By Laura DeVries Content Management • • • • 0 Comments

A Crash Course in Content Marketing

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action (Content Marketing Institute).

 

 

 

 

Content can mean:

  • Blog articles
  • Web pages
  • Landing pages
  • Books
  • Photos
  • Infographics
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Social media posts
  • Ads
  • Flyers and other print material

Content in any of the above formats can provide value to an audience. And if it is both relevant and consistent enough, it will drive profitable action from your audience.

 

Content Marketing Actually Offers Something Your Customers Want

Traditional marketing is becoming far less effective while content marketing is on the rise. Why?

Because content marketing provides what traditional marketing doesn’t: value and relevance.

When you understand how the buying cycle works, you can start to see where content marketing succeeds and traditional marketing falls short:

 

  • Awareness: The customer becomes aware there is a solution to a need they may have
  • Research: Upon becoming aware of a solution, the customer will educate themselves on offerings of solution
  • Consideration: After deciding they have obtained enough information about the solution, the customer will compare and evaluate the tangible solution offered by different vendors
  • Purchase: Once the customer has selected a vendor to fulfill their need, they will move forward with the transaction

Traditional marketing is good for the last two steps— offering an option, a sales pitch, and a call to action for how to buy the product or service.

Traditional marketing is also known as push marketing which is all about pushing the ad message out in front of anybody.

Push Marketing vs. Pull Marketing

In push marketing, there’s no room for the first two steps of the buying cycle.

But with content marketing, the first two steps are the most important. The aim is to raise awareness and then educate an audience on a solution they may not have previously considered.

By tapping into the first two steps of the buying cycle, content marketing does a great service to consumers by offering them honest, valuable, and relevant information. There are no strings attached. There is no luring and no shady sales tactics in content marketing. It is honest and upfront.

This is why this type of marketing is otherwise known as pull marketing. Because it is designed to attract customers through search engine optimization, which allows the consumer to find brands through relevant searches.

The consumer is pulling marketing to themselves that they find relevant and of value.

When the first two steps of the buying cycle are accomplished by you, the marketer, you have established ethos with the consumer. With that trust, you can establish customer loyalty far more effectively than any form of traditional marketing can.

So How Do You Get Started?

First, you need a plan. Like with any marketing, it’s not wise to just throw money at something and trust that it will work simply because someone told you it would.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • What am I trying to achieve with content marketing?
  • What media make the most sense for my target audience?
  • Which social platforms do my target audience spend the most time on?
  • What kind of content schedule can I commit to?
  • What kind of content should I create?

When you have answers to these questions, you have the skeleton of a marketing plan in place, which is all you really need. You shouldn’t wait and dither around until the cows come home. Having some content out there is better than having none.

So then, it comes down to execution.

You have a few options when it comes to executing your content marketing.

  1. Do it yourself
  2. Assign the role to someone in-house
  3. Hire a professional content marketer to do it for you

Pros & Cons of DIY

Pros:

  • Saves you money
  • You have full control of your brand voice
  • You have full control over your content distribution

Cons:

  • Huge time commitment
  • Takes a lot of energy away from your business
  • You have to stay up to date on the best content marketing practice like SEO and the best times to post

Pros & Cons of Doing it In-House

Pros:

  • Might save you money
  • Takes the job off your plate so you can focus on building your business
  • Might be more reliable than doing it yourself

Cons:

  • Takes away some control of your brand voice
  • Your in-house staff person may or may not be a good writer, and they may or may not have the aforementioned skills required to be a good content marketer

Pros & Cons of Hiring a Professional

Pros:

  • You get high-quality professional work
  • You get someone who’s highly considerate of your brand voice and your target audience
  • You work with someone who understands the context of a larger content strategy with your goals in mind

Cons:

  • You relinquish a lot of control of your brand voice
  • A good writer might not quite fit your budget if you’re not fully invested in content marketing

Some freelancers will charge you per hour, some will charge you per word,

  • but many professionals with marketing experience will charge per project

Interested in learning more? Email us at LauraD@CommCoreMarketing.com or call 314.308.0799.

By Laura DeVries Marketing • • • 0 Comments

What is SEO?

Search engines, like Google, use search algorithms to rank page results that come up when you put in a question or keyword. We try to optimize our content to appeal to or influence these algorithms with SEO techniques. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is simply the act of attempting to improve search engine rankings by showing relativity and their authority. Higher ranking can mean more web traffic, and more web traffic means a better shot at creating conversions.

Relativity is what Google deems what you would most likely find relevant as results to a given search term. Authority has to do with the number and quality of links from other pages. It’s kind of like an Internet recommendation—the sites with more and higher quality links have more trust and credibility than ones that have fewer links.

 

Mobile-friendly

However, relativity and authority are not the only factors Google’s algorithm cares about. The developers at Google are always working to update the algorithm so Google becomes an even better tool to us. Since everyone started using smartphones, Google decided a couple of years ago to add “mobile-friendliness” into their algorithm.

That means sites will be ranked lower on Google if their site doesn’t have a readable and easily usable layout on a smaller screen.

So, how do you optimize your rankings on Google?

  1. By creating content that uses words and phrases people use when searching for products and services related to your industry
  2. By having your content linked and shared

In simple terms, you’re trying to establish relevance and authority within your industry on the search engine.

 

Keyword Research

When you create content that really offers something useful to the market of interest, you’re doing a great service to your target market. They’re getting good advice from you—for FREE! People love getting valuable information for free.

To make this valuable and free information more accessible, we do research to find out which keywords and key phrases are most optimal to be used in your content so that people who are interested will have an easier time finding it. Hence, more traffic!

You might be thinking “well, hey I know what words and phrases my target market is using. I’ll just load my content up with these words!” Not a good idea. This is called keyword stuffing, and Google will penalize your site in the search rankings if too many of the same words or phrases end up on the page together, or too close to each other.

Google isn’t stupid. The algorithm helps it read your content so it can rank it for user experience. Ultimately, search engine ranking all comes down to user experience.

Keywords are just one on-page factor that contributes to SEO. Other things to consider include:

  • Slug (this is the part of the URL that comes after the site name.)
  • Title tags
  • Meta descriptions
  • Header tags
  • Alt tags (tags on images)
  • Internal links

 

Create Authority by Creating Value

When you get more traffic, more people will want to share the valuable information you have to offer. Google will take note of this and say “Hey, this site must have something of value to people, we better put it up higher in the rankings so it’s easier to find!”

And just like that, you’ll have more authority on Google. But you can’t just be shared or linked to by any old website. You could have 10 really poor quality websites linking to your content and that wouldn’t mean as much to Google as one really high-quality website linking to your content.

 

Linking Structure

In fact, if you do have poor quality websites linking to your content, Google might actually penalize you! Why you might ask? Because years ago before Google ranked sites on quality, everyone was trying to get as many links to their website as they could to manipulate search results.

Google caught on to this and put a stop to it. Now you can’t have any old spammy site linking to you. You have to have sites with good authority linking to you. Just like with people, in the search engine ranking world, you are only as good as the company you keep.

This is called backlinking. In addition to backlinking, other off-site ranking factors can include:

  • Citations
  • Reviews
  • Social traffic
  • Paid search results

(Yes, your paid ads will affect your organic rankings!)

 

Conclusion

Don’t get on Google’s naughty list, do SEO the right way. (Also known as white hat SEO.) Create valuable and useful content with researched keywords and phrases, strong links, and thoroughly optimized on-page elements—content so good that people have to share!

 

By Laura DeVries Company Branding • Content Management • Marketing • • • 0 Comments

Is Your Content Good Enough to Cut Through the Noise?

At this point, you get it: content is integral to your marketing efforts. You probably understand that it builds a foundation on which you can build your business because it gives you credibility and authority.

But to what ends are you creating this content?

At one point or another you’re going to hit a wall with content creation and wonder what this is all for. If you don’t know the answer to why you’re creating content, your passion and thoughts and ideas are going to dry up and fade away.

The reason behind your content creation should lie much deeper than to simply check off a box on a list of things to market your business well.

Your content is an extension of yourself— the written and spoken pieces of yourself that will stand out amongst the noise of all the other content out there. 

So what do you want said?

 

If your voice isn’t heard, it doesn’t exist

It’s harsh but it’s true. There are plenty of voices out there and most of them are just adding noise. We can all agree that to at least be recognized, our voices need to be heard.

The culture, the value, the methodologies, and the things that go on behind the scenes in business are the things that really matter. If these things only exist inside your head, that’s fine and dandy, but if nobody knows about it, it doesn’t exist.

So you have to create content for the sake of being heard, for being seen, and for adding something of value to this world. Documentation is not a checkbox, it’s a means to creating something bigger than yourself.

That being said, if that “something bigger than yourself” isn’t seen or heard, it cannot actually be bigger than yourself.

 

Video is the best way to communicate your voice

The best way to get your voice out there and heard is through video. Period.

You may think this whole video marketing thing only applies to people who are extroverted and outgoing, but that’s not true.

There’s personality inside of everybody. You don’t have to be an off-the-wall, energetic person just to justify doing video. It’s okay to be yourself on video everyday.

Every single platform out there is tailoring to video. So if you’re going to create content that resonates, then you have to be on the cusp of what’s actually happening. Communication is never going away and it is always evolving.

This means your brand will forever have to learn how to communicate effectively. And in this modern day, that means being on video.

 

Consistency is the means to an end

Consistency is a marketing strategy. Just doing it once or twice isn’t going to work.

And it’s not just about staying consistent, it’s about retaining attention. Sure, your consistent videos may draw new attention, but are they retaining that attention?

That consistency is merely a strategy for building something bigger. There’s no guarantee you will retain attention just because you show up regularly.

You have to create that reason for people to show up.

 

Give your audience a reason to keep coming back

You have to strategize how you’ll retain attention. Don’t be that brand that fades out over time.

If you look at what’s going on inside your content strategy right now, is it driving people that show up multiple times a week? And if there are people who do show up multiple times a week, how many more can you get to do the same?

Your strategy for retaining attention is simple: develop authentic relationships with people using your content.

 

Give yourself a reason to keep creating content

If you want to be an ever-flowing source for content, you have to know why you’re creating it in the first place.

So is your content good enough to cut through the noise?

At the end of the day, you’re not just creating content to knock out your agenda or your client’s agenda. Where’s the greater meaning in that? We’re in business to tell our stories because these stories are worth being told.

So what are you really doing? If you’re just here to own a business, that’s all your content will communicate. Document what you want remembered.

 

Following through with your content

Are you inspired to create your content? Maybe so. Will you be just as inspired a week from now? A month? A year? Maybe not.

When you get all wrapped up in your to do list and your emotions, you exhaust yourself. You lose sight of what really matters.

So ask yourself: why are you creating content? Are you doing it because that’s what you’re “supposed” to do? Or are you creating it because you truly want to resonate with your audience?

Think about it. It’s not something you’re going to figure out after one day. It’s a continual process you work on everyday.

And as you figure out what you’re leaving behind, continue to document. Don’t just document the good stuff, document the bad stuff too. The best content is formed from storytelling.

So keep on documenting for the sake of something greater, and you will produce amazing content.

By Laura DeVries Marketing • Social Media • • 0 Comments

5 Free Tools to Help You Optimize Your Social Media

Overwhelmed by social media? Struggling to keep up with an online presence? At times, we all struggle to keep up. It’s a time investment. That’s why it’s helpful to have tools that make the task of managing your social media a little easier.

Here are five free tools you should know about:

 

  1. Evernote

 

Evernote is an app and web extension that enables you to clip web pages and images, organize notes, and find text in images. It also has a messaging feature so that you can discuss and share your notes with your team. Evernote is almost like an Internet notebook.

 

  1. WeTransfer

WeTransfer is a web-based file sharing service. It’s as simple as entering the recipient’s email address and the files you are sending. WeTransfer allows up to 2GB to be sent for free. It comes in super handy for quickly sharing content to schedule on social media. 2GB is a lot of data to be able to send quickly for free!

 

  1. Buffer

Buffer is a useful tool for scheduling and publishing posts across multiple social platforms. It also features analytics and allows for multiple users to collaborate at once. You can schedule posts for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. If you use multiple social accounts, scheduling posts can be done just once by clicking on the desired social channels.

 

  1. Canva

The easiest way to make quick graphics is Canva. Even if you aren’t much of a graphic designer, it’s easy to create beautiful branded graphics. Canva has many easy-to-use features and you can even create graphics with sizing for all and lets you create graphics with sizing for all the different social platforms.

 

  1. Grammarly

 Grammarly is a web extension and app that edits. It empowers you to edit everything you type – from work documents to your emails to your social media posts. This is the easiest way for you to improve your communication. No more excuses for grammar mistakes!

 

Conclusion

Don’t stress about your social media! Take advantage of the free tools available to you and look around to see what else is out there. You might be surprised by what you can do for free!

By Laura DeVries Marketing • • 0 Comments

Local Women Owned Small Business Entrepreneur Graduates from VISION St. Charles Leadership Program

DeVries portrait. May not be used or reproduced without permission.

Local Women Owned Small Business Entrepreneur Graduates from VISION St. Charles Leadership Program

 Laura DeVries, founder and principal of CommCore Marketing, LLC and 2017 recipient of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council’s Women Owned Small Business certification, graduates from the VISION St. Charles County Leadership Program.

 The VISION St. Charles County Leadership Program’s mission is to educate community and business leaders by providing experiences that will increase awareness, develop leadership skills and motivate participants to be actively engaged in St. Charles County. 2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the program.

 DeVries was selected as one of 30 applicants to participate in the 9-month program. “The program changed my perspective on everything,” states DeVries following her April 26, 2018 graduation ceremony. “As an independent company, I didn’t know what was happening in my own back yard. The VISION program changed that by putting me in touch with a phenomenal network of people, events, and settings I otherwise never would have encountered.”

 An element of the VISION program is to create a class project. DeVries’ group developed the Protégé Professional Mentorship Program whose purpose is to enhance the leadership qualities of St. Charles County’s emerging workforce. Its primary function is to match mentees (protégés) with mentors (luminaries) to help teach, develop, and grow future leaders.

 “Through the leadership program, I’ve become a better business owner and more involved in the community. It’s been an emotional, life-altering experience for me.”

 For more information, contact Laura DeVries, CommCore Marketing, LLC at laurad@commcoremarketing.com and 314.308.0799. For more information on the Protégé Professional Mentorship Program or to participate as a protégé or a luminary, visit www.visionprotege.org

https://commcoremarketing.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauradev

https://www.facebook.com/CommCoreMarketing

https://twitter.com/CommMkt

By Laura DeVries Hiring • Uncategorized • • 0 Comments

Need A Little Help? Hire A Freelancer!

There’s no doubt the work landscape has changed with the rise of the internet. Unprecedented connectivity has allowed us to break free of the 9 to 5 work schedule and commuting to an office space. It has also yielded a growing workforce of “alternative workers.”

Alternative work is characterized as unsteady or temporary— such as work as an independent contractor or through a temporary help agency (Quartz, 2016). Businesses everywhere are hiring more freelancers as opposed to full-time workers. Why?

 

Saves You Money

 When you’re only in need of help for specific projects, why hire somebody to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? A full-time employee with salary and benefits can be expensive. Whether a freelancer charges you by the hour or a flat monthly retainer fee, a freelancer is far less of a cost than a full-timer.

You can actually save 20-30% a year by hiring freelancers. Yes, even with the higher hourly and flat rates of freelancers they are less expensive to hire!

 

More Flexibility

 Freelancers don’t need to adhere to a 9 to 5 work schedule, so they have more flexible work hours. That means you have someone to take care of work beyond your business hours such as engaging on social media, responding to emails and messages, and making website changes and tweaks.

 

Expertise

When you hire a freelancer, you’re hiring someone who specializes in a field or fields and has spent time honing their craft. You don’t need to invest your time and resources into training this worker like you would with a new full-time employee— or teaching yourself the skills you need to do it yourself.

Here are some great jobs to outsource to freelancers:

  • Writing, blogging, website content creation, marketing content creation, or editorial management
  • Web design
  • Graphic design
  • Social media management
  • Marketing strategy
  • Virtual assistance
  • Coding/web development
  • PR/influencer outreach
  • Photography
  • Video production

 

Fresh Ideas & Quality Work

Sometimes it’s helpful to just get a pair of third-party expert eyes on your projects who are willing to bring their fresh perspective to the table. Freelancers who have been working independently for awhile tend to have a variety of experience and can therefore offer something unique to your business.

Plus, because freelancers make a living off of repeat work, you can be assured that a good freelancer will communicate well, have good customer service, and strive to give you their best work. Freelancers have to continuously prove their worth in order to maintain their job because they’re not permanently on your payroll. Don’t you want an employee that’s held more accountable to the quality of the work they promise to deliver?

 

Less Risk

Because freelancers are not technically employees, they don’t have the same rights and legal obligations that salaried employees do. If you find that a particular freelancer just isn’t a good fit, they are easy to replace. There are no shortage of freelancers out there and you can shop around to find one that you can form a strong working relationship with.

 

Conclusion

 If you need some extra help with some projects in your business, you should strongly consider hiring a freelancer. It’s a low-risk, low-commitment option to get a job done by a specialist with experience.

If you’re in need of a freelancer referral, get in contact with Laura for a solid recommendation.

By Laura DeVries Marketing • • 0 Comments

9 Tools for Optimizing your Social Media

By now you know that social media for your business is a must but, if you have any experience with it at all, you’re probably aware of how time consuming it can be. Managing your social sites can be even more cumbersome than managing your website.

Luckily, there’s no shortage of tools out there to help you manage your social strategy. Here are nine to get you started:

 

  1. Evernote

What It Does: Evernote is both a web extension available on most browsers and an app. It allows you to clip webpages and images, find text in images, and keep all your notes organized. It also has a messaging feature so that you can discuss and share your notes with others.

The plus and premium versions offer features like saving important emails and annotating pdf files. You can essentially build your own web database with this software and compile a rich resource of content to use on social media.
Who Else is Using It: 200 million users

 

  1. Feedly 

What It Does: It’s a content marketer’s dream. Feedly aggregates content from web browsers and mobile devices and compiles it into useful news feeds for the user to customize and share. You can monitor news by getting keyword alerts from Google, and it even connects with various softwares like Evernote, Slack, and Trello to optimize business usage.

Who Else is Using It: MIT, Zendesk, Foundry Group, and 12 million other users

 

  1. MeetEdgar

What It Does: This is a social media management software that you definitely need to know about. MeetEdgar uses and reuses your best content to optimize post views. Edgar offers a categorized library with types of content. You can then schedule the type of content to post at the right time on the right social channel and Edgar will take over from there, week after week. Then Edgar stores the content for later use so he can share it after he runs out of material thereby optimizing post views.

Who Else is Using It: Neil Patel, DigitalMarketer, CopyHackers, Canva, ProBlogger, Foundr, and thousands of other users

 

  1. Sprout Social

What It Does: Like MeetEdgar, Sprout Social is a social media management software with features including a unified Smart Inbox, social CRM tools, advanced scheduling tools, social media monitoring, sophisticated analytics, and team collaboration tools.

Who Else is Using It: UPS, Ticketmaster, Stanford University, Bentley, Hyatt, Evernote, Grubhub, and 17,000 other users

 

  1. WeTransfer

What It Does: WeTransfer is a web-based file sharing service. It’s a really simple platform that only requires your recipient’s email address(es), your email address, and the files you are sending. You can send files as big as 2GB for free.

This is a great tool for quickly sharing files to schedule for social posts.
Who Else is Using It: Enough users to send 10 billion transfers in 2016

 

  1. Iconosquare

 What it Does: This is the go-to tool for scheduling Instagram posts. What stinks about scheduling Instagram posts is that because Instagram doesn’t share their API, auto-posting is not an option. With Iconosquare, however, you can schedule posts and get notifications when it’s time to post. Plus, the analytics are some of the best and most in-depth out there for the platform.Who Else is Using It: FourSquare, KemperSports, Krupp Group Public Relations

 

  1. CoSchedule

What It Does: CoSchedule is a social media management tool, but it’s also a very powerful collaborative calendar. You can organize all of your social media posts, content, events, and tasks in one place. Plus, the ReQueue feature finds optimal posting times and fills in the gaps in your social calendar with your best performing posts.Who Else is Using It: Convince & Convert, Borshoff, Foundation Recovery Systems, Florida Realtors

 

  1. Buffer

What It Does: Buffer is a handy tool for scheduling and publishing posts across multiple social platforms. It also features analytics and allows for multiple users to collaborate at once.Who Else is Using It: Fortune Magazine, Business Insider, About.com, Seattle Times, the Denver Broncos

 

  1. Canva

What It Does: If you want to make quick and easy graphics but you’re not much of a graphic designer, this is the perfect tool for you. Canva is loaded with easy-to-use features and lets you create graphics with sizing for all the different social platforms.

Who Else is Using It: Over 10 million users

 

Conclusion

No matter what tools you decide to use to help manage your social media, make sure you take advantage of the many free tools out there. This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to helpful software!