Tag : keywords

Are You Using Keywords in Your Content Marketing?

24Oct

Whether you know it or not, you most likely create ‘content’, and engage in ‘content marketing’ every day. With online channels that include websites, sales pages, blogs, articles, social media channels, mobile apps, newsletters, and email – the use of content and content marketing is unavoidable in the sales and marketing world. If you’ve ever posted anything on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter (or composed an email for that matter) you’ve created content. The question is, was it good content?

First, what exactly is ‘content’? Very simply, it’s information that is valuable and relevant to the reader. ‘Content marketing’ is the act of getting that information to the right people on a consistent basis – with the goal of inspiring them to take action. Remember, the key to content is: valuable information, with the most common uses being on social media and blog posts.

Consistently publishing updated content on these sites, with the best wording to get your message across, is crucial to getting more traffic from social media sites and search engines, while creating a power of influence over your visitors. It will also help make YOU the person (or business) that people think of when they need the type of services your offer AND help get you found in online searches for your type of business.

The first thing everyone reading this should do, whether you have a blog or social media channels or not, is to create a list of keywords and keyword phrases that define your business. Why? These are the cornerstones of your marketing plan. They should be the words and phrases you use on sales calls, your printed material, and on your website and social media to create continuity with your overall strategy. What are they exactly?

Your keywords and keyword phrases are literally the words and phrases that your potential client might type into a search engine to find you and/or your business, or in other words – the features you provide that make you valuable and unique. It’s important that you use these in everything you do, online and offline, so that you are known for that particular set of ‘terms’. If your business deals with “elders” or “seniors”, or “assisted living facility florida” or “senior memory development 33770”, these would make your list of keywords and keyword phrases. The longer your list and the more unique, the better.

By consistently utilizing these keywords and phrases in your social media and blog posts, you will in time become more findable in online searches by potential customers, peers, other respected members of your audience.

In addition to the written word, things that can be considered good content are photos and images, quotes, infographics, videos, and testimonials to name a few. However, be sure to pepper these with descriptions and comments that include your keywords and phrases for an extra punch.

Stuck for ideas to create original valuable information for your audience? Try some of these:

*Google Alerts: Enter your keywords and Google will trawl through all of the new results on a daily basis and email you with the results. These are great ways to come up with topics that are not only topical, but also hot off the press.

*Your Staff: Ask the people within your organization. They may have ideas that you haven’t thought of!

*Competitive Analysis: Look at what your competition is writing about and see how successful it is. Then write some original blogs and articles with those topics in mind.

*Social Media: Do a social media search for your topic and see what comes up. I suggest using Twitter and LinkedIn for this as they tend to give you the most relevant results. See what people are talking about, see what they are asking about. Find some hot topics and create a blog or two around them.

One great tip is to keep a page on your computer desktop just for jotting down ideas. If you see something interesting, cut and paste the link so that you can go back and expound on it later. Be creative, explore what makes your business unique, and share it with the world! Using some of these tips will help you to create content that is effective, well received, and will

THE GOLDEN CONTENT RULE: MAKE SURE THAT YOUR CONTENT IS ENGAGING, ENTERTAINING, EDUCATIONAL AND FOCUSED ON YOUR TARGET MARKET AT ALL TIMES!

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Keywords: The Forgotten Piece of the Content Marketing Puzzle

By Christopher Tompkins

25Apr

Uncategorized

If you are interested in marketing your business online, I’m sure that you have seen the surge in articles heralding the importance of generating original content in addition to having a solid content marketing strategy in place.

Having consistently updated content published on your site is crucial to getting more traffic from social media sites and search engines while creating a power of influence over your visitors.

I’m sure that this is where you might think we would start talking about how to write blogs and market them. This is not the case.

What I want to talk about here is what you need to do BEFORE you put pen to paper (do people still do that?) and begin formulating your first blog.

Keywords.

With all of the fervor over the power of content marketing, one aspect that I don’t think is stressed enough is the use of keywords when writing your content. Keywords are how people will be able to find you, your business, your services and your products online when searching for you – plain and simple.

Keywords also help you target the RIGHT market that you want to attract to your business.

Above and beyond this, keywords can make your website a powerhouse in Google (as they play a crucial role in SEO) and when used throughout your marketing materials (offline and online) can create a continuity with your overall strategy.

I have a two step process for keywords – in order to keep it simple and to get you to begin to formulate your first list.

First, write down who your target consumer is. Then write down what your key product/service offering is. Now you will have a good idea of who will be searching and what they will be searching for.

Second you want to formulate your list of keywords. A quick way to see what keywords you are currently using is to use a tool such as Wordle (http://www.wordle.net). This will provide a good baseline to grow from.

Then think above and beyond what you think “keyword” means and think more about how your target market would search for you on search engines like Google. Come up with a list of keywords (such as “elders” or “seniors”), or keyword phrases (which are short phrases like “assisted living facilities florida” or “senior memory development”) that you think your target market would use to try to find you online.

Need some help? Use the Google Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__c=1000000000&__u=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS ). This will help you come up with some good ideas that are a bit more out of the box. Also, it will help you with coming up with more competitive keywords and keyword phrases that have high search-ability, but low competition with others in your market.

The point here is to come up with a solid keyword list that you can begin to use when formulating and executing your content strategy. The more relevant keywords that you pack into your blogs or updates, the more chances that you have in not only showing up in Google searches, but also social media searches for your topic.

Even better? This can constantly evolve with your business. I would suggest taking a look at your keyword list every month to see if it needs tweaked. A great tool to see how your keywords are working for your website (and social media) is Google Analytics. If you are currently not using this wonderful tool to monitor your website, I would suggest that you install it now. It is free and helps you see where your traffic is coming from and what potential customers are using to find you.

While the above task can be taxing, in the end it will truly help your content strategy get off and running with a bang!

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