by Marianna Muscat | Feb 23, 2016 | Blogging, Content Marketing
Social media sharing, like any aspect of marketing, requires a plan and a strategy to be successful. Building your blog audience to generate more traffic to your website is quite achievable, especially if you follow some basic guidelines.
The starting point would be to identify which social network you want to focus on. More and more pop up each month, so it’s unlikely you’ll be able to feature on each one. Using too many networks can result in little interaction, so it’s worth singling out the platforms that you think most of your audience would use. Unsurprisingly, the Big 5 of social media sites are Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn. A blog more professionally geared would get more traction on LinkedIn, but a visually heavy blog would get be better posted on Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram.
There are a number of tools out there to assist you with automation of sharing. For sharing on multiple platforms, automation is an invaluable tool. WordPress Sharing, Buffer and Dlvr.it are all great tools for getting your new posts automatically shared to a few select social profiles, so you won’t have to do it manually.
Repost your blog content – when you’ve been blogging a while, you will have a sizeable collection of articles, some of which will be evergreen. Reposting allows you to breathe new life into old content, especially if it was awesome the first time round. Change the headlines and check any details that may need updating.
Putting social sharing buttons on your blog is an easy way for your followers to share your content, but limit yourself to three – any more than this will confuse the reader and slow down your page speed.
Share lines or snippets of your blogs posts on Twitter or Facebook, without linking the full post. It’s a temptation thing – if the lines are good enough, people will go to your blog anyway. You can also share quotes, statistics or handy tips; the use of short and to the point posts without numerous attached links will be appreciated by your readers.
Use hashtags. Identify popular and relevant hashtags for your blog post and use them. Hashtag.org is a useful service for finding well-liked hashtags.
Viral Content Buzz is a free service to get social shares for your content. You join a community of people that help share blog posts. By sharing other people’s content, you build credits that you can then use to have other people share your posts.
Hopefully, with this information, you’ll be able to build a bigger audience, and drive more traffic to your website. Contact us if you’d like to discuss more options on social media marketing.
by Marianna Muscat | Feb 9, 2016 | Blogging, Content Marketing, Copywriting
With content marketing costing around 60% less than traditional marketing and generating three times as many leads, it’s no surprise that the online space is being flooded with content. The commonest forms of content marketing include newsletters, blogs and social media posts, helping companies create brand awareness and connect with their customers. Interactive content marketing is an exciting way to stand out of the crowd and to earn the attention of your audience and increase engagement.
Interactive content marketing is different as it guides the audience through a uniquely personal experience, based on their needs. For example, a quiz addressing specific issues, or an app that gathers data before reaching a recommendation are ways of creating an individual experience. It’s more engaging than traditional content, as it requires input from the audience. Partaking in a quiz or interactive white paper will keep your audience for longer than a blog post. Interesting apps or surveys save your potential customers from reading through the many articles and blog posts to find what they need. Using interactive content marketing will set you apart from your competitors – most of whom are still participating in content marketing only. Having your audience spending more time on your content and sharing it more readily gives you the edge on your competition.
One of the most compelling reasons to be using interactive content marketing, is that it creates a more memorable experience. Using content that requires the audience’s interaction will help them remember your message, make them feel involved, giving them a vested interest in seeing it through to the outcome.
There are a number of tools available for creating more interactive content; here are some examples:
- ThingLink – this platform allows users to bring their photos and videos to life through the inclusion of rich media links. By adding multiple engagement points to a photo or video, users are able to create a unique experience that encourages the user to interact for longer.
- ContentTools – offering seven different types of interactive content, this platform aims at helping businesses generate leads, drive website traffic and increase social engagement. These are:
- Personality quiz
- Trivia – challenge your audience with a trivia based quiz
- Polls – opinion based pooling tool
- Ranker – collect crowdsourced rankings from your audience on any topic
- Can you guess – informative, numerical quizzes
- Caption this – encourage engagement by asking your audience to submit a caption for an image
- Contests – collect valuable information about your audience by using giveaways from your site
- Zaption – an interactive video tool designed to engage learners by prompting them with clarifying questions throughout an educational video. A great tool for training, this type of video-based learning can be used to demonstrate new methods, operating instructions, etc. It is designed to differentiate instruction and keep it interesting.
To learn more about content marketing and how we can assist with your digital marketing strategy, contact us today!
by Marianna Muscat | Feb 2, 2016 | Blogging, Content Marketing, Copywriting
Coming up with fresh, consistent and entertaining blog ideas for your website can be difficult, especially if you’re doing it all by yourself. You can outsource some of the blog writing, or invite guest writers, but here are some tips and suggestions to improve your blog content, which should get you more traffic and boost your business.
- Write for a specific audience
Most of the time, your readers are your customers, so write content that is relevant to them and answer the types of questions you think they would ask.
- Find out what your customers want to read
Use a free tool like Survey Monkey to create a questionnaire that will help to create a list of problems your blog could address. You could also check other sites in your niche to find out what your competitors’ customers are commenting on.
- Use clever keywords and phrases
Identify the keywords that keep cropping up from customers, then use Google’s AdDWord Keyword Tool to find high search volume phrases.
- Answer your customer questions and use their comments
If you find your customers are repeatedly asking the same questions, use these for blog posts. It will allow you to go into more depth on the subject than replying to a question by email. Your customers often have good angles or questions that you could use as a basis for a blog post.
- Stay current with your subject matter
By typing your blog keywords into Google Alerts, you can receive the latest updates, tweets and news on the topics, to help you stay current.
- Use Google Insights for Search
This will show you what people are searching for and what the next big search terms will be.
- Try a series
A five part (or more) series of blog posts that is entertaining or very practical/informative, will keep your readers coming back for more.
- Don’t underestimate the power of titles
Specific is good, if you want to keep your readers beyond the first few lines. “How to” headlines are popular, as well as ones that promise lists or easy-to-digest points.
- Use images
This increases the time a reader will focus on your blog. Images offer the visual stimulation that is often needed to keep your reader engaged. Using images with humour work well to draw attention, although they should have some relation to your article.
- Make sure you don’t make spelling mistakes
Careless grammar or spelling mistakes can undermine your efforts to sound professional and knowledgeable in your field. Using txt talk is another no-no; it makes your blog harder to read. Use a spell check and proof read your work before you post it.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on your blog posts, or if you need us to help you with your blogs, please contact us.
by Marianna Muscat | Jan 12, 2016 | Blogging, Content Marketing, Copywriting
Writing from scratch is for rookies. Applying copywriting formulas will help you write faster and better. Experts in content marketing use copywriting formulas to make their work easier and to ensure quality each time.
These formulas will help you when writing anything whether it is a general web page, a sales page, an ad, a blog post or a tweet. They’ll help you eliminate the guesswork and take your digital marketing strategy to the next level. You’ll face the blank pages with courage and generate ideas much faster. In this post, we provide you with four formulas for general web content:
- AIDA
This stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.
- A – Grab the reader’s attention. This may include using a catchy headline or title tag.
- I – Draw the reader’s interest by giving them information that is fresh, unusual or counter-intuitive. This is where you show what makes you unique.
- D – Engage your readers so that they want what you have to offer.
- A – Ask your readers to take the next step.
- AIDCA
This stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction and Action. This is similar to AIDA with the addition of “Conviction.” This requires you to convince your readers to take action, by showing them that it is safe and what you have said is true. This may involve the use of testimonials, guarantees, demos, statistics, endorsements and other data.
- IDCA
This stands for Interest, Desire, Conviction and Action. It is similar to AIDCA however, more emphasis is placed on piquing the interest of the reader as opposed to grabbing attention. This is suitable for a landing page as you have already captured your reader’s attention. You only need to keep their attention and can therefore jump right into interest.
- PAS
This stands for Problem, Agitation and Solution. This formula requires you to identify a problem and poke at it to make it serious to the reader. You then show how your solution can help them. This approach is especially useful for sales pages.
Contact us today for more information.
by Marianna Muscat | Dec 15, 2015 | Content Marketing, Blogging, Copywriting
One of the points of blog writing is to do it regularly, keeping your site constantly updated, so your visitors stay interested and hopefully share your content. But even the best writers can hit a wall and be stuck for ideas for new and interesting blog titles, especially if your business is niche. So the next time you’re faced with a blank screen and no ideas are jumping out at you, try following these tips or using some of the online tools to get your creative juices flowing again.
- Bottlenose: this tool brings live social intelligence to you, from analysing all the major social networks. This is a great way to stay current with what is trending in your industry and others.
- Write a post based on a customer question, not necessarily from one of your posts. By reading the comments and questions posted on your competitors’ sites, you could find a question that has gone unanswered and it could form the basis for a blog post. You’ll establish yourself as an expert in the field, since you’ll be able to give a more in-depth answer to a question that is probably on the minds of many people.
- TweetChats: this is a nifty way to have a scheduled conversation with people from all over the world about certain topics, over Twitter. You can find out past TweetChats specific to your topic or areas of interest by using keywords, or schedule your own chat.
- Subscribe to blogs in your industry. Not only does this give you the edge by knowing what your competitors are thinking, but you could get an idea or direction from something you read on someone else’s post. It’s not a good idea to copy or pinch an idea directly, but using it for inspiration as a starting point is fine.
- Quora Questions: this comprehensive Q & A site provides the answers to questions, in the form of facts, opinions and humorous stories, by Quora members. The content from this site can be used verbatim, as long as you reference it back to the original content on Quora.
- Topsy: this social media analytic tool allows you to search by time and place, person, links to a site, set alerts and analyse sentiment for every tweet ever made.
- Alltop: this tool helps you find blogs on virtually any topic. It shows the latest five posts from each blog, so you can skim them quickly and decide which ones to subscribe to, or just use the headings to give you the start of an idea.
- Ubersuggest: this great keyword tool will show you the top 10 suggested keywords and phrases when someone starts typing into Google’s search box. You write a term in their search box and Ubersuggest will take your base term and add a letter or digit, to extract suggestions for it. Add keywords you like to your basket, or click on each word to get further suggestions.
- HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator: this is exactly what it does. You enter a few keywords or phrases and it will give you five simple title suggestions. As you get familiar with the way it works, you can tweak your phrases to make the suggested titles more relevant to your industry.
- Wriber: this content idea generator is a bit different from others, since it takes your keywords and comes up with 10 questions or topics, which force you to think in alternative directions. A great tool for writing better content.
Let WSI come up with the ideas for your blogs
If you still find writing blogs too time consuming or lack the inspiration, let WSI OMS do it for you. From content creation, copywriting and social media marketing, this digital marketing company can make it happen for you. With loads of relevant experience, the team can transform the way you communicate online. Contact us today to find out more.
by Marianna Muscat | Dec 8, 2015 | Blogging, Content Marketing, Copywriting
With over 20 000 blogs being posted on the Internet per day, there’s a lot of competition in getting your blog read. Since fewer than 25% of people don’t read beyond the headline, it’s amazing any blogs get read at all, but they do. So what is it that makes one person’s blog more interesting and readable than the next?
Anyone can write a blog (and do) but there are ways to improve your blog writing and to ensure it gets to the right audience. Changing your writing from acceptable to good, or from good to excellent, takes time and effort and there are both tips and tools to get you there.
Editing is vital for spotting mistakes and to ensure the blog is specific to your readers. You need to pay special attention to headlines, images, proofreading and social media. Here are some clever online tools to help you achieve superior writing skills:
- For headline help: 25 Headlines or KingSumo Headlines. Entering keywords about your blog will result in headline suggestions you can use or which will spark creativity.
- For editing assistance: Grammarly, Hemingway App, AtomicWriter or ProWriting Aid. These tools offer more than just checking your spelling and grammar – they can measure and adapt to your way of writing and for a specific audience. They can also check for plagiarism and offer suggestions for more diverse vocabulary.
- For images and gifs: Stocksnap.io, stokpic, Giphy or Pablo by Buffer. Images are crucial, whether they be in the form of illustrated graphs, cartoons, photographs or an embedded video. Pictures break up the text, making it easier to read and helping the reader to visualise your writing. Appropriate images can increase page views by over 90%. These tools are free and some have apps to edit your own pictures.
- Social media: AtomicInsights, Edgar, Social Media Calendar or Post Planner. These tools will help you increase your chances of exposure, by reminding you what to post, when to post, how often to post.
- For relevant content: Google Alert. Setting up an alert will ensure you get the content you are interested in, delivered directly to your inbox. You should aim to go through these daily, if possible, to stay on top of trends.
- For ideas and titles: Portent’s Content Idea Generator, HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator. By typing in keywords, suggestions will be generated to give you a way forward or to help with your creative thinking.
- To avoid distractions: Quabel, Write or Die. Both tools are to keep you focused and on track, they are customisable to help you write a blog of the correct length, desired reading time, etc. Write or Die is not for sissies – if you don’t meet your targets, alarms start to sound, spiders crawl all over your screen, or your words start disappearing.
If that all sounds too much like hard work, WSI can take care of it for you
From content generation to copywriting, social media services to search engine optimisation, WSI does it all. A broad spectrum digital marketing company like WSI can take care of all your blogs and social media requirements, leaving you more time to focus on other aspects of your business. Contact them today to find out how their online solutions can improve your business’ performance.
