Thanks to Guest Blogger Paula Pollock of Pollock Marketing Group
Launching your online marketing campaign is less about design and more about content. But, using the same content and even content writing styles throughout your campaign can be detrimental to its success. As we write a great deal of content for our clients, we have seen both successes and failures (see below) in producing content that attracts clients.
Website – This is often assigned to the site designer, product managers or the owner, in the case of small businesses. Without the input of your SEO team and CMO or marketing director, your site will need major rewrites. While you need to convey what your company does and it’s USP – unique selling proposition, you need to speak to your target audience and the search engines in ways they both like. That’s three different groups that you need to reach effectively with this content. Most companies approach content as something that needs to get done. Miss one of these three and you will need rewrites eventually to reach your online goals.
Blog – Your company’s blog is a golden opportunity to share two things: how much you know about your industry and insight into your personality. Blogs are accepted as the place a company makes more personal connections with their audience by encouraging comments, Tweets and forwarding. If you use the same tactics for your blog posts as your website content, your blog will probably be pretty dry. Even a technical company can loosen up on their blog and are often favored for doing so.
Social Media – This is your soapbox. Here is where concise, relevant and compelling titles are important. Letting your networks know about blog posts, white papers, newsletters, client acquisitions AND getting them to click through are two different things. Think of your titles as a CTA – call to action. If you have messaging rights on a network like Facebook or LinkedIn, use them wisely or you will be reported as a spammer.
Whitepapers, Reports and Offers – Here you can focus on the meat of the topic like you did when writing your college thesis. Like your blog, this is an even better opportunity to share knowledge, demonstrate your talent and your approach to your industry. Hopefully, you have these behind a sign-up form of some kind so you capture those who are truly interested. Anyone that gives you their email is a potential prospect, so consider offering content as the first step to a sale.
Online and web content development is precise today. To make it more difficult, a good writer is not necessarily good at marketing or SEO, an SEO writer may not understand your technical product, a web developer only writes code, a marketing consultant doesn’t write at all and your company may lack the time and talent to blog. Outsourcing each style of writing is challenging to manage, but it will produce better results than having a single writer try to do it all well.
(I mentioned failures in content production earlier. They were all caused by clients insisting we use the same writing style for all their web content. It’s like watching a car accident in slow motion.)
About Guest Blogger Paula Pollock
With more than 25 years of business development, marketing and indirect channel experience with AT&T, Beringer Wines, NTT/Verio, Qwest and Savvis, Paula manages the team at Pollock Marketing Group (PMG). PMG assists good companies in becoming great through outsourced marketing services. To schedule a private appointment contact Paula.
