by Marianna Muscat | Aug 14, 2014 | Blogging, Content Marketing
Everyone’s digital marketing strategies look different. Content marketing, however, should be a part of everyone’s strategy. While certain platforms (such as Instagram and Pinterest) work better with certain types of businesses and industry, virtually anyone can benefit from a solid content marketing plan. Here are the top four reasons to invest in content marketing:
- Drive new leads
While PPC can give you immediate results, the ads disappear once your daily budget runs out. When you create blog post and articles, those remain online forever, giving you the ability to pay a once-off sum (either the time spent writing the blog post or the money invested in paying a copywriter to do it) and continue benefitting from the new visitors and leads it brings in.
- Build relationships and trust
You’re not a reputable company unless the internet says you are. If somebody Google’s your brand’s name or your name – what will they see? If they come across a website, a blog, active social media accounts and other content about you, they will be able to trust what you are saying and consider buying from you.
- Be a part of the buyers journey
According to Hubspot, customers now spend 70% of the buyers journey educating themselves instead of talking to sales people. This figure alone shows that you need to invest in content instead of sales people in order to reach your customers.
- Increase customer satisfaction
Research company Gallup surveyed a million businesses and came to the following conclusion: in order to create customer satisfaction, you need to give customers advice. Giving relevant advice was cited as the most important factor in creating high customer satisfaction.
Need someone to help you with your content marketing strategy? Contact us today.
by Marelise da Silva | Aug 13, 2014 | Blogging, Website Analytics
The website development needs of clients have changed a lot over the past few years. In the past, we were focusing on flash designs and shopping cart integration features, but today a lot of the more forward-thinking companies are investing in web apps.
If you have a web app, you need to track how it’s performing. There’s no way to know where your strategy needs tweaking if you’re tracking the analytics on your app. Here are few web app analytics tools that we’ve come across:
Open web analytics
Besides Google Analytics, Open Web Analytics is one of the few free web app analytics tools on the market. It is is licensed under GPL and provides website owners and developers with easy ways to add web analytics to their sites using simple Javascript, PHP, or REST based APIs. It also comes with built-in support for tracking websites made with popular content management frameworks such as WordPress. The best feature of Open Web Analytics is the fact that it is easy to integrate.
Snowplow
Snowplow is a paid web app analytics tool that I would use for a company who needs a lot of data. If you have a large application that gets used by many people and want to be able to easily interpret the mounds of data that the app generates, this tool is for you.
Hitslink
Hitslink is another paid web app analytics tool. What’s nice about this tool is that it also measures and tracks hits from social media and the reports give you clear insights without drowning you in details and numbers.
Sessioncam
Sessioncam has free and paid user subscriptions. What makes Sessioncam cool is the fact that you get “heatmaps”, which shows how your app users are using the app. You can even see mouse movements, scrolling, clicks and other gestures that are made when using your app.
Need an experienced web development company to take care of your website and web apps? Contact us today.
by Francois Muscat | Aug 12, 2014 | Blogging, LinkedIn
When it comes to social media marketing, people tend to get hyped up about Facebook ad strategies and new platforms like Vimeo and SnapChat. I’ve found LinkedIn to be one of the most effective business networking tools though. While changes in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are pretty common, LinkedIn’s changes are usually more few and far between (but usually have a greater impact).
One of the recent changes on LinkedIn is the sleeker home page. The new home page layout allows a lot of customisation and it feels faster. If I had to describe the new look and feel, I’d say it’s a mix between Google+ and Facebook.
LinkedIn announced the new changes in their blog, saying these are just the first of a bunch of new changes that users can expect.
“This is just the beginning of many more exciting, new features we plan to bring to the Homepage to offer more customization and functionality this year. We look forward to making the LinkedIn Homepage your go-to destination to discover and discuss what matters to you, your industry and your professional network around the world.”
The new home page includes the latest updates from your network and it also recommends the top three stories you might be interested in reading. If you decide to click to see more news stories, you will be taken to the LinkedIn Today page where more relevant news stories have been chosen for you.
The best feature of the new home page is undoubtedly the fact that you can engage with your connections directly from your home page. If you see a relevant post from a connection or industry group, you can comment on it right there. This makes it much easier to stay connected and keep communicating on LinkedIn.
Need help with your social media marketing strategy? Contact WSI OMS today.
by Marianna Muscat | Jul 28, 2014 | Blogging, Content Marketing
Blogs and pictures and videos are great – but at the end of the day, they need to serve a purpose. Some people might be interested in creating an army of a following, establishing themselves as an industry authority or taking on Justin Bieber as one of the top people to follow on Instagram. But most of us are executing a content marketing strategy in order to increase our bottom lines.
One thing people fail to take into consideration is the type of content various potential buyers will need at various stages of the sales funnel. It’s all well and good to have an editorial calendar filled with infographics, tweet schedules and on Friday “post something about cats” ideas, but you need to take time to get back to basics and make sure you’ve got a golden thread running through your content marketing strategy to ensure it overlaps with your company’s sales strategy.
The first funnel tier is awareness. Make sure your reader knows what you do and what you’re all about. The type of content that works for creating awareness includes blog posts, social media updates or shares, infographics, press releases, newsletters and e-mails.
The second tier is research. This is when your reader will start narrowing down their purchasing choices – and this is where you need to POUNCE like a lion, or at least provide compelling reasons why they should choose you. Content types that work well in this tier include Whitepapers, eBooks, webinars, know-to videos and presentations.
The final tier of the sales funnel is purchasing. You need to create content that not only eliminates any doubts and fears they may have, but also creates a clear picture of options available to them. Types of content to consider here include special offers, packages and prices: brochures, case studies, sales sheets and product demo videos.
Not only can we create all the content mentioned above, but we can do it with pizzazz. Contact WSI OMS today.
by Marianna Muscat | Jul 21, 2014 | Blogging, Content Marketing
We’ve written about the pains and strife involved in getting your blogs out there. You create a candle-lit, calendar-inscribed event out of writing a blog post (because we know this doesn’t happen during the day when the phone is ringing and clients are breathing down your neck), you’ve shared it on social media and you’ve even gone to the effort of finding a relevant picture because you read that your “content needs visuals”. So now what?
If you’re creating good content and want to establish yourself as an industry authority, then you need to repurpose your content. Not only does this help with inbound marketing, but it means that tens of thousands of people could potentially read your blog (and not just your friends and Aunt Edna who troll your Facebook profile relentlessly). Here are a few places to repurpose your content:
Inbound.com
The entire goal of Inbound.com’s content repurposing is to help make sure great content gets read by people from all over the world. You can set up a free account and simply post a link to your blog. Well it isn’t that simple. They do have a pretty strict set of guidelines (as any good content repurposing site should), so make sure your blog post fits the bill. Inbound’s guidelines include being “cool” (we could probably help you with that as we’re pretty hip-and-happening) and not writing self-promotional material.
Biz Sugar
If you’ve got a small business and are set up educating your readers, then this is a great place to repurpose your content. The type of articles and blogs that get posted here are generally targeted at small business owners and they include tips, tricks and how-to types of content. Check out Biz Sugar.
Reddit
Reddit has become increasingly popular over the past few years. What makes this a great content repurposing site is the fact that users submit votes to promote stories to the front page.
Need help with your content marketing strategy? Then Contact WSI OMS today.
by Marianna Muscat | Jul 14, 2014 | Blogging, Content Marketing
In our last post we explained why any blogger should consider creating an e-mail list. The answer is plain and simple and in retrospect it could’ve been summed up in one sentence: because more people will read what you’re writing about.
Regardless, we didn’t give you all the tips you need about creating a winning content marketing strategy to make sure that people actually sign up to receive e-mails from you, so here are a few tips to make this happen:
Give away a worthwhile freebie
Everyone is giving away freebies to entice people to sign-up to their lists. You need to make your freebie stand out because a one-page pdf isn’t worth the data needed to download it in the first place. Find out what your target audience would need. A simple way to achieve this is: look at your blog’s statistics to find out which posts and topics are top performers. Create a whitepaper, free webinar or something cool that they would want that relates to this topic.
Create a personalised welcome series
Don’t copy and paste the standard welcome message that robots write for e-mail list sign-ups. Write a more personal message and say that readers are welcome to contact you for blog suggestions or with questions (and include your own e-mail address, because if a reader is willing to give you their personal e-mail address then you should do the same). This creates an invaluable open communication channel with your readers.
Need help with your content marketing strategy? Then Contact WSI OMS today.
