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How to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy

Whether you’re just diving into content marketing for the first time or you’ve been at it for a while and want to change up your current content marketing strategy, it all starts with building a solid plan. Believe it or not, this critical first step of developing a winning content marketing strategy often gets overlooked. After all, it’s easy to get so excited about revamping your content marketing strategy that you neglect to make a plan first.
However, this is a crucial part of the process and can’t be skipped. Laying a solid foundation by first developing a content marketing plan can help you define KPIs (key performance indicators), recognize current pain points, and, most importantly, help you to outline a workflow process for you and your team to follow so that nothing slips through the cracks.

Here are some tips for developing a content marketing strategy built for success!

Step 1: Define your goals

What is it that you’re trying to accomplish by developing a new content marketing strategy? Are you trying to generate more new leads per month? Boost your SEO page rankings? Increase your conversion rate? Whatever your goals, it’s important to clearly define them at the very beginning of your strategy development process.

Step 2: Conduct research

Now that you know what you want your customers to do, it’s important to define who they are and what they want out of their experience with your business. Getting to know your target audience by conducting market research can offer untold insights to help fine-tune your content marketing strategy.

Step 3: Perform a content audit

Take a look at all of the content marketing pieces that are currently being seen by your clients- what’s working? What’s not? Maybe a certain landing page is resonating with your target audience while another piece of content- say, targeted emails- are doing nothing to bring in new leads. By taking a closer look at what you’ve already got in the way of content marketing collateral, you can determine which pieces need to be changed and which may be performing really well already.

Step 4: Choose a Content Management System

A CMS, or Content Management System, is an all-in-one marketing platform that allows you to keep track of everything that’s going out to clients and prospects. You can create, manage, and track your content all in one convenient place, making it easier to measure your results and re-vamp content as necessary based on your findings. Try a popular CMS like HubSpot or Monday to get started.

Step 5: Generate Content Ideas

Good news: you now know what content needs to be produced to help fine-tune your content marketing strategy. Bad news: you don’t know exactly what that content should look like! Brainstorm some ideas that speak to your brand’s identity, industry, and target audience to give your content the right voice. If you don’t have a professional content writer on hand, now may be a good time to hire one!

It may seem overwhelming when you look at it, but developing a content marketing strategy can be the key to increased leads, conversions, and ultimately sales! Switching up your content marketing game is certainly worth the effort, and something you should get going on today!

Contact Echero Today!

Need help? That’s why we’re here! The Echero team can assist with your content marketing needs, from helping you develop a custom content marketing strategy to creating unique, engaging content just for you! Contact us today to learn more.

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Is It Possible Your Website Has Too Much Content?

When it comes to website content, there’s no such thing as too much…right? While having a healthy amount of content on your website is certainly important, it’s a question of quality over quantity. There is a difference between website content and good website content, and it has less to do with word count than you may think. We’re here to dispel some rumors about website content, what makes good content good, and why you should worry less about how many words are on a page and concentrate more on what those words are saying.

What Makes For Good Website Content?

When a consumer visits a website, it’s because he or she is looking for more information about a product or service a company provides, as well as some background on the organization itself. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the customer has the time or the desire to kick back and read a 1,500-word description of every single offering on the website. Good website cuts right to the chase, delivering all the pertinent information in short, easy-to-digest bites that satisfy the user’s quest for knowledge without boring them to death.

Unfortunately, many content writers- and their employers- believe that word count is the most important aspect of writing website content that resonates with consumers, and that a 2,500-word blog post is somehow more impactful than one that only weighs in at 350 words. While long-form blog content is sometimes the most necessary and effective means of sharing information, it should not be what a content writer strives for every single time. When you are shooting to fill a certain number of pages with words, what ends up happening nearly every single time is that you are bloating a piece that could have been written much more concisely, making it repetitive and boring for those who are reading it.

How Much Content is the Right Amount?

So how do you know when to go with the long-form content and when your information would be better off in smaller doses? When in doubt, follow the Miniskirt Rule- keep it short enough to cover the point but long enough to keep it interesting. In other words, once you’ve stated the basics of your topic and conveyed the information you want your readers to learn from the piece, flesh it out a bit, give it some color and voice, and shape it into the sort of thing you would be interested in reading yourself as a consumer. Try not to let word count lengths dictate your decision-making process here; some blog posts are destined to go on for a thousand words by nature while others are best left at 400. When you feel there is absolutely nothing left to write about on the topic at hand, that is usually an indicator that you’ve reached a good stopping point.

Contact Echero Today

Echero knows a thing or two about good website content, and we’re here to help you! Contact us today to hear more about our professional website content writing services.

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Creative Content Ideas For Your Website

If you’ve ever spent any time on the Internet, you probably already know this: there’s website content, and then there’s GOOD website content! Knowing the difference is half the battle when it comes to ensuring that your company’s website stands out against the competition.

Of course, in a world where we live much of our lives online- socializing, shopping, reading the news, and more- it’s easy for website content to get mundane, overused, and just plain boring. That’s why it’s essential to make sure that your site visitors are being met with content that not only informs but engages, excites, and inspires. If that sounds like a pretty tall order, it is! But with a few creative ideas, you can ensure that your website is definitely one of the good ones. Here are some website content ideas for you to try.

Go Native

Anyone can take content from another website and rewrite it to fit their own purposes (and a lot of content writers do!) If all you’re trying to do is fill a page and incorporate relevant SEO keywords, this works just fine. But for truly great website content, the kind that keeps people coming back, it’s always a good idea to offer native advice, DIY hacks, and other pro tips from a resident expert. By “native,” we mean original website content written from the perspective of an actual expert on your staff. By positioning your company’s website as the go-to place for knowledgeable advice on a specific topic, you’re likely to receive a boost in organic traffic from consumers who purposefully seek out your wisdom.

Buying Guides

As we mentioned in the example above, some good website content can come from setting your company up as the resident experts on the type of products or services you offer. Creating product tutorials, reviews, or “best of” lists to help inform and educate consumers on the variety of products that they can find will aid their decision-making process, making them more likely to think of your business when they decide to pull the trigger on their purchase.

Funny Business

We love to laugh, and we feel like everything’s just a bit better with a good injection of humor. This goes for website copy too- keeping things lighthearted, whimsical, and funny can humanize you in the eyes of customers, as well as set your copy apart as a quirky alternative to typical business jargon. Additionally, when people are entertained by what they read, they are more likely to engage with the content and retain the important information from it, which can help them form a stronger association with your brand.

Contact Echero Today!

Struggling with writer’s block? No sweat- Echero is here to help! Our content specialists are well-versed in creating beautiful original content for a variety of topics across multiple industries. If you need a hand with website content creation, contact us today and learn more about our services.

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Content Marketing Strategy

As a business owner, chances are you’ve been hearing a lot about content marketing. No matter what industry you’re in, content marketing strategy has been a huge focus for businesses over the past several years. If you’re stuck wondering how to do content marketing (or even what content marketing is), you’ve come to the right place.

About Content Marketing

In the digital age of business, content marketing is vital for reaching your desired audience. Using media channels such as your website, blog, social media platforms, automated email blasts and more, companies are able to reach a wider group of target consumers than ever before. Content marketing can be a huge make-or-break factor for a company, yet, believe it or not, a whopping 63% of businesses don’t have a content marketing strategy in place! Here are some tips for creating a content marketing strategy to drive greater potential success.

  1. Set Objectives – What is the mission of your company? What do you hope to accomplish? How many people do you wish to reach? These questions sound simple, but they define the entirety of your content marketing strategy, so be sure to answer them first. Setting goals and objectives can help you determine whether a strategy is working.
  2. Establish KPIs – KPIs, or key performance indicators, serve as measurable benchmarks to help you and your team evaluate the success of your content marketing strategy. By establishing a set of KPIs- for instance, X amount of organic search engine traffic each month, or a conversion increase of X percent- you can see where your strategy is succeeding as well as assess where it needs to be improved.
  3. Collect Demographic Data – As any marketer can tell you, knowing your audience is the key component in developing a solid strategy. By collecting data points on website visitors, email subscribers, social media followers, and more, you can better understand which channels work better than others for delivering your message to those who need to hear it most.
  4. Create a Content Calendar – After figuring out which channels to use to reach the most people in your target audience, you need to develop the content you’re going to use to reach them! Creating a content calendar is a great way to organize all the content you will be blasting across the various channels, as well as to keep track of content that still needs to be created.

Contact Echero Today!

If you feel that your content marketing strategy is in need of a little help (or if your current content marketing strategy is nonexistent), the team at Echero is here for you! We assist business owners with all things related to content marketing, from strategy development to content creation, and are happy to answer your questions. Contact us today!

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Importance of Website Content

Business owners, here’s a question: how’s your website? And before you answer that, we’re not just talking about design here. These days, it’s increasingly easy to generate eye-catching, professional-quality websites that are as user-friendly as they are visually stunning. However, the design of your website is just half the battle when it comes to attracting new customers and boosting your company’s visibility and awareness among members of your core audience. When it comes to designing a website that will get your brand’s message to resonate with the people who need to hear it most, content is key. Here are some blogging tips to ensure that you’re not just creating website content: you’re creating GOOD website content.

Find Your Voice

It’s called content writing for a reason: your copywriter is not just throwing a bunch of SEO keywords onto a blog post and calling it a day. (At least, we hope not!) Good content writing comes from a place of truth that gives a distinctive voice to your brand. A good website content writer will take a brand’s mission, values, and overall personality into account when creating the copy for web pages, blogs, emails and more. Blog posts, especially, are a great place to bring out that voice and let it shine. By staying on-brand with both tone and intent when writing your blog posts, you can ensure that your audience has a good feel for who you are and what you stand for, which in turn will make them want to choose your products or services over that of the competition.

https://neilpatel.com/blog/10-most-important-seo-tips-you-need-to-know/

Tell a Story

These days, there’s so much noise coming at us from all four corners of the internet. It can be hard to find authenticity and meaning in much of the marketing that’s out there. For that reason, honesty, transparency, and truth are some of the most sought-after attributes among today’s consumer audience. Storytelling is an extremely popular marketing strategy, and the more compelling and inspiring a brand’s story is, the better. You can use your website content to craft a true identity for your brand by taking your readers on a journey with your words and helping them to see your company not just as another business, but as something more special and real. In addition to strong, engaging blog content, try telling your story through interesting videos, infographics, and social media posts to send a message that will truly resonate with members of your core market.

Optimize Responsibly

SEO, or search engine optimization, has become quite the buzzword in the business world in recent years. The basic idea is to use specific, highly-searched keywords in your website content so that your site ranks at or near the top of a Google search performed on those words or phrases. However, there is a difference between optimizing good website content with relevant SEO keywords and using underhanded, “black-hat” SEO practices like keyword stuffing, which is writing website copy using keywords and nothing else to create a jumble of unintelligible gibberish in the hopes of ranking higher for organic search results. A good content writer knows how to sprinkle in the important SEO keywords to boost rankings without diminishing the quality of the content.

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Blogging for Beginners

If you are the owner of a small business and have recently decided to add a blog to your company’s website, congratulations! Content marketing is an exciting way to expand your target audience, increase page views and improve search rankings- all extremely helpful things when it comes to getting the word out about your brand. If you have never managed a blog before, you may have some questions on how to get started and what sorts of things can make good blog posts. We’re here to help you get started on your new blog with some insider tips on what makes good content great! Here are some things to get you going.

Continue reading “Blogging for Beginners”

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3 Ways to Share Your Expertise (Without Giving Away Your Secrets)

It’s an age-old dilemma among marketers: how do you get prospective clients to understand what you do, without giving away the secret recipe for how you do it? On one hand, you need to let people know the purpose of your business, and help them understand how your products or services can add value to their lives, but you also don’t want them to take the information you’ve shared and recreate your efforts, leaving you and your company entirely out of the picture! What to do? Continue reading “3 Ways to Share Your Expertise (Without Giving Away Your Secrets)”

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Why Content Matters

Content on your website ranges from images, to service pages to blog posts, and it all tells a story of who you are, what you do and why you do it. This is important to show your website visitors they’re in the right place for what they’re looking for, and this shows Google that you’re a trustworthy source of information. So, how do you get quality content on your website? Continue reading “Why Content Matters”