug their collective shoulders and scroll past it, your message tumbles into the internet equivalent of a black hole.

That’s why your strategy must be customer-centric. Conduct in-depth research and analysis to learn about your browsers’ demographics, interests, behaviors, preferences, and frustrations. Use this information to determine the type of content to produce, topics to cover, and tone to adopt. 

Choosing content distribution channels

The next part of your strategy focuses on distributing content so audiences discover your brand. Choose channels that align with their preferences and behaviors, which you ideally established during your audience research. Consider the channels’ reach, engagement potential, and cost-effectiveness when finalizing your choices.

To maximize reach, we recommend a mix of channels for diversity.

• Owned channels, such as your website, blog, app, and email newsletter, are fully under your control.
• Paid channels can give you a significant lift in exposure, but they have a price tag. PPC ads, influencer partnerships, and sponsored content fall into this category.
• Earned channels include media mentions, user-generated content, and guest blogs. They require a third-party endorsement of your brand, which makes them feel more authentic to customers.

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy: Step-by-Step

As you can tell, it takes time to develop a content marketing strategy that grows your business. It might seem daunting, but if you break the process into steps, your strategy slowly and surely comes together.

Define your audience

Start by defining your target audience. Buyer personas are useful for seeing your customers as people rather than a demographic. 

• Talk to your product team. Your colleagues likely performed audience research when designing and branding the product.
• Review website analytics. Google Analytics, for example, offers insights into audience demographics, location, interests, and their favored devices.
• Conduct surveys and focus groups. Ask questions about preferences, challenges, and where customers get information from.
• Monitor social media conversations. Listen to what audiences say about your industry, brand, and competitors.

Research keywords

SEO goes hand in hand with a content strategy. Perform keyword research using tools such as Semrush to ensure your content appears in the SERPs when your audience searches for your product or service. Lean on different keyword research tools to generate and analyze search terms so you can prioritize the ones with the most potential for your business. 

We recommend using keywords to guide your content — they’re not meant to be stuffed onto each page. Organize keywords into themes, and don’t forget long-tail keywords that reach customers with specific search intent. 

Set goals and choose KPIs

Remember that a content marketing plan needs a clear purpose to drive results. Your content goals might be to boost brand awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, conversions, or sales. Pair your goals with quantifiable metrics. These benchmarks are reference points for your progress, telling you which parts of your strategy might need a little TLC.  Over time, some metrics may spike, plateau, or drop. Use this data to keep your strategy on track and refine your tactics. Track key performance indicators regularly, especially after specific campaign rollouts. 

Determine content types and channels

Most content strategies rely heavily on blog posts because they easily adapt to your messaging. But you can (and should) draw on various content types to make your strategy more dynamic. Always keep your audience in mind, and match content to the buyer’s journey.

• E-books and white papers let you dive deep into a topic and provide thought leadership.
• Case studies draw on real-life examples to demonstrate a solution to a problem.
• How-to guides and instructional resources help readers accomplish a task.
• FAQs provide quick answers to common customer concerns.
• Webinars and podcasts are interactive workshops, presentations, and discussions that share expertise. 

Here’s a content strategy example. If you want to use content to generate leads, and your customer is a B2B decision-maker, consider a gated white paper on your website. If they frequent LinkedIn, create a video as a teaser to capture their interest, and link to your landing page in the post.

Conduct a content audit

You don’t need to start your content production from scratch. See what assets you already have by auditing your content and creating an inventory of previously published assets. List each item in a spreadsheet and track title, URL, content type, category or theme, buyer stage, and target keywords. Then, you can determine what content you need to complete your strategy.

Pro tip: At the same time, evaluate each page to ensure it contains high-quality content that meets Google’s excellence standards. Add any necessary content refreshes into your strategy.

Build a content calendar

A content calendar helps you visualize how the pieces of your plan should roll out. Plan it at least 6 months in advance, scheduling each piece with a publication date and working backward to determine writing, editing, and design deadlines. You can also use the calendar to assign your team specific roles, especially if you have a pool of writers. Editorial calendars are essential for staying organized and keeping things going after ideation. 

Executing Your Content Marketing Strategy

While a documented content marketing plan can lead you to your goals, you unlock its potential once it’s implemented and brought to life. Create an organized content production process to ensure what you publish strikes a chord with your audience. Then, promote your content diligently so they can discover it.

Content creation best practices

Audiences quickly decide if a piece of content is relevant or interesting. Use our content creation tips to produce stellar blog posts, articles, landing pages, and web content.

• Understand search intent. Users have a specific query in mind when they plug keywords into a search engine. If you’re targeting the search term “hatha yoga,” for example, determine if someone wants to know the history of hatha yoga, how to do it, or where to take classes. SEO tools can help with this, or you can look into the types of content currently ranking for the search term.
• Create content briefs. Use our content brief template, and give your writers guidelines for crafting each piece. A brief covers keywords, search intent, target audience, People Also Ask questions, tone, style, word count, and deadlines. 
• Make your content exceptional. Follow the basics of good content creation, such as writing concisely and proofreading before publishing. Every piece should provide value, such as original research and real-life examples.
• Incorporate multimedia. Perk up written text with graphics, slide shows, or video to help tell your story in a visually appealing way. 
• Optimize for SEO. It can seem like Google’s algorithms are random and mysterious, but there’s a method to the madness. Improve your chances of ranking by helping search engines understand the content. Add meta titles and descriptions, organize content with headers, use descriptive anchor text and URLs, and optimize for featured snippets. Videos should include transcripts for those who prefer to read, and images should have alt-text for accessibility.
• Include CTAs. Help readers navigate your website and get to the next stage of their journey with strong, clear calls to action. You can incorporate these as links within your copy or as more prominent buttons.
• Stay true to your brand. To build loyalty, each piece of content should reflect the essence of your brand so audiences know what to expect. Marketing specialist Ann Handley describes this as “artisanal content.” In a recent Crowd Content webinar about the future of content marketing, Handley explained, “[It’s] content that can only come from you … that’s really infused with your voice, with your point of view, or with your face, in some situations. It can’t come from anyone else; it won’t sound the same. [It] feels almost handcrafted for us specifically.” 

Effective distribution channels

Search engines, newsletters, social media, and paid ads all help distribute your content to a broad audience. To get the most impact, ensure the format suits the channel. Buffer, for example, promotes articles on LinkedIn as carousels. As users have to swipe through the content, it’s more engaging than simply posting a text summary. 

At Crowd Content, we use multiple channels to distribute content more widely. Our blog post about whether AI content can rank in Google doubled as a jumping-off point for a podcast discussion.  

“There’s no one size fits all recipe when it comes to determining what channels you should use for your business as far as what’s going to work well for you — not just the mix, but the weighting,” our VP of Content Operations, Rick Leach, recently explained. “I encourage you to try, measure, adjust … then increase or decrease the percentage of resources that go toward that channel as the data tells you.” 

Measuring the Success of Your Content Marketing Strategy

Once you have your strategy in motion, monitor your progress across your distribution channels. Platforms such as Google Analytics, Hootsuite, HubSpot, Semrush, and Ahrefs capture website analytics and integrate with social networking and email platforms to consolidate data into a single dashboard. 

Key performance indicators in content marketing

Choose KPIs related to your content marketing goals so you can make data-informed decisions and fine-tune your tactics. 

Analytics for strategy optimization 

You might feel like you’re swimming in numbers once the data starts rolling in. Tackle your analytics in the same way you put together your content strategy: methodically.

Search for patterns, trends, and possible issues with your content performance. For example, begin investigating if your engagement metrics show audiences aren’t interacting. Look at individual pieces of content that are drop-off points in the funnel, or segment audiences by demographics, device, or behavior to see if a particular group isn’t engaging.

Based on the findings, you might improve navigation, design, or CTAs. You could also experiment with formats, topics, and storytelling techniques that better resonate with audience preferences. Using your data and analysis, make incremental adjustments to your content to optimize it, and continue monitoring and adjusting.

Future Trends in Content Marketing Strategy

When you think you’ve got your content marketing strategies nailed down, things shift. It’s one of the realities of our chaotic, digital world. You can expect audience preferences to change, new competitors and technologies to pop up, and algorithm updates to steer content in new directions. Adopt a proactive approach so you can prepare for these inevitable shifts.

Emerging technologies in content marketing

Businesses are already exploring how artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies can support content marketing. Be open to experimentation and innovation that can refine your strategies and set you apart from competitors. For example:

• Content intelligence platforms identify topics for different stages of the buyer’s journey and predict the best distribution channels.
• AI writing tools can help with research and outlining. (But make sure your final content has a human touch.)
• AI-powered web analytics tools quickly process data to detect trends and patterns and anticipate future behavior.
• Augmented and virtual reality offer new formats for storytelling.

Changing consumer behaviors

No matter what technology you leverage, don’t lose sight of your audience. Keep a pulse on your customers. Continue to talk to them through focus groups and surveys to understand their priorities. Employ social media monitoring to listen in on real-time concerns. When you understand what’s driving audience behaviors, you can provide better content solutions to meet their needs.

Crafting a Successful Content Marketing Strategy for Your Business

Once you build a solid framework for your content marketing, it’s easier to create pieces that appeal to your audience and inspire them toward desired goals. Spend some time laying the groundwork by getting to know your customers, establishing objectives, and choosing relevant distribution channels. Stay on track by monitoring KPIs and audience behaviors, and refine tactics with your sights set firmly on your goals. 

Maximize your content potential

Ready to revolutionize your brand’s digital presence? Discover how Crowd Content’s content strategy services can elevate your business. Our team of experts is dedicated to crafting bespoke strategies that resonate with your audience and drive results.

The post Unlock the Power of Digital Storytelling With a Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

In an increasingly saturated business landscape, trust perseveres as a key determining factor for consumers. Web users conduct research before buying anything. They compare your website with reviews and your brand’s social platforms to make informed decisions. According to PWC, only 27% of customers trust the brands they buy from. So, who do they trust? Other consumers — and that’s where UGC comes in, serving as social proof and validating brands’ claims in prospective customers’ eyes.

Learn about UGC as we reveal the secrets of two successful examples and show you how to turn your customers into brand ambassadors.

What Is User-Generated Content (UGC)?

UGC is any form of promotional content that’s created and shared by users rather than brands.

You can use UGC across various channels, including social media, websites, email marketing, and in-store displays. Reposting your customers’ experiences humanizes your brand’s image and instills trust in their eyes, and displaying UGC on product pages incentivizes buyers.

What sets UGC apart from conventional ads is its ability to foster genuine connections and evoke visceral responses. Unlike corporate messaging, UGC carries an air of authenticity and relatability that resonates with audiences. It speaks directly to people, reflecting their experiences, aspirations, and emotions in a way traditional marketing can’t replicate.

UGC is a powerful tool for sparking conversations. It cultivates a sense of belonging and camaraderie, transforming passive observers into engaged advocates who champion your values and find meaning in being part of your community.

The rise of UGC 

Content marketing has turned traditional advertising on its head. Thanks to digital disruption, ordinary people can reach vast audiences and make millions of dollars producing blogs and videos from their homes. As it turns out, there’s a substantial public demand for content created by consumers for consumers. 

Plus, with so much access to information, people have become mindful of traditional advertising techniques and more wary of inauthentic media campaigns. They don’t trust the polished images projected by brands as much as a recommendation from another human being. User-generated content is the new word of mouth — with the bonus of global reach.

Benefits of UGC

Let’s look at the benefits of UGC in more detail:

• Social proof: When consumers see a real person endorse a product or service, it verifies your brand story’s credibility.
• Unlimited free ads: UGC is often free and is always more affordable than a full-scale ad campaign. 
• Conversion influence: In 2023, around 50% of consumers said UGC videos help them discover new things to buy. Plus, according to a cumulative analysis, 90% of consumers are more likely to buy something if they see a video of someone positively endorsing a brand without sponsorship. 
• Community building: In the past, companies tried to garner loyal customers. Thanks to social media, you can go a step further and build a community that’s connected to each other and your brand. People have a strong drive to feel included and live with a sense of purpose. Brands can tap into this through storytelling and creating spaces where customers rally together. UGC thrives on platforms such as Reddit and TikTok because people use them to form and find communities.
• Appeal to Millennial and Gen Z audiences: Younger generations seek immersion in their content, and Deloitte Insights suggests that UGC (and video games) most effectively fulfill this need. 
• Drive engagement: UGC is a nifty tool for driving engagement on your social media pages. 
• SEO: Brand mentions, reviews, and an active social media presence are some of the biggest drivers of organic SEO. 
• Voice of the customer: Gathering UGC gives you access to indispensable customer data to refine and improve your brand.  

Barriers to UGC Success

Weak branding and lack of clarity regarding values are the main barriers to UGC’s success because consumers can’t form an emotional connection if certain elements are lacking. For the brands we’ve helped, the solution was targeted content production. Focusing on storytelling that showcases consistent brand values, personality, and voice sets the stage for community-building and UGC. 

A strong brand identity is underpinned by engaging content that’s tailored to each distribution channel. Website copy, blog posts, and videos help prospects decide whether to connect with your company. Considering that 7 in 10 consumers are more likely to buy from brands that share their values, purpose is another essential element of a strong brand identity.

Use these values to inform content ideation and spark the emotional connection that inspires customers to become UGC contributors. 

User-Generated Content Examples

These user-generated content examples demonstrate UGC’s potential to shape the digital landscape. Below, we outline how industry leaders SHEIN and HelloFresh leverage UGC to drive growth, increase engagement, and create opportunities for their audiences to interact meaningfully with each other. 

SHEIN 

This case study explores how fast-fashion retailer SHEIN strategically uses UGC.

Social proof and community building

Social proof is at the heart of SHEIN’s UGC strategy, with real-life recommendations validating the brand in consumers’ eyes. Users post reviews with photos that are prominently displayed under each item’s product description.

This feature has turned the platform into an active community hub where shoppers share styling tips, outfit inspirations, and feedback on product quality. 

Rewarding engagement

SHEIN’s innovative approach to UGC extends beyond traditional product reviews, encouraging users to show off pictures of their SHEIN hauls alongside reviews, including detailed sizing information.

To incentivize users to contribute, SHEIN rewards them with points, giving discounts on future purchases for sharing their experiences. 

Consumers as collaborators and Gen Z appeal

One of SHEIN’s strengths lies in the company’s ability to tap into the preferences and aspirations of Gen Z consumers. These buyers prioritize self-expression, authenticity, and social connection in their shopping experiences. Prominently displaying honest, uncensored reviews with photos on each product shows a commitment to transparency and gives customers a platform. 

By positioning consumers as collaborators, SHEIN empowers them to play an active role in the brand’s success. This approach resonates strongly with the target market, driving engagement and brand affinity. 

SHEIN vs. PrettyLittleThing

A study comparing PrettyLittleThing and SHEIN supports the idea that consumers — especially younger generations — trust UGC more than branded content. All 12 participants preferred having the option to compare themselves to real people on SHEIN’s website rather than only models on PrettyLittleThing. For this reason, they all said they’d prefer to shop with SHEIN. 

One expressed a clear lack of trust in PrettyLittleThing’s branded imagery. 

Prioritizing social proof, community building, and consumer empowerment has helped SHEIN captivate Gen Z consumers and establish itself as a leader in the fast-fashion industry. 

HelloFresh

Through a carefully curated blend of branded and user-generated content, HelloFresh has established a thriving community and transmitted its brand message across multiple digital channels. The meal-kit delivery service uses UGC to manage customer expectations, foster community engagement, and drive business growth. 

By prominently showcasing real-life experiences and testimonials from satisfied customers, HelloFresh creates authentic and relatable narratives that resonate with its target audience.

Influencer marketing

HelloFresh relies on influencer marketing to amplify its UGC campaigns. Partnering with food bloggers, home chefs, and lifestyle influencers enables the brand to expand its reach, piggybacking on the creators’ reputations. 

In sponsored ads, YouTubers and TikTokers make DIY content, where they cook HelloFresh recipes. They also ask viewers to send pictures and videos of their HelloFresh cooking triumphs and disasters and offer discounts for using their branded codes.

Social media

Another core element of HelloFresh’s UGC strategy is social media engagement. The company asks customers to share photos of their meal creations using the hashtag #HelloFreshPics. 

Winners are chosen randomly to be featured on the website homepage, with their Instagram username and photo caption prominently displayed.  

Consistently curating and reposting UGC amplifies HelloFresh’s customers’ voices while inspiring others to try its products. Consumers are excited by the opportunity to be featured on the brand’s homepage, driving engagement and brand mentions for the company. 

Email marketing

HelloFresh integrates UGC into email marketing campaigns. The company gets results from email newsletters featuring customer testimonials, reviews, and photos. 

Content marketing 

Crucially, HelloFresh’s content strategy underpins its UGC initiatives. Its team focuses on creating visually appealing content that showcases the produce and educates its audience. High-quality yet relatable blog posts, recipe cards, and cooking tutorials include call-to-actions recommending HelloFresh customers share their culinary creations.

Even the brand’s in-house ads are intentionally shot to look realistic and relatable instead of highly stylized. 

In a 2021 interview, Carrie Crow at HelloFresh explained, “We want to make sure that what we’re representing is what the customer is going to be able to do. Maybe it’s slightly more aspirational, but we want it to be a realistic interpretation of what they’re going to make for themselves.” 

UGC is authentic and relatable  

For decades, advertisers exclusively displayed products in their most polished, picture-perfect state. You might fear putting your brand image into your customers’ hands in case you lose control of the narrative. But remember, when you have consistent and clear brand messaging that aligns with reality, consumers know what to expect. As SHEIN and HelloFresh have proven, UGC’s DIY, less-than-perfect aesthetic isn’t off-putting to prospects — in fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Brands should consider customers’ emotions, desires, and pain points to spark interest and establish meaningful connections. Here’s a summary of how the companies in our case studies did it:

• SHEIN realized people were asking, “Sure, that dress looks awesome on the model, but how will it fit me?” The brand displays reviews with pictures of real people so customers have authentic reference points to gauge how clothes will fit them.  
• HelloFresh understands that meal kit customers often think, “The food looks beautiful on the recipe card, but if mine looks nothing like it, I’m going to feel disappointed.” UGC and relatable branded content helps them manage expectations. Instead of being disheartened when dishes don’t look perfect, customers feel a sense of achievement because they’ve made something that looks like the UGC photos they’ve seen.

Getting Your Audience to Produce UGC

Incorporating UGC on top of written and branded content is an affordable and effective way to establish trust and increase conversions. Per PWC’s 2023 Consumer Insights Survey, 63% of consumers reject middlemen and prefer to purchase directly from brands, and this trend is predicted to increase. With more eyes on your website and social media pages, optimizing these touchpoints is essential. 

Use the following strategies to encourage your customers to produce user-generated content:

• Interactive elements: Polls, quizzes, challenges, and contests drive participation and bring a sense of ownership to your brand’s community. Making them active participants empowers them to contribute their unique perspectives.

• User-generated hashtags: Create branded hashtags that resonate with your audience and encourage them to share their stories, photos, and experiences with your brand. By curating and amplifying user-generated content with these hashtags, you increase brand visibility and make your customers feel a sense of belonging.
  
• Cocreation: Cocreate content with your audience that reflects their interests, preferences, and aspirations. Ask them about their ideas for product development or UGC campaigns. As you can see from our case studies, involving your audience in the creative process strengthens their emotional connection to your brand and drives engagement.
  
• Incentivized participation: Offer rewards, incentives, and exclusive perks to motivate audience members to contribute to UGC. Whether it’s discounts, freebies, or a prominent feature on your website or social pages, incentivizing participation sparks action and enhances the perceived value of making a contribution.
  
• Authenticity: Embrace imperfection and celebrate diversity by showcasing real-life stories. Authenticity resonates with today’s consumers, who value transparency and genuineness more than image alone.
  
• Community building: Foster a vibrant online community where your audience feels connected, supported, and valued. Start conversations, reply to comments on social media, and celebrate the contributions of your most engaged followers. This creates a supportive environment and inspires brand advocacy.
  
• Emerging technologies: Champion innovative tools and platforms that enable new forms of UGC, such as augmented reality, virtual reality, live-streaming, and interactive storytelling. 

How to Measure UGC Success 

To measure UGC’s success, focus on: 

• Sentiment analysis: Natural language processing gauges the emotional tone of user-generated content and how it aligns with brand messaging. 
• Engagement metrics: Track likes, comments, shares, and other forms of interaction to measure audience engagement levels.
• User demographics: Use analytics tools to understand the demographic characteristics of people creating your UGC so you can target them in the future.
• Influence mapping: Identify key influencers to find partners who are able to make a sizable impact within your community.

• Trend analysis: Monitor trends and patterns in UGC to anticipate shifts in consumer preferences.

Common challenges and solutions in UGC management

These are common difficulties brands run into when deploying and overseeing a UGC strategy, along with solutions:

• Authenticity: Implement robust curation processes to ensure only genuine and relevant UGC gets showcased.
• Verification: Establish verification procedures to authenticate user-generated content and maintain credibility.
• Integration: Develop integration methods to incorporate UGC into marketing campaigns across channels.
• Negative feedback: Embrace transparency and respond constructively to negative UGC, turning criticism into opportunities for improvement.
• Legal considerations: Adhere to copyright and privacy regulations when using UGC to safeguard your brand and the people creating content on its behalf.
• Community management: Curate a supportive and engaged community around UGC, setting rules and using strict moderation to encourage collaboration and positive interactions.

UGC Drives Authentic Engagement and Growth

To grow, brands must engage audiences across more channels than ever. That means fostering communities and forging emotional connections instead of relying on conventional advertising methods. But it isn’t easy. Your target market needs to hear, see, and recognize your brand’s voice and values for them to resonate. 

Let Crowd Content craft website content, blog posts, podcast scripts, and e-books reflecting your values and amplifying your brand voice. With a solid foundation of content speaking directly to your target audience, UGC can flourish. 

The post User-Generated Content Examples appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

To stand out, you need exceptional content for all stages of the buyer’s journey: articles that answer burning questions, convincing case studies, and irresistible product descriptions that compel conversions. A successful digital content strategy helps business owners understand customer needs, engage their curiosity, and leverage technology to make an impact in a highly competitive landscape.

The Role of Content in E-Commerce Success

Content is a powerful tool for enticing customers to your e-commerce store and encouraging them to take action. The most effective content strategies reel in your customer no matter where they are on their path to purchase:

• Awareness: At this stage, customers aren’t entirely sure they need your product. Your content positions you as a source of knowledge and addresses pain points. Introduce your brand with how-to guides, articles, problem-solving content, quizzes, and engaging social media posts.
• Consideration: Now, your customer is actively thinking about solving a problem, and your content explores possible solutions. A kitchenware store might publish blog posts about choosing between pressure cookers and slow cookers or the purposes of different kitchen knives.
• Decision: Your customer has decided on a solution, so it’s time to set your brand apart. Convince them with comparison guides, product pages, product demos, FAQs, testimonials, and landing pages offering free trials. You could also use augmented reality to help customers visualize a product’s appearance in their space.
• Retention: Once you make a sale, provide resources to continue engaging your customers. User guides, product tips, newsletters, and exclusive or personalized content encourage satisfaction and build loyalty.

SEO and Content Marketing in E-Commerce

Fuse your content marketing efforts with a solid SEO strategy to ensure your audience finds you. According to data from 2023, 39% of consumers start their e-commerce journeys on search engines such as Google or Bing. In fact, search engines are the first stop for online shoppers in the United States behind Amazon.

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps lift your content higher on search engine results pages (SERPs), which are the lists of webpages returned by a search engine in response to a user’s query. The higher your result, the more exposure you have and the more enticing your website is to potential customers. Once readers click through to your store, your content can work its magic. You can nurture prospects through every stage if you’ve matched content to the buyer’s journey. 

How to integrate SEO and content marketing

Google offers many opportunities for your website to appear in search results. Your SEO content strategy can target:

• Organic search results: These listings appear below paid ads and include rich snippets that display images, videos, and star ratings.
• Featured snippets: Google sometimes displays an excerpt from a web page that concisely answers the search query. These results often get more of the clicks because they’re prominently displayed on the SERP. 
• Google Images: In addition to crawling text, Google can index optimized images. For example, this enables someone to search for “heart-shaped earrings” and see relevant products in search results.
• Local searches: When you use local SEO strategies, your content displays for searches in a specific geographic region.
• Voice search: Speech recognition technology enables users to search by voice. Use long-tail keywords and a natural, conversational style to surface in these search results. Content that aligns with the way searchers ask questions, that is Who, What, Why, When, How, are more likely to win at voice search.
• Search generative experience: SGE uses artificial intelligence to present a snapshot of a topic. Optimize content for these search results with concise and unique answers to fill in content gaps.

Incorporating SEO tactics in your content strategy improves your chances of appearing in these search results:

• Perform keyword research to plan appropriate content.
• Provide superior user experiences with intuitive navigation and fast page loading times.
• Give search engines the confidence to recommend your content by demonstrating E-E-A-T principles.

Emphasize content quality

Before we get too immersed in SEO-speak, let’s shift the focus back to the content you’re publishing to win over customers. E-commerce content is all about communicating with humans whose problems need solving. SEO tactics and data-driven approaches are essential for search visibility, but your content must resonate with audiences to convert.

Make it a priority to create content that offers value to readers. Share your expertise generously, and offer substance and depth. Mix in original research and thought. It takes time and effort to produce high-quality, helpful content, but the end product intrigues your readers and improves your chances of converting.

Some marketers use artificial intelligence for content creation. While AI can help with research and ideation, it doesn’t have the same creative chops as a human. By all means, use AI to get started, but make sure the end result appeals to your customer’s curiosity, intelligence, humor, and emotions — something that usually requires deft human touch.

Developing Your E-Commerce Content Strategy

Finding and using relevant keywords effectively

Effective SEO content begins with keyword research, which is the process of finding the search terms your customers use and choosing ones to build your content around. Use keyword research tools to generate ideas and gather data to help you decide which search terms to pursue. Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, KWFinder, and AnswerThePublic are tools that identify high-performing search terms.

Promising keywords have enough search volume to send the right traffic flowing to your site. Target ones that are lower in competition so you can more realistically rank for them. Keyword competition is often rated on a scale from 0 to 100, and a lower score means less competition. You can pursue more difficult keywords, but it takes time to build up the backlinks and authority needed to knock competitors out of the top spot. 

Add in some long-tail keywords with a lower search volume. Because they’re precise, they typically send highly qualified traffic your way that’s more likely to convert. For example, “women’s dress shoes” is broad. 

But “women’s ballet flats” can help you reach someone who knows what they want to buy and is further along in the buyer’s journey.

Leveraging topic cluster strategy

Organize your e-commerce content into clusters, each focused on a specific topic. A topic cluster strategy gives your website structure and establishes your expertise.

• Sort your keywords into categories or themes.
• Create a pillar or overview page that anchors the cluster.
• Bolster the pillar page with detailed articles around subtopics.
• Interlink between the pieces in the topic cluster, guiding search engines and users to related content.

Audit your existing content, and place it in the appropriate cluster. You can then see what additional pieces you need to build out your topic.

SEO Strategies Tailored for E-Commerce

SEO best practices apply regardless of your business niche, but e-commerce sites need to pay particular attention to a few areas.

Product pages

Product descriptions generate excitement for an item and provide enough detail for customers to make a purchasing decision. Even if manufacturers provide product information, we recommend crafting unique copy rather than duplicating what other sites publish.

Incorporate keywords in the following places:

• Product name
• Page title and meta description
• Near the beginning of the product description
• URL
• Image file name

Take a look at this product description for wet cat food from Purina. It includes the keyword “wet cat food” in the product title and URL. The description also mentions “wet formula” in the first sentence. These tactics help search engines match the product to appropriate queries.

Category pages

Category pages serve as a home page for related products. Not all websites need a category page, but if you have enough products, it can help users navigate them. For example, Williams Sonoma has a category page for knives, distinguishing between paring knives, steak knives, carving knives, and cleavers. The page includes a few paragraphs of content that offer opportunities to rank for related keywords.

Long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are at least three words long and are used to find a specific answer to a query. These phrases often have lower search volumes but can be lucrative if they have commercial search intent since the consumer may be close to the decision stage. 

You can find long-tail keywords in keyword search tools or head to Amazon and try the autocomplete feature to see what people are searching for. If you enter “backpack with” into the search box, the autocomplete suggests “laptop compartment” and “wheels for adults.”

Incorporate long-tail keywords into product descriptions or blog posts to attract these customers and guide site visitors to a conversion.

Mobile-friendliness

Consumers aren’t just shopping on desktop computers. They’re also making purchases on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. In the United States, mobile commerce accounted for 43.2% of retail e-commerce sales in 2023. By 2027, m-commerce is expected to make up nearly 50% of U.S. e-commerce sales.

While sites optimized for mobile aren’t guaranteed to rank better in Google, mobile-friendliness is one of the search engine’s positive signals when it comes to page experience. To encourage conversions, optimize your e-commerce store for screens of all sizes to ensure customers have seamless experiences as they shop. Other ways to improve your mobile responsiveness include using image compression tools for faster loading times, and simplifying the navigation to improve usability.

Importance of Knowing Your Target Audience and Tips on Audience Research

Before creating content that engages your audience, you need to get up close and personal, understanding who they are, what motivates them, and how they behave online. Define each target customer with basic information such as age, marital status, income, job title, and geographic location.

You can create personas to make them seem like real people instead of a collection of statistics. This helps you create content in the right tone and format to engage these customers authentically.

Research your customer by:

• Talking to your product development and marketing departments
• Analyzing website traffic to see where visitors come from
• Surveying customers and offering discounts to encourage participation
• Listening in on social media, online forums, and message boards
• Asking sales and customer service teams what they’re hearing on the ground
• Analyzing competing brands to see where they engage customers

Content Personalization in E-Commerce

Consumers have plenty of options for where to spend their online dollars. Content personalization, which caters to audience preferences based on past interactions, can sway them to your brand. Customized content increases your brand’s relevance, improves user experience, and boosts your conversion rates.

AI and machine learning make personalization easier by analyzing customer data and helping you display information based on behaviors. Here are some ways to personalize content and encourage more engagement and sales:

• Product recommendations that pop up while customers browse: These are typically “You May Also Like” or “Other Customers Viewed” suggestions.
• Personalized email campaigns: Offer discounts on birthdays or let someone who hasn’t shopped for a while know that you miss them. You can also segment your email lists based on behavior, like recent purchases, or industry, like B2B, so you can personalize your outreach.
• Dynamic website content: Content changes depending on location or user behavior. If you notice someone keeps viewing the same product, you might have a pop-up offering a discount to nudge them toward a sale.
• A/B testing: Gather data on how different landing pages or ads work to assess the most effective copy to convert sales.

Utilizing Emerging Technologies

At its most basic, digital marketing in e-commerce consists of static pages of product images and descriptions. But with technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality, you can help your website come to life. You can’t replicate in-store service, but you can engage your customers online and offer a unique digital experience.While customer preferences are always changing, websites can meet those demands by creating personalized shopping experiences.

Conversational commerce

AI chatbots can be programmed to answer questions in real time, such as how long shipping takes and what your return policy is. This removes friction by preventing cart abandonment and helps keep customers on a website. Italian designer Ad Hoc Atelier uses a chatbot that triggers when a visitor leaves their cart. The company reduced its cart abandonment rate and increased its conversion rate by engaging customers.

Video commerce

Clothing brand Free People makes products shoppable on livestreams. The hosts provide product demos and model clothing, and shoppers can ask questions and make purchases. According to a case study, Free People gets an average of 2,000 viewers per video with a conversion rate that’s three times higher than average.

Virtual try-ons

Augmented reality, popularized by Snapchat filters, can be creatively applied to e-commerce stores. Zenni Optical has a try-on feature that superimposes eyeglass frames on your face to help you pick a style you like.

In Germany, H&M took this a step further. Customers were invited to make an avatar with a body scanner so they could try on items virtually at home.

Leveraging Social Media for E-Commerce Engagement

Social media is an important content distribution channel for e-commerce brands. According to data compiled from a 2023 survey, 50% of shoppers worldwide learned about products on social media.

While social media can send users to your online shop, nearly 60% of shoppers buy products directly through networking platforms — a practice known as social commerce. Salesforce estimates that in 2024, 64.6 million users will shop on Facebook, 46.8 million on Instagram, and 40.7 million on TikTok.

Your brand can make the most of social media by:

• Building a community of followers: You can market directly to your audience through social posts. Take a look at H&M’s creative TikTok video. It grabs attention with an “invisible” model and provides product ideas in a viewer’s feed.
• Encouraging engagement: Your post can appear in other people’s social feeds through shares, likes, and comments.
• Placing social ads: Paid advertising gets your content in front of a wider audience.
• Partnering with creators: Consider collaborating with influencers or businesses with a similar target audience to help promote your brand.

Innovative Monetization in E-Commerce

We’ve focused primarily on traditional product sales, but modern e-commerce offers additional opportunities to generate revenue for brands and content creators.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliates are third parties who promote a brand and receive payment in exchange for clicks or sales. This is a win-win situation: Brands tap into a fresh audience and boost sales. Affiliates can generate revenue by reviewing a product, hosting a contest, or offering a promo code to their followers.

Subscriptions

If you sell items customers need to replace regularly, a monthly or quarterly subscription encourages customer retention. Consumers commit to a recurring purchase in exchange for a discount, free shipping, or other incentive. Similarly, content creators can build subscription models that offer exclusive or enhanced content offerings.

Blockchain technology

While blockchain technology is commonly linked to Bitcoin, it has other applications. A blockchain is a transparent ledger where transactions are shared within a network, verifying ownership and the movement of goods.

The technology is in its early stages regarding retail applications, but we’re beginning to see its potential. In 2021, H&M launched an innovative clothing rental service in Berlin that used blockchain to track who had borrowed items.

Similarly, in the automotive sector, BMW Group used blockchain technology to make its supply chain more transparent and traceable. This means they can track where materials and parts come from, all the way to the finished car, and this ensures that everything meets ethical standards. 

Measuring Success: Analytics and KPIs

You’ve put your online retail content strategy into action, and now it’s time to see if it’s driving awareness, traffic, and sales. Track key performance indicators to learn where to fine-tune your strategies for more impact and which tactics successfully yield results.

Common KPIs to track include:

• Keyword ranking: Where are you landing in the SERPs for your target keywords? Keywords that aren’t getting traction may need better optimization.
• Referral sources: Where are your visitors coming from? This metric tells you how users find your site and which content distribution channels work best.
• Click-through rate: If you’re not getting clicks from the SERPs, adjust your meta title and description or optimize for rich snippets.
• Page traffic: Which content pages perform the best, and which need more optimization?
• Impressions: How many people are viewing your product pages?
• Time spent on page: Are users spending time engaging with your content? If they abandon the page quickly, your content may need adjusting.
• Add-to-cart rate: Combine this KPI with impressions to gauge whether the content on your product pages is convincing people to purchase.
• Conversions: Assess how well your site drives desired actions, such as subscribing to mailing lists, adding products to wish lists, and making sales.

Knowing which KPIs to track is the first step. The next step is to understand how to accurately measure them, and this is where analytics tools come into play.

Analytics tools

You may need a few analytics tools to obtain a complete picture of your content’s performance. Google Analytics is ideal for monitoring page-level activity and user behavior on your site, while Semrush or Moz can provide in-depth insights into your keyword rankings and search performance. Platforms such as Instagram, X, and LinkedIn provide data on user engagement, but it’s easier to use a tool such as Buffer to compile data and generate all-in-one reports on channel performance.

Adapting to Consumer Behavior and Trends

McKinsey & Company notes that customer expectations change with each new successful digital venture. Online shoppers embrace speed and convenience, thanks to the bar set by Amazon, while short video snippets have been popularized by TikTok.

Brands need to be open and responsive to changing customer preferences to stay relevant. You should keep a pulse on digital marketing trends and developments in your industry, but you can also look to your customers for signals.

Regularly check in with your customers through reviews, feedback, and surveys, or practice social listening. These tactics dig up real-time insight into how your customers are feeling.

Artificial intelligence is a powerful partner when it comes to anticipating customer behaviors and preferences. Predictive analytics uses various inputs — including customer demographics, website analytics, and interactions at different touchpoints — to find patterns in behavior. AI then predicts what a customer might purchase or do next. As data is updated, the AI is better trained. These insights help you create content and marketing messages that precisely meet customer needs, improving their experience and guiding them toward conversions.

AI helps us predict and fulfill customer needs, but it also highlights our responsibility to use technology ethically. We need to make sure our approaches are aligned with what customers expect in terms of ethical and sustainable practices.

Ethical Considerations and Sustainable Practices

Let’s step back for a moment and look beyond financial transactions. Your overall business practices influence how audiences view your brand and impact your bottom line. Consumers expect companies to conduct themselves with integrity and a sense of responsibility. According to a 2023 survey, 45% of respondents considered themselves ethical or sustainable consumers.

Ethical conduct

When it comes to your e-commerce content, set high standards. Create fair, well-researched, and accurate content, and disclose any conflicts of interest in what you’re writing about. You can expect diverse audiences to visit your website and social accounts, so be inclusive and sensitive with your language. Finally, as brands ramp up data collection, be clear in your privacy policies about how and why you’re gathering information.

Sustainable practices

Consumers, especially younger generations, are increasingly concerned about social issues and how brands impact the environment. Among Gen Z, 62% prefer to buy from sustainable brands, and 73% are willing to pay higher prices for sustainable products.

Engage ethical consumers with content about your sustainability initiatives and practices. This includes information about materials, production processes, and packaging. If you have eco-friendly programs in place, such as REI’s online store for used gear, create content to promote and highlight the benefits of these practices.

Additional Resources and Tools

Successful content marketing for e-commerce involves many components, but an array of tools are available to make the process easier. Whether you’re tackling the work in-house or outsourcing to a content strategy service, check out some of the following resources to help get your campaign off the ground.

• Semrush: Perform keyword research, discover content ideas, and improve your site’s on-page SEO.
• Keyword Insights: Generate keyword ideas, and create topic clusters with a click.
• CoSchedule: Organize your content strategy and manage deadlines.
• Alchemer: Collect feedback across channels to understand customer needs.
• Make My Persona: Build buyer personas to inform your content strategy.
• Feedly: Monitor developments and trends in your industry.
• Google Search Console: Monitor site traffic and the keywords visitors use and find issues that may impact your site’s SEO.

Drive Results With a Dynamic Content Strategy (and a Helping Hand)

Customers find their way to your website through content: insightful tips and articles, convincing product pages, clearly presented case studies, and your brand story. But to really pull in your audiences, your content must offer unique value and insight.

Your e-commerce content strategy begins with keyword research and a deep understanding of your audience and the buyer’s journey. You can then develop highly targeted content that encourages engagement.

Consider our e-commerce writing services to produce professional, results-driven content that’s optimized for search engines and your readers. Find out how our experienced team of writers, editors, subject matter experts, and content managers can fuel your online visibility and help your business hit its growth goals.

The post E-Commerce Content Strategy in 2024: A Comprehensive Guide appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Gone are the days of just winging it. Today’s cluttered blog landscape and the developing metaverse of tech and talk mean spontaneous posting just isn’t enough to get your brand noticed. That’s why it’s so important to understand what makes a strong content production process.

See how infusing every step of your content strategy with a triple-optimization approach (SEO, reader engagement, and business goals) can get you where you need to go.

What Is Content Production and How Does It Connect to Your Digital Marketing Strategy?

Content production is a comprehensive process and includes planning, creating, refining, and publishing content to meet your business objectives. This is so much more than dashing off a blog post and pushing it through your WordPress dashboard.

Properly producing effective and on-brand content requires equal parts art and science. The artsy end of things comes when your writer crafts a pithy turn of phrase or your graphics team creates a memorable infographic. The science portion of the process involves things like keyword research, evaluation of potential distribution channels, and analytics review.

All these components feed into and become one with your digital marketing strategy. Think about how you choose to spend time on and funnel resources into:

• Audience engagement
• Brand awareness
• Search engine optimization
• Lead generation
• Social media presence
• Email marketing
• Analytics and iteration
• Consumer education

Lay the proper foundation; tick all the boxes, and visibility and audience reach will soar. Skip steps or engage in random marketing — think paying freelancers for content without a brief or review process — and you might as well convert your marketing budget into dollar bills, throw the pile into gale-force winds, and try to get your stack back in place. 

The Process of Content Production: Strategies for Guaranteed Results

We should preface: There are no guarantees in content or marketing overall. But there are ways you can construct your content production process to increase your chances of success. For your content to be a hit, you should pay attention to every stage of the process and understand the true goal for each phase. 

Hint: Too much of what should happen early in the process is often left to writers. 

1. Initial strategy/keyword research/analysis

This is where you establish the initial whos, whats, and whys of content creation.

• Why are you producing content in the first place?
• What business goals are you trying to achieve with content? 
• Who is the content for?
• What does that audience need or want?
• What are your competitors doing better than you? 
• What are your competitors not doing well?

Keyword research, market research, and market trend analysis can aid your search for those answers. The goal is to understand what your competitors are up to and how your target audience behaves to better fuel your strategy.

2. Ideation

Brainstorm unique and competitive ideas that address the keywords and their respective search intent. Every concept should build on the research in step one and answer those whos, whats, and whys.

3. Pre-production

Pre-production is like planning for the plan. What kind of timeline are you thinking, and what outside influences (an upcoming product launch date, for instance) impact your decisions?

During this phase, create content briefs and infographic templates, conduct interviews, or send out surveys that will become part of the content created down the line. Don’t leave the opinions and insights captured in your content to chance here; determine what they’ll be before moving onto the next phase.

4. Writing

Now, the content briefs, resources, and instructions land in the hands of talented freelancers or your in-house writing team, and the actual writing begins.

5. Editing

Fully drafted content is sent to editors, who review everything for clarity, coherence, grammar, and style. This stage is not just a case of dotting an “i” here and crossing a “t” over there. Editors contextually review the content, double-checking that it aligns with brand guidelines and the messaging fits the campaign.

6. Review

Send the edited draft to anyone who needs or wants to give their input. This may include subject matter experts, peer reviews, or other decision-makers on your team. Content that’s on point moves to the next step. Everything else gets marked up and sent back for further work.

7. Design

Support written content with bespoke images, graphics, and videos. Everything should slot in well with existing branded material and be formatted for the intended distribution channels — no long-form videos for TikTok or long-winded rants for X.

8. Publishing

Send your finished, multifaceted content out into the world. Channels might include your company website, a branded blog, social media pages, email newsletters, industry publications, podcasts, or e-books.

9. Tracking/analytics

Use key performance indicators to track how your content is doing and whether you’re meeting your brand’s goals. Metrics such as page views, conversion rates, social shares, and post likes and comments can give you insight into what’s working well and where you could improve. Be sure the primary metric you track for each asset aligns with the reason you created the content in the first place. 

10. Content refresh

Update content that has grown stale or isn’t performing as you’d hoped by adding insights, recent developments in the topic, and updated statistics. At this stage, you should also ensure that the content still aligns with the search intent of your primary keywords. 

Best Practices for SEO and Content Production

There are lots of bits and pieces that go into planning stellar content, but SEO is a big one — it’s integral in producing compelling content that ranks high in the SERPs. Best practices demand you incorporate SEO at least three times during the content production process:

• Keyword research: During the ideation phase, spend time researching what keywords can help you achieve business goals and which best answer your target audience’s queries.
• Search intent optimization: As your team creates content, they incorporate the keywords chosen during the ideation phase. These should address users’ questions and individual stages of the buyer’s journey. By determining the intent behind KWs, you can ensure you attract the right online traffic.

Image Source: semrush.com

• SEO analysis: After publishing your content, track and analyze key metrics that show how that content is performing. This requires looking at organic search traffic and click and conversion rates to see which KWs are effective and which may not best serve your purpose.

Working SEO into your content production process offers a range of benefits, such as improved visibility and rankings, increased organic traffic (saving money on paid ads), and advantages over the competition. But SEO is also closely tied to user experience. When you serve your research KWs properly versus simply shoving them into existing content, you give searchers valuable content that satisfies their needs and wants.

AI and Other Advanced Strategies in Content Production

Storytelling is the foundation of content production. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about product descriptions, white papers, or press releases. The bottom line is that you’re telling a story. This is more important than ever with Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, which favor personalization and experience. While weaving a tale is a tradition as old as time, the methods you can use to convey your message have evolved.

Artificial intelligence

Not too long ago, AI seemed like something to be feared rather than embraced, but machine learning is transforming digital marketing at a rapid pace. For content production, AI has several purposes:

• Content personalization: Use AI to get to know your core audience’s behavioral patterns and preferences. Algorithms can review massive data sets and find patterns in record time, efficiently informing your strategy.
• Content optimization: Tools that oversee A/B testing and analyze content can help evaluate context, sentiment, and technical SEO needs.
• Predictive analytics: Knowing what lies ahead can help you stay ahead of the curve. AI-powered predictive analytics look at future trends and expected content performance to see what audiences might love tomorrow as well as today.
• Content creation: You can use AI to create outlines, brainstorm topic clusters, and even write actual content — as long as there’s always human oversight and final review processes in place.
• Content distribution: Figure out where to distribute your content and use AI scheduling tools to push out social posts and other assets when they’ll have the most impact.

User-generated content

User-generated content is all the content created by fans or followers of your brand. Testimonials, hashtag campaigns, social media posts, case studies, and even comments on blogs or social profiles are all types of UGC that can help create a more authentic content experience.

UGC is a win-win proposal. You save money on paid content creation and take advantage of social proof. Consider that, out of 500-plus surveyed marketers, 92% reported increased brand awareness due to UGC. 

In recent years, Formula 1’s racing team, Mclaren, has encouraged fans to use the hashtag “FansLikeNoOther” to increase brand awareness.

Top Tools and Resources for Effective Content Production

You can use top-rated tools and platforms to help guide and streamline the content production process. Here are some of our favorites.

• Content management systems facilitate content creation, modification, and overall management. They’re primarily used to manage website content, as seen with sites like WordPress and Squarespace. Some, like Shopify, have additional utilities to facilitate running an online store or creating a digital portfolio.
• SEO tools: Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs are two of the biggest SEO tools in the marketplace. They help brands identify relevant keywords and provide in-depth analysis of goodies like backlink potential and competitor strategies.
• Analytics platforms: Master business intelligence’s nuances with platforms designed to discover and analyze data and provide actionable insights. With tools like Google Analytics, Semrush, and HubSpot, you can make data-driven decisions that fuel your overall digital marketing strategy.
• AI-driven technology: AI content creation tools focusing on the written word are everywhere these days, with sites like OwlyWriter AI and ChatGPT making major waves. But there are also tools for creating AI graphics (Midjourney), recording and editing podcasts (Podcastle), and building competitive content strategies (Crayon).
• Project management: Make no mistake, scattered communication and a lack of centralization can bring a robust content production team to its knees. Look for tools that support the collaborative process that content production has to be. Tools like Trello, Asana, monday.com, and Basecamp should fit the bill here. 

Key Challenges and Solutions in Content Production

Even experienced content production specialists run into hurdles from time to time, and for newbies, content creation can be a minefield. Understanding common challenges and approaching them armed with solutions can mean the difference between achieving success or stumbling.

• Maintaining content quality: When you start to generate more content or branch out from your initial content type or topics, it’s easy to watch quality sink as you just focus on getting it out there. It’s important to post consistently and stay visible, but if that means you start churning out content that lacks value and authority, the tradeoff isn’t worth it.
• Scaling production: Companies often experience temporary surges in production needs, such as wanting to populate a new blog in under a month or needing tons of local SEO service pages lumped into a one-off order. Other brands want to rapidly scale from a couple of pieces of content a week to a couple dozen. That’s hard to accomplish when relying solely on in-house staff.

These concerns can be mitigated — if not eliminated — by outsourcing content creation. At Crowd Content, we funnel our resources into building vetted, experienced networks of writers, editors, and subject matter experts who know how to generate high-quality content. With a pool of talent already in place and a three-step quality assurance process on tap, you can get a single piece of content or 1,000 product descriptions at a time, all while preserving quality.

The Role of Visuals and Multimedia Content in Content Production

The word “content” is often tied to text-based assets, but content production encompasses visual elements and multimedia creations. A whopping 91% of consumers prefer viewing visual content over something written. 

Incorporating so-called visual aids such as videos, infographics, images, and interactive elements into your content — or as the content itself — can make content more appealing. It may also make the things you publish more memorable and more desirable for consumers to share.

And while infographics, videos, and tables do take some effort to create, images that illustrate, entertain, and break up lengthy articles are now merely a few keystrokes away. 

Future Trends in Content Production

As we tiptoe further into the year, expect the landscape of content production to change. Some shifts may feel small, like shifting consumer behavior that hints at more significant changes in years to come. Other trends are poised to smack into industry norms hard enough to make the industry quake.

Take Google’s Search Generative Experience, for example. This feature, unveiled by Google in 2023, uses the power of AI to give searchers insight into their topic of interest without the need to repeatedly click on links in the SERPs. The risks and opportunities presented by this extension of Google’s search ecosystem aren’t yet known. Still, companies will have to adapt to more zero-click search and fight to be featured and preserve organic traffic.

Content Production Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond 2024

Crowd Content’s content creation services lead the industry with a pool of content managers, writers, SMEs, and editors who are as talented as they are committed to all things content. 

While there’s no such thing as a turnkey content production process, getting to know the top tools, strategies, and trends can undoubtedly make it easier to produce content that resonates. Given the importance of crazy-good content in digital marketing, it’s more important than ever that you get expert guidance and ultimately produce content that makes you — and your audience — proud.

The post Crafting Content That Counts: Inside the Content Production Process appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

This guide offers clarity around the content channels you can choose from, with examples of how other brands are leveraging these platforms. We’ll explore how to choose channels to share your content and ways to track performance to build a robust brand presence. To wrap up, we’ll peek into the crystal ball to see what the future of content distribution might look like.

The Essence of Content Distribution Channels

If you’re producing high-quality content, you’re on your way to building brand awareness, nurturing leads, and closing sales. However, you still need to nail down your distribution strategy to get that content in front of potential customers. 

If you feel it’s hard to find and connect with your audience, you’re not alone — there’s a lot of competition for their attention. Consider what happens in a single minute on the internet:

• Emails sent: 241 million
• Terms searched on Google: 6.3 million
• WhatsApp messages sent: 41.6 million
• Facebook posts liked: 4.0 million
• X (Twitter) posts sent: 360,000
• Years of streaming content watched: 43
• Global hours spent online: 25.1 million

With all this digital commotion, taking a measured approach to content distribution helps cut through the noise. By assessing the effectiveness of potential channels, you should come closer to your goals.

As you continue through this guide, remember: Content channels overlap. Your social profiles send traffic to your blog; your website promotes your latest posts, and paid ads funnel traffic to your landing pages. Your content distribution strategy needs to work cohesively to engage customers and guide them through your marketing funnel.

Types of Content Distribution Channels

Content distribution channels are the various platforms and media you use to promote and share content with your target audiences. They’re divided into three categories: owned, earned, and paid. 

1. Owned channels

Owned content distribution channels are properties you manage or control. You can distribute content on your schedule and customize it to suit your branding and messaging goals. Some examples of owned channels include:

Websites

A website is the foundation of your digital presence, containing official information about your company’s products and services and generating and converting leads. Visitors from search engines, social media platforms, paid ads, and newsletters often land on your website.

Since you have autonomy over user experience and functionality, you can publish an array of web content and get creative with engagement tools.

Blogs

Blogs are an extension of your website. By delivering helpful content to your audience, blogs position your business as an authority in your field. You have the flexibility to plan and distribute content for different audiences and stages of the buyer’s journey. 

IBM, for example, has a comprehensive blog with topic clusters that demonstrate their depth of knowledge. Users can navigate to subjects such as artificial intelligence, security and identity, and business automation. 

Social media accounts

Your social media accounts let you connect with online customers wherever they hang out. Even if they don’t follow you, they can discover you through a hashtag. To leverage social channels effectively, you’ll need an in-depth understanding of which platforms your audience uses.

You can use social media to tease content on your blog or deliver content on the platform. Lululemon’s Instagram reel, for example, promotes a New York pop-up event.

Newsletters

Newsletters let you reach your customers directly in their inbox. You can set your distribution frequency and customize the content of your mailings to link to blog posts, promote new products, and offer discounts.

The beauty of newsletters is you can segment recipients by audience, personalizing content based on customer demographics, interests, and behaviors. Want to reach out to customers who haven’t purchased in a while? Tailor content based on what they ordered previously to reignite their interest.

At Crowd Content, we opt for both written and video newsletters. 

Consumer-facing apps

Customers reach for mobile apps when shopping and ordering food, but forward-thinking brands are using them to keep audiences engaged.

Check out Nike’s group of mobile apps, focused on interests such as shopping, workouts, running, and new product drops. Nike Training Club, for example, is dedicated to wellness and distributes content such as yoga videos and healthy eating tips. 

2. Earned channels

Earned or shared channels are organic, unpaid avenues owned by third parties. Snagging a mention on these channels can give you exposure to a wider audience, but you do have to earn the opportunity by:

• Generating interest or loyalty in your brand, which inspires users to recommend or promote your company
• Demonstrating credibility so a third party feels confident associating with your business

Media coverage

A highly coveted earned distribution channel is media coverage. A profile in a reputable publication or industry blog can amplify your brand and send users flowing to your website. Audiences view these channels as especially trustworthy because you can’t control your placement or pay for it.

It might be hard to land a mention on a site like Wirecutter or authoritative sources for your industry, but you can sometimes coax similar results through press releases and some savvy PR. Just make sure you have a newsworthy reason for reaching out. 

BrightLocal publishes data-filled reports that are frequently cited. Shout About Us published an entire article summarizing one of their reports, providing BrightLocal with unpaid promotion and authority-building backlinks.

Guest blogging

With guest blogging, you contribute content to third-party sites. This practice is a win-win for both sides. You’re introducing your brand to potential new customers, and the partnering site benefits from your expertise and content. Make sure the site you’re contributing to has the same target audience as your brand, and make the most of the opportunity with exceptional content to emphasize your credibility.

Littledata, an e-commerce data platform, authored a guest article on Smile.io, a loyalty app. Both businesses target online retailers. The piece delivers useful information to readers, but more importantly, it highlights the Littledata brand with links to Littledata’s X account, white paper landing page, and free GA4 order checker tool. 

User-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is influential word-of-mouth information created by your customers and fans. UGC comes in many forms: images of new purchases, fun unboxing videos, beauty product tutorials, reviews, and testimonials. UGC carries significant weight with audiences because it tends to feel genuine.

Instagram user charlesjpgs tagged RockCreek Seafood & Spirits during a recent dining experience, providing the restaurant with potential exposure to nearly 50,000 followers. On a larger scale, GoPro promotes UGC by giving their users a tool to share their video adventures to social media. 

Keep an eye on social media review sites for user-generated content around your brand, and interact with posts by liking, sharing, and commenting. It helps if you’ve built a community of engaged followers — you can create your own hashtag and invite customers to share their experiences. 

3. Paid channels

Paid content channels help you tap into a targeted audience, providing significant exposure to customers you don’t normally reach through other channels. 

Digital advertising

Digital ads are also known as pay-per-click (PPC) because you only pay when someone clicks the link. They’re found throughout the internet in different forms:

• Search engine marketing ads appear on search results pages above the organic snippets.
• Social media ads appear in the feeds of users who match the ad’s target audience.
• Display ads include banners and other clickable ads on websites and apps.

You can zero in on the audience you want to reach based on their demographics, location, device, interests, search terms, and other targeting options. Customize your ads with text, images, or video, and support them with a well-crafted landing page to convert clicks.

Influencer partnerships

Influencers have an audience of followers who look to them for niche recommendations. These content creators can give your brand a sizable boost by talking about or using your product, offering discount codes to their followers, or running contests and giveaways. If their audience matches your target demographic, you’ve got an opportunity to connect with a fresh segment of customers.

Influencers typically create content in their own style for authenticity. KitchenAid’s most high-profile partnership may be with actor Jennifer Garner, who uses the mixer to whip up recipes in her “Pretend Cooking Show” posts. However, the brand has many online ambassadors promoting its products.

Sponsored content

With sponsored content, you pay a third-party site to distribute your content to their audience. It’s similar in concept to guest blogging, but you’re paying for the exposure.

Software company Accelo has a sponsored post on the Search Engine Journal site about mitigating agency churn. It’s created in the form of a blog post, delivering expertise on a topic while also promoting their client work management platform. The piece ends with a link to a free trial to generate leads. Search Engine Journal does identify sponsored posts to distinguish them from their regular content.

Evaluating Content Distribution Channels

So many channels, so little time. How do you choose between them? To begin, each type of channel has advantages and limitations that you’ll have to weigh:

• Earned channels carry a lot of credibility but can be hard to secure. You can work toward these organic endorsements by cultivating relationships, but don’t rely on them solely for promoting your brand.
• Paid channels generate quick results, helping you reach a specific demographic in a short period. But on the flip side, they can be costly to maintain long-term and you lose visibility when ads stop running. 
• Owned channels give you complete control over messaging, style, and branding, and you can update content whenever you wish. These properties help you build a strong online presence but take time and resources to build and manage.

The channel, combination of channels, and investment for each channel you choose greatly impacts the results you’ll get. Here’s where research, trial, analytics, and adjustments come into play. 

Perform due diligence 

Picking content distribution channels is a bit like matchmaking: You’ve got to make sure the channel is compatible with your goals and target audience. What you shouldn’t do is randomly push out content on different channels in the hopes that somewhere, something clicks. 

You can make purposeful and informed decisions when you:

• Research your audience: Conduct market research to understand where your target customers go for information and their preferences for consuming content. If they’re not on Pinterest, you don’t need to be either.
• Identify your business goals: Look at your short- and long-term goals. Determine which channels are best, whether you’re focused on product launches, customer acquisition, lead generation, or customer retention.
• Review past performance: Analyze the channels you’ve used previously, and look at the costs and results. You may decide to continue distributing content on some channels or, based on audience research, move on to others. 
• Stay competitive: What are your competitors doing? Monitor your industry to see where brands are finding their customers. If competitors are having success engaging audiences on another channel, you may want to test it out, too.
• Optimize resources: Track data to understand the best return on investment, and adjust your strategies accordingly. We’ll explore this in more detail a little further down.

Diversify your channels

As you develop your content distribution strategy, aim to make it sustainable. If any of your channels lose traction, you should have others in place to pick up the slack. We recommend a mix of owned, earned, and paid distribution channels so you enjoy stability and growth.

“Marketers need to look at their different channels as an investment portfolio in terms of diversification and return,” suggests Carlos Meza, President and CEO of Crowd Content. “Double down on your winners, invest in other channels to mitigate risk, and make some bets on high-potential channels.”

Here are some examples of what a content channel portfolio might look like in practice:

• Double down on your winners: Is your website making progress in generating organic search traffic? Direct more resources to the channel to accelerate growth.
• Invest in other channels: While you’re reaping the benefits of your proven assets, strengthen other channels. You might focus on growing your newsletter mailing list to safeguard leads in case your search rankings take a hit.
• Bet on high-potential channels: Based on your market research, test out promising new avenues for content distribution. Maybe you can check out TikTok or try your hand at digital PR. 

Avoid having all your eggs in one particular channel, as it can leave you exposed. You may be one Google algorithm update away from having your traffic, engagement, and inbound leads vanish overnight.

Carlos Meza

Measuring and Analyzing Performance

Your content distribution strategy may be sound in theory, but you can’t always predict customer behavior or the impact of external factors.

Set benchmarks so you can compare performance after specific campaigns and on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. Regular tracking gives you the data you need to guide decisions and refine strategies. You may want to test messaging and timing, for example, to see if any adjustments impact performance. 

Select your metrics and tools

There are many metrics you can measure, but focus on ones that deliver meaningful data. They should be tied to the content channel and the goals you’ve set so you can measure your progress. We’ve listed below some common metrics for various channels, along with tools you can use to gather insight.

Sample website metrics 

• Organic traffic
• Unique visitors
• Page views
• Time spent on page
• Bounce rate
• Time spent on site
• Conversion rate (for desired actions, such as white paper downloads or free trials)

How to track website metrics: Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Semrush, Ahrefs

Sample PPC metrics

• Impressions
• Reach
• Click-through rate
• Cost per click
• Return on investment

How to track PPC metrics: Google Ads and individual social media platforms

Sample social media metrics

• Engagement (followers, likes, shares, comments, views)
• Reach/impressions
• Click-through rate
• Conversion rate

How to track social media metrics: Analytics features on individual platforms or dashboards such as Hootsuite and Rival IQ

Sample newsletter marketing metrics

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Conversion rates
• Subscriber growth

How to track newsletter marketing metrics: Email marketing tools, such as HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Constant Contact

Future Trends in Content Distribution

The playing field for content distribution is ever-changing. Competition is ramping up, new channels are vying for attention, and audience preferences change. Here are some content distribution trends we’re keeping an eye on:

• The role of content intelligence: This AI-driven technology processes existing content, behavioral data, and market research to provide in-depth audience insights. Watch for marketers to lean on content intelligence platforms to choose content types, formats, and distribution channels.
• Data-driven personalization: There’s more data than ever to analyze, and the focus will be on harnessing information to deliver hyper-personal experiences. Marketers can use proprietary data, third-party data, and AI technologies to build a better understanding of how people move through channels. Based on these patterns, they can deliver precise content.
• Holistic content distribution: Instead of having SEO, social media, and digital ad teams working in silos, brands will begin to unify content across touchpoints to provide a seamless experience.
• Renewed emphasis on owned channels: With so many changes in the distribution landscape, marketers will focus on properties they have control over to ride out any rough patches. This may include strengthening brand websites as a trusted source of information, creating loyalty through memberships, and building first-party mailing lists.

Trying to balance the pieces of your content strategy? Our experts can help with your content production or distribution needs. Contact us today for a free consultation about how to maximize your content marketing to keep in step with your customers, no matter where they’re spending their time online. 

The post A Marketer’s Guide to Exploring Effective Content Distribution Channels appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Yes and no. A single scan is ultimately a roll of the dice, with results varying drastically among tools. And each new AI model further reduces accuracy as generative text becomes more human-like. But with larger sets of articles to analyze, the accuracy gets a bit better. 

In the future, popular AI detection apps will likely pivot toward fact-checking and ensuring artificially generated content offers tangible value to readers. Until then, current technology does have a role in your workflow as long as you understand its limitations and how it works.

What Are AI Content Checkers, and How Do They Work?

At a basic level, AI content detection tools examine word probability and sentence structure. However, it’s easier to understand what they do by first looking at how AI writes content.

Large language models, such as Open AI’s ChatGPT, Google’s BERT, and Anthropic’s Claude, function similarly to a librarian. When you ask these librarians a question, they synthesize an answer based on all the knowledge available from the library — the AI’s training data.

Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than that, as large language models use parameters to adjust how they use the information. More parameters mean more ways to work with the training data, and ChatGPT-4 has nearly eight times as many parameters as GPT-3, showing just how fast this technology is evolving.

ChatGPT leverages its enormous training data and over a trillion parameters to predict what it expects to come next in a sentence. It answers questions using probability like a highly sophisticated version of your phone’s autocorrect — albeit with fewer mistakes.

However, it never truly understands the information.

AI content detectors also use probability

Like ChatGPT, AI detectors use machine learning and probability, except they attempt to reverse the process that generates content. They look for text with low randomness, predicting the words generative AI will use in any particular sentence.

However, most tools also check for highly uniform sentences and paragraphs — a characteristic called burstiness. Human writing generally has high burstiness. 

For example, human writers may even use single-sentence paragraphs for emphasis.

AI, on the other hand, writes more methodically. The text has a predictable flow and a beautiful conformity that makes it structured, easy to read, and well-organized. However, AI text detectors — and even perceptive humans — can spot this lack of burstiness.

If you scan text with a detector, the tool scores it, typically with a percentage rating. It may also highlight specific sections it believes may be artificially generated.

The percentage rating is usually a confidence score. It’s how certain the tool is that AI text is present, not a measure of how much of the content is artificial, so even a high rating of 70% shows a lot of uncertainty.

Review of Top AI Content Detection Tools

So, where should you start if you need to check the credibility of AI detectors? We think by testing them. We compared 100% human content, 100% AI content, and a mix of human and AI content across multiple AI detectors to evaluate how each one reacts — then we took a closer look at five of the most popular tools.

As you can see, no tool was perfect, but some tools performed better than others. 

5 Top AI Detection Tools

Winston AI

Winston AI touts itself as the most accurate detection tool, and it certainly seemed sure of itself when we tested it. It had a low tolerance for AI-written text, even when edited. However, it correctly identified human-written text — albeit with a lower confidence level than other tools.

Overall, Winston AI has many valuable features. For example, its project and document storage lets you check previous scans and organize content. Uniquely, the tool utilizes OCR technology, which lets you check whether text in images is AI-written.

Pros:

• Image scanning
• Downloadable PDF reports
• Team management functions
• API access for integration with other marketing tools
  

Cons:

• Limited free access
• False positives due to the strict algorithm

Price: $12 per month for 80,000 words

Originality.ai

Originality.ai is another robust AI detection platform with many features to unpack. Besides the scanning tool, which lets you check whether content might be AI-written, you get plagiarism checks, a readability analysis, and fact-checking.

Compared to other tools, Originality has a low tolerance for AI. It rated each test article, including human-written articles, as AI-written with 100% confidence. The tool seems to place additional weight on burstiness, leading to false positives from highly uniform text.

Pros:

• AI, plagiarism, fact-check, and readability scans in one tool
• Team management features to help scale content production
• API for bulk scans

Cons:

• No free functionality
  

Price: $14.95 per month or $30 pay-as-you-go

GPTZero

GPTZero is one of the most straightforward tools we tested — especially if you only need to check a few pieces of content. This is because you don’t need a subscription or account for a basic scan. Simply paste your content into the web interface. GPTZero also has a novel feature that recreates typing behavior in Word or Google docs, which is a nifty way to be certain that a human typed rather than pasted content. 

During our scans, GPTZero identified each type of content relatively accurately. The tool was quite confident when it saw full AI content, with predictable decreases in its confidence rating when presented with mixed content. Compared to Winston AI, GPTZero was also less uncertain about the purely human content.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Chrome extension available
• Writing reports to certify human writing
• API access

Cons:

• No readability scan
• Account required for more advanced features 
• Character count for individual scans limited on free version

Price: Free (50,000 characters/10,000 words per month scan limit)

Sapling

Sapling works differently from other tools on this list. While you can perform a content scan through its web app, the tool also integrates directly into browsers and Google Docs.

Another unique feature of Sapling is its spelling and grammar check, which works similarly to Grammarly. You also get AI-powered writing assistance, recommending ways to complete and enhance content.

When we tested Sapling, it didn’t differentiate well between AI and partially human content. However, it did identify the fully human content.

Pros:

• AI assistant and grammar check included
• Multiple integration options
• User-friendly interface
• API for batch processing

Cons:

• Low non-English accuracy
• Limited free AI detection

Price: $25 per month

Crossplag 

Crossplag is primarily a plagiarism detection tool, but the platform also offers free AI detection through a web app. However, you need to sign up for an account to use it.

When we tested Crossplag, the tool correctly identified pure AI content, but it also gave the mixed-origin text a 100% confidence score. Crossplag shows this confidence level as a handy color-coded scale on the dashboard but doesn’t highlight individual sentences like GPTZero and Winston AI do, so there’s no way to know how much potential AI the mixed article had. 

Pros:

• AI and plagiarism detection in one tool
• Free AI detection
  

Cons: 

• Limited features
• No detailed scan stats

Price: Free AI detection but $9.95 for a plagiarism check of 5,000 words.

Real-World Application and Case Studies

Given the discrepancies among AI content detection tools, adoption has been somewhat inconsistent. After all, when one app says AI wrote an article but another says the opposite, how can you base decisions on the results?

Universities have had to ask the same question. While many adopted Turnitin’s AI detector early to address academic cheating, this overzealous uptake led to false-positive scans. That’s why prominent institutions such as Vanderbilt and Michigan State inevitably turned the technology off.

Surfer conducted a case study using Originality.ai that also revealed insight into the accuracy of AI content detection. The company ran 100 human and AI-written articles through the tool. Results showed:

• The detector was only 50% confident it found generative text across 78% of AI-written content.
• About 10% of human content received a confidence score lower than 50%.
• Only 28% of the human-written articles received confidence scores of 90% or higher.

What does this tell you about the capabilities and accuracy of AI detection tools? Unfortunately, they’re not reliable at all.

It’s best to take what content checkers tell you with a grain of salt. Use them, absolutely, but only as part of a broader content audit to confirm existing suspicions. Also, don’t just use one tool; use several and cross-reference the scan results. 

If content flags across most tools, a false positive is less likely. However, you’ll never completely eliminate false positives.

Alternative Evaluation Methods: Identifying AI Content Without Tools

While AI detection apps can be helpful, it shouldn’t be your only method of determining the authenticity of human-written content. If you review content regularly, it’s a good idea to become familiar with AI-generated content. Read enough of it, and you’ll start to see that even AI has habits. 

There are several things to look out for.

• Lack of depth: Granted, writers can’t cover everything about a specific topic. However, unedited AI content skims the surface of topics. More importantly, it rarely shows the firsthand experience or expertise that E-E-A-T compliant content has.
• Unusual phrasing: AI uses specific buzzwords like “meticulous” and too often tacks “-ing” phrases onto the end of sentences that don’t need them, looking a lot like the phrase you’re reading right now. It also sometimes uses phrases that sound odd, such as advising you to delve into the world of toothpaste flavors or embark on a journey to discover dishwasher settings. These phrases lend too much grandeur to mundane topics — something a human would typically avoid.
• Repetition: A talented human writer will avoid repeating ideas unless necessary, but AI often repeats itself in a single article.
• Overly clean structure: AI adheres to a highly predictable flow and uniform sentences. It lacks spontaneity and reads more like academic text structure-wise. Of course, sometimes a project calls for this style from humans, so it’s not definite. 
• Way too much voice: If instructed to inject some form of personality into the writing, it often goes over the top, dumping the full salt shaker of voice when just a sprinkle was needed. 

When you audit content to confirm suspicions of AI use, look at multiple articles, including those written pre-2023, when generative AI was more primitive. Do you see any dramatic changes in a writer’s style or grammar? Human writers work hard at their craft, and false positives are a common occurrence. A reasonably confident decision requires ample data.

The Limitations of AI Detection Tools

AI detectors play a role in content production but have limitations. Their accuracy is fairly high when detecting verbatim use of AI text. However, the number of false positives from human text should cause you to pause before relying on them.

There’s also a widespread misconception that if human text scans as AI through detectors, they’re probably not valuable. However, this ignores the tools’ emphasis on sentence variation and Google’s overwhelming desire for content matching the E-E-A-T guidelines.

We cover this misbelief — and several others — within our webinar on the myths and realities of AI detection. Watch the webinar, and you’ll discover key insights into how AI detection technology works and how generative AI will continue to evolve in the future.

We also take a deep dive into how we audit content, what we look for during a manual review, and how to address client concerns over AI usage.

The post Do These Top 5 AI Content Detection Tools Really Work? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

A technical writer helps make complex topics understandable, so you can effectively deliver information to employees, colleagues and customers. For many companies, particularly those in the technology, scientific or medical space, this can mean the difference between success and failure.

So, can technical writing benefit you? To answer that question, let’s take a deeper dive into what technical writing is and why it’s so important in certain industries and departments.

What Is Technical Writing?

Technical writing aims to make the complex simple. It’s a form of written or digital communication that documents specific processes or imparts information about complex or specialized subjects with a high level of accuracy and in the most efficient way possible. For example, technical writing may deliver research findings, forecast or analyze industry trends or provide instructions for difficult tasks. If you’ve ever had to create a user guide or assembly instructions, you’ve used technical writing skills.

Technical writing often targets a narrow audience consisting of industry professionals, such as engineers, doctors or scientists. However, content may also be aimed at a general audience, which often includes users of a product or service. In the latter case, technical writing must present complex topics in a way that even a layman can understand. 

Who Needs Technical Writing?

STEM-related industries, including scientific or medical organizations and computer-related companies, often hire technical writers to create product documentation, operator manuals and other instructional materials to help employees and customers understand complex topics and to teach them how to execute technical tasks. Additionally, technical writing is important in the management space, particularly in industries that must deliver complex quarterly or annual financial reports.

However, any business that needs to share accurate or complex information with their employees, customers or other industry professionals, can benefit from technical writing services. For example, a restaurant may require training materials to help new staff learn to use kitchen equipment, or a furniture manufacturer may need to provide assembly instructions with their products.

How Does Technical Writing Work?

There’s no universal formula for technical writing. The process can vary widely depending on the type of content, the targeted audience and the industry. However, regardless of type, most technical writing involves several stages:

1. Defining the content: Typically, the person who orders the content lets the writer know what tone, writing style and difficulty level they should aim for. Writers should also know the target audience and its needs. In some cases, technical writers may have a say in choosing the best medium for the message or audience.
2. Gathering resources: A technical writer should have access to all relevant resources, which may include item specifications, research data and product samples.
3. Consulting with relevant experts: Often, technical writers work directly with technical staff, product liability specialists and customer service managers to ensure the content they create is as clear and accurate as possible, complies with safety regulations and meets any other organizational requirements.
4. Creating the content: Technical writers may write text from scratch or update existing content to meet new or changing needs, or to address revised product specifications or corrected information. Content creation may also involve incorporating visual elements, such as photos, illustrations, graphs or animation to enhance clarity and comprehensibility.

What Are the Characteristics of Technical Writing?

Although technical writing spans a continuum of written and digital content, high-quality examples typically share several common characteristics:

• Accuracy: The main goal of technical writing is to convey information, so it must be accurate. Incorrect, vague or outdated information can result in costly mistakes, lost customers and, in extreme cases, legal action.
• Thoroughness: To be effective, technical writing must be thorough and comprehensive. It should address all relevant aspects of the topic and may include visual accompaniments to complement written text.
• Logic: Technical writing must make sense, so actionable steps are easy to follow. It should never include contradictory information or gaps in logic that could diminish authority or credibility.
• Sequence: Technical writing embodies the philosophy of one step at a time. Particularly in operator guides and other “how-to” instructional materials, writers should make sure all steps are listed in the order they must be performed.
• Organization: Readers don’t want to skip around to find important information. Technical writers should present the material in a well-organized, intuitive fashion.
• Economy: Because technical writing is meant to inform or instruct, every word matters, and text should include no wasted words. If you can convey information sufficiently in 50 words, don’t use 75.
• Audience appropriateness: Technical writing may target different audiences. The complexity and style of writing should be appropriate for the intended audience. For example, technical writing aimed at a general user should be substantially different in tone, vocabulary and style from writing aimed at engineers or other technical professionals.

What Are the Different Types of Technical Writing Services?

Depending on the industry and a company’s unique needs, technical writing can take many forms. Although the applications are numerous, common types of technical writing services include:

• Case studies: These in-depth studies may focus on individuals, groups or events.
• Assembly manuals: Step-by-step assembly guides show consumers how to safely and correctly put together a product.
• User guides/user manuals: These guides provide comprehensive information about operating a product or using a service.
• Product specifications: Spec sheets highlight features and functions of an item. They may include dimensions, materials and safety specifications.
• FAQs: Often used on websites, FAQs answer frequently asked questions about products and services.
• White papers: These informational documents typically highlight information about a product, service or solution
• Quarterly or annual reports: These public-facing reports summarize a company’s financial statements. They typically include a profit-and-loss statement.
• API documentation: API documents typically include tutorials, references, tutorials and other materials that help developers understand and use your application programming interface.
• Statements of work: These legally binding documents define the scope of a project. They may include a project’s goals, deliverables and schedule.
• Literature reviews: These documents summarize previous research and scholarly sources on a given topic.
• Technical video scripts: Scripts may be written for television, radio, Internet or podcast.

How Technical Writing Skills Differ From Copywriting Skills

Both technical writers and copywriters must be able to write clear, readable content, but they differ in many areas. Copywriters need to create engaging, marketing-focused content that drives sales, while technical writers deliver objective instructional or informative content designed for employees, customers and industry professionals.

Besides knowing how to write well, technical writers often have a specialized skill set, which includes experience in or knowledge of the topic they’re writing about. In many cases, technical writers must be able to distill complex information into language that the general population can understand. They must also be able to share, discuss and understand the information received from technical professionals about a given subject. Because of this, technical writers often start out in technical or scientific jobs. In some industries, technical writers may need to hold a bachelor’s degree in a relevant field of study.

A Comparison of Copywriting, Business Writing and Technical Writing

It’s worth noting that many projects, such as video scripts or trade magazine articles, may combine elements of two or more types of writing. 

How Technical Writing Services Can Benefit You

Whether you lack the resources to hire a full-time technical writer or you just want to leave the writing to someone else, outsourcing technical writing services can help your company gain the competitive edge. No matter how big or small your business is, you can acquire the top-notch instructional materials you need through Crowd Content. 

Through Crowd Content’s world-class content writing services, you can order spec sheets, technical manuals and any other written documentation your business needs. Many of our dedicated, professional freelancers are subject matter experts and have the experience and expertise to create engaging, copy in technical areas, such as computer science and engineering. 

When you work with Crowd Content, you’ll receive publish-ready, SEO-rich content that drives organic traffic to your website while meeting your company’s high standards. We can also accommodate any requirements you have regarding style and format, including citations, to cement your industry reputation. So, if your latest white paper or e-book is still nothing more than notes, leave the writing to Crowd Content and rest easy.

The post Simplifying the Complex: Why Technical Writing Matters appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

It’s a challenge all email marketers face. How can I get people to care? What email newsletter tips can I use to excite my customers?

Email marketing is competitive. Simply sharing your latest blog post or promoting a sales campaign won’t inherently help you stand out.

The truth is, emails inundate us more than ever. Advancements in instant-messaging technology, social platforms and push notifications only make the problem worse.

From the most-recent data, the ROI of email marketing has decreased in recent years, landing at 36:1 ($36 in revenue for every $1 of costs) from 42:1 in the previous year.

That’s still an impressive ROI—showing how dominant email is as a marketing channel that drives sales.

So what gives? Why is it more difficult to create a successful email newsletter? Well, customers have higher expectations coupled with limited attention spans because of bloated inboxes.

Yet email remains one of the best mediums for how to grow your business using content marketing.

To get it to work, you have to construct a strong narrative in your email newsletters, messaging that compels readers and a user experience that optimizes for conversions & more sales.

It’s not easy, but you can improve results by making a few tweaks to your newsletter strategy.

In this guide, you’ll discover the key benefits of email marketing and learn five email newsletter tips to make your own campaigns more successful.

What Are the Benefits of Email Newsletter Marketing?

It’s easy to guess the typically cited benefits of email. You can reach your audience directly, email is cost-efficient & increases sales, email newsletters drive engagement, etc.

But email marketing with newsletters is special because it’s particular for one specific segment of your audience: existing customers.

Research shows that email marketing works best when focused on “post-purchase” opportunities. In other words, steer efforts towards upsell revenue, not net-new revenue.

Makes sense. Other types of marketing emails like transactional emails used in sales sequences target leads and potential new customers.

But existing customers are more likely to subscribe to your newsletter. That’s because, according to the above study, they want “to learn about the products they purchase.”

Simply put, once they become new customers or are at least near the bottom of the sales funnel, a newsletter offers them the chance to feel nurtured by you as a customer.

So what are some of the unique email newsletter benefits you can leverage from these insights?

Unique Benefits of an Email Newsletter for Existing Customers

When optimizing your newsletters, ensure you’re providing value for actual subscribers.

Email newsletters shouldn’t assume recipients are still just learning about your brand, so aim for these unique benefits from newsletters to extract as much return as possible.

• You can collect feedback from customers. Email newsletters are perfect for asking about satisfaction levels, sentiments and ideas.
• Educate customers. Subscribers want to learn about your services, understand how they can get the most out of them and stay abreast of new features or updates.
• Increase upsell revenue. Email newsletters promoting product suggestions or discounts & deals almost always yield great profits.
• Drive loyalty via reputation marketing. Telling stories and connecting with customers emotionally means they’ll more likely refer you and become a fan of your business..

What Makes a Successful Email Newsletter?

Now that you know what benefits to aim towards from your email newsletter, how can you realize them?

Remember, we mentioned above that simply sending out information about your company or promotional campaigns isn’t sufficient.

Email ROI has slightly decreased because not enough marketers have upped their content game.

Compel readers with the “hook, line and sinker” approach to marketing. Grab their attention, deliver on the promise with memorable associations and then inspire engagement.

For example, say you’re sharing news about a product update.

I don’t know about you, but I see emails like this in my inbox every day, glossing over most of them if I open them at all since they look like the engineers who coded the updates wrote them.

But if I see an email about a product update from a brand I love because they have a reputation for sharing news in an interesting way? Now I’m intrigued.

Is there a relatable pain point addressed? Is there messaging that makes me feel like the email is for me? Is there a solution to the problem connected to benefits that I can understand?

Creating a successful email newsletter requires great content, good timing and other content marketing know-how.

Let’s review actionable email marketing newsletter tips to help you get there so you can increase conversion rates, improve revenue and grow your brand.

Email Marketing Newsletter Tips

1. Write a Compelling Headline as Your Subject
2. Make the Content Relevant to Your Audience
3. Write Amazing Copy That Converts
4. Map the Message to the Buyer-Journey Stage
5. A/B-Test All the Things!

1. Write a Compelling Headline as Your Subject

One of the easiest ways to improve your emails is to write great headlines in the subject field.

Make each headline should short, interesting and relevant to your audience; otherwise, recipients won’t open the message and read your content.

Shorter headlines of five to seven words often perform well, but it’s important to test variations with your audience to find what works for them.

Avoid words that are likely to trigger an email provider’s spam filter or turn off customers in general.

For example, “buy,” “order,” “clearance,” “cash,” “cheap,” “money” and “price” aren’t very intriguing.

To generate interest in your email newsletters, try the following:

• Use the subject line to make an announcement.
• Ask a question in the subject line and provide the answer in the body of the email.
• Offer a valuable tip in the subject line.
• Use imperatives to direct the reader. This works best if you want people to download something or sign up for an event.

2. Make Content Relevant to Your Audience

Are you an email marketer who wants your newsletter to make you the hero at your company? Write content that’s actually relevant to your audience and speaks to them specifically.

This means you need to research your target audience thoroughly, understand their pain points.

First, segment by audience information. Email marketers who craft unique messaging for different segments report an average increase in revenue of 760%!

Examples of email segmentation include:

• Geographic (where people live);
• Psychographic (lifestyle characteristics);
• Behavioral (how your audience found you, how they engage with your product, etc.); and
• Demographic (age, gender, etc.).

When you segment subscribers, you can tailor email newsletters to your audience, making them more likely to convert.

3. Write Amazing Copy That Converts

But I’m an email marketer for a chain of hardware stores who needs to push plumbing supplies this week! How am I supposed to make that sexy?

Here’s why you shouldn’t let doubt sink your newsletter down the drain….

There’s no followup to the above sentence. But I did write a compelling line referencing industry-related humor, didn’t I?

Want to know how to seize people’s attention? Humor and puns are a great tactic for subject lines. But there are many others.

Callback time! Remember when I introduced the previous subsection with a question asking you if you want to be the hero at your company?

Yes, that was a copywriting technique to appeal to your personal desires. And it works wonders. 

,It’s also important to write like you’re talking to a friend. Conversational writing connects with audiences and persuades them towards taking action.

Just be sure to not literally write like you speak!

Next, don’t obscure your message with jargon.

Whether you sell a $10 item aimed or one worth $5,000, communicating value propositions clearly and with action words is one of the most impactful email copywriting tips to follow.

Lastly, demonstrate to your target audience that you actually know them. People like to feel identified. Let’s look at an example.

This email from a newsletter caters to its audience, service providers, by acknowledging to them that they’re experts. Service providers definitely love to hear that; it makes them feel respected.

But the best part of this copywriting trick? Explicitly saying who your audience is (“as a business owner…”).

When you see your name, title, identity marker, etc., you subconsciously pay attention. It’s that simple.

4. Map the Message to the Buyer’s Journey Stage

What is the buyer’s journey? It’s the path a customer follows to purchase from your company.

When you set up a sales funnel, the buyer’s journey is how that funnel looks from the customer’s perspective.

You should have content for every stage to reflect the buyer’s needs and push them forward in their journey.

For instance, a lead or new customer at the top of the funnel—the start of their journey—has pain points but is still discovering your brand; pushy calls-to-action aren’t ideal for them.

Conversely, you should craft more sales-oriented messaging for those at the bottom of the funnel. They’re ready to buy—or ready to buy even more!.

5. A/B-Test All the Things!

A/B-testing is a way to compare two pieces of copy and determine which one performs better.

You can test an alternate subject line or different body copy for valuable future insights to help you improve open rates, click-through rates or conversion rates.

In fact, you don’t have to restrict yourself to copy! There are lots of examples of A/B-testing for emails, like calls-to-action, images or even testimonials.

The key to A/B-testing effectively is to change just one variable each time you run a test.

If you want to test headlines, for example, the headline is the only thing you should change. The content, images and formatting would all stay the same. This ensures statistical significance.

Once you decide to conduct an A/B-test, determine how you’ll measure performance. You may want to see which headline leads to the highest open rate or which CTA gives you the best click-through rate.

Most email-service providers offer built-in A/B-testing functionality, but here’s a list of different A/B-testing tools for email to consider.

Master Your Email Newsletter With Amazing Content

Turning your email marketing newsletter into a conversion-generating machine relies on great content, strong messaging and a hyper-focused awareness of your target audience.

Email newsletters remain a tried-and-true way of engaging with existing customers to build your brand, drive sales and inspire loyalty if you follow these tested email marketing newsletter tips.

Consistently producing great email content doesn’t happen overnight. Connect with customers, save time and optimize resources by exploring an email writing service that suits your needs.

When you outsource email content to professional writers, you can focus on what you do best while your newsletter runs like clockwork.

It looks like any reports of email’s death have been greatly exaggerated indeed!

The post 5 Tips for Writing an Email Marketing Newsletter appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Many writers are uncertain whether the words winter, spring, summer and autumn begin with a capital letter. You’re not alone if you turn to Google to answer the question.

Let’s clear up the capitalization confusion once and for all. This guide delves into the reasoning behind the rules — and, yes, there’s logic to it! We also have plenty of examples to make sure you can capitalize with confidence when we’re done.

Why Do Writers Get Confused About Capitalizing Seasons?

It’s helpful to know why confusion arises around capitalizing the seasons and when you might be getting offtrack.

One theory, according to Merriam-Webster, is that we’re accustomed to capitalizing days of the week and months of the year. It’s natural to want to apply this rule to seasons. After all, seasons are another way to track the passage of time.

You can see why it might happen — Monday is a specific day, and it’s capitalized. November is a specific month, and it’s capitalized. Autumn is a specific season, and…well, no, it’s not capitalized.

Proper nouns get a capital letter, but general nouns — like spring, summer and fall — aren’t capped, with a few exceptions.

When Are Seasons Capitalized?

Since seasons are common nouns, they follow standard English grammar rules for capitalization. Hit that shift key to capitalize a season when it’s:

1. The First Word of a Sentence

• Winter boots are on sale to make way for our spring collection.
• Spring is my favorite season, followed closely by summer.

2. In the Title of a Movie, Book, Song or Play

• The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was filmed in the winter of 2019.
• My favorite Shakespearean play is The Winter’s Tale.

3. A Proper Noun

• I look forward to the St. Paul Winter Carnival each winter.
• Let’s meet in front of the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway.

Seasons Aren’t Capitalized in Most Cases

AP Style sums it up clearly: spring, summer, autumn and winter shouldn’t be capitalized unless part of a formal name or title. This includes derivatives of the nouns, such as summery. Bookmark this handy Instagram post for a great reminder when you write.

Let’s look at examples of this rule in action. In the following sentences, seasons aren’t capitalized because they’re general nouns and not proper names.

• I’m looking forward to skiing this winter.
• The Moon Festival takes place mid-autumn.
• It’s not summertime without ice cream.

Using Seasons as Attributive Nouns and Verbs

Seasons can also be used as attributive nouns, which are nouns that describe other nouns. They’re still not formal names, so hold off on the uppercase letter.

• Connecticut’s beautiful fall foliage attracts many visitors.
• The summer crop of strawberries is ready to be picked.
• Are there any winter carnivals in the state?
• My students are so restless; they must have spring fever.

Seasons are also used as verbs in some cases. But they’re still not proper nouns and shouldn’t be capitalized.

• They like to summer in the Hamptons and winter in Florida.

Common Capitalization Conundrums

No matter how well you know the rules for capitalizing common and proper nouns, the English language can still be perplexing. Let’s look at the most common mistakes people make when it comes to capitalizing seasons.

Equinox and Solstice

Summer solstice and autumn equinox sound like official names. They occur on specific dates, like Mother’s Day and Halloween. However, they aren’t holidays or proper nouns.

An equinox is a general noun describing the time of year the sun crosses the equator. A solstice occurs when the sun is the furthest north or south of the equator. Write these common nouns in lowercase when using them in sentences.

• The summer solstice takes place on June 21.
• The spring equinox occurs on March 20.

Standard capitalization rules kick in when these words are used in the names of events and titles of books.

• Vancouver’s Winter Solstice Lantern Festival is a family-friendly celebration.
• I just finished Winter Solstice by Elin Hilderbrand.

Academic Semesters and Breaks

Most people are so happy for school breaks that the time off seems like an official holiday. Celebrate your leisure time, but resist the urge to capitalize it unless it’s part of a formal name or title.

• Hawaii is a popular destination for winter break.
• Come to Florida for the 2022 Spring Break Extravaganza!

When you refer generically to a fall or spring semester, you don’t need a capital. Capitalize a specific semester when it’s identified by year.

• I’m taking English in the fall semester.
• Is the editing course offered in Summer 2022?

Keep in mind that some academic institutions have their own internal style guides, so writers should follow their clients’ preferences. The University of Colorado, for example, doesn’t capitalize semester names.

Publications

Newsletters, magazines and journals often publish seasonally. Go ahead and capitalize when a season is used as the name of an issue, but not as a general description of an issue.

• Have you seen the fall issue of the magazine?
• I’m editing the Fall 2022 issue of the magazine.

The Olympic Games

This one is simple: if the words summer or winter directly precede the words Olympics or Games, capitalize both words.

• The next Winter Games take place in Beijing.
• He qualified for the Summer Olympics.
• She’s going to Paris next summer for the Summer Olympics.

Personified Seasons

There’s one last scenario to cover. You won’t come across personification often, but this isn’t a definitive guide if we don’t mention it.

Seasons may be personified in stories and poems for literary effect, which means they’re given human qualities. When you write about a season and assign human attributes, use a capital.

Capitalize on Your Career With Crowd Content

Ready to put what you’ve learned to work? Writers of all skill levels are needed to deliver dynamic copy to clients in a wide range of industries. Choose the projects you work on and how you use your time. Start your freelancing career and write with Crowd Content today.

The post Are Seasons Capitalized? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

You might be thinking… “What is evergreen content, and why do I need it?”

Hint: Evergreen content attracts continuous organic traffic and loyal readers.

How does that sound?

In this post, you’ll learn what evergreen content is, why it’s important, and how to create it.

Let’s get started!

What is Evergreen Content?

You’re probably wondering, “Why is evergreen content, ‘evergreen’?”

The name, evergreen content, was inspired by evergreen trees. Unlike most trees, evergreen trees don’t lose their leaves. In fact, their leaves stay green and healthy all year round.

ALSO – Find the best content writers to craft evergreen content for your website

Like an evergreen tree, evergreen content is long-lasting and fresh. This type of content is useful for years to come.

What Evergreen Content Is Not

Before I talk about what evergreen content is, let’s go over what it isn’t:

• The latest statistics – “The Top 20 Pop Music Statistics of 2020”
• The most popular trends – “Content Marketing Trends to Look Out for in 2021’
• Breaking news – “New Evidence of Life on Mars”

The topics above are time-sensitive—it covers short-term trends and the latest news. Evergreen content, on the other hand, covers long-lasting content:

• How-to posts – “How to Build an Online Business”
• Checklists – “10 Ways to Teach 3rd Graders Math”
• Resources – “How to Cite Your Research Paper in APA Format”

On that note, evergreen content is relevant, optimized, and authoritative. I’ll go over each description below.

Relevant

Think of evergreen content as a dictionary. Sure, dictionaries aren’t used every day, but you’ll always refer back to it.

Scott Johnson, the owner of Pitt Home Buyers, explains this further, “When creating evergreen content for your website, be sure that you’re speaking on a topic that will continue to be relevant in the future.”

With that said, evergreen content doesn’t have an expiration date. Your readers should always find it useful.

It covers topics with long-term value for the present and future.

Optimized

Evergreen blog posts are revisited, shared, and searched on Google. They attract links from outside sources and drive traffic.

Simon, the founder of CatchWorks, touches on this, “Evergreen content often forms the core foundations of an SEO content strategy.”

Evergreen content gets high rankings because it covers ongoing trends and search terms. Your readers are constantly searching for these topics—it never goes out of style.

With that said, your topic must be covered comprehensively. Your readers should leave your evergreen content with all of their questions answered.

In SEO, you can do this with:

• Consistent high search-volume topics
• Targeted keywords and semantic keywords
• On-page SEO optimization (i.e. keywords, linking, format)

Step 2 of this post goes over evergreen SEO in more detail.

Authoritative

Imagine going into an auto shop to buy a new car.

When you talk to a sales person, would you rather them…

A) Only know a few details about the cars they’re selling

B) Use their knowledge to answer all of your questions and help you find the perfect car

You’d probably go with B, right?

Authoritative figures attract the most customers because they’re credible, knowledgeable, and helpful. Evergreen content always covers a topic extensively. When you do this, the reader will think of you as an authoritative source.

Scott adds another insightful comment about authority, “Evergreen content builds your credibility and helps your customers see you as an expert in your field.”

Evergreen content is the key to building trust and credibility with your business. And when a user trusts your business, they’re more likely to become a long-lasting customer.

Why is Evergreen Content Important?

Along with the traits above, evergreen content is timeless—as in, it lasts forever.

“Evergreen content that will stay timely for years to come will likely give you the most legs and ‘bang for your buck’ in terms of your marketing strategy,” says Samantha Russell from Twenty Over Ten.

Timeless content gives you infinite possibilities to skyrocket your organic search and become an authority in your space.

So… how do you make this happen? How do you create evergreen content?

How Do You Create Evergreen Content?

You can create evergreen content in 6 steps. Examples of evergreen content will also be included in this section.

1. Consider Your Audience

When you create content, you should always think about your reader first. If your readers aren’t interested in your content, it won’t deliver long-term value.

Tricia Harte from Digital Third Coast recommends asking yourself questions like, “What pages are they visiting on your website? What questions does your internal sales team receive from potential clients? What do you do (differently) than your competitors?”

Along with the questions above, here are a 4 ways to gather customer data and feedback:

Analyze Your Website

Your website gathers a ton of useful customer information.

Figure out what your readers find interesting with Google Analytics. Google Analytics determines your most popular content with the following metrics:

• Bounce rate – How long do users stay on your page?
• Page visits – How many users visit your page?
• Engagement – What content does your readers like most? The least? How can you turn them into evergreen content?

Execute Social Listening

Like your website, social media can tell you a lot about your readers. Social listening monitors both your social media channels and conversations within your industry.

You can monitor your own channels and analyze your most popular social media posts—which posts receive the most engagement? The least?

You should also consider your likes and comments. Who’s interested in your content? Do they have any feedback or questions for you?

Along with monitoring your posts, keep track industry trends:

• Follow hashtags within your industry – what topics are your audience talking about?
• Track your competitor’s social channels – What pain points are your competitors not reaching?

These insights help you dig deeper into your audience’s pain points and build relevant and authoritative content.

Ask Your Readers Directly

When in doubt, ask your readers what they want to see.

Build a survey and send it to your readers via email, or hold a Q&A session on Twitter. Your readers will appreciate you asking for feedback and recommendations.

All in all, your audience always comes first. Their feedback will steer you on the right path to evergreen content.

Implement Keyword Search

There’s a good chance you already use keyword search for all of your content.

Evergreen content, in particular, needs keyword search to find continuous trends. Remember, evergreen content never goes out of date.

Use the following metrics during a keyword search:

• Search volume

Make sure online users are searching for your keywords. The higher the volume, the better.

• Traffic

Assess how much traffic other top sites get with your keyword. High traffic usually means your topic is evergreen.

• Other keyword ideas

Similar keywords will help you brainstorm evergreen content ideas.

For example, “Wooden house,” may have a similar keyword like, “Paint a wooden house.” From here, you could write an evergreen post on how to paint a wooden house.

You can use a free tool like Keyword Generator to help you out. Plus, you can check out other ways to optimize your keyword search here.

2. Research Evergreen Trends

Evergreen content isn’t focused on current trends, but continuous trends. Remember, evergreen content is relevant—relevant content stays on top for both the present and future.

On that note, you can find long-term evergreen content ideas with Google Trends. Google Trends measure long-term online trends. We’ll use the term, “evergreen content” as an example.

The graph above shows you the search popularity of “evergreen content” over a span of 12 months.

At the top, you can customize the country, search type, category, and time length of your topic. You’ll get the most out of this tool when you tailor its features for your audience.

Plus, Google Trends will recommend other topics and keywords to use at the bottom of the page.

You can use both keyword search from step 1 along with Google Trends to gather long-term trends.

3. Write Cornerstone Content

Evergreen content is educational and engaging.

With that said, don’t expect to write a 500-word post and be done with it. Instead, create cornerstone content.

Also known as topic clusters, cornerstone content uses interlinked web pages to improve user-navigation and SEO crawling.

So… how does it work?

Imagine cornerstone content as a tree trunk. Cornerstone content covers one broad topic and interlinks to its branches, which cover related-topics.

Together, the tree trunk and its branches create relevant, optimized, and authoritative content—it’s evergreen.

You can check out this cornerstone article by Twenty Over Ten to understand how they work.

Along with internal links, cornerstone content includes the following features:

Credible statistics

Well-researched stats are up-to-date and relevant. Avoid using statistics from questionable sites—you want to build trust with your readers.

Search for white papers and research journals within your industry for valid research. You can also create your own research with a personal study.

Quotes

Using quotes from other authoritative sources does two things:

One, they add different perspectives on your evergreen topic. The most informative pieces of content educate readers with different POVs.

Two, they build relationships with other professionals. When you quote a professional within your industry, they’ll take notice. You might even get a few shares.

Images

Images visualize your topic for your readers.

With that said, every photo should have a reason to be there. Random stock photos aren’t useful. Instead, insert screenshots to explain a step or sum up your article with an infographic.

As you write evergreen content, keep your audience in mind the entire time. Use cornerstone content to answer their questions and show them actionable steps to achieve their goals.

Plus, cornerstone content can be written in a variety of formats, as you’ll see in the next step.

4. Format Your Evergreen Content

Think back to the last time you read a textbook. You probably didn’t enjoy reading endless pages of small font, right?

Textbooks are intimidating—they created a belief that reading is hard and not fun. Luckily, you can format your content for your audience and Google.

Formatting your content benefits you in 3 of ways:

• It provides a welcoming environment for readers
• It helps Google crawl your site
• It can rank your content as a featured snippet on Google (you must also use schema markup, which you can learn more about here)

When you format your post, use headings, subheadings, and short paragraphs to separate blocks of text.

Along with formatting, you should create easy-to-navigate content.

John Matyasovsky, Digital Marketing Specialist at Roofing Webmasters, suggests adding a table of contents, “Readers can quickly access the portion of the document that most interests them.”

Here are 4 different types of evergreen content you can use to format your page. Click on each example to see each one in practice.

List Post

A list post is…well… a list. This type of content usually lists reasons, trends, tips, etc. about their topic.

Example: The Top Content Writing Skills Content Writers Need to Know

How-to Post

This type of post teaches your readers how to do something. They usually include a list of actionable steps.

Example: How to Write a Great Listicle for 2020

Guides

Guides cover everything you need to know about a general topic. They’re in-depth and answer any question your readers may have.

Example: Roofing SEO: The Definitive Guide

FAQs

Also known as, “Frequently Asked Questions,” a FAQ page covers common questions users have.

Example: Questions to consider when selling your house

Some formats will work better for you than others. Test out which ones are best for your audience and evergreen topic.

5. Promote Your Evergreen Content

You can write the best evergreen content ever, but it won’t be any use if nobody reads it. Optimized and relevant content is seen by current and future readers.

On that note, you can promote your post on and off of your site.

On Your Site

There are 4 ways to promote evergreen content on your site:

• Interlinking

Insert your new post’s link into other blog content. Better yet, add it to a cornerstone article.

I also suggest featuring your evergreen content to a service page. For example, if you provide SEO services, promote a blog post about SEO.

• Implement a side toolbar

Create a side toolbar on your site with a list of your most popular blog posts. Add your evergreen content to increase its visibility.

• Pop-up ads

You can also promote your posts with pop-up ads. An example is adding a top banner to your site. Insert a call to action with a link to your new post.

(insert a photo of a top banner example here?)

Off Your Site

Use time-sensitive content to promote your evergreen post.

For example, you could create an infographic and post it to your social media. The infographic will attract readers to learn more about your content.

Speaking of social media, this is the time to tag anyone you mentioned in your posts. Most likely, they’ll share your content and spread the word.

Other types of time-sensitive content include:

• Social media post
• An email newsletter
• Short blog post
• Video

As you promote your evergreen content, take note of where your blog post receives the most traffic.

Let’s say your post’s highest traffic was from Twitter. Now you know to promote more of your content there.

You can track this with any analytics tool, like Google Analytics.

6. Update Your Evergreen Content

The most important part about evergreen content is to update it. Updating your content keeps it relevant and maintains its organic ranking.

Tricia Harte from Digital Third Coast agrees with this, “Provide updates as they provide benefits to your audience. Meaningful updates give you a reason to promote them via social media and newsletters and re-engage your audience with your content.”

With that said, don’t let your content get old. Out-of-date content is no longer relevant, optimized, nor authoritative.

Here are a few ways to update your content:

Check Statistics

Statistics can be 1 or 2 years old, but any longer is outdated. Your readers are looking for the most current information out there.

Revisit SEO

Look at your meta description and keywords. Are they still relevant to search?

For example, you might find a new keyword to use within your content. Make sure to update your meta description as you make changes.

Repurpose Your Evergreen Content

You can use time-sensitive content to both promote and update your content. In this case, you can repurpose your evergreen post into another piece of content. This will target new readers and keep your content alive.

An example is repurposing your blog post into a video. You could embed your video within your post to attract visual learners.

You might be wondering how often you should update your content.

This answer depends on your content marketing strategy and analytics. On that note, measure your evergreen content results.

Analyzing your content helps build the most effective evergreen content for your business and readers. You can use the same metrics from step one:

• Bounce rate
• Page visits
• User sessions

Along with these metrics, you should analyze your SEO performance. If your rankings aren’t improving or begin to decline, you need to find out why.

Track your keyword competitors and use tools from Step 1, like social listening, to stay up to date with your audience.

When you track your results, you’ll figure out the best way to update your content and keep it timeless.

To Wrap Up

If you’re going to take anything away from this post, it should be this:

Evergreen content lasts forever.

Every step in this post will help you create timeless evergreen content in your industry.

Sure, writing evergreen content isn’t easy, but the long-term results are absolutely worth it. If you don’t have the time to build evergreen content, we’re happy to help you out.

ALSO – White Paper Examples & How to Advice to Drive Amazing Results

The post What Is Evergreen Content and Why Do You Need It? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Marketers that understand how to create content for every stage of the buyer journey know that leveraging different types of content is critical.

One of the most valuable mid-funnel content types you can leverage is the white paper. These are incredibly valuable resources for buyers who are looking to learn more, evaluate options, and ultimately help nudge them towards the decision stage of their journey.

But, white papers need to be amazing to accomplish this goal in a world where readers expect more and more of the content they consume.

In this post, we’ll go over what makes a good white paper and then highlight some great white paper examples you can emulate. 

White Papers at a Glance

White papers are in-depth explorations of a topic, written to provide a targeted audience with valuable, actionable content. A white paper differs from a blog post because it’s longer and more thoroughly researched, with a formal tone and usually packaged in a PDF file. 

This doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be engaging — it means the priority is giving readers authoritative information they can use to solve a particular problem.

Initially, a white paper was solely a government technical document that helped to gauge public reactions to legislative changes. Organizations and businesses now use them as part of their content marketing strategies to influence decision-makers. 

White papers can help you in the following ways:

1. Act as lead magnets that leads download in exchange for their contact information
2. Drive SEO results if published and indexed on your site (not in a PDF)
3. Establish you as an authority in your space

Why Are White Papers Effective?

A white paper is effective primarily because it communicates your expertise to other businesses and potential buyers and is a valuable asset that these people can use. 

Because your audience values them, you can write white papers with the aim of influencing b2b marketers or put them behind a sign up form on a landing page to generate leads or grow your subscriber base.

A good white paper contains unique, valuable information that your target audience of potential contacts would find difficult to find elsewhere. When you understand what your target market is looking for — you can preempt and exceed expectations by producing content the reader needs.

Good white papers address a common problem or challenge your audience is facing and provides a comprehensive solution. Spending time to understand what these challenges are and what questions your audience has is critical.

SIDENOTE – If you choose to publish your white paper, or a portion of it, ungated then your white paper can also help to drive SEO traffic. When you’re researching what topics you should cover, you should also find search terms that your audience uses in Google when trying to address the challenges you’ll cover. Be sure to build that into your content to capture valuable organic traffic. 

In the Inc. blog, Victor Ijidola points out two studies that back up how white papers improve marketing success. According to one by Eccolo Media, out of 10 types of content, white papers were ranked as the most helpful form to use in the initial sales phase. Furthermore, a survey by TechTarget reported that 91% of IT buyers consider a white paper to be the second most effective type of content to use in the first stage of buying — with product literature ranked first.

Harness the Broad Reach of Content Marketing

Blogs, case studies, eBooks, e-newsletters and infographics are just a few content types useful in content marketing. The acceleration of digital marketing and the growing influence and reach of technology means having a well-defined content marketing strategy is more crucial than ever. Its effectiveness lies in the indirect approach of becoming more than just a brand to consumers by adding value to their lives through content.

Social media and email marketing are particularly useful due to their prevalence in consumers’ everyday existence. Since it became the standard for people in our society to carry a smartphone, the reach of these channels has increased. These are great channels to distribute and promote your content.

Most people spend a significant portion of their day checking emails and scrolling through their various social media feeds for updates. If you’ve had a blog and noticed how effective it is as a means of engaging potential customers, creating a white paper would likely enhance your content strategy even further.

Ultimately content marketing needs great content to fuel it. You need content to promote and hook visitors in, who you can then nudge down your funnel by progessively showing them content that makes them more interested in your products or services. 

When it comes to mid-funnel and bottom of funnel content, white papers are amongst the best tools at your disposal. As you map out your funnel, be sure to identify what white papers you can create at these later stages to convert more of your traffic. 

Best Uses for White Papers

The modern buyer is savvy, and they understand that research is critical when they’re choosing which product or service to use. A well-written white paper feeds this thirst for knowledge while subtly positioning your solution as the definitive answer to their need. This is part of the reason why they’re so popular with workers and operators within the tech industry.

Often times these buyers will be researching products or services to solve a problem or challenge they’re facing. White papers that solve these problems are incredibly useful to potential buyers. 

White papers are also excellent tools for B2B marketers who are establishing themselves as thought leaders in their niche. You can expand your network and build awareness by inspiring fellow businesses with insightful and authoritative content which can lead to them contacting you when they need help that only you can provide. 

Your sales team will thank you if you have great white papers they can leverage. White papers perform a variety of useful functions throughout the sales process:

• White papers establish thought leadership and attract sought-after affiliates and partners.
• They teach potential customers and current clients relevant and valuable information.
• The content in a white paper is educational and not at all sales-focused.
• A business benefits white paper informs the reader about a product without using sales pitches.
• Technology benefits white papers are more technical and detailed about specific features.
• Product comparisons are popular types of white paper that give the audience impartial information to help them make a choice.
• You can generate leads if you put them behind a paywall or contact form — this can be especially effective if you already have a blog or provide content that people read regularly.

Know Your Target Audience

Before you start writing, you must develop a clear understanding of your audience. For example, if your subject matter is aimed at expert engineers, your content should be appropriately technical. On the other hand, if your audience is content writers — they’ll enjoy slightly more elaborate adjectives and fewer statistics. You should also reflect these preferences in the white paper design and layout.

Who Is Your Audience?

Firstly, ask yourself who you want to target. Build a profile of an individual representative (a persona) of your target audience and find out what they need. Search engine data gives business owners a uniquely honest and direct insight into the queries your audience has. You can also interview people in this audience, or ask your sales team what questions they often hear during negotiations. 

To write the best white papers, you’ll need to find out the questions your audience needs answering.

How Do Their Needs Align With Your Business Offering?

Now you’ve established the audience’s question; you must find a way of providing them with factual information that compels them to use your product or service to fulfill that need. Remember — it’s not a direct sell. You need to frame the solution as your brand, as opposed to explicitly pointing the reader towards it.

What Are the Main Elements of White Papers?

A captivating and effective white paper relies upon six essential elements:

• Captivating title and headlines: The title is the first opportunity to have to entice readers in. Clear and compelling titles and headlines keep the audience interested and provide markers to help them navigate your content.
• Executive summary: This helps decision-makers whose time is precious to make a quick decision about whether you’re delivering a solution they require. It’s a summary of the key points, with a succinct conclusion that doesn’t leave any questions unanswered.
• A clear introduction or abstract: An introduction should clearly outline your main points and tell the reader what to expect.
• Thoroughly researched and actionable content: This is the main body of your content and the area where the value lies. You must conduct thorough research to provide information that’s easily digestible but goes into enough depth to be a complete resource.
• Snackable layout: Don’t underestimate how crucial layout and design are. Readers quickly lose interest in monotonous content with unbroken blocks of writing. So, make sure you use blocks of color, diagrams, pictures, headings, subheadings and lists to break up the content and keep the audience engaged.
• Implement a clear distribution strategy: Now you’ve written your white paper, you need to release it into the world as part of your content marketing strategy. You’ll need a clear plan in place about whether you release it for free on social media or build a broader strategy around a paywall or sign up form.

How to Promote White Papers

There are myriad ways to ensure maximum exposure for your content, and it’s a time-consuming piece of writing to create — so make sure it gets the reach it deserves. In particular, you’ll need a well-structured promotion plan to make sure your B2B white papers reach a wider audience. Here are several ideas to help you distribute your content :

• Create a landing page on your website with a short opt-in form to download the white paper
• Create a blog post promoting the white paper or post a portion of your white paper and ensure it’s SEO optimized to rank and drive organic traffic
• Promote your white paper by publishing it with hashtags on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Quora, Instagram and Pinterest
• Submit a guest post to an influencer’s blog with a backlink to your landing page for your white paper
• Use email to promote your white paper to your existing mail list, or pay to send a sponsored email to a relevant partner’s list
• Host a conference, podcast or webinar about your white paper and interview industry experts
• Develop relationships with fellow influencers in your vertical and encourage them to share your white paper
• Email the owners of resources lists and ask them to feature your content
• Share your white paper with your partners and affiliates
• Create an infographic based around the info in your white paper

Where Does a White Paper Fit Into the Buyers Journey?

As mentioned earlier, statistics suggest that white papers are most useful at the consideration stage of the customer journey. This is when a consumer is most likely to conduct extensive research regarding their purchase. They understand what their problem is, and they’re looking for a solution. Encouraging downloads and getting contact details at this stage can be the most effective way of finding leads and converting them. The three steps on the sales journey are:

1. Awareness stage, where you capture the audience’s interest
2. Consideration stage, when they’re gathering information
3. Decision stage, when they decide which product of service to use

At the consideration stage, you have the opportunity to give them information about how you intend to solve their problem. Once you’ve obtained their contact details, you can follow up with targeted content to further encourage a conversion.

White Paper Examples and Resources

You can find an array of helpful resources and excellent white paper examples from some of the biggest companies in the world. Here’s a selection of useful tools and resources for white paper writing.

Sample White Paper Templates

The American Marketing Association has a handy white paper template.

B2B

HubSpot produces a slew of great content resources including a range of white papers. Their white paper on How to Use Instagram for Business is a great example of a piece that offers solutions to a common challenge many of its audience face – how are B2B companies supposed to leverage Instagram? 

An outstanding example of a B2B white paper is Networking and Your Competitive Edge from Cisco. It uses a futuristic and sleek design to communicate the benefits of its services to decision makers.

LinkedIn is highly adept at using content to build a relationship with its users. The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to Content Marketing helps content marketers to succeed with valuable insights from industry leaders.

B2C

While most white papers are aimed at B2B audiences, they’re often just as valuable for B2C audiences.

Google wrote a detailed piece entitled the Google Cloud Security and Compliance Whitepaper, targeted at the public as much as it’s aimed at organizations. It aims to communicate the brand’s dedication to security and privacy, encouraging trust and affirming Google’s commitment to its users online safety.

Increase Conversions at Each Stage of Your Sales Funnel

White papers are useful for many reasons, but their primary advantages are that they establish you as a thought leader in your field while improving your website’s search engine ranking. No matter what your area of expertise is, a well-constructed white paper instills confidence in consumers and partners that you can provide the solution to their problem.

To find out more about content marketing strategies, sign up to Crowd Content’s blog, and get actionable SEO and digital marketing advice delivered straight to your inbox.

ALSO – Do you Need a Content Writer or a Copywriter?

The post White Paper Examples & How to Advice to Drive Amazing Results appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Need a hand creating content? Connect with the best content writers on the web.

What Is the Buyer’s Journey?

The buyer’s journey is the process by which someone decides they need to buy something and then goes about making that purchase. The journey typically involves three stages.

• Awareness, when the person becomes aware of a need, problem or want.
• Consideration, when that problem or need is defined and the consumer starts to look for solutions
• Decision, when a solution is chosen and a purchase made

The buyer journey exists for every purchase, albeit at different scale. Consider the three scenarios below to understand how varied buying journeys can be.

Why Do You Need Content for Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey?

You can see from the table above that buyers’ journeys can be very short or extremely long. But you can capture consumer interest (and the chance at a conversion) at any stage of the journey. Unfortunately, so can your competition.

That means you can’t aim content at a single stage. If you concentrate solely on the awareness stage, for example, you might educate a lot of consumers about why a certain solution is important. But if competitors are doing a good job at creating content for the consideration stage and you’re not addressing it, all you’re doing is priming consumers to fall into the funnel for other companies.

To capture consumer attention and keep them coming back all the way to the decision stage, you must create content that’s relevant throughout the journey.

What Topics Should Be Covered for Each Stage of the Journey?

But what topics should you cover to ensure you’re connecting with consumers at every stage? It depends on your audience, products and niche. 

Polly Kay, senior marketing manager at English Blinds, says, “Driving conversions involves putting yourself in the prospect’s position and learning what their motivations, pain points and incentives are and preempting them by supporting them with informative content.”

Kay’s advice holds true for every stage of the funnel. Here are three ways to learn what those motivations and pain points are for your target audience.

1. SEO and Keyword Research

Jacon Edwards-Bytom, director of ecommerce for Made4Fighters, says, “Targeting long-tail keywords…helps you expand the top of the funnel. Long-tail keywords are not terms that usually have purchase intent, but they can help build awareness for your brand.”

In short, Edwards-Bytom is pointing out that content for the awareness and consideration stages must align with the keywords used by and the intent of consumers looking for more information about these problems and solutions. According to Forrester research, more than 70% of consumers start their buying journeys with search engines; almost three-quarters consult search engines during consideration and decision stages. 

If you’re not doing the keyword research to understand what people are searching for in various stages of the funnel, you’re potentially missing connections with 75% of the market.

2. Customer Interviews

Don’t leave any source unturned in your search to find out what the customer needs or wants to know. 

Linda Emma is the head of content at ESM Digital and says knowing your audience is key. “Whether you build out personas or rely on your sales database, gather as much information as you can about who your current customers are. You can’t build effective content without knowing who will consume it.”

Many brands overlook one of the best ways to get to know who their customers are: Simply ask them. Take time to engage clients when you’re talking to them and ask questions that might inform your content. You can also conduct customer interviews or use survey and market research tools to learn more about your audience. You might try Survey Monkey, which is a free online tool, if you don’t have a CRM solution or other software with survey or customer feedback functionality.

3. Sales Team Feedback

“The best tip for creating content for all stages of the buyer journey is to align your content marketing team with your sales team,” says Carsten Schaefer, CEO of crowdy.ai “A lot of times, the content you create is completely unaligned with what the customers really need to make decisions. The sales team is at the frontlines, and they interact with customers all day long. They know exactly how you can connect with your ideal target audience, what content format you should use and which topics you should cover.”

Schaefer said once his marketing team started involving the sales team in content creation talks and processes, the brand’s conversion rates related to content rose from 1.9% to 3.1%. That’s an increase of more than 60% just by communicating between departments to align with customer needs.

Distribute Content Effectively Throughout the Buyer’s Journey Using Multiple Channels

Talk of content marketing often has people thinking of their website, and you definitely need something for every stage of the journey on your site. Informative blog posts can be great for awareness and consideration stages, buying guides can help shepherd people through consideration, and product descriptions and landing pages may be the push someone needs to finalize the decision stage.

But effective distribution of content requires reaching your audience in other ways too. You can’t rely solely on consumers arriving on the right website page at the right time during their journey. Integrate some or all of the following channels to widen your net and drive more leads and conversions.

Emails

Newsletters let you inform existing subscribers of new products and services and continue to connect with people during consideration stages. Drip campaigns are useful for engaging buyers as they move from consider to decision stages, and cart abandonment messages can help remind someone they were ready to make a decision and why you have the right product for them.

Best for: Consideration and decision stages, but can also be used to capture leads during awareness stages.

Social Media

Many people actually use social as a search engine these days. More than half of social media users research products and brands via social networks, and many actually start there by looking up a brand’s profile page or asking for recommendations from others.

Keeping your social profiles fresh by posting your own content, sharing posts from others and interacting via likes and comments engages your audience. It also keeps your brand in consumer minds as people go through the buyer journey — and makes it more likely you’ll show up from the start for those who start their journey on social.

Best for: Engaging people during consideration stages or connecting for the first time before or during awareness stages. Social posts and ads can also work well in decision stages for certain types of products, such as apps or impulse-buy products.

Online Ads

When targeted correctly, quality online ads can drive high conversion rates. Data analytics company Heap found that Google ads drove an average conversion rate of more than 8%, for example. Online ads also let you connect with consumers in all stages of the buyer’s journey.

Best for: Showing up on consumer’s radar during awareness stages via targeted advertising and ensuring an ongoing connection during consideration and early decision stages via retargeting.

Tips for Nudging People Through the Funnel

It’s not enough simply to reach a consumer during the buying journey, though. Your content must connect with them and shepherd them through the rest of the journey so they’re more likely to buy your product. Here are four tips for doing so.

1. Don’t leave the consumer in doubt.

Saj Devshi, a digital lead for EasyMerchant.co.uk, says it’s important to ensure landing pages don’t leave prospects in doubt about whether your product is right for them. 

“What we try to do is remove as many barriers or obstacles as possible by creating a FAQ for each of our products with the most commonly searched queries related to that product,” says Devshi. “This gives them more confidence in what they are buying and that it is right for them and also reduces our costs, particularly in terms of having to deal with returns and refunds.”

The proof of this strategy is in the numbers. According to Devshi, Easy Merchant improved its conversion rate from 1% to 4% by using it.

2. Provide step-by-step instruction without boring the audience. 

Your content should guide the reader, not leave them hanging and wondering what to do. Rhea Henry, a content strategist with EnergyRates.ca, says content should inform readers about how to accomplish the next step.

“It helps to go into as much detail as you can to help them do each step without becoming dull and dry,” says Henry. She says to tell consumers, “where they can go, what do they do, how do they do it, [because] each time they have to click out of your article to find the solution is a chance you lost the opportunity to convert.”

3. Make use of retargeting technology.

But do assume that some consumers will click away or not complete the buying journey on their first session on your site. Invest in retargeting ads to bring them back to your product.

Morgan Taylor is the CMO for LetMeBank and highly recommends tapping into Google Site Analytics. “This will allow you to assess how long a person spends on each page, where they exit your site and [other information],” says Taylor. “Then you can retarget with ads that address only the topics they care about. Or, call them out for exiting a particular page.”

4. Perfect your internal links.

You work hard to get someone to your site. Make sure your internal linking strategy is on point. Taylor says, “Your internal linking strategy must be perfect. You need to be sure you’re funneling readers further down your sale funnel and not into dead ends.”

Need Help Creating Content for Every Stage of Your Buyers’ Journeys?

Whether you’re looking for whimsical product descriptions to entice your target audience or hard-hitting sales landing pages that leave nothing on the table, Crowd Content can help. Check out our self-serve marketplace, where you can connect with thousands of high-quality writers, or reach out for more information about how our enterprise solutions can support your online marketing campaigns.

ALSO – 5 Ways To Make Your Content Budget Go Further

The post Creating Content For Every Step of The Buyer’s Journey appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

How Much Should I Pay a Freelance Writer?

As a business owner, you need to find a balance between paying a freelance writer what they deserve and not decimating your budget. This would be easier if there were a set rate for writing, but that’s not the case. With so many types of content, niches, and other factors in play, figuring out the going rate isn’t always simple.

It’s like hiring a plumber or any other home service contractor. The amount you pay a relatively new-to-the-biz plumber differs from what a veteran might charge you with decades of experience. Add offerings such as regular versus emergency service and routine tasks versus specialty tasks, and the rates shift again.

A low rate doesn’t mean poor quality, and a high rate doesn’t mean you’re getting the best. That’s why it’s crucial to consider your needs, the industry norm, and other ingredients of the project pie before you set a rate and start your hunt.

Factors influencing freelance writer rates

Many factors go into determining how much a freelance writer charges. Some are within your control, such as the length of the project and the amount of research. Other factors depend on the freelancer’s professional background and personal circumstances. Get to know each element, and you’ll be better prepared to make the right writer an offer that benefits both parties.

1. Content type and purpose

Consider what content you need and how you plan to use it. Some types of writing are best handled by a specialist with extensive experience in your industry, while a general writer can manage others. Product descriptions and broad-topic blog posts with minimal research requirements are easier to write than case studies or white papers. 

Freelance writer rates tend to be higher for content that’s used to convert prospects into qualified leads or leads into paying customers. You can also expect to pay more if you need a writer for highly technical topics. For example, a medical device manufacturer needing a case study should expect to pay more than a fashion designer who needs basic product descriptions.

Here are some of the most common types of content:

• Articles
• Blog posts
• Press releases
• Case studies
• White papers
• Reports
• E-books
• Email newsletters
• Infographics
• Thought leadership pieces
• Product descriptions
• Category descriptions
• How-to guides
• Sales letters
• Landing pages

2. Content quality

When it comes to quality, speed, and price, there’s an old saying in the business world: “You can have it fast. You can have it good. You can have it cheap. Pick two.” In other words, you shouldn’t expect top-tier quality at bargain prices. This informal explanation of the iron triangle is a business concept related to scope, time, and cost.

If you’re planning to hire a writer, think about whether you want to prioritize your budget or the quality of your content. Quality should be your top priority if you’re trying to win new clients or get media coverage for your business. For basic product descriptions, you may be able to give your budget more weight.

Just remember your published content needs to paint your business in a positive light. There’s no real benefit to paying bargain-basement freelance writer rates if the finished product is riddled with errors or makes your company look bad.

3. Additional responsibilities

If you expect your writer to wear more than one hat or provide more than basic writing duties, expect to pay a higher rate. Depending on the type of project you’re doing, you may need to pay for the following:

• Travel time, lodging, and other costs associated with on-site work
• Time spent interviewing sources
• Photography or stock photo sourcing
• Article pitches to digital or print publications
• Graphic design/document layout
• Extra revisions
• Editorial services

4. Turnaround time

Freelance writers usually work on multiple projects simultaneously, many of which are scheduled months in advance. If you need a quick turnaround time, the writer may have to reschedule other projects or work extra hours to write your content. Remember the plumber analogy? If you need someone to tackle a major leak ASAP, you pay a premium for priority status. Likewise, freelancers often charge a premium for flexibility.

Even if you’re paying extra for a fast turnaround, you should have reasonable expectations. While writing a short blog post in 24 hours is possible, a writer may need more time to collect data for a case study or interview sources for a long-form article.

5. Expertise required

It’s a good idea to write a job description or request for proposal before you start looking for a writer. The document should spell out the knowledge, skills, and abilities a freelancer needs to mesh well with your team. Consider the type of expertise required. Do you need a journalist who can write long-form articles about your business? How about a technical writer with experience writing user documentation for complex software packages? 

You may also look for writers with specific degrees or professional certifications. If you’re hiring a writer to craft content about project management, someone with the Project Management Professional certification may provide deeper insight than a generalist writer without the PMP credential.

6. Project requirements

Not all writing projects have the same requirements. Some clients provide templates and ask their writers to submit completed projects via email. Others want their writers to use a content management system (e.g., WordPress, Joomla) to write the content, add photos, and develop meta titles and descriptions.

At Crowd Content, we work with clients who have detailed requirements regarding keyword usage, formatting, backlinking, and image use. Generally, the more precise your requirements are, the more you can expect to pay a freelancer.

7. Author credit

Freelance writer rates also depend on whether you plan to give the author a byline or publish the work under your name. Publishing under the name of a well-known writer gives your company and website credibility — something Google’s algorithm loves and looks for — so you can expect to pay more if you include the writer’s byline on your site.

How Freelance Writer Pay Is Determined

There are typically three ways freelancers get paid.

• By the word: This is arguably the most common and straightforward pricing method. Paying by the word helps you manage your budget — 20 cents per word times 1000 words always equals a maximum of $200. But word count doesn’t always equal value. For instance, a 20-word Facebook post is typically more expensive than $4.
• By the hour: Many clients like to pay by the hour because it’s the system they’re most accustomed to. But if a writer works quickly, they’re penalized for their expertise. Conversely, a slow but methodical writer could exceed your budget. For those reasons, hourly pay is best reserved for add-on services, such as interviewing an executive for a business profile or attending a Zoom strategy meeting with your marketing team.
• By the post/page/project: Freelance writing rates set by the post or project are often the fairest way to approach projects that require a lot of knowledge but few words. Flat fees also work if you have a budget in mind and don’t know how many hours it will take to complete the project.

Rates for Freelance Writing Services

Carol Tice, an experienced journalist and the owner of Make a Living Writing, conducted an annual survey to determine how much freelance writers earn for various projects. The 2020 survey included more than 600 participants at all levels of experience. Approximately 50% of respondents indicated making over $100 for a short blog post (500-800 words); for longer blog posts between 1,000 and 2,000 words, most writers reported earnings of up to $350. 

According to Tice, writers should expect to be paid hundreds of dollars per page for case studies and white papers, as they’re “heavy-duty lead generators for businesses that help them book millions in new revenue.” Short marketing email prices ranged from $100 to $750 per email.

As of 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median pay for writers and authors at $73,150 or $35.17 per hour. Using that model, you could estimate how long a project would take and pay by the hour or the project. For instance, a blog that should take about 2 hours may cost about $70. But using that rating system across the board doesn’t consider industry, expertise, or content type. Content focusing on specific niches and requiring extra education or credentials is priced higher than articles requiring basic research. An agency outsourcing content for a portfolio of end clients might encounter the following rates for an article or blog:

• Education: 25 cents per word
• Business: 30 cents per word
• Fintech: 50 cents per word

The rate for a buyer’s guide or email template might be slightly lower in each category, while the rate for technical writing, such as a white paper or case study, nearly doubles. When you work with Crowd Content, you get access to teams of freelancers who write at various pay rates. We review your budget and let you know what to expect regarding quality and turnaround time.

Making Room for Content in Your Marketing Budget

Content is one of the most important aspects of any marketing campaign. Whether you run a small business or work in the marketing department of a Fortune 500 company, great content helps you boost your search engine rankings and increase conversion rates. If you want high-quality content, you need to pay reasonable freelance writing rates based on the scope of the project, your company’s needs, and the writer’s skills and experience.To see how a freelance writer can help you grow your business, look at Crowd Content’s content creation services today.

The post Freelance Writer Rates: How Much Should You Pay in 2024? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

But, we’re finding more and more that these don’t have to be two distinct strategies. Content marketing and paid channels like Facebook and Google Ads CAN be melded together, and what’s more, it may be more effective than using one or the other.

This is a discussion about how content and advertising can be used together in a cost-effective, high-ROI campaign.

What Is Content Marketing?

The first step to understanding how to mix content and advertising is to understand exactly what content marketing truly means. Many business leaders think that if they have a blog and post content regularly, it’s a content marketing strategy.

If you want your content marketing to not be a complete waste of time, though, you have to think hard about the goal of any given piece of content you create. Let’s say you write a blog. How can you get the work you’ve done in front of the right sets of eyes?

Valuable content can be truly invaluable when used with a variety of strategies, according to the Content Marketing Institute:

Content is non-negotiable in an SEO strategy; a blog post optimized for keywords, backlinks, and on and off-page best practices has the potential to multiply the number of views on a piece of content.

Email marketing: No matter the type of email list you have access to, thin content that isn’t relevant to your readers won’t get the clicks to justify continued use of the channel.

It’s crucial in social media; even loyal customers aren’t quick to engage with weak content.

ALSO – Social Media: How Does it Impact Your SEO in 2019?

Content Marketing and Ads: Addressing the Limitations of Unpaid Media

But, what happens when your organic and “unpaid” channels aren’t getting the results you need to promote your products and services effectively? If you’re a marketer for a smaller brand without the authority to compete on a level playing field with the big boys, SEO, email, and organic social media alone may fall short.

For example, email campaigns are generally high-ROI activities, but only if you have the email addresses to make it worthwhile. Social media is great for nurturing a warmer group, but organic posts are unlikely to reach colder parts of your target audience.

This is when it’s time to start pursuing paid channels. But, there’s a mistake that many marketers make when switching from content marketing to paid advertising: they de-emphasize valuable, high-performing content, with the expectation that adding money to the equation will make up for it.

Why Is Content So Important in Paid Advertising (and Vice Versa)?

Imagine you’re running a Facebook ads campaign. You optimize the targeting and reach perfectly. You do everything right, except build your ads on the back of a great piece of content that provides a solution to a relevant issue faced by your audience (psst… here are some examples of content that inspires and excites).

What’s going to happen? Most likely, your cost-per-click (CPC) will be high and your engagement rate low. In short, your ads will be a waste of money.

The same goes for something like Google PPC. Without valuable content to direct people who click, your opportunities to get new leads without offering discounts or special promotions will be limited.

So, we’ve established that content can be limited without paid channels, but also, that paid channels can be limited without great content. Leveraging them both can be the answer.

How to Mix Paid Ads and Content Marketing

We understand that leveraging paid traffic with valuable, relevant content can address common roadblocks that can arise when you run a campaign using just one or the other. But, getting started can be tough. How do you know what to do first?

Most marketers agree: content comes first. You need to identify your strongest content and work backward. But, how do you decide which content to use? Here are a few examples of how to identify valuable content and use it effectively in content advertising.

Identify the Best Content for Your Chosen Paid Channels

The harmony between your content and the way it gets distributed should be top of mind.

Andy Mura, Head of Marketing at Userlane: “when it comes to paid promotion for top-of-the-funnel content, the first — and highly important — step is to identify the kind of content that will yield the best results.”

The goal of this practice is to find something that marketing guru Larry Kim calls “unicorn content”. This is content that ranks high, gets tons of engagement on social channels, and outperforms relevant KPIs. But, how do you single out this rare type of piece?

Look to the Past

This is where having a breadth of content-focused campaigns in the past can give you the advantage. Based on past results (traffic, click-through rates, and other data), you can identify high-performing content to promote through paid channels.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming something that performed well in the past will simply work in the future, however. Here are some tips to refresh old content for a new purpose (or in this case, paid promotion).

Consider the “How”, Not Just the “What”

What’s the risk of choosing the wrong content for a given channel? Low engagement and poor ROI. Imagine you’re using a Google ads campaign to break into a new market, and research has uncovered the potential to reach new leads. If you build your ads on the back of content that’s more relevant to current customers than cold leads, you won’t get the response you’re looking for and that spend will go to waste.

But what happens if you don’t have the data on past content to inform future strategy?

Facebook Ads Content Marketing: You Can Use Paid Ads to Test Content

If you don’t have good data to use when choosing content to build a paid strategy on it, you don’t have to guess — you can build your own data.

For example: Facebook’s advertising algorithm gives marketers the ability to test content across a variety of different audiences, as well as test two pieces of content against each other to the same audience. This is the strategy used by Quincy Smith, a marketer at Ampjar, when conceptualizing a paid content marketing campaign.

Says Smith, “we have audience segmentation in Facebook that corresponds to our user-profiles and so we will promote pieces of content to these groups and see who responds favorably.”

Marketers who just use paid ads to boost content they already know to be “high-performing” may be missing out on using these channels as a way to identify new, strong content that may perform even better.

Content + Retargeting = Conversions

Most people are familiar with the concept of “funnel”. Top-of-funnel customers are those who know almost nothing about your brand. Bottom-of-funnel customers are those making a purchase.

You can use paid content marketing to push prospects along the funnel — simply promote broadly relevant content and track the hand-raisers. These are the people who will be more receptive to receiving narrower, “mid-funnel” content in the near future.

Facebook and Google ad channels provide an easy way to track this timeline: just build a Facebook ad promoting content to the coldest leads — those who have never even heard of your brand before. With the installation of a Facebook pixel on your landing page, you can build a list of users who are farther down in the funnel and thus, more likely to convert.

Paid Ads and Content Can Be Mutually Beneficial

By backing your paid advertising with great content, you can drive leads to your business, but that’s not the only potential benefit:

According to Abel Hegyes, Marketing Director at eBacon, “website visitors who are just looking for information have turned into customers along the line. So our PPC strategy helps to drive traffic to our informational content sites and targets customers who are in the educational stage of our sales funnel.”

This is a great example of the symbiotic relationship between content marketing and PPC advertising. In the best case, an ad campaign built on a particular piece of content will drive new leads to your business, but even if it doesn’t, traffic to the page from users looking to relevant answers will boost your SEO, even if your content isn’t destined to end up on at the top of a results page.

The Best Channels for Promoting Content

We’ve mentioned a few of the channels that will provide the highest ROI for content promotion: Google Ads is among the most commonly used, and for good reason — when leveraged with top-of-funnel keywords and match phrases and paired with unique, relevant landing pages, Google Ads can provide cost-effective promotion of a wide range of content. Facebook, too, has been successful in this purpose.

Some channels you may not have considered offer cost-effective native advertising on a wide variety of sites, meaning that you can see your content placed on domains that are relevant to your audience. Among the most widely used are Taboola and Outbrain.

Your Next Steps

As we mentioned, the content comes before you can think about injecting ad spend into the equation. This starts with figuring out what your audience needs, and identifying relevant posts, white papers, case studies and more that helps meet those needs.

This can take place using a content audit, an intensive process of indexing all the content you’ve created (and deployed) in the past. You may not have the type of content you need, however. Before you can start blending content marketing and advertising, you need to have a content creation process that yields valuable assets.

The post Content Advertising: How to Leverage Paid Ads in Your Content Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

But the purview of a skilled ghostwriter isn’t limited to life as an A-lister’s assistant. Freelance writers also lend their talents to all kinds of web content, novels, marketing copy, and even social media posts — they’re tasked with creating content someone else will officially take credit for.

If life as the wizard behind the words sounds enticing, this could be the career for you. Here’s everything you need to know about finding ghostwriting jobs and turning your creative writing abilities into professional opportunities that could change your life for good.

What Is a Ghostwriter?

Everyone has a story to tell, but not everyone has the tools to tell their story effectively. Even those who are equipped may not have the time or inclination to put words to paper. That’s where a ghostwriter comes in.

Ghostwriters are professional writers who craft material for others, taking a client’s vision, story, or idea and creating a polished, publication-quality product that the client can attach their name to and call their own. These writers for hire are generally invisible to readers — hence the spook-inspired moniker — and write for financial gain rather than a byline.

Our post, What Is a Ghostwriter Best Able to Help With? takes a deeper dive into the world of ghostwriting and how it can benefit your clients. But before you take that leap, here’s a look at the essentials.

Is Ghostwriting Just for Books?

While many writers picture juicy celebrity confessions when thinking about ghostwritten material, Britney Spears and Prince Harry aren’t the only people who hire ghostwriters. Ghostwriting jobs come in many forms, ranging from tasks requiring full-length fiction to orders for social media snippets. In addition to traditional “as-told-to” memoirs and autobiographies, some examples of ghostwriting services include:

• Nonfiction books: Ghostwriters often assist experts who are knowledgeable and respected in their field but might not be skilled writers.
• Novels: Ghostwriters might oversee books that are part of a series or continue the work of prominent authors who have passed away — Carolyn Keene, “author” of the Nancy Drew mysteries, wasn’t an actual person but a whole team of ghostwriters!
• Articles: It’s not uncommon for a prominent business person, such as the CEO of a company, to hire a ghostwriter to pen an article that will eventually be published in a newspaper or magazine.
• Blog posts: Brands rely on ghostwriters to keep up with the high volume of content needed to populate a company blog.
• Website content: About Us pages, landing pages, and general copy might sound like they come from the company, but they’re usually written by a ghostwriter.
• Newsletters and emails: Letter from the owner? Maybe, but it’s more likely a letter created by a ghostwriter and approved by the owner.
• Social media posts: Ghostwriters are often the voices behind those pithy posts you see on platforms such as Facebook, X, and LinkedIn.
• Speeches and video scripts: Sometimes, ghostwriters put words into people’s mouths by generating scripts for speeches, promo videos, webinars, and other presentations.
• Song lyrics, short stories, and other types of creative writing: If you have a flare for the fantastic, you may find work as a ghostwriter who specializes in creative content that’s less about marketing and more about storytelling.

What Does a Ghostwriting Job Involve?

The nuts and bolts of each ghostwriting job can differ depending on the project and the client. Your instructions could include:

• Rewriting: Sometimes, ghostwriters rework preexisting content rather than writing content from scratch. The goal could be to improve the quality of an earlier draft or alter the perspective of the piece to better speak to a new audience. There might also be a need for updated search engine optimization — this is especially true with web pages or marketing copy designed to help a site rank.
• Expanding: Sometimes, a client needs help turning a rough draft or even a pile of scribbled notes into publish-ready content. This happens most often with specialty content in a fact-driven niche, such as fintech or health care. Your job is to transform disjointed ideas and statistics into a well-written piece that maintains the integrity and accuracy of the original information.
• Writing from a general topic, idea, or title: The most common type of ghostwriting job involves the client giving you a general subject or title and asking you to create new content from the ground up. You’ll probably be given a content brief that includes an overview of the appropriate style, word count, target audience, and crucial points to touch on. The rest is up to you.

ALSO – How to Get a Ghostwriter to Craft an Ebook That Drives Results
ALSO – Ghostwriters – the Secret to Maximizing Your In-House Content Team

What Qualifications Does a Ghostwriter Need?

Part of learning how to get ghostwriting jobs is ensuring you have everything you need to catch a potential client’s eye. Freelance writers who want to pursue a career in ghostwriting can benefit from meeting basic educational requirements, such as a bachelor’s degree in English, communications, journalism, or a related field.

That said, many clients consider hands-on experience in lieu of a degree, meaning talented ghostwriters can still enjoy a fruitful career, even if they don’t have a college diploma hanging on the wall of their home office.

What Skills Make a Good Ghostwriter?

While the skills required to ghostwrite a novel may differ significantly from those required to write clever advertising copy, there are some basic skills that are almost universal.

• Expert-level writing skills: First and foremost, ghostwriting is about words, and ghostwriters should be able to deliver polished prose. All content submitted should be clean and require minimal editing.
• Flexibility and adaptability: While many writers have their own recognizable style, ghostwriters need to effectively capture the voice of their clients so the writing feels on target to the listed author or brand.
• Ability to follow directions: Clients may have specific dos and don’ts for projects, and a good ghostwriter should be capable of adhering to any guidelines presented.
• Research competence: While many clients will provide information and resources, ghostwriter will sometimes need to embark on research of their own. A good ghostwriter understands how to source and cite appropriate material and fit it seamlessly into the content they’re writing.
• Focus and discernment: While clients are responsible for coming up with the basic skeleton of an idea, a good ghostwriter should be able to finesse, refine, and nurture that idea into something truly compelling.

How Can You Build Your Reputation as a Ghostwriter?

There are several smart ways you can build your reputation as a writer and demonstrate to potential clients you’re the right person for the job.

• Create your own blog, or offer your services as a guest blogger in your area(s) of expertise: Whether it’s fiction or nuclear physics, blogging is an excellent way to make a name for yourself in your niche and show the world your writing chops. This approach also showcases your authority in a given niche and can attract clients looking for writers who can double as subject matter experts.
• Set up a digital portfolio: Several sites, such as Clippings.me and Journo Portfolio, offer free or low-cost online portfolios for writers. These sites let you easily share your clippings with potential clients in a polished, professional manner.
• Reach out to local businesses: Network with other SMBs, particularly nonprofits or those you have personal connections to, and offer your services at discounted rates in exchange for the right to use the finished content in your portfolio. Bonus points if they agree to a written testimonial you can use on your website.
• Join an association: Joining a professional association, such as the Association of Ghostwriters, can provide you with vital resources, opportunities for networking and learning, and even job leads. Many professional organizations offer lower-cost associate memberships that include benefits geared toward newer writers.

How to Find Ghostwriting Jobs

Are you revved up about a future in ghostwriting yet? If you’re itching to make a career switch or change up the types of writing projects you’re tackling, a lot hinges on finding ghostwriting jobs. 

1. Freelance job boards: If you’re ready to dive into your first assignment or just want to check out what’s available, you can find listings for ghostwriting jobs on some of the Internet’s many freelance job boards. Sites such as Freelancer generally offer search functionality and filters, making it easier to find the positions you’re looking for.
2. Advertise your services: Sites such as Fiverr let freelance writers post small advertisements with services offered. While these small-scale ghostwriting jobs may not be enough to pay your bills, they give you opportunities to test the waters and make vital connections.
3. Classified sites: Sites such as Craigslist, especially in bigger cities, often have postings in the Writing Gigs section from companies looking to hire ghostwriters. Be careful — no one verifies clients on these sites, and scammers are plentiful.
4. Cold outreach: Most companies with robust digital marketing programs need a lot of content, so it follows suit that they need a good team of writers. Cold emailing the director of marketing or someone in a senior content position could net you an ongoing gig. This approach is especially effective if you’ve positioned yourself as an expert in a given niche and approach companies in that space.
5. Crowd Content: Crowd Content’s unique platform offers writers a place to find work based on a quality star rating. One distinguishing feature of Crowd Content is that it provides ample opportunity for talented, reliable writers to demonstrate their ability and move up in the ranks, accessing higher-paying jobs. The platform vets both writers and clients before jobs are posted — there’s no chance you’ll be stiffed on pay or have to chase down a client to get work approved.

ALSO – 9 Benefits of Freelance Writing as Told By Top Content Writers

Applying to Be a Ghostwriter

If you plan to work as a ghostwriter through a freelancing platform, you’ll have to go through an application and approval process before you can access actual ghostwriting jobs. At Crowd Content, the sign-up process for freelancers starts when you create a dedicated account. Then, you’ll be asked to share some basic information, including your name, geographic location, and general work experience.

The most important part of the application is the writing test. Follow the directions given to create a high-quality, task-specific sample that showcases your ability to:

• Write well
• Follow directions
• Review content and refine as needed

If you’re approved, you’ll have access to work either through the Marketplace (jobs created and reviewed directly by clients) or Managed Services (high-volume projects run by Crowd Content’s experienced content managers). From there on out, every job counts! Only take on tasks you feel confident writing, and reach out to the client or the content manager if you have any questions.

How to Thrive as a Ghostwriter

You’ve applied for a ghostwriting job, and you’re hired! Now what? Sometimes, the hardest part of being a ghostwriter isn’t finding a gig but keeping it. These tips can help you find long-term success in a highly competitive field.

• Deliver your best work every time: Time is money when it comes to freelancing, and it can be tempting to cut corners. But always remember someone will be publishing this project with their name attached. If you’re not 100% proud of what you’re submitting, the content isn’t ready to be submitted.
• Meet every deadline: Deadlines aren’t suggestions. They’re commitments you make as a professional writer, and your ability to keep those commitments could make or break your reputation and your relationship with your clients. While there are valid reasons to miss a deadline such as medical emergencies, delays should be the exception, not the rule.
• Communicate with the client: If you have a problem with meeting a deadline or something isn’t going as planned, make sure to let the client know as soon as possible. This is ultimately their project, and keeping a client in the loop can keep the process running smoothly for all involved.
• Ask questions: If something about the job isn’t clear or doesn’t make sense, ask for clarification. Most clients are more than happy to provide additional guidance to ensure they receive the quality writing and focused content they’re paying for.
• Be professional: This is a business relationship, and it’s important to treat it as such. Be polite, and always treat clients with respect.

ALSO – 10 Things to Know Before You Start Writing

Are Ghostwriting Jobs Right for You?

While writing without a byline may be a turnoff for many writers, it can be a lucrative career choice for others. It can also be immensely rewarding to be the driving force in helping people get their stories out into the world. If you’re interested in pursuing a career in ghostwriting, visit Crowd Content’s freelance writing job page, and take the first step toward success.

The post Ghostwriting Jobs 101: How They Work, Where to Find Them and How to Thrive appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

For every dollar the average brand spends on email, they get a whopping $38 in return. That translates into a 3,800% ROI — can your client’s direct mailers and PPC banners do that?

Email is not only here to stay, it’s a platform for exciting new ideas and twists on tried-and-true content marketing strategies that could help launch your business to the next level. Here’s what you need to know about email copywriting and a few tips to help you master best practices, write effective emails and become the very best email copywriter you can be. Avocado toast sold separately.

Types of Email Copy

Email marketing is so much more than those rambling missives from brand ambassadors and social media interns that land in your inbox on their way to the trash pile. Personal messages can be an important part of your brand story, but there’s a way to go about that so you can keep your audience’s attention and still get your point across. But more on that later.

ALSO – What is Copywriting?

For now, it’s crucial you understand how diverse email copywriting can be and the many use cases that turn a simple electronic letter into a marketing powerhouse.

• Announce New Content. If a new blog post goes up but no one’s scrolling your blog to see it, the content almost doesn’t count. Yes, there’s SEO to help attract interest, but letting your warm leads (those on your email list) know there’s something new to read or otherwise act on is a smart move. Sound the virtual trumpets whenever your client launches an ebook, has a sale, conducts a webinar or has a few case studies that serve as a lead magnet.

• Newsletters. Almost every brand can benefit from a newsletter-style email that helps potential and current customers understand your brand relevancy and how you’re different from your competitors. Use it to highlight important news from across your industry, curate interesting and relevant content from a variety of sources, emphasize the people and processes behind a product or do some combination of all the above.

• Product Updates: Let subscribers know when an app is upgraded or a site has new functionality. A monthly digest is better if there are a lot of little updates unworthy of separate emails, but occasional revamps should be shared to remind customers the service is available and there’s even more value on tap.

• Prospecting Campaigns: When a company wants to get their product or service in front of a new buyer persona, they often start with a large list of contacts they can make the first contact with by sending emails. This prospecting campaign relies on smart, strategic content that speaks to common pain points and challenges that buyer persona often experiences. Content has to have wide appeal to the different types of contacts under the buyer persona, but still be engaging, empowering and compelling, with a strong call-to-action to respond.
  
• Onboarding Sequences: These email series help usher engaged users — subscribers, for instance — into paying customers. The idea is to build suspense and authority over several emails, delivering value and driving interest before eventually encouraging readers to take action.
  
• Post-Purchase Drips: Once somebody buys a product or service, it’s time to follow up with emails that welcome them on board, tell them how to make the most of their purchase, offer optional add-ons and otherwise nurture the relationship. This is a great tool to help nudge new customers into the advocacy stage of the buyer’s journey.
  
• Cart Abandonment Campaigns: As of 2018, cart abandonment rates sit at 79.17%. That’s a lot of consumers adding things to their virtual basket and then leaving without an actual buy. Cart abandonment campaigns can remind shoppers of what they left behind and make it easy to return and complete their purchase.
  
• Promotional Campaigns: This type of email marketing series builds with each successive message, provoking emotion, stoking curiosity and building suspense before announcing an offer and using imagery and other hooks to direct readers to a well-written landing page and cements a sale.

This is far from a comprehensive list — everything from form submission confirmations to event invitations could also conceivably be included — but it gives you an idea of how diverse and powerful email marketing campaigns can be.

ALSO – What Types Of Email Newsletters Are Most Effective in 2019?

Tips for Writing Emails That Connect and Convert

Know Your Audience — and Capitalize on that Knowledge

Every piece of content you send should have a purpose, and that purpose is to create a connection with the recipient. The emails you write need to resonate with your audience and be relevant not only to their lives and interests but also to where they’re at in their buyer journey. Consumers have different needs during the awareness stage than they do when they’re about to make a decision; tailor your words to match the timing and you’ll be far more persuasive.

To create content for your audience, you have to get to know them. Buyer personas, face-to-face conversations, competitor research, social studies, monitoring online activity and sending out surveys are all legitimate ways to form an accurate, detailed picture of your consumer base. Then it’s time to put that data to work.

Alex Membrillo, CEO of Cardinal Digital Marketing, brings it all together: “The trick to successful email marketing is delivering engaging content, relevant to your audience. The easiest way to ensure your content is relevant is to segment your email campaigns based on your target markets and audiences.”

“I was recently working with a client who wanted to feature a blog post in an upcoming e-newsletter that was geared to a Business-to-Consumer market. However, we determined that the target market and email list was for a Business-to-Business market. Therefore, the content didn’t make sense for the audience, and strategically the decision was made to change the focus of the email to a more relevant topic.”

ALSO – Email Marketing: Still Business’ Best Marketing Tool

Focus More on the Reader Than On Yourself

It’s amazing how hard it is to break away from marketing emails that lead with “I” or “we”. Yes, you’re advertising a business, but you should be advertising subtly and crafting consumer-centric content that doesn’t feel so self-centered and single-minded.

“This may seem like a basic statement, but many B2B-marketers (and B2C-marketers) still focus their content around telling people about how good they are,” says Operation Manager Ola Rask of Match2One. “The simple truth is this; people care a lot more about themselves than they do about you. In fact, they probably don’t care about you at all — so try to personalize your content and make them feel special.”

Tweak Your Writing

Spruce up your content and create copy that sells using a feature-benefit structure that helps consumers understand not only what you’re selling but why they should want it. Instead of boasting that a food processor has five speeds and a safety button, say it has five speeds to help you do everything from dicing to pureeing and a safety button to prevent accidents. If a customer reads a brand boast in your email and says, “So what?”, you haven’t clearly outlined the benefit.

Action words are helpful tools, too, in that action drives action. If you want your audience to get excited, use words that have power, such as:

• Discover
• Act
• Learn
• Explore
• Listen
• Win
• Make
• Create
• Develop
• Achieve

Aim For an Emotional Response

Famous examples of advertising such as soda companies showing people having fun and being sociable highlight an important (albeit sometimes misused) marketing principle – if you can help your audience connect emotionally with your brand and offering, they’re more likely to convert.

What they’re doing is in effect visually telling a story. You can also focus on storytelling in your email copy to elicit an emotional response. This could come in many forms including:

1. Fear of missing out
2. Warmth toward your brand or offering
3. Desire to associate with successful people
4. Curiosity to learn more

What emotional appeal you target will depend on the purpose of your communication and the target audience, but keep in mind choosing the right emotional appeal can drastically increase your success rates. 

Stick to One Clear Call to Action

The average open rate across all industries is just under 17%. The average click-through rate is 7.43%. That means 17% of the people on the average email list will even bother to open your emails and about 7.5 out of every 100 will click your CTA to see what’s on the other side. There are lots of reasons that number is on the low side, but asking too much of your email subscribers is a great way tank conversions.

Riah Solomon, Content Marketing Manager at SaaSOptics, feels strongly about the power of a solitary CTA. “Every email should have one main goal with a clear purpose, which means you should only have one main call to action. Write everything to point toward that call to action, and you’ll see click-through rates jump. Your readers need clarity and direction. When you give it to them, they will follow your lead.”

Don’t Underestimate the Power of a Great Email Subject Line

People are scanners by nature, and if your subject line doesn’t make them sit up and take notice, there won’t be anybody reading your email. To get more clicks, Charles Floate, Owner of DFY Links, offers these six expert suggestions:

1. Put the offer/information upfront – the further back in the subject line your offer is, the less chance it has of being read
2. Keep your subject line short – people have short attention spans
3. Give it a sense of urgency – give them a reason to open it now
4. Make it personal – make them think they know you
5. Triple-check your spelling and grammar – no need for explanation here
6. Bonus tip: Be clever – bland and grey never see the light of day

Be consistent, too. Whatever you promise in your subject line should actually exist in the body of your email. Nothing ruins a customer’s trust in a brand faster than feeling tricked. Bait-and-switch marketing may get clicks, but it’s a lot harder to increase conversions when inconsistency, whether intentional or accidental, is putting a dent into your authenticity and authority.

Find Ways to Personalize Every Message

The power of personalization is big to warrant a more in-depth look. Personalized subject lines boost email open rates by 26%, but that’s just the beginning. You can also personalize by targeting emails using information from customer surveys, recommendation purchases based on past buying behavior, highlighting mutual connections (referencing an industry-leading decision-maker, for instance) or simply making an email feel personal by addressing common consumer hurdles or including praise. Specifics are paramount, so use all the information at your disposal to zero in on personal factors that will help your message resonate.

Need help with your email marketing? We can help.

Before You Hit Send…

One of the most important things you can do as a marketer to drive conversions is to A/B test the heck out of your emails to understand exactly what will drive conversions the highest. Digital marketing guru Neil Patel gives some great advice on what you should test and how you should do it.

Although everything from the colors and imagery to the body text and personalization are game for testing, there are a few key things that you must get right to ensure a high conversion rate:

• Subject line (“Free Shipping Ends Tonight” vs “Enjoy Free Shipping”)
• Call to action (“See What’s Inside” vs “Learn Insider Secrets”)
• The offer itself (“Deep Discounts” vs “BOGO”)

Think about what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re seeing dismal open rates, then begin by testing your subject line. To get your conversion rates up, start by testing your calls to action.

Those who use MailChimp or another similar email marketing platforms may find built-in testing tools to help get the job done. If you’re looking for another solution, Hubspot has a great list of A/B testing tools to try. No matter what tool you use, keep in mind that email marketing without testing first is about as effective as throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping something sticks.

When you set up your tests, keep things as subjective as possible. Patel says that you should always use the same list for a test, and if you can’t run the test on the whole list, any subset should be chosen randomly. It’s also imperative that you shouldn’t stagger your test, as you may run up against time-based factors that impact the results.

If you’ve never done any A/B or split testing before, you might want to consider hiring a pro to do it for you if you have the budget. But whatever you do — include testing in your project plan.

Wrapping it Up

At its very heart, a good email boosts results and conversions by addressing your target audience’s pain points and connecting with them. Do that and you’ll achieve the success you crave. I call that a solid day’s work.

The post Email Copywriting: Tips for Mastering a Profitable Niche appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Whether you’re an individual or a corporation, the blog content writers in charge of your blog posts can run into a creative wall that makes it more difficult to come up with ideas and create high-quality content that performs in the search engines and resonates with readers. Luckily, we’ve put together a list of 13 winning types of blog posts that make it easy to craft content that drives social shares, backlinks, conversions and other important metrics.

ALSO: Hiring Blog Writers? 7 Common Mistakes You Need To Avoid

1. Posts that Answer Questions (Featured Snippets FTW!)

Ben Zeisloft from Qlicket says, “Blog posts and other content written by businesses are most effective when they answer questions in the minds of customers.”

When you ask a popular question (one that users are commonly searching online) and answer it immediately in a short list or paragraph of 25 to 40 words, you position yourself to potentially win the Featured Snippet position. Google displays the featured snippet on top of other organic search results, and often the page that earns the Featured Snippet spot also appears in the top three results, doubling the chance that someone will click on the link.

Zeisloft notes that this type of blog post isn’t just good for winning the Featured Snippet. “When a potential customer encounters a blog post answering their specific query,” he says, “the beginning of a value-creation relationship has already begun. Additionally, when a company creates a blog post that solves dilemmas or answers questions for potential customers, the company’s legitimacy among its customer base is built.”

How do you go about generating these types of posts? Zeisloft advises content marketers to “use free tools such as AnswerThePublic to find your customers’ questions and answer them with simple, brief, and effective blog posts. Then, use Google Trends to select optimal keywords so the blog post appears as a top result on search engines.”

2. High-Quality Mega Posts Based on Content Pruning

Kulwant Nagi shares a practice called content pruning that the team at BloggingCage.com uses.

“One thing which worked for us in 2019 is content pruning,” says Nagi. “In October 2018, we started the process and found 300+ articles that were either of very low quality or ranking nowhere in Google. In the first phase, we grouped similar articles and combined them into one mega post. We keep the best-ranking URL and redirected (301 redirect) other similar links to that mega post.”

So far, it may not sound like pruning, but here’s where the second phase comes in. According to Nagi, the team identified all the posts that were still not ranking in Google and removed them. They took down 319 total articles from the blog.

“In January,” says Nagi, “we started seeing traffic going up, and now we’re seeing more than 200% growth in traffic.”

3. Single Refreshes of Old Blog Posts

You don’t have to reorganize the entire content garden to see results, though. Sometimes, it’s about giving individual plants (aka, existing blog posts) some extra love to generate more fruit (aka, traffic).

Shelby Liu, an SEO analyst for Brand Buddha, says, “Don’t forget about your older articles. Give them a second chance to shine. The truth could be that those older posts used to rank well but were taken down by new articles that better answer people’s search queries. Tweaking your older articles is more likely to improve rankings than creating content from scratch, and this tactic also gives the search engine some time to crawl and rank.”

Crowd Content secret: the article you’re reading right now is a refresh of a page we posted in 2016. We’re just adding all-new data and quotes to be current and expanding the content to cover more types of posts. This is a tactic you can easily use on your own site.

4. Episodic Blog Content

Episodic content continues to be a winner, especially if you have a good hook to retain readership over the course of a series. When you’re working with high-quality blog content writers, you can create cliff-hangers that leave the reader looking eagerly for the next installment, which makes episodic blog content a great partner for email marketing newsletters.

5. How-to Blog Posts

The past few Google algorithm updates have put searcher intent at the forefront of ranking considerations, and optimizing content for that intent is critical to success in the SERPs.

Most searches can be categorized into three major intent groups:

• Informational: the searcher wants to know something
• Transactional: the searcher wants to do something
• Navigational: the searcher wants to go somewhere

How-to searchers are a huge percentage of informational queries. From “how to cook a roast” to “how to buy a tennis racket,” people look for step-by-step guides every day. Conduct keyword research to find out what people want to know how to do in your niche and create content that answers those questions.

6. Q&A with the Experts

Speaking of Google algorithms, 2018’s Medic update and June 2019’s core update both illustrated the need for more expert content on sites, especially for brands that serve finance, health or safety niches.

You can demonstrate expertise with authorship through bios and bylines, but you can also create Q&A interview posts. Your staff or freelance writers can interview experts and turn those conversations into engaging question-and-answer blog posts.

This is one of the best types of blog posts for adding expert content on topics when you don’t have in-house SMEs. While it’s always a good idea to post the thoughts and answers of your own staff, it’s also fine to interview an expert outside of your organization for your blog; some individuals may be happy to contribute in return for a shout-out or backlink to their website.

7. Behind-the-Scenes Posts

Expertise is only one piece of the quality pie for Google. E-A-T content (expertise, authority, trustworthiness) requires building trust with your readership. One way to do that is to create blog posts that provide a behind-the-scenes look at your operation. When possible, be candid about how you make or do things, or let loyal readers in on some of the details —obviously without giving away brand secrets.

In addition to building trust, behind-the-scenes videos and blog posts creates an exclusivity that helps your readers feel like part of a community culture surrounding your brand.

8. Epic Lists (We’re Not Talking a Top 10)

While those top five and top ten lists are losing ground in terms of online marketing, epic blog posts are still a great way to drive backlinks and position yourself for potential viral sharing.

An epic list is exactly that . . . EPIC. Consider writing lists with 50 to 100 points of curated content for readers to consider. Jeff Bullas’ list of 72 resources for writers is a great example.

Insider tip: If you don’t have the time or resources to find 99 items for a list, do something to differentiate your shorter lists. Top Tens went out with Letterman, but a shorter list with an odd number of points can still fare well when it comes to SEO and conversions.

ALSO: Are Short Blog Posts Worth It in a Long-Form World?

9. Curated Expert Advice

Combine tips six and eight by curating a list of points backed by expert advice. This is a great way to add authority if you don’t have a single expert willing to sit for a 30-minute interview. You can ask experts to share success stories about certain topics or give their top piece of advice.

Services like Help a Reporter Out connect publishers with experts willing to provide quotes, but you do have to meet some minimum publisher requirements. If you don’t meet those requirements, consider reaching out to the owners of websites in your industry (who are not direct competitors). They’re often happy to provide a quote in exchange for a link.

10. Infographics Turned Into Blog Posts

If pictures are worth a thousand words, a good infographic could be worth millions. Put together a comprehensive graphic and share it (with a high-res option for download). Then break off portions of the larger visual, sharing smaller glimpses into it alongside in-depth text analysis of the data.

Pro tip: Canva is a great tool for marketers who need to create social media graphics, infographics and more branded visual content.

11. Blog Posts that Are Lists of Social Media Posts

Need some visual bang, but don’t have much buck to buy it with? Whether you’re stretched on time or don’t have the resources to create visual content this week, consider clipping social media posts. Many brands create viral content by sharing screen grabs of or embedding relevant Twitter posts and using them to tell a story (or writing clever captions between them).

You can use your own social media posts — effectively doubling the return on investment in that particular content — or swipe content from others. Just remember if you use posts from other individuals, best practice is to embed it so it’s clickable or include a credit link.

12. Posts that Share Your Own Data or Original Research

We don’t mean to harp on E-A-T. . . actually, we do. It really is that important. And another way to demonstrate expertise and authority is by putting your own data and research on display. You can do that in the form of blog posts that include references to your own data, as we did in this article on reading levels.

You can also blog about your own case studies — sometimes one case study or long-form piece of research you commissioned can become multiple blog posts. Power Inbox worked with Mantis Research on a study about email marketing and then turned it into half a dozen or more blog posts on the subject.

13. Posts for Someone Else’s Site

Finally, remember that every type of blog post you write doesn’t have to be for your own site. Consider breaking free from your own pages to guest post on someone else’s site. You might do this as part of an exchange, having someone from the other site write a piece of content for you. It’s a great way to build authority by getting your name on other pages and get fresh ideas on your own site.

Stuck for Types of Blog Posts to Write?

Consider working with professional writers who can come up with new ideas for your content marketing efforts. And if you’re burned out on the entire process of keeping content calendars and blog posts current, consider working with a professional team.

The post 13 Types of Blog Posts to Fire Up Your Readers (And Your Editorial Calendar) appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Learning how press releases support your content marketing strategy can help you get more bang for your buck out of every blog, social post and white paper, and that’s something worth talking about.

AlSO – Find out how to hire the web’s best press release writers

Combining PR and Marketing

Whether you’re a new startup, a global Fortune 500 company or something in between, press releases will work for you on some level because they revolve around a story. And everyone has a story.

While it’s true that journalists are still probably going to pay more attention to big companies than small ones, a great press release (built around an equally great story) can help you gain traction as journalists pick up your release and pass it on. And that’s an important point — though you’ll see press releases pulling double duty in your online newsroom or as extra collateral for your social media pages (more on that in a moment), your primary audience is still journalists rather than end users. Keeping that in mind as you create and distribute could go a long way toward helping you shape content that resonates with the people who have the power to pass on your news.

But how does PR support content marketing? Skilled PR teams and professionals craft press releases that they distribute to journalists, journalists and bloggers that they can use as inspiration to write articles about.

As you’re designing your next marketing program, consider if you could build in a PR campaign to support it. If you’re able to get your story picked up by journalists in significant and industry relevant publications, that can get a lot more eyes on your content as well as some powerful backlinks.

You can create press releases with a customer-centric bent and use it to tell a tale your audience wants to hear:

• Announce your newest celebrity endorsement or an appearance by a local sports star
• Discuss how your upcoming fundraiser will benefit neighborhood initiatives
• Share why your small business block party is going to be kid-friendly
• Highlight what problems your new ebook will help solve

Use Press Releases to Support Your Content Strategy Via an Online Newsroom

As the owner of Redhead Marketing & PR, Hilary Reiter has a plethora of experience in both content marketing and public relations. She advises clients to include press releases in the newsroom of their website as “this helps them keep their content fresh to enhance organic SEO.”

Combine those PRs with in-house announcements, messages from the founder and other time-sensitive tidbits, and you’ll maintain a steady flow of information without being repetitive or sacrificing cohesion.

In addition to keeping your site’s content fresh, a newsroom adds a sense of legitimacy to any company’s site which can help build trust with your audience.

Press Releases Can Help Drive Traffic

Reiter’s multipronged approach to press releases also includes a dash of social media strategy. After all, your content is useless if nobody’s reading it, and with two-thirds of adults on Facebook, most on a daily basis, social platforms are an invaluable resource for anyone hoping to build readership.

“We advise them to link their press releases from social media to drive traffic to the site,” says Reiter. “Distributing press releases to media to get 3rd party coverage and credibility results in greater awareness as well as referral links that drive traffic to your website.”

ALSO – How Social Media Impacts Your SEO in 2019

Keri Lindenmuth, marketing manager at KDG, uses weekly press releases to fuel his company’s content marketing strategy and stay ahead of the competition. “To find a topic for our press release, we first look at our keyword rankings. If there is a keyword that seems to be struggling or a keyword that our competitors are catching up on, we’ll put out a press release concentrating on that keyword and link back to our website.”

Follow Keri’s advice and you’ll usually garner the added benefit of publications writing about that keyword and linking back to your site which can help rankings even further with powerful contextual backlinks.

ALSO – 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Press Release

Establish and Expand Your Authority

Most content creators have two primary goals: creating pieces that are SEO-driven and those that capitalize on thought leadership. The value of SEO is indisputable, but thought leadership is far more underutilized. By becoming an authority in your field, you insert yourself into the public conscious as the go-to source for industry trends, new ideas, and interesting takes on existing concepts. People build entire businesses on the back of their authority, and according to Michelle Calcote King, founder of PR and content marketing agency Reputation Ink, press releases can help get the word out in a big way.

“If [the content] is thought leadership-driven,” says Calcote King, “the press release can announce important content pieces that you want your target audience to be aware of (i.e. announcing an e-book, research report, etc.). The fact that you’ve created a resource for your audience can be news. You can also announce speeches, industry involvement, etc. — anything that will build a reputation for being a thought leader in your space.”

Anyone can hold a seminar on personal finance or self-publish a book on flipping houses, but only someone with a sound content marketing strategy that incorporates press releases will get maximum exposure when time in the spotlight matters most.

Getting Your Press Releases to Journalists and Influencers

Once you get the hang of writing press releases, you have to know where to send them. You can distribute the PRs yourself via social media, as part of your email marketing plan (a great way to flesh out your newsletters), or on your website, or you can hire a professional press release company. Many PR pros build media contact lists as well, and pitch those contacts to write stories about their latest press release (often offering early access to the press release to help them get a jump on competing publications).

News wire distribution agencies know which publications are best suited for the topic at hand and they likely have relationships and contacts you don’t.

Reiter recommends services such as PRWeb to help boost online visibility while minimizing the burden on your in-house resources. Lindenmuth favors multiple distribution points. “EINPresswire is a paid platform, but it is perhaps the best for building backlinks across the web. It submits your press release to hundreds of news outlets. PRLog is a free service that also lets you include links back to your website. Using both sites together, and distributing a press release weekly, ensures that fresh, new content about your site is always on the web, which does wonders for SEO.”

Distributing press releases is a specialty job, and sometimes it’s best to have specialty help.

As with most things in marketing, writing content alone won’t guarantee success. By using press releases to support your overall content marketing strategy, you help your brand gain visibility, build authority, improve search rankings and reach journalists who act as your conduit to a new, larger audience. Focus on careful integration and look at your press releases from the audience’s point of view and you may soon see just how relevant PRs continue to be.

Need help mastering the art of the press release? Hire a professional press release writer and get your story the attention it deserves.

The post How Can PR Support Your Content Marketing Strategy? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

If you think the email list is dead (or even dying) as a marketing tactic, think again. It’s alive and well, even among younger generations. According to a study commissioned by PowerInbox, more than half of all adults age 18 and up subscribe to at least one email newsletter. And those same subscribers do engage with advertising and offers in the emails; in fact, two-thirds say they’ll click special offers in an email if it’s interesting and relevant.

With so much to sort through online, consumers naturally spend more time and effort on the brands that do the work to reach them. That means you can’t rely on a tried-and-true automated email campaign or newsletter format to keep hitting it out of the ballpark, and if you’re seeing email engagement slide, it might be a good idea to try some new approaches (or possibly hire a talented newsletter writer).

But you don’t have to go far to scout out effective email campaigns: We’ve put together some tips and tricks garnered from real-life examples of effective lead-nurturing emails for you to check out.

1. Create Simple Messages from Individuals

Larry Kim of Mobile Monkey often shares great advice on Facebook Messenger marketing and specifics about his own marketing campaigns, and he’s scored some winning open and click-through rates with email marketing. It’s not surprising, because he knows how to put together an effective email that resonates with the reader and catches their attention.

But the unicorn marketer doesn’t make it flashy: he keeps it simple and direct. Check out the screenshot below for an example of one his marketing emails. The subject line, “check your phone” is simple but attention grabbing. In a list of emails in your inbox, this will stand out on a scan through because your immediate thought may be “Wait, did someone text me?”

Once you open the email, it’s addressed to you, poses an immediate question and starts to convey the message — all in a way that seems like Larry is talking directly to you. It’s a tactic that makes it more likely someone will click on the call to action or links provided later in the message. He also often links to his social media and blog posts, linking one piece of content with his entire channel.

2. Give Real Value for Free

Words like free, gift, freebie and give-away still resonate with individuals and drive crazy open rates. And that’s true whether you’re engaged in B2C or B2B marketing.

That said, used improperly or too frequently in your subject lines, these words can set off spam filters. Be sure to use them carefully, and make sure your subject lines don’t come across as spammy.

More than just promising value in your subject line, figure out what you can offer your subscribers that’s easy to deliver and not costly to you but will be valuable to readers.

Check out Digital Marketer’s early January promotional email below. Like the example from Larry Kim, it’s simple, personalized and comes from an individual in the company. But it also comes bearing free gifts, a fact which is stated in bold right in the first sentence. Talk about a hook.

3. Keep Mobile Users in Mind

Mobile bypassed desktop computing as the preferred platform for accessing internet content in general sometime between 2015 and 2016, and it didn’t take long for access to email to follow suit. According to ReturnPath, users were choosing mobile access to email over webmail at a rate of two to one as of 2017. (Webmail refers to online mail providers such as Gmail). Use of desktop email programs such as Outlook to receive and send emails was low on the preference list, and desktop email programs such as Outlook to receive and send emails was even further down.

Given those numbers, it’s critical to design your newsletters with mobile devices in mind. Keeping it simple does this, because a text-only email with basic links is going to display well on most screens. Just keep the length of paragraphs and list elements in mind. Shorter may be better, because mobile users could get tired of scrolling before they get to the goods if you’re long-winded.

But mobile doesn’t completely preclude longer content. Check out the screen shots below from part of a digest-style email from The Hustle. While this email had a single header graphic (that would have scaled on a mobile device), the rest is fairly simple and features small content chunks broken up by headers and white space.

4. Design and Write for Your Audience

When a sports scout is looking for a new pitcher for a baseball team, they aren’t just looking for someone who ticks all the boxes when it comes to curveballs and game stats. A good scout also looks for a player who will work well with and complement the existing team.

Your job in creating email marketing materials is similar: No matter what is performing for everyone else, you do what performs for your audience.

Check out the screen shot below of an email from Sarah Foil, who provides editing and other services to authors. You’ll note that the bulk of the email actually looks a lot like an Instagram post. That’s followed up with a very direct and conversational CTA that asks for the reader to take specific actions.

This works for Foil specifically because she knows exactly who her audience is: they’re also the audience for Bookstagram, a subset of Instagram that posts pictures and content about creating and reading books and general bookish lifestyle. It’s likely this image is going to naturally resonate with her audience.

To follow Foil’s example, figure out what your audience is interested in and what type of content they are likely to engage with online. Then, convert that into something that works for email.

Expert Advice, but No Easy Answers

If you’re here looking for a magic formula for email newsletters that succeed in 2019, we’re sorry to disappoint. The truth is, there aren’t typically easy answers in marketing. Instead, there’s a lot of expert advice, such as the breakdown above about types of email newsletters that work.

But the coach (or advice giver) can’t make the play for you. You might use a pinch hitter to create quality content for your newsletter or tweak your subject lines with an expert’s eye, but no one understands your brand like you do.

Whether you’re working with an agency to create your email marketing campaigns or doing the work in-house, take some time to really understand your audience and your message so you can hit it out of the ballpark with email marketing.

The post What Types Of Email Newsletters Are Most Effective in 2019? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

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Hiring outside help is a phenomenal way to boost marketing efforts while ensuring your brand is in experienced, linguistically capable hands — but writers aren’t all created the same. In fact, there are several different types of writers, all of whom have their own strengths, weaknesses and areas of specialty.

Finding the right person to write content for your website isn’t just a matter of connecting with someone who can string together a convincing combination of nouns and verbs.

For your content to excel, you need a writer whose skill set and expertise matches the project at hand.

With that in mind, here’s a quick overview of the three types of writers your business might consider hiring and for what jobs.

Copywriters

Copywriters are the word-spinning geniuses behind marketing content and other kinds of promotional material. “Copy” generally has three goals:

• Connect with the target demographic
• Communicate brand messaging
• Convert, as in compelling a sale or inspiring the reader to click, email or call

Think of copywriting as action-based writing. It’s sales, but instead of knocking on doors and demonstrating the handy-dandy features of an upright vacuum cleaner or convincing car shoppers that they really need that upgraded interior, copywriters are using the power of the written word to position a client’s products or services as the solution to a specific pain point.

ALSO: What is Copywriting?

You might hire a copywriter for:

• Ads
• Product descriptions
• Landing pages
• Sales pages
• Copy-based search engine optimization (SEO)

Some copywriters dabble in multiple niches, while others are the master of landing pages or Facebook ads and won’t touch anything else. If you’d prefer to have one writer take care of everything, make sure you discuss that up front, but also know that sometimes it’s good to have a surgeon, anesthesiologist and scrub nurse all on your team. In other words, there are occasions when a copywriter with a practically Lilliputian area of expertise is far more valuable than a supposed jack-of-all-trades.

ALSO: Copywriting for SEO: How to Be Sure Your eCommerce Copy Converts and Ranks

Content Writers

Content writing is also part of marketing, but it’s a softer sell and involves more layers of the overall sales funnel. Depending on the piece, content writers may try to inform, entertain, establish authority, nurture rapport and build trust — or all of the above.

Where copywriting seeks to make a sale, content writing is how you soften up a potential customer, laying the groundwork for the idea and promise behind a product.

Most often, content writers create content that’s top of funnel near the awareness and interest stages. Copywriters tend to create content at the desire and action stages.

Content writers are responsible for projects such as:

• Blog posts
• Articles
• White papers
• Ebooks
• Social media posts
• Press releases
• Reviews
• Web content
• Employee bios

As with copywriters, the content writers you hire may do a little bit of everything, or they might stick to a single industry — say, plumbing or wine — or a single category of content.

ALSO: How to Tell Freelance Content Writers What You Really Need

Fiction Writers

All writing involves a certain level of imagination, but creative writing has more leeway. Fiction writers may be inspired by real-life people and events, but they aren’t tied to that narrative. They can conjure characters out of thin air. They can even conceive of entire worlds a la Tolkien or Rowling, writing a book that takes readers places nobody on the planet has ever been before.

It may not seem like fiction writers have a place in the cold, hard world of sales and marketing. While it’s true that both content writing and copywriting require a strong factual thread that lends credibility and legitimacy, how you flesh out that truth skeleton is up for grabs.

Some people choose to fuel their marketing initiatives with pie charts and statistics. Others turn to storytelling to share information in a format that’s attention-getting and gently leading. It’s not surprising, then, that some of the greatest literary minds of the last century also offer up some sage marketing advice.

ALSO: How to Revolutionize Your Copywriting Strategy

How They All Work Together

While many freelancer writers specialize in one kind of writing — and some niche down even further, focusing their energies just on newsletters or blogs posts, for instance — others offer overlapping services. You may find a talented writer who churns out unbelievably pithy social media posts but also creates catalog copy and collaborates on children’s books on the side.

Sound confusing?

It can be. Maybe this will help: Pretend you have a business selling a new kind of mop. Everybody needs mops, right? But there’s also a thousand other mops on the market, so you need to find a way to differentiate your brand.

A fiction writer might create a story around your mop, introducing the Duke of Dirt and the Princess of Perfection who are locked in an eternal battle of clutter versus cleanliness.

Your content writer will build on those tales from the Land of Tidying Up by referencing them in blogs, using the characters to connect with consumers on social media or author an article that uses the Duke and Princess to recount the many benefits of clean floors and research behind your brand’s cutting-edge mop technology.

Finally, a copywriter steps in to create a sales page to convince those clicking on a Facebook post or blog CTA that this is the mop they want — no, the mop they need.

The point is this: take the time to vet and hire a writer who knows how to open closed doors and invite readers in. Whether you’re looking to publish a book or launch a new website, the writing process doesn’t start when your freelancer picks up an order and starts tapping on their laptop’s keyboard — it starts when you choose the talent whose skill set best serves your needs.

The post The Three Types of Writers Your Brand (Probably) Needs appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

What does all that have to do with editing? Everything.

Businesses tend to pony up for copywriting services without too much hesitation, but when it comes to the other two tiers in the content marketing system (editing and quality assurance), the ROI isn’t always so easy to identify. A good writer should be able to forge a cohesive message, work in the right keywords, and arrange words in an entertaining and accessible manner, but even the best scribes benefit from a keen eye and the digital version of a big fat red pen.

Investing in copy editing services is like supercharging your copywriter; their talents are suddenly magnified and, at the same time, given extra focus until your vision is expertly tailored for maximum connection, conversion, and engagement.

Crossing I’s and Dotting Your T’s

See what I did there…? Seriously though, as potent as great content can be, web copy or blogs marred by typos and grammatical oopsies can be just as potent — albeit in a decidedly negative fashion.

Editors are the gatekeepers who swoop in and clean up any literary detritus accidentally left behind by the creative types. Some writers are technically brilliant; others are stellar at generating compelling concepts but wouldn’t know an infinitive from a gerund.

A talented editor ensures that you’re never called out on social media for an oh-so-egregious your vs. you’re error (and we all know how forgiving those eagle-eyed commenters can be) or surprised by awkward copy that makes your new site launch less than perfect.

I can practically hear the “but what about Grammarly?” protests already, and it’s true that there are tons of online editing tools that will catch basic errors and keep you from inserting commas willy-nilly, but AI editors are deeply flawed too.

Grammarly flags every instance of passive voice with admirable enthusiasm but eliminating those completely will likely cause your content to read aggressive or robotic. Other times you’ll intentionally use colloquialisms or grammatically incorrect language to make a point or reinforce a specific voice; Grammarly can’t recognize tone and giggle at cheeky reference the way a real editor can.

When you’re commissioning content for a live audience, you should hire a live editor to review it.

A Quick Review: Two Types of Editors

The confusion over why you need an editor when spellcheck is so darned effective (not) is probably at least partially connected to the misconception that an editor is an editor is an editor.

Nope.

A copyeditor is the hawk-eyed specialist who pores over things like parallelism and punctuation. They can typically rattle off the finer points of Chicago style or AP guidelines with the greatest of ease, and their ability to spot even the tiniest typo is legendary.

A strategic content editor, on the other hand, is your audience’s representative during content creation. Your customers have wants, needs, concerns, and questions. They have pain points that must be addressed and preferences in terms of visual components. Your editor looks not so much at how a piece is written, but at how it reads. Does it tick all the boxes attached to your brand persona? Does it slot into your overall content marketing strategy? Is it useful? Will your audience care?

A copyeditor is valuable; a strategic content editor is priceless.

Ann Gynn, editorial consultant for the Content Marketing Institute, defines these two types of editors this way: “Strategic editors (or someone who has that role) are critical to ensuring first that the content meets the needs of the audience and the company. Second, this editor can review and edit the piece to ensure the content is written appropriately — it puts the topic in the relevant context, includes pertinent details (and excludes unrelated ones), is accurate, and explains the topic in a way that the audience can understand and wants to read/consume.”

She goes on to say, “Then, this editor can smooth the rough edges, refine its structure, and make it audience ready. A line editor or proofreader who is fresh to the copy will be able to catch grammatical and style errors more easily.” As the strategic editor for CMI, she focuses on making sure that the content published speaks to the brand’s audience and meets the company’s business goals and needs.

With the rapid evolution of technology, we’re now also seeing what you might call a third type — AI-based editors. Cynthia Spiers, who heads up content and digital at Acrolinx, relies on human content creators, but then everything is put through the company’s content optimization platform. “Powered by artificial intelligence, it ensures the content we produce is aligned to our content strategy. That means that the platform understands our standards for brand, style, tone, and terminology, and it evaluates our content against those standards,” she reports.

Here’s the Sad Part

We heard from more than 50 companies on the subject of how critical an editor is to the content creation process, and more than half of them don’t understand that there are different types of editors. In fact, they view editors as little more than human spell-checkers. These are brands that are missing out.

Shelby Rogers, content marketing manager for Solodev and DigitalUS, sums things up quite nicely on this front: “I’ve seen on a handful of reputable marketing resources that editing should be an afterthought, and I cringe each time. Clearly, no one thought to edit that piece of ridiculous advice. Editing — both prescriptively and conceptually — plays a massive role in our content creation.”

Highlighting Your Differentiator

Brands get ahead by showcasing whatever makes them different from their competitors. That much you probably already know, but the how of this whole scenario is harder to pinpoint. Some C-level suits turn to a strategist, but marketing mastermind Seth Godin backs a different approach.

According to Godin, the key to building a better brand media property is to avoid playing it safe and instead figure out how to make your content more interesting. “You need editors, not brand managers,” says Godin, “who will push the envelope to make the thing go forward.”

Good editors are strategic and largely responsible for driving results. Have a specific business goal in mind? Editors shape drafts to better conform to the task at hand. When your messaging threatens to meander away from the point, an editor can step in and tweak the content until it better adheres to the directive. Concerned that your core values aren’t reflected in your home page? Editors also look over content to see whether you’ve had a chance to shine.

There is such a thing as flawless content that is also lifeless. Cold copy never drives traffic. Bring on an editor who has a feel for your brand’s heart and soul and you have another person on your team who’s dedicated to capturing the spirit of your message rather than just joylessly adhering to the style guide.

The Importance of Consistency

The modern editor isn’t just a proofreader with an attitude but a smart and savvy brand tactician that knows how to wield content on a way that fuels max ROI. When you’re churning out content on the regular – and by all accounts you should be – it can be tempting to try and be all things to all people. Don’t.

Random acts of marketing are disorienting, and a disoriented audience isn’t inspired to take action. It’s fine to have blog posts, newsletters, emails, eBooks, white papers, case studies, and social posts all in various stages of development and publication, but each type of content needs to relate to each to each other and back to a central strategy for any of it to make sense. Editors are big-picture people who monitor flow, delivery, and cohesion, asking for rewrites or revisions and rallying the troops so that everything that arrives in your inbox commands the right kind of attention not just separately but also as a whole.

As Lisa Barone, Chief Marketing Office for New York-based creative agency Overit, puts it, “It’s great for content to be well-written and grammatically correct, but if it doesn’t connect to the larger marketing strategy than it isn’t truly serving its purpose.” Her content editors are tasked with upholding strategy and brand standards and ensuring a high level of quality control.

Barone goes on to say, “A good editor is someone well-versed in the industry and larger business goals who can help guide a writer to make sure he or she is touching on the important aspects of a topic, that they are finding the right way to engage, that they are using terms with correct context (not just grammatically correct), and that they are seeding content for reader shares from the very onset. There is a lot more to content than simply words on a page and a good editor can help guide this process.”

At Crowd Content, we utilize a three-tier editorial system that funnels content from the writing stage through editing and QA, so our clients get the best of copyediting and that strategic eye. You get exponentially more attention, and those extra steps often translate into content that sells faster and reaches farther. In other words, it fuses the talents of our visionary writers, editors and reviewers into a dynamic, multitasking Transformer-like entity that could very well save the world. Or at least give your brand the market share it deserves.

The post Are Editors Essential to Your Content Marketing Success? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Your Dashboard makes it easy and quick to see what’s happening with your recent content orders.

Recent Activity

Easily view recent activity on your account. We’ve added intuitive icons that tell you when orders are placed, picked up by writers, dropped by writers, or ready for review. Simply hover over an activity item to see quick actions you can perform for that order.

Order Status Shortcuts

Just above your recent activity, we list all orders you currently have for each status. Just click on a status, like “Ready” for example, to see all orders that currently have that status.

Easy Access to Create Orders and Add Funds

You’ll notice that the green Create Order and Add Funds buttons are shown in the same place on every page. This makes it easy to find these commonly used actions, saving you time and frustration.

Featured Blog Posts

We’re starting to publish more and more great content at our blog, Crowd Content Resources. On your Dashboard, we list the 4 most recent blog posts to keep you updated on content marketing trends, how-tos, and Crowd Content updates.

Notification Menu

A new feature we’ve added is the Notification Menu. You can view this menu by clicking on the small “notepad” to the right of your account balance.

The Notification Menu keeps you up to date on all happenings with your account. For example, we’ll add new notifications when you receive messages from writers or when orders become ready for review.

Help Menu – Your Customer Success Manager

Click the “question mark” icon that is next to the Notification Menu to view your dedicated Customer Success Manager’s contact info.

All clients at Crowd Content get a dedicated Customer Success Manager regardless of how big or small you are. Use your account manager to help with system support or to give guidance on content strategy.

My Account Menu

In the top right of your screen, you’ll see your profile image or a default image if you haven’t added a profile image. Click this image to view your My Account Menu.

You can manage your account and navigate to important areas of the website from this menu. Here is a list of the menu items described:

• Edit Image (hover over image) – allows you to add a new profile image or crop your existing one
• Add Funds – allows you to add funds to your account
• Account Information – allows you to update your contact information
• Deposit History – shows you the funding history on your account
• Low Funds Notification – allows you to set a low funds threshold. If your account balance falls below this amount, we will send you an email notification
• Change Password – allows you to change the password on your account
• FAQ – brings you to the frequently asked questions from Crowd Content clients
• App Directory – allows you to install apps and connect your Crowd Content account to partner services
• Sign Out – safely signs you out of Crowd Content

Writer Management – Profile Images and Pen Names

One of the biggest upgrades to the new Crowd Content platform is the way you see and work with your writers.

For every writer you interact with, you see their profile image and their Pen Name. You can also hover over a writer’s image anytime you see it to bring up a mini writer profile.

When viewing the writer’s profile, you can see his or her rating (from 1 to 4 stars) and perform the following key tasks:

• Blacklist Writer – blacklisting a writer means that the writer will no longer have access to any new orders you post
• Send Direct Order to Writer – this automatically takes you to a new order form with the writer pre-selected. The new order will then be sent directly to this writer.

My Content – A Comprehensive Order Management Tool

This tool not only lists your orders, but allows you to perform advanced filtering actions and organize your content into folders.

Quick Actions Give You More Control

Hover over any order to see available actions for that order. Quickly Copy, Edit, Pause or Delete an Order. Or view the History of that order to date.

Progress Indicator

Easily see how much progress your writer has made on your order. The percentage shown is based on the number of words written by your writer as a percentage of the maximum word count you specified for the order.

Note: the progress indicator is replaced with the rating you gave the writer for that order once the order is Completed.

Colored Status Labels

We make it easy for you to know what’s happening with each order by listing colored status labels. As you use Crowd Content, you become familiar with the colors and know quickly what status each order is in.

Robust Filtering Options

The filtering options here are flat out amazing. Filter by:

• Status – see only orders in a certain status, like “Ready” for example
• Folder – see only orders in a certain folder
• Quality – see only orders placed at a certain Quality Level
• Writer – see only orders from one or multiple writers
• Rating – see only orders you gave a certain rating to. For example, view all Completed orders that you rated as Excellent. Then use those writers for future work.
• Date – see only orders from a certain date range

You can also combine any of the above filters together to mine deeper into your content. To clear all filters, simply click the refresh icon to the right of the date range filter.

Batch Controls Save You Time

Click the check boxes to the left of the orders to perform batch controls. Current batch controls available are Accept, Delete, and Pause.

Drag and Drop to Organize Content into Folders

Want to move a content order to another folder? Easy! Just hover to the left of the check box on any order and then click and drag the order to a folder on the left.

Condensed View for Power Users

Are you managing a lot of content? We make it easy for power users to get the job done. Click the button with 4 lines on it to the right of “Display” in the top right.

This brings up a condensed view that lets you see more orders at one time. Despite the view being condensed, you don’t lose any functionality. Simply click the “gear” symbol to the right of any order to access all available actions for that order.

Chat with Your Writer – Communication Is Key to Project Success

We’ve made it easy to communicate with your writers by offering an instant messaging feature. Chat with your writer while you review his first draft and let him know what you think. This feature also helps when one side needs to clarify the instructions, limiting needed revisions and saving you valuable time.

Folders

Folders help you organize your content orders.

If you have several websites, or have a large website with several sections, you can create a folder for each website or section.

If you’re an agency, create a folder for each of your clients.

Advanced Order Management – Even More Control!

As you may have noticed, a big theme built into Crowd Content is maximizing control over your ordering and management processes.

After placing an order, enjoy the following tools that give you full control with every content order you place:

• Edit Orders – edit an order provided that it is still in Placed status. Edit an order to change the word count, title, instructions, or anything else. The only thing you can’t edit as of now is the Content Type (from Custom to Tweets to Facebook Posts).
• Pause Orders – this simply puts the order on hold without deleting it. You can then unpause the order when you’re ready to put it live again. Note: if you pause an order that is “Being Written”, the order will not be paused unless/if the current writer drops the order.
• Copy Orders – click Copy if you want to create an order with similar details as a previous order. By clicking Copy, an order form will appear with the exact same details and instructions as the order you clicked Copy from. You can then make any changes you want and place the order as a new order.
• View History – clicking History will show you the status history of the order. For example, it will show you when the order was placed, picked up by a writer, dropped by a writer, ready for review, and completed. This can help when trouble shooting an order.
• Delete Orders – you can delete any order that is still in Placed status.

A Sophisticated Content Ordering Form

Content Type – Order Standard Content, Tweets or Facebook Posts

With most other platforms, there is no specific Content Type for Tweets or Facebook Posts. You have to request a large word count range and then ask the writer to create as many Tweets or Facebook Posts as they can within the word count. This is confusing and lacks quality control; character counts are not monitored.

At Crowd Content, we’ve introduced the Content Type. You now have the following content types to choose from (Note: several more Content Types now exist):

• Custom – if you want a blog post, product description, article, page for your website, or any type of content other than Tweets or Facebook posts, choose Custom.
• Tweets – choose this type if you want Tweets for your Twitter campaigns. When writers are working on Tweets, all character counts are monitored and are guaranteed to be between 15 and 140 characters.
• Facebook Posts – choose this type if you want Facebook Posts for your Facebook page. When writers are working on Facebook Posts, all character counts are monitored and are guaranteed to be between 100 and 300 characters.

Order Type – Open to Crowd, Team, or Direct with Writer

The order form makes it easy to send orders directly to your preferred writer(s).

Choose Open Order if you want to make your order available to all qualified writers (based on your order criteria).

Choose Team Order if you want to make your order available to a team of writers you have created.

Choose Direct Order if you want to place your order directly with a preferred writer.

More Control over Processing Time

If you have an order that requires a lot of research or extra work, you can give your writer extra time. Simply open the Advanced Options and then adjust the Processing Time.

App Directory – Your Workflow Just Got More Efficient

We’ve partnered with some pretty big names to connect your content with services you already use.

After installing an app on your Crowd Content account, you can use it by going to the Tools and Apps tab of any Completed order. From here, you can use your apps to send completed content to partner services.

Currently, the App Directory has the following apps:

Shopify

Shopify has everything you need to create your own ecommerce store. Our app connects your Crowd Content account directly to your Shopify store. To use this app, you need to have a Shopify account.

The app allows you to:

• Order content for Product, Brand or Category Descriptions, Blog Posts, or other
• Automatically publish completed content to your store (no copying or pasting!)
• Manage thousands of Product Descriptions with ease (no spreadsheets!)

WordPress

WordPress is free web software that allows you to create a beautiful website or blog. Connect your Crowd Content account to your WordPress website or blog to:

• Automatically send completed content to your blog or website (no more copying or pasting!)
• Set content to draft status or to publish instantly
• Manage multiple blogs or websites by connecting multiple WordPress accounts

Constant Contact

Constant Contact helps small organizations grow their businesses by providing email, event, and other online marketing tools. Use the Constant Contact App to:

• Send completed content directly to your Constant Contact account
• Create a new email campaign for your completed content

MailChimp

MailChimp makes it easy for marketers to send email newsletters, manage subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. Use the MailChimp App to:

• Send completed content directly to your MailChimp account
• Create a new email campaign for your completed content

HootSuite

HootSuite is a leading social media dashboard that helps you manage and measure your social networks.

Crowd Content is fully integrated with your HootSuite account. After connecting your Crowd Content account with your HootSuite account, you will be able to place, review, and accept Crowd Content orders from within your HootSuite Dashboard!

Use the HootSuite App to:

• Automatically send completed Tweets, Facebook Posts, or other content to your HootSuite Dashboard
• Send completed content to streams like Twitter, Facebook and WordPress from your HootSuite Dashboard

My Schedules – Automating the Content Creation Process

Looking to automate your content creation process? Is the scheduling tools built into Crowd Content.

To create a new schedule, simply create an order and enable the schedule for that order. Then, to view and manage existing schedules, click on My Schedules in the main header.

To learn more about scheduling orders and to learn best practices for using the scheduler, please read Automating Content Creation: 5 Best Practices for Using Schedules.

The post Crowd Content Platform – Base Features appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

RSS has been declared dead time and again, but it’s actually still with us, and it still represents a solid method for promoting your content.

About RSS

Users of RSS reading software subscribe to the RSS feeds served by popular websites. They then get notifications when those sites publish new content. There are usually previews of the articles and posts within the RSS feed, and some organizations even provide the full text. This makes things easy for consumers because they don’t need to visit each website regularly; they’ll know whenever there’s something new that they want to check out.

Feedly RSS Web Reader

RSS allows people to stay up to date on the online resources they’re interested in without having to clog up their email inboxes with newsletters and promotional materials or follow dozens of companies on Twitter. It doesn’t require any personally identifying information or per-site user accounts. Subscribing to and unsubscibing from a feed is as simple as clicking a button. There are desktop, mobile and web-based options when it comes to RSS reader packages, and they range from the spartan to the sophisticated.

How to Make an RSS Feed

All the links and other info comprising an RSS channel are contained in an XML file. This file must conform to the relevant RSS specifications or else there’s a chance that RSS reader programs might garble it.

There are, broadly speaking, two sections of an RSS file. The first contains the name of your channel, which can be the same as that of your site, an image and other data that will remain constant. The second consists of a list of items, with links to your pages and either summaries or full text, that you’ll update whenever you add new content.

After you’ve created this file, upload it to your web server. Then add calls to action and links on your home page and other popular areas of your site so that people will know where to find your RSS channel. Every time you edit your feed to incorporate new elements, your subscribers will see them in their RSS readers.

Automated RSS Tools

Rather than manually editing XML, which can be a challenging endeavor, you may wish to take advantage of hassle-free software to make it a piece of cake. WordPress automatically generates RSS feeds, unless you disable them, but you can probably get better results by manually altering the settings. If your content management platform doesn’t create RSS channels for you, then you can explore RSS Builder, which is cost-free and open-source.

Expand Your Reach

There are several directories on the net that maintain lists of RSS channels. Submit yours to a few of them that target the same topics and demographics that you do. You’ll thereby attract more viewers to your site and grow your user base.

As a proven and time-tested framework, RSS feeds can contribute successfully to your content marketing strategy. Setting up your own RSS channel isn’t too difficult, and it will provide you with another avenue for visitor acquisition and retention.

The post RSS Feeds: Old But Proven Tech for Spreading Your Message appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

But people that rush into entrepreneurship don’t often take the time to consider the details of their business plan. In fact, there are thousands that have the same idea and without a major cost-prohibitive barrier to enter the market, competition is fierce. Here are 3 tips to make your emerging store stand out among the competition:

1. Embrace Partnerships

Many first-time online sellers fail because they try to go it on their own. The approach that brings success to a vast majority of e-sellers involves forming meaningful partnerships with more successful stores, both ecommerce and brick & mortar.

Why? Because Amazon and the like have it all figured out, as far as drawing and retaining customers. Associating with a major brand can kickstart your business, after which you can re-assess your relationships.

2. Market and Re-Market Through Multiple Channels

To get the largest return out of your likely small, starting advertising budget, you have to capitalize on opportunities to build loyal customers. This means send emails to shoppers that abandon their carts and take part in less expensive advertising strategies like content marketing in the form of blog posts and valuable email newsletters.

Your starting budget for advertising and outreach will most likely be miniscule; that’s the part of starting a new business that most people consider to be the most expendable (as opposed to, say, rent on your inventory storage) and you’ll want to squeeze every dollar of ROI out of this budget.

3. Consider the Limits of Your Products and Pricing

It may seem like an attractive option to offer deep discounts, but according to Inc., nothing makes a seller appear more desperate than frequently discounting products, not to mention the effect it has on your profit margins.

The same goes for your product range. While you may think it’s a better option to try and meet the needs of more customers, this can increase the inventory burden on your business. Ask yourself, “is it more complicated and expensive to store 1000 units of 1 product or 1 unit of 1000?”.

The market for ecommerce businesses has never been more attractive, and in turn, more contentious. To stand out among the intense competition, you’ll need to solidify your business plan in a way that gets the most out of your limited resources.

The post 3 Tips to Help Your Emerging Ecommerce Business Surge appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Somewhere along the way, however, marketers are taking this to mean that simply posting a blog or two a week is all they need to do to explode their brand’s social presence, when in reality, bad habits in content marketing could be hurting ROI.

Here are some common ways bad content can cause your brand to lose the value that content marketing offers.

1. Inconsistent or Stale Content

If your content doesn’t have an audience, it won’t yield new leads. That’s the major difference between a content marketing campaign and an SEO campaign; if your website copy is focused only on SEO, you can get away with bland writing, as long as the keywords are there.

Content marketing, on the other hand, necessitates that thought go into the writing, so that the result is content that is relevant and valuable to your current audience and hopefully, prospective new leads.

2. Writing For the Search Engines Only

Content marketing and SEO are related, but when marketers produce content for the primary purpose of courting search engine rankings, content itself drops in quality.

It’s easy to get caught up worrying about keyword density, but if the content itself isn’t robust and valuable, you’re throwing away benefits of adopting content marketing in the first place.

3. Not Engaging Multiple Channels

Maybe you see some ROI from your blog, but should you rest on your laurels at the faintest sniff of success? There’s a reason why the marketing community can’t seem to agree which content marketing channels are more effective than others.

Different brands have different marketing considerations, so it’s understandable that their lead-maximizing strategies will be different as well. Try different combinations of social media, email newsletters and valuable, sharable blog posts to better reach your audience.

4. Poor or Nonexistent CTAs

Even if your content is otherwise perfect, a Call To Action (CTA), or lack thereof, can hamper your marketing ROI.

No matter how much you spend on content marketing, you won’t see a significant increase in sales without an effective CTA.

The CTA is the bridge that turns your blog audience into a new lead and potential conversion, with a concise statement that shows your product or service’s value to the customer and link to the conversion process.

Without a careful, start-to-finish content marketing strategy, You’re leaving benefits on the table.

How do you maximize the effectiveness of content marketing for your brand, or the brands you write for?

Let me know in the comments section below.

The post 4 Ways Bad Content Can Hurt Your Marketing ROI appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

How often do you send an email straight to the trash without opening it?

If you’re like most people, it probably happens to you dozens of times every day. Unfortunately, in today’s busy world, many emails that aren’t absolutely essential are delegated to the trash can instead of claiming a few seconds of a reader’s time.

While email marketing campaigns can be very effective, some campaigns work better than others. With these tried and true tips, you can be sure your email newsletter is effective, interesting, and, most importantly, opened!

1. Make Sure Your Subject Line Is Catchy

While it’s important not to judge a book by its cover, it’s altogether too common for a busy professional to disregard emails that don’t have a compelling or important-sounding title.

In order to catch a reader’s eye and convey the message that your content is worth reading, choose a title that is to the point, catchy, or witty but still conveys the message you are trying to send.

An interesting title is an asset, but you should try to avoid subject lines that could be considered clickbait, or a misleading title designed to generate as many clicks as possible.

Although clickbait can be effective at drawing in readers, most people dislike clicking on an article or opening an email that has a completely different message than what the title implied. This creates distrust in readers, driving them away from further communications.

2. Keep Your Content Professional

Above all else, email marketing content should be high quality. While email communication is often casual and relaxed, an email marketing campaign is a big part of your online reputation and should speak to what you have to offer.

If your email newsletter is littered with grammar issues or uses text message abbreviations, your readers won’t take you seriously, resulting in a marketing campaign that does more damage than good.

By relying on professionally-written content that is aimed at the interests of your readers, you can be sure that everyone who opens your emails will get an accurate image of the prestige and reputation of your business and what you have to offer.

Many companies also see utility in HTML content with images, providing a more put together look and feel for readers.

3. Keep Content Brief and Easy to Read

Most working adults lead very busy, full lives, making reading long articles a luxury for which there is little time in the day. In order to best attract readers, keep your content short, to the point, and easy to read.

Rather than overwhelming your readers with technical language and long-winded articles, give them something they can read over easily.

Many newsletters don’t provide full articles but rather titles, highlights, and summaries from successful content marketing pieces with a link to the original blog or post. If you feel as though shortening content sacrifices your message, this method allows you to provide a brief yet informative experience to readers while still allowing them full access to articles that may attract their interest.

When handled properly, an email newsletter can be extremely effective. By crafting titles that are are captivating and content that is proper, professional, and easy to read, you can ensure your email marketing content is read and appreciated.

The post 3 Steps to Mastering the Art of Email Content appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

When we begin thinking about ourselves as small businesses, we begin to realize the full scope of that definition. We must budget, we must produce, and most of all, we must market. Marketing experts attest that email is alive and well for the 2015 freelance season, which means that freelancers must sit up and pay attention to what that means for them.

Marketing efforts are focusing on less direct, or word-of-mouth, marketing, and more on email campaigns. How, then, do freelancers use this information to increase personal success?

What Is Email Marketing?

We must first understand the true definition of email marketing. It is the online version of the direct letter; instead of fliers and newsletters to a home, a business sends the same information through a digital connection. Most of us already have this information; what we must glean from the definition is the fact that this type of marketing is easier to track than direct mail. As a small business, a freelancer can find out what types of mail are being opened and read by existing and potential customers.

Essentially, email marketing is more than its base definition: it is the newest, and among the best, tools for freelancers.

Different Types of Email Marketing

There are many different types of email marketing employed by small businesses. Freelancers have the opportunity to choose what fits their marketing plan best and engage its  -or their – services.

• Newsletters – This type of campaign is among the easiest, because it’s all about you. The newsletter is a quick update on what you’re doing, what’s coming up in the future, and any new offers your business has on the table. Newsletters are often sent bi-weekly or monthly.
• Invitation Emails – These are quick blurbs highlighting a special service from a small business. Perhaps a freelancer has a 10% off white papers special for the next two weeks. Let customers know in an invitation email.
• Promotional Campaigns – This can include coupons or encouragement to invite new clients. They are sent in the days leading to a sale, such as a coupon for a free article next month, or a coupon for free editing to anyone who refers a new client.
• Survey Emails – Small businesses use these emails to find out more about their market base. Many of a freelancer’s clients are happy to fill out a brief survey, especially the satisfied clients. Find out what makes your clients happy to recruit new clients with the same types of services.
• Lead-Nurturing Emails – These emails are sent to prospective clients. This is where a freelancer’s virtual “commercial” happens. Freelancers send these emails in an effort to convert potential clients into paying customers.
• Transactional Emails – These are simple, “Thank you for the business” emails. These are important to freelancers who want repeat customers.

Tips for Email Marketing

Tips from those who have found email marketing successful include:

1. Determine Target Audience – Random emails don’t work. Find out who you want to work with and target them through email.
2. Outline a Campaign – Every campaign must have an end goal, complete with a method of arriving there. Find out how to obtain email addresses, determine which method of email to use, track opened emails, then determine if your client goals have been reached.
3. Review – Look over the emails to find out if they are effective. If they’re not, look over your campaign to find where it is breaking down. Are your emails being opened? Why not? Are they being read thoroughly? Why not? Are you getting a positive response? Again, why not? Reviewing an email campaign is a repetitive process, but it’s necessary for a freelancer’s success. Small businesses are consistently reviewing their email strategies to ensure success; freelancers should do the same.
4. Focus on What You Have – Use email campaigns to focus on existing customers first; new customers can be obtained after the initial email campaign has proven successful. Keeping current clients is easier than obtaining new clients through email campaigns, so freelancers should use their first email campaign as a “test run” to keep current customers happy. Subsequent campaigns can be used to obtain new clients.

The post We Are Small Business – Why Email Tips for Small Businesses Work for Freelancers Too! appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Email content has the advantage of having better organic reach, but it is less likely to engage your audience. Traditional marketing content is more engaging, in part because your audience usually takes independent action in order to view that content.

Using email marketing to mitigate the organic reach limitations of traditional marketing also weakens the advantage of your website, because the audience was directed there, rather than looking for it independently. A rather effective middle ground is for your marketing to make use of a regularly updated blog.

Advantages of a Blog

The main advantage of using a blog in content marketing is that it is regularly updated. This means the content remains fresh and will generally be more engaging to your audience.

A blog can then link to your traditional marketing in an organic way that doesn’t pressure your audience. A popular and useful blog will organically drive traffic to your content marketing.

All you need to use this technique successfully is to find an effective way to drive traffic to your blog.

Synergizing Your Email Content With Your Blog

The main negative feature of email marketing is that it has difficulty engaging an audience. A good way to make your email marketing content more engaging is to create your email newsletter using excerpts from your blog.

By its very nature, your blog already receives feedback from your audience, in the form of contents, so you know what content in it is the most engaging. Include excerpts of that content in your newsletter and link directly to your blog.

This creates a synergistic relationship between your blog and your newsletter. Your newsletter offers organic reach that directs your audience to the most engaging articles on your blog and re-using blog articles decreases the time spent on making your newsletter.

While re-purposing blog articles is remarkably effective, you shouldn’t stop there. To truly take advantage of this synergy, you need to focus on making your newsletter as engaging as possible.

This means you should test various strategies with your email marketing content and pay close attention to what proves most effective. If you do this, you can combine email marketing, blogging, and traditional marketing for better results.

The post How to Synergize Email Marketing Content with Blogging appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Between business web pages, blogs, online newsletters, and the glut of new social media options, the available content marketing options are nearly limitless.

Unfortunately, there are also a growing number of hindrances to content marketing like the Google Panda update or various Facebook algorithm updates.

If the latter have hindered your content marketing attempts on Facebook, consider the following content tips.

The Facebook Algorithm Dilemma

If you have ever refreshed your Facebook page, you probably noticed that the stories in your news feed changed slightly. Some new ones appeared and others disappeared.

This is because Facebook uses an advanced algorithm to determine your individual feed. This algorithm is designed to show you posts that Facebook believes will interest you.

While the algorithm is inexplicably complex, in terms of pure numbers, the effect of this algorithm is that whenever you post, only about 6% of your friends or followers see your post.

This is frustrating for content marketing because it means your message isn’t reaching much of your audience.

Using Images to Circumvent The Algorithm

Building social media into your marketing is an effective way to better engage your audience. This makes it important to try to improve the reach of your Facebook posts. One of the simplest ways to improve your reach is to market with images.

Facebook gives higher priority to images on news feeds, especially photo albums of images. Images are most effective when they can express a message without your audience having to read the comment section.

For facebook, where memes are particularly possible, consider using a meme generator site to create images that will engage your audience.

Beyond Facebook

Facebook isn’t the only social media site where images will help improve your content marketing. Images are particularly effective at reaching disparate audience on popular image sites like Pinterest or Instagram. Avoid sites like Twitter, though, where you audience needs to click a link to actually see the image.

The extra step defeats the purpose of using images in the first place.

The post Social Media Content Tip: Use Images to Get More Reach appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The Attributes of a Press Release

An Eye-catching Headline

Kerin Foster of Marketing Land states that the best way to develop a great headline is to put yourself in your readers’ shoes. What type of headline would capture your attention? People have access to limitless information every time they browse the web. Without an eye-catching headline, your target audience is unlikely to read, or even notice, your press release.

An Informative First Paragraph

You have succeeded in catching a reader’s attention, and this is not the time to be coy. As captivating as your press release may be, it is unlikely that your reader will read every word before moving on to another headline. All pertinent information should be covered in the first paragraph: the Who, What, When, Where and Why.

A Notable Quote

Providing straightforward, boiled down facts can feel a little dry and boring. By including a quote from a notable person regarding your announcement, you can provide interest to your piece. According to Hannah Fleishman of Inbound Marketing, the quote you choose should emphasize the core of your announcement.

Contact Information

A common mistake a press release writer may make is forgetting to include the company’s contact information. Your press release should conclude with the company’s telephone number and the email address of whoever handles your company’s marketing communications.

Marketing Your Press Release

Whether you are writing the press release yourself, or you have hired a professional press release writer, effectively marketing your press release is the key to success.

Social Media

Press releases are easily shared across social media platforms. Whether you post it, tweet it or pin it, social media provides a great way to connect with your target audience.

Email Marketing

Do you send out regular newsletters? If so, you already have an effective means of sharing your press release with those who will benefit from it the most.

Website

Whether you post the press release to your blog or feature it on your homepage, your website is the prime location to share your announcement.

The post A Guide to Writing a Great Press Release appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

• Provide valuable information about current events and how they affect your company
• Present new ideas that encourage open discussion
• Educate readers about new research findings

As a white paper writer, you may feel overwhelmed with the amount of time and research that goes into creating a document that is worth reading. By using information that you already have on hand, you can efficiently create a white paper that will set you apart as an expert in your field.

Keep reading to discover five time-saving tips for writing your next white paper.

Create an Outline

When efficiency is the objective, taking the time to create an outline can seem counterproductive. However, this pre-writing step allows you to hone your focus and organize the layout. This will save you time by allowing you to quickly write your first draft.

Mirror Your Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar is a great tool for strategically planning your content and reducing stress. However, as Roanne Neuwirth of Content Marketing Institute suggests, editorial calendars can also provide an outline for your white paper. Use your white paper to tell your readers what to expect from upcoming blog posts, newsletters or videos.

Use Your Knowledge of Your Customers

If you have a strong social media presence, you have already had the opportunity to discover what topics resonate with your audience. Use the research you have already gathered to create a white paper that will interest your readers.

Repurpose Your Content

As a white paper writer, you likely already have all the information you need for an effective white paper. Use the information you have already gleaned for infographics, blog posts and product descriptions to quickly create an information-rich white paper.

Keep Moving Forward

Once you have gathered the necessary information and created an outline, it’s time to begin writing. While you want your first draft to be as smooth as possible, getting hung up on perfection will slow you down. As Ann Handley, the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs advises, one key to efficiency is embracing the ugly first draft. After all of your thoughts are committed to writing, you will have time to polish the white paper before sending it on its way.

Writing a white paper does not have to be time-consuming. By using the information you already have on hand, you can quickly create a piece that will bring value to your readers.

The post 5 Time-saving Tips for White Paper Writers appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Email newsletters are an effective tool that allows you to maintain an ongoing relationship with your customers. Depending on the purpose and goal of your website, sending out a regular newsletter can:

• Create a sense of loyalty and community among your subscribers
• Enhance your reputability in your field
• Allow you to announce new products and services
• Create new possibilities for monetization  

You may be worried that your customers would see a regular newsletter as junk mail cluttering their inbox. That is a valid concern with a very simple solution: don’t send junk mail! According to Brian Massey of Content Marketing Institute, your customers are not interested in promotional emails from your company. They want email that will educate or entertain them.

So, how do you generate attention-grabbing newsletters that will benefit your business? Where do you find email marketing content that will interest your subscribers? If your website has a blog, you probably already have a ton of great content at your fingertips!

Blog Posts Can Power Your Newsletters

Having a blog that is regularly maintained is essential to building a loyal customer base. Posting fresh content three or four times per month sends a message to your customers that you are up-to-date on the issues that matter to them.

Regular blogging also provides you with a quick and easy way to create a newsletter. Perhaps you have a blog post that sparked a reaction in your community of readers. Maybe you announced a company milestone or a new product or service you are offering. By converting your blog post into a newsletter, you can be sure to reach your target audience, even if they missed the blog update.

When you have a regularly updated blog, creating email marketing content can take as little as 20 minutes.

Making Sure Your Newsletter Finds the Inbox

Luke Guy from Convince and Convert offers several tips to help you keep your newsletters from being classified as junk mail. Among them are:

• Keep the newsletter brief
• Use the recipient’s name
• Include no more than one link
• Drop the images
• Use fresh, relevant content (it’s easier than you think!)

By sending out a regular newsletter, you can reach more customers, drive up your website’s traffic and create a stronger online presence. 

The post How to Create Email Marketing Content Your Audience will Love appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Blog writing is a powerful marketing tool for your business. With a blog, you can:

• Attract visitors to your main website
• Humanize your business
• Provide better customer service
• Drive up your sales

Because blogs are generally informal and conversational, they are a forum in which your readers will feel comfortable engaging with your business. Attract more viewers by syndicating your blog feed to social media sites. You will reach a wider audience and create brand loyalty over time.

But don’t stop there! You have invested time and money into each blog post. By repurposing the content, you will elevate your exposure, attract more readers and ultimately get more bang for your buck.

Listed here are four ways to get more mileage out of your blog posts.

White Papers are Still Relevant

According to Content Marketing Institute, white papers are still an effective content marketing strategy. To create an effective white paper, reference the responses your blog post received from clients. What resonated with your audience? Did you gain fresh insight from your clients’ responses? Convert your blog post to a white paper by further refining and presenting your original point of view.

Create Infographics

Your readers are highly visual. Converting the information in a blog post to an infographic is an effective way to convey valuable information to a wider audience. As Jeff Bullas states, infographics are easy to scan and easy to share on social media sites.

Repackage the Details in an eBook

Have you wanted to create an eBook for your website, but you don’t know where to begin? Take a look at your blog. You likely already have a selection of carefully researched and written content. Choose a topic, filter the blog posts accordingly and most of the hard work is already done.

Use Your Blog Posts to Power Newsletters

Newsletters are a great way to send customized mail to your readers. Even your most faithful readers may miss a blog post or two. By reusing a blog post as a newsletter, you can ensure that valuable information about your products or services reaches your target audience.

Repurpose your blog writing and syndicating the updated content to all your usual social media sites. You can reach more readers with increased social shares, ultimately driving more traffic to your main website.

The post How Consistent Blog Writing Drives Your Content Strategy appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

A successful influencer campaign starts with seeking out relevant influencers.

In terms of content marketing, these are people who weld the same power through various online platforms ranging from blogs to online review sites.

You want to build relationships with these discerning individuals in an effort to boost your brand and establish credibility among your target audience.

Solicit Content from Relevant Influencers 

Online influencers aren't as elusive as paparazzi-shy celebs. In fact, many influencers are more than willing to contribute a wide range of content to your site, write about you on their website or blog or simply pass on your eBook to their followers.

By turning to influencers, you get the benefit of:

• Free content from a reputable source with significant followers
• Building your brand by association with a trusted influencer 
• A steady stream of new visitors generated from your influencers' traffic stream

Identify Influencers Relevant to Your Target Audience

There are plenty of influencers out there. The key to successful influencer marketing, however, is finding influencers relevant to your target audience.

The research involved with this process can be as simple as searching on keywords and phrases your target audience is likely to be using to find you.

Google has a Blog Search feature you can use if you only want to find influential bloggers. You can also search on specific keywords on social sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter or use PR tools such as Cision and Vocus.

Prioritize Your Influencers

Once you identify relevant influencers, the next step is to prioritize your list of influencers.

Engage one or two of your influencers at a time to keep things manageable, especially if you're a smaller business with other tasks you need to perform on a daily basis outside of marketing efforts.

An easy way to rank influencers is to test the waters and engage each one in a small way. Make your decision based on how engaging they are with you and the results you see in terms of traffic.

Additional ways to rank your influencers include:

• Following them on Twitter or Facebook
• Re-tweeting some of their content that's relevant to your business or industry
• Leaving comments on their blogs

Introduce Yourself Establish a Professional Relationship

After a few weeks of testing the waters, you should have a good idea of which influencers jive with your business. Once you reach that point, send your selected influencers an email where you introduce yourself.

In a professional way, explain that you've been following them on Twitter or leaving comments on their blog. You'll also want to share a few of your collaborative ideas once you've identified topics relevant to both of you.

During your introduction, you should also:

• Include relevant stats such as how many visitors your site gets each month
• Offer incentives such as mentioning them in your newsletters or eBooks
• Delve into your stats and point out how you can broaden their audience

If anything, these examples should serve as an incentive to interact with followers and engage your target audience. The more personable you become, the more likely you are to form mutually beneficial relationships.

Finally, take time to build followers and become an influencer yourself.

The post Power Up Your Content with Influencer Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

We’ve taken this feedback and infused it into the brand new Crowd Content – a robust and intuitive content creation platform.

The new platform replaces the old one and offers more control managing content orders, greater ability managing your freelance writers, and, overall, is a lot easier to use.

A full tutorial of the new Crowd Content is below. If you don’t have a Crowd Content client account yet, we suggest you create one and check it out. It’s free to sign up and look around.

Dashboard

Your new Dashboard makes it easy and quick to see what’s happening with your recent content orders.

Recent Activity

Easily view recent activity on your account. We’ve added intuitive icons that tell you when orders are placed, picked up by writers, dropped by writers, or ready for review. Simply hover over an activity item to see quick actions you can perform for that order.

Order Status Shortcuts

Just above your recent activity, we list all orders you currently have for each status. Just click on a status, like “Ready” for example, to see all orders that currently have that status.

Easy Access to Create Orders and Add Funds

You’ll notice that the green Create Order and Add Funds buttons are shown in the same place on every page. This makes it easy to find these commonly used actions, saving you time and frustration.

Featured Blog Posts

We’re starting to publish more and more great content at our blog, Crowd Content Resources. On your Dashboard, we list the 4 most recent blog posts to keep you updated on content marketing trends, how-tos, and Crowd Content updates.

Notification Menu

A new feature we’ve added is the Notification Menu. You can view this menu by clicking on the small “notepad” to the right of your account balance.

The Notification Menu keeps you up to date on all happenings with your account. For example, we’ll add new notifications when you receive messages from writers or when orders become ready for review.

Help Menu – Your Client Account Manager

Click the “question mark” icon that is next to the Notification Menu to view your dedicated Client Account Manager’s contact info.

All clients at Crowd Content get a dedicated Client Account Manager regardless of how big or small you are. Use your account manager to help with system support or to give guidance on content strategy.

My Account Menu

In the top right of your screen, you’ll see your profile image or a default image if you haven’t added a profile image. Click this image to view your My Account Menu.

You can manage your account and navigate to important areas of the website from this menu. Here is a list of the menu items described:

• Edit Image (hover over image) – allows you to add a new profile image or crop your existing one
• Add Funds – allows you to add funds to your account
• Account Information – allows you to update your contact information
• Deposit History – shows you the funding history on your account
• Low Funds Notification – allows you to set a low funds threshold. If your account balance falls below this amount, we will send you an email notification
• Change Password – allows you to change the password on your account
• FAQ – brings you to the frequently asked questions from Crowd Content clients
• App Directory – allows you to install apps and connect your Crowd Content account to partner services
• Sign Out – safely signs you out of Crowd Content

Writer Management – Profile Images and Pen Names

One of the biggest upgrades to the new Crowd Content platform is the way you see and work with your writers.

For every writer you interact with, you now see their profile image and their Pen Name. You can also hover over a writer’s image anytime you see it to bring up a mini writer profile.

When viewing the writer’s profile, you can see his or her rating (from 1 to 4 stars) and perform the following key tasks:

• Blacklist Writer – blacklisting a writer means that the writer will no longer have access to any new orders you post
• Send Direct Order to Writer – this automatically takes you to a new order form with the writer pre-selected. The new order will then be sent directly to this writer.

My Content – A Comprehensive Order Management Tool

In the old Crowd Content, you had My Orders – an area that simply listed your orders. In the new Crowd Content, you have My Content – a tool that not only lists your orders, but allows you to perform advanced filtering actions and organize your content into folders.

Quick Actions Give You More Control

Hover over any order to see available actions for that order. Quickly Copy, Edit, Pause or Delete an Order. Or view the History of that order to date.

Progress Indicator

Easily see how much progress your writer has made on your order. The percentage shown is based on the number of words written by your writer as a percentage of the maximum word count you specified for the order.

Note: the progress indicator is replaced with the rating you gave the writer for that order once the order is Completed.

Colored Status Labels

We make it easy for you to know what’s happening with each order by listing colored status labels. As you use Crowd Content, you become familiar with the colors and know quickly what status each order is in.

Robust Filtering Options

The filtering options here are flat out amazing. Filter by:

• Status – see only orders in a certain status, like “Ready” for example
• Folder – see only orders in a certain folder
• Quality – see only orders placed at a certain Quality Level
• Writer – see only orders from one or multiple writers
• Rating – see only orders you gave a certain rating to. For example, view all Completed orders that you rated as Excellent. Then use those writers for future work.
• Date – see only orders from a certain date range

You can also combine any of the above filters together to mine deeper into your content. To clear all filters, simply click the refresh icon to the right of the date range filter.

Batch Controls Save You Time

Click the check boxes to the left of the orders to perform batch controls. Current batch controls available are Accept, Delete, and Pause.

Drag and Drop to Organize Content into Folders

Want to move a content order to another folder? Easy! Just hover to the left of the check box on any order and then click and drag the order to a folder on the left.

Condensed View for Power Users

Are you managing a lot of content? We make it easy for power users to get the job done. Click the button with 4 lines on it to the right of “Display” in the top right.

This brings up a condensed view that lets you see more orders at one time. Despite the view being condensed, you don’t lose any functionality. Simply click the “gear” symbol to the right of any order to access all available actions for that order.

Chat with Your Writer – Communication Is Key to Project Success

We’ve made it easy to communicate with your writers by offering an instant messaging feature. Chat with your writer while you review his first draft and let him know what you think. This feature also helps when one side needs to clarify the instructions, limiting needed revisions and saving you valuable time.

Projects Are Now Called Folders

A small change made on the new platform is that Projects are now called Folders. Folders behave in the same way that Projects did on the old platform – they are simply a way for you to organize your content orders.

If you have several websites, or have a large website with several sections, you can create a folder for each website or section.

If you’re an agency, create a folder for each of your clients.

Advanced Order Management – Even More Control!

As you may have noticed, a big theme built into the new Crowd Content is maximizing control over your ordering and management processes.

After placing an order, enjoy the following tools that give you full control with every content order you place:

• Edit Orders – this is a huge upgrade over the old platform. You can now edit an order provided that it is still in Placed status. Edit an order to change the word count, title, instructions, or anything else. The only thing you can’t edit as of now is the Content Type (from Custom to Tweets to Facebook Posts).
• Pause Orders – this is another new feature. You can now pause an order. This simply puts the order on hold without deleting it. You can then unpause the order when you’re ready to put it live again. Note: if you pause an order that is “Being Written”, the order will not be paused unless/if the current writer drops the order.
• Copy Orders – click Copy if you want to create an order with similar details as a previous order. By clicking Copy, an order form will appear with the exact same details and instructions as the order you clicked Copy from. You can then make any changes you want and place the order as a new order.
• View History – clicking History will show you the status history of the order. For example, it will show you when the order was placed, picked up by a writer, dropped by a writer, ready for review, and completed. This can help when trouble shooting an order.
• Delete Orders – you can delete any order that is still in Placed status.

A More Sophisticated Content Ordering Form

The new order form is still very similar to the previous order form, but offers a few key advantages.

Content Type – Now Order Tweets or Facebook Posts!

Before, there was no specific Content Type for Tweets or Facebook Posts. You had to request a large word count range and then ask the writer to create as many Tweets or Facebook Posts as they could within the word count. This was confusing and lacked quality control; character counts were not monitored.

In the new Crowd Content, we’ve introduced the Content Type. You now have the following content types to choose from:

• Custom – this is exactly what we offered before. If you want a blog post, product description, article, page for your website, or any type of content other than Tweets or Facebook posts, choose Custom.
• Tweets – choose this type if you want Tweets for your Twitter campaigns. When writers are working on Tweets, all character counts are monitored and are guaranteed to be between 15 and 140 characters.
• Facebook Posts – choose this type if you want Facebook Posts for your Facebook page. When writers are working on Facebook Posts, all character counts are monitored and are guaranteed to be between 100 and 300 characters.

Order Type – Open to Crowd or Direct with Writer

The new order form makes it easy to send orders directly to your preferred writer.

Choose Open Order if you want to make your order available to all qualified writers (based on your order criteria).

Choose Direct Order if you want to place your order directly with a preferred writer. A dropdown menu will appear to your right with the images and names of writers you have previously worked with.

More Control over Processing Time

If you have an order that requires a lot of research or extra work, you can now give your writer extra time. Simply open the Advanced Options and then adjust the Processing Time.

App Directory – Your Workflow Just Got More Efficient

We’re happy to announce the launch of the Crowd Content App Directory! We’ve partnered with some pretty big names to connect your content with services you already use.

After installing an app on your Crowd Content account, you can use it by going to the Tools and Apps tab of any Completed order. From here, you can use your apps to send completed content to partner services.

Currently, the App Directory has the following apps:

ShopWriters (Shopify)

Shopify has everything you need to create your own ecommerce store. ShopWriters is an app that is built directly into your Shopify admin panel. To use this app, you need to have a Shopify account.

The ShopWriters App allows you to:

• Order content for Product Descriptions or Blog Posts from your Shopify admin panel
• Automatically publish completed content to your store (no copying or pasting!)
• Manage thousands of Product Descriptions with ease (no spreadsheets!)

WordPress

WordPress is free web software that allows you to create a beautiful website or blog. Connect your Crowd Content account to your WordPress website or blog to:

• Automatically send completed content to your blog or website (no more copying or pasting!)
• Set content to draft status or to publish instantly
• Manage multiple blogs or websites by connecting multiple WordPress accounts

Constant Contact

Constant Contact helps small organizations grow their businesses by providing email, event, and other online marketing tools. Use the Constant Contact App to:

• Send completed content directly to your Constant Contact account
• Create a new email campaign for your completed content

MailChimp

MailChimp makes it easy for marketers to send email newsletters, manage subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. Use the MailChimp App to:

• Send completed content directly to your MailChimp account
• Create a new email campaign for your completed content

HootSuite

HootSuite is a leading social media dashboard that helps you manage and measure your social networks.

Crowd Content is fully integrated with your HootSuite account. After connecting your Crowd Content account with your HootSuite account, you will be able to place, review, and accept Crowd Content orders from within your HootSuite Dashboard!

Use the HootSuite App to:

• Automatically send completed Tweets, Facebook Posts, or other content to your HootSuite Dashboard
• Send completed content to streams like Twitter, Facebook and WordPress from your HootSuite Dashboard

My Schedules – Automating the Content Creation Process

Looking to automate your content creation process? Is the scheduling tools built into Crowd Content.

To create a new schedule, simply create an order and enable the schedule for that order. Then, to view and manage existing schedules, click on My Schedules in the main header.

To learn more about scheduling orders and to learn best practices for using the scheduler, please read Automating Content Creation: 5 Best Practices for Using Schedules.

Thank You, Clients and Writers!

We want to send a huge thank you to all of our clients and writers. We couldn’t have put this amazing content creation platform together without your feedback and support. We truly feel that a positive content community is coming together around Crowd Content and we’re just happy to be a part of it.

As always, if you see any bugs or have feedback about the new platform, please contact support or your friendly Client Account Manager. Thanks!

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