CompuKol Connection » Web Content

Use SEO as a Tool to Satisfy Clients

Carolyn Cohn — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an extremely valuable tool to give to your clients so that their business capabilities are enhanced and so that they have a greater chance of succeeding through their online business capabilities and interactions.

Please forgive the constant repetition of the phrase “Content Is King”; however, truer words were never written. The way that you and your business will succeed through your social media interactions is with your content. Of course, it goes without saying that your content has to be well written, exciting, and informative. The fact is that you have tremendous capabilities when it comes to providing your clients with valuable content. The big question, now that you have the content to share with your clients, is how you truly give them what they want and need in order for them to succeed in their businesses.

Find out what they want and need

Sometimes the most simplistic approach is the most effective one. When it comes to clients, the majority of them won’t mind if you ask them what they want. In fact, it will probably make them happy to know that you are definitely putting their needs first by asking them how you can solve their problems. A great first step when it comes to gathering information about what your customers want and need is to send them a survey (through a free survey tool like Survey Monkey or Zoomerang). Once you have signed up for one of those services, you will need to create some questions, such as

How can you help them to run their business more effectively?
What do they consider the most valuable among your products and/or services and why?
Exactly what do they lose sleep over when it comes to their business?
What improvements would they like to see when it comes to your business offerings?

Your questions should be clear and concise and, of course, they should focus on the needs of your particular target market. There is nothing worse for the recipient than long-winded and/or numerous questions. You may also want to consider offering an incentive as a reward for taking the time to answer your survey (such as a discount coupon, free gift, etc). This will make your clients happy and it will cause your relationship to grow stronger.

The responses to your survey

After you have gathered the responses to your survey questions, you need to study them very carefully. Be prepared to receive both positive and negative comments. As painful as it may be to receive negative comments, you should be open minded and use them as a learning and growing experience for your business. Those comments may make you aware of an issue that you didn’t know existed. You can’t fix something that you don’t know about. As a result, you will be improving upon your existing offerings and presenting superior products and/or services. You should ask yourself the following questions based on the results of the survey:

What additional services can I provide to my clients based on their feedback from the survey?
What specific changes can I make to what I am offering?
How can I fulfill my clients’ needs in a unique fashion?

Once you have come up with answers to those questions, it will be time to take action. With the feedback in mind, you can provide effective and helpful content that the search engines will love. The content should contain what offerings from what the clients asked for. If you are at all unclear about how to focus your content in that direction, your hints are in the feedback from your clients (look for the strongest and most prevalent keywords and key phrases).

SEO content writing results

After you have formulated your plan and have added the effective content to your website (or other elements of your web presence), you need to find out if what you did was effective. Keywords and key phrases are at the heart of what is important when it comes to content and SEO. The way to truly measure the results is by looking at an analytics tool (such as Google Analytics). This will tell you where the clients are going.

Once you have identified that information, you will be able to understand what your clients want and need. There is no better source than your clients to know what you need to do in order to make them happy.

Conclusion

SEO is an extremely important and useful tool when it comes to the success of your business. It isn’t just an acronym that people utter with no strength behind it. It is a critical part of your business’s success when it comes to online interactions and online relationships. The more valuable the information that you share with other people is, the stronger and more long lasting your relationships will be. That also means that the quality of your SEO must be top notch. Of course, that will ultimately translate into more success.

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Honing Your Writing Skills Through Social Media

Carolyn Cohn — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Now that you are writing content and posting it on your chosen social media channels, your writing skills are bound to be improving. Even if you were a great writer before, social media can help you become even better.

When you write content for business, your approach to the language should be totally different than it is if you are posting content for personal use. The language that you use for business is much more formal than when you are sharing it with friends and family. The chances are great that the quality of your writing is a lot better now than when you first started writing and posting your content. The approach that you now take is much less selfish and focuses much more on other people. It is geared to reaching out to them and addressing their needs and wants. The following points may illustrate the differences that you see from your original writing to your writing style now:

More “them” and less “you”: You now write a lot less about what you need and want and how wonderful you are. Instead, you gear your writing toward how you can help other people to solve their problems. In other words, you practice the marketing principle of “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me).
Clear and concise: Your writing used to be verbose and unending. Now, you write clearly and concisely. You choose your words very carefully, knowing that your readers don’t have the time or the patience to read encyclopedias. At the same time, you want to give them something of value that they can benefit from.
No editing required: You no longer see the value in big words that are only used for the sake of appearing impressive. They serve no purpose for your readers (or, in turn, for you). Knowing (or hoping) that your content will be shared by others, the last thing that you want is for someone else to have to edit what you post in order to make it suitable to share with other people. If your content needs to be edited, people will not make the effort as frequently to share it as they would if all they had to do was push to button to send it to other people.
Social media appropriateness: Writing content for social media is very different than writing content for any other medium. You are now able to effectively communicate your ideas in short and compelling ways. If you have a lot more that you feel you want to write on any given subject, you use a different forum (such as a blog or Ebook) to do so.
No more writer’s block: You used to experience writer’s block quite frequently. Now that you have been writing for a while, your creative juices are flowing more easily than ever before. One of your biggest sources of inspiration can be what other people are writing. Ideas for your content can come from many different sources.
Interactive discussions: You are involved with a lot of interactive discussions based on the content that you are posting and sharing. Those discussions (on many occasions) result in ideas for more content. People love to know that their needs are being met and that their interests are being satisfied. If you write on topics that other people tell you they would like to read about, you will be building strong relationships and they will eventually become loyal customers of yours.
Write everyday: The more you write, the better your writing skills will be. If you make it a point of writing something every single day, you will find that the effort will pay off for you. By writing everyday, you are forcing yourself to evaluate your work carefully and really hone your skills, including identifying both your strong and weak points.

Conclusion

As important as it is to be persistent and consistent when it comes to your writing online, it is also important to make sure that you manage your time effectively when it comes to your involvement in social media. You should make a commitment for a certain, finite amount of time and stick as closely to that as you possibly can. When you are not interacting (or doing other important, work-related, necessary things), you should continue to hone your writing skills. The more you write, the better a writer you will become. Other people are bound to appreciate the quality of your writing and you will be tremendously proud of what you have accomplished.

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Being Mindful of Appropriateness of Online Content

Jonathan Cohn — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

You post content on a regular basis and you are sensitive to what you can and cannot appropriately post online. With that in mind, you should share your knowledge with others who are not as aware of what to do.

Discretion and a refined approach

Some subjects and even the delivery of certain subjects are appropriate and acceptable when presented in certain ways and some have the potential of offending other people. Of course, first and foremost, always be polite. You should always try to understand how your words will be received. Sometimes, the inappropriate content is screamingly obvious and sometime it is more subtle and you need to sit and contemplate whether it is acceptable to share it with other people or not. The last thing that you want to do is offend others or violate some online etiquette rule (written or just commonly understood).

There is a common misconception that it is acceptable to post certain content through social media channels that is clearly not appropriate in any other medium. Well, it is actually not acceptable through social media channels either. Social media has given people the opportunity to hide behind what they regard as a protective shield. They feel that whatever they post is ok and that there will never be any repercussions from that sort of communication. It isn’t that the people who are posting such content are bad people who have no idea how to distinguish right from wrong. The issue is that the same social skills and finesse that apply to face-to-face interactions don’t necessarily apply in the same way to online interactions. The behavior is still being honed for online interactions and it may take a while longer until the behavior has been refined to its final version.

Social media unfortunately doesn’t come with an established set of written rules so the code of behavior is still being established. Because of the nature of social media and the way in which members of social networking communities interact and behave online, the relationships that the people share are bound to be different than face-to-face interactions are and the way in which people relate to each other in person is different than the way that they relate to each other online.

The age of communication

The age of communication is upon us and the young people of today (Generation Z—people born from the mid-1990s until now) must be educated and nurtured in an age when communication is very different than it ever was in the past. For older generations of people, behavior when it comes to socializing online isn’t difficult and a great deal of the behavioral decisions are driven by common sense. When it comes to online privacy settings for friends, family members, and colleagues, it is simple to know what and what not to share with certain people. The broad rule is that every piece of content with which you have a connection should be socially acceptable and there should be nothing in there that could hurt you in any way. With the younger generations, don’t assume that they will automatically understand what is and isn’t totally appropriate.

The way in which younger people communicate seems inappropriate at times (at best) and crass or even damaging (at worst). The problem with that type of communication is that it goes beyond the person who is actually doing the communicating and is considered a reflection on other people who are associated with that person (parents, friends, etc).

The reality of perception

We all create perceptions of ourselves (consciously or subconsciously) and whether those perceptions are true or not, they are definitely someone’s reality. Although there is an expectation that teenagers are still learning how to behave on their journey to maturity, it is important to teach them what is acceptable and what is not acceptable online and creating a negative perception may have long-lasting effects that they really shouldn’t have to be faced with.

Conclusion

Whether a code of ethics and etiquette is written down or merely understood, it is just as real. Everyone online has to play by the same rules and the education is a critical part of the success of online communications. The fact is that social media, social networking, and online interactions are here to stay. Everyone just needs to make sure that their approach to online communication is done in the best way possible and in a way that is never offensive or insulting. If you treat people politely and respectfully, they will react positively to you and will react favorably to what you are saying. Remember, you really do catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

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Turning Data Into Content Through Social Media

Carolyn Cohn — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Data as it relates to your business can be used in several ways and serve many different purposes. From a marketing perspective, data can be turned into content and published and syndicated.

Of course, the next question is how to turn the data into content in the most effective way possible.

The first step

The first thing that you should do when you want to turn your data into content, which you will then share through social media, is to look at your keywords and how effective they are at drawing web traffic to your business. Once you have identified your strongest and most effective keywords, you should concentrate on the tweets that drew the most attention and the other social media updates that attracted the greatest number of people. With Twitter, you can identify the most popular tweets through lists. Because of the large volume of content, people don’t have the patience or the time to read everything so if you give them something that they can skim, they will usually be willing to skim to find information that is of interest to them.

Gathering a variety of concepts

There are several different ways to share your content though social media. There are some approaches that are basic and involve common sense and there are others that are more complex and not for everyone, depending on your particular business and your particular business approach. The approach that you use should be geared toward your particular target audience. For example, if you write an article and send the title to many different people and places, the result will be that it will pique the interest of other people enough to want to go further. It is an excellent introduction to what will come later, which is the sharing of the actual article. Many people are interested in short, quick bits of information that they find compelling and that stick with them.

Turning data into content

When you actually turn your data into content is when you truly demonstrate just how creative you are. As you are going through your data and analyzing what you have collected, you will begin to identify which information is appropriate to share and you will start to be able to pick out the gems that will be most valuable in the eyes of other people. It is very important to remember not to seem as though you are trying to sell something by sharing the information online. You will see that the data that you are expressing through your content will be fascinating to other people because they will be able to apply at least some of the concepts to their own businesses and they may be able to use the information to help their businesses to become even more successful.

The way that people communicate

Customers and potential customers reach out to businesses in very different ways than they did in the past. With the social media revolution, when a person is interested in a particular product or service, the first thing that they do is to search for the product or service on one of the many search engines. Next, they go directly to one of the websites that appears toward the top of the search engine page. Once they have visited the website and have determined that they like what is being offered, they will try to communicate more directly with the people who run that particular business. Their third vehicle of communication is often their mobile device. The end result of all of those interactions is that relationships are being built in the process. Online interactions are all about building relationships and the concept of helping other people to solve their particular problems should always be top of mind. Once you have accomplished all of that, people will feel that you know what you are talking about and that you are trustworthy. It is extraordinarily important that you make your business and your business offerings readily available so that people can find you easily.

Conclusion

Everything follows a process. In this case, collecting the data from your business is the initial part of the process. The next part is actually converting that data to content, which you will then publish and syndicate to many other people through social media. All of the different elements that go into effective social media communication are important and, in fact, are essential to success. Always bear in mind that you need to cater to the needs of other people and if you are able to satisfy their needs, they will, in turn, want to do business with you and interact with you more and more over time.

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Writing Content That Gets Noticed

Carolyn Cohn — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:00:00 +0000

You have been blogging for some time now. Since you started, you feel that you have established a momentum. However, your content isn’t getting as much as attention as you want. You need get it noticed by more people.

There is a mutual need when it comes to online content. You need to share content that will touch other people to the point where they will react positively and want to interact with you and build a relationship because of your content (with the eventual goal of their becoming your client). On the other side, your readers have a need to absorb content that they can learn from and that helps them to solve whichever issues they are encountering. High-quality content gets noticed and it helps you to gain more traffic and to be recognized for your accomplishments by others. There are several approaches that you can take when it comes to writing content that is attractive to other people. Before you start, you must be very clear on what your goals and objective are, who your target audience is, and exactly what you are offering to other people.

Your reason for existing

It is a known fact that you only have three seconds to attract your readers enough for them to want to continue reading. If you don’t grab them within those three seconds, it’s over as far as that particular piece of content is concerned. With that in mind, the way in which you state your purpose for taking up the space with your content must be very clear and extraordinarily compelling. Always keep the concept of WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) at the forefront of your mind. I must always be about how you are going to help the other person. In doing so, your needs will also be fulfilled. If they can’t glean the information of how you are able to help them from your content, they will quickly move on to someone else’s content. Upon first glance, the most important elements of your article are the title and the teaser paragraph. They better really pack a punch. Other elements that you should keep in mind are your domain name, tag line, and look and feel of your blog. All of those elements will give your reader a really good idea of what they can expect from you if they decide to engage with you and your business.

Your content should never be long winded. Bullet points work very well in the blog setting. They allow the reader to understand a lot of important information in short spurts, which means that they will probably do a good job of remembering what you have written. Lists work effectively for the same reason. The majority of people scan rather than reading entire articles. People don’t like to work too hard when it comes to reading content. Along those same lines, your paragraphs should be short (no more than three or four sentences) for the same reason. People will be much more likely to absorb your information is it goes into their heads quickly and easily. A one-paragraph in a blog article (under the right circumstances) is acceptable also.

Enticing headlines

If your headline grabs the reader, they will definitely want to read more. Your headline should tell the reader what the rest of your article is about and how it can solve their issues. A great way to come up with compelling headlines is if you gather compelling headlines that other people have written. If you can identify why they work, you can mimic them in your own writing and captivate your readers.

One of the main objectives when it comes to your headlines is to get to understand your target audience and how they think and what they feel. Try to identify which keywords and key phrases they are using to search for the content that they need. Basically, you need to try and get inside their heads. If you can do that, you will be golden. Also, always remember to write with the emotional element in mind. People respond to ideas that touch them emotionally.

Using graphics

Nobody wants to read only words all of the time. Graphics and other images are very important because they break up the content and make it pleasing for the reader. Images (if used appropriately) can be even more effective than words are. Readers will react favorably to them and will want to continue reading and will really want to be a part of whatever you are offering.

Give others the benefit of your expertise

Other people are constantly thirsting for knowledge. The more you can share, the better they will feel about you and your content. For that reason, you should be very careful with the way in which you choose your keywords and key phrases. There is definite skill involved with choosing the most effective ones and it is well worth the time that it takes to learn how to do that most effectively.

Choosing the best topics

Always choose topics that excite you. If they excite you, other people will be excited by them also. If you have a passion for the topics about which you write, other people will understand that passion and will react to it favorably. The choice of topic is critical to your success.

Conclusion

Your content should be the absolute best that it can be. It should be exciting, informative, educational, compelling, and enticing. Remember that your topics should vary over time but always be interesting and always offer solutions to the issues of your readers. If you always write with others in mind, you will succeed at getting your content noticed over and over again.

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Finding Effective and Compelling Blog Topics

Carolyn Cohn — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 09:00:00 +0000

If you are going to continue to blog indefinitely, you are going to have to continue to come up with exciting, effective, and compelling topics that will hold the interest of your readers. Your creativity will be tested.

When it comes to blogging, in general, there are several different schools of thought regarding the writing style. However, if you blog for business, your style is most likely more formal and proper than if you were blogging for pleasure. When you blog for business, it generally doesn’t read like a journal. When you are blogging for business, you must always keep in mind the marketing principle “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me?). In other words, your objective will always be to help the other person solve his or her problems. If you satisfy the needs of the other person, your needs, in turn, will also be satisfied.

There are many ways in which you can come up with exciting and compelling blog topics that other people will really react positively to.

Pull topics from the news

The news is an incredibly rich topic source. Before the news items ever reach the public, the information has been researched and investigated thoroughly. If you use topics that you have found in the news for your blogs, you will have had some of the background work already done for you. Remember that you should under no circumstances use the exact words that you read in the news articles. That is plagiarism. However, there is absolutely nothing wrong with your borrowing other people’s ideas and communicating them in your own words. After all, you are using their ideas, not their words.

Gather other people’s opinions

If you are a frequent blogger, you may find that it is getting more and more difficult to come up with blog topics on a frequent and regular basis. If you feel that your “well is running dry,” and you are experiencing a blockage, it is an excellent idea to ask other people what they are interested in and what they would like to read about. There is no doubt that you are surrounded by interesting and intelligent people who most likely have plenty of creative ideas about all sorts of things. That is most definitely a resource that you should tap. If you aren’t totally comfortable with directly asking them what topics they would like to read about, you could try another approach. You could bounce some ideas off of them and see how they react and where the conversation goes from there.

Do thorough research

One of the main items that you should be searching for in the course of your research is effective keywords and key phrases. You can use those to come up with new topics for your blogs. Also, those terms will help to drive more traffic to your blog. If you use effective search terms, large numbers will visit your blog as they are searching for those terms. It shouldn’t be too difficult for you to determine which topics are hot and then you can use those topics to your full advantage. As you start to figure out which topics people are really interested in reading about, you can customize your writing for your readers.

Listen to what other people are saying

Another great source of blog topics is other blogs that are popular. There is a great possibility that when you read other people’s blogs, you will be inspired and you will come up with new creative and exciting ideas for your blog. You will be able to identify which topics get the most reaction from readers and you can imitate that approach. Then you can use a similar approach on your own blog and see what type of reaction you get from your readers.

Think about it overnight

If you are still having difficulty coming up with blog topics, go to sleep and try to clear your mind of everything. When you wake up the next morning, try to grab onto the first thing that is in your head and see if you can use that for your blog. Put it down in a notebook so that you don’t forget the idea. Then, try to develop a blog that centers around that idea. You may be surprised at how creative you were during the night and into the next day. Clearing your head the night before can be very beneficial and it can cause you to simplify your thought process and to really get to the heart of your creativity.

Conclusion

Continually coming up with fresh and creative blog topics can be challenging at times. However, if you try different approaches to gathering ideas, you may be surprised at how many wonderful topics you are able to come up with and continue to come up with over time. Speak with other people and their words and ideas may very well be a source of inspiration for you. Your consistently wonderful content is the reason that people keep coming back to you over and over again. The tips that were discussed here will help you to keep that momentum going strong.

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Social Networking -The Three Cs

Carolyn Cohn — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Social networking does a great deal to enhance your professional and personal experience online. Personally, it allows you to connect with others easily. Professionally, it helps you to develop relationships. It is about creation, curation, and consumption. To tie in creation, curation, and consumption with social networking and online relationships, you create an online presence that is a reflection of your personality and your values. Once you have created your presence, you share it with others and continue to build new relationships as well as strengthen and maintain existing relationships. Once you have gotten that part of the equation to be exactly what you need it to be and you have confidence that everything is working well, you become the consumer (not only you, although you are one of the important players). You devour content that is shared with you and you continue to cultivate and enhance relationships with others that become stronger and stronger over time.

Social media is all about relationships—strengthening existing relationships, establishing new relationships, bringing relationships to new levels. The relationships that we share with others really help us to share information that we feel is valuable to others and that we feel will enhance the other person’s knowledge in some way. With the technology giving us the advantages that it has given us for some time now on a consistent basis, it has put us in a position to have much more control over what we do and how we form relationships.

Each time we start to establish a new relationship, we are in a position where we must share personal details with the other person. Many times, these are details that we probably would not share under other circumstances. As we reveal details about ourselves, we will also, in turn, learn interesting details about the other person. Those details will cause us to get closer to the other person. Once the foundation has been built and it continues to grow stronger and stronger, it will cause both sides to trust the other and credibility will be established.

The motivation behind the relationship

Social networking works because of people. They are at the heart of every aspect of successful interactions. What motivates us initially to build relationships may not turn out to be what actually sustains the relationships. That is not really important. The important thing is that the relationship is strong and mutually beneficial. In all meaningful relationships, both sides need to get something out of the interactions. If that is not the case, everything will fall apart and the relationship will not be able to be sustained. In your interactions with people, content is critical. The quality of the content and to what degree it will help other people is very important. It is just as important as the delivery of that content and the approach that you take to deliver that content. The better your approach is to other people, the more inclined they will be to interact with you.

Creation, curation, and consumption

The foundational aspects of social networking—creation, curation, and consumption (the 3 Cs), if executed properly, will carry you though and you will enjoy success in all of your relationships. If you create worthy content, content that other people feel they can use and that touches them in some way that they need, they will respond positively to you. The social media channels are successful and popular because of content. It isn’t about lengthy content (for example, Twitter only allows a 140-character maximum). It is about good-quality content. Now that we have been using social media for a few years, we have moved beyond the novelty of the initial concept and on to the next level of sophistication. Because of this, it is critical that business owners truly understand how to connect to their target audience in a way that really causes high-quality interactions. The content needs to be compelling and enticing and really helpful.

The idea that many people have not jumped on the social media bandwagon yet is moot. The fact is that a very high percentage of people nowadays do engage with social media. The issue now is how to get them to be excited about doing it more often. You have the power to make this happen.

Once you have created the content, you need to share it and it needs to be devoured by others. You want them to engage with you as often as possible. This is a good thing in many way. First, it drives traffic to your website or blog. Second, it creates relationships with people who will hopefully (eventually) become loyal customers.

Conclusion

In any aspect of business, if you don’t have a strong and proper foundation, everything will crumble eventually. The 3 Cs must be a part of that foundation. It is important to remember that you are doing all of this for others, all the while understanding that you will benefit from it as well. Social networking brings your relationships to a level that allows you and your business to grow tremendously. It enhances every aspect of your business, from branding to building customer loyalty to actually selling your products and/or services.

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How to Avoid the Hard Sell in Your Content

Michael Cohn — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 09:00:00 +0000

You have established yourself as a subject matter expert in your niche. People continue to read your content because it offers answers to their problems. What they don’t want from you is to do a hard sell on them.

If you try to overtly sell anything to anyone, you will most likely not succeed and in the process, you may lose some very valuable business relationships. In fact, if your writing is about selling, they won’t bother to read your content at all. They will read other people’s content and become loyal to them instead of to you.

When it comes to your promoting your business, there is definitely an appropriate place and time to communicate about what you offer. In fact, it is appropriate to put your call-to-action in a resource box at the bottom of a blog article that you have posted and syndicated as well as putting some type of promotional content on your website’s landing page. Of course, it is not advisable for you to do this before you have established a relationship with your online connections that is solid and one in which those people find you credible and trustworthy. It is extremely important that your content is informational and educational and doesn’t in any way read like an infomercial.

Another good reason to steer clear of self-promotion in your content is that you will have a more difficult time getting it published, especially if you submit your articles to business directories. The reputable business directories have strict guidelines when it comes to what they will accept and what they will not accept. There are many ways in which content can come across as being self-promotional, which should be avoided whenever possible. The following are types of content that you would be better off avoiding:

Mentioning money: Mentioning any money amount in your articles does not offer any real value to your readers. It doesn’t give them anything that they can walk away with. It is no different than the content that you would find in an advertisement. On the other hand, if you give people information that they want and need, they will keep coming back to you for more and more information.
Dropping names: The only appropriate place to put your call-to-action in your article is in the resource box at the bottom of the page. The article body should be used for tips, hints, tricks, and other substantive copy. The concept is that you entice them with valuable information and once they have become interested in what you have to say, you provide them with a way to continue the relationship with you by giving them your contact information.
Reviews of other products: It is perfectly acceptable for you to post unbiased reviews of other people’s products and services as long as you have no connection to them. Remember, of course, that it is important that you don’t provide a direct link to the owner of the products and services because that would be promotional on their behalf.
No outline: Writing from an outline is a great tool. Once you have finished writing an outline that you feel you can depend on, you should stick to it as religiously as possible. The outline will keep you focused and on track in your mission to stay away from any sort of promotional content.
Wishy-washy messages in your title: It is very important to have a strong article title (always) and to also make sure that your title ties in closely with the rest of the article. Your message should be clear and focused. Your goal is to get your readers to stick with you and read the entire article and then want to read more and more of what you are writing.

The heart of the problem with content that is self-promotional

The problem with content that is self-promotional is that its goal is to convert readers into customers right away. It is not a healthy relationship if your readers become clients before you have had a chance to develop a relationship with them in which they have come to trust you and consider you an expert in your niche or industry. Building credibility is critical to the success of your business. If you don’t have credibility, you won’t have customers. You need to make sure that if you go anywhere near promotional ideas in your content, you are subtle and you don’t make it all about selling. It is always important to make the other person feel that they are in control of making their own decisions and if you build a solid relationship with him or her and they eventually want to buy from you, they will do so wholeheartedly.

Conclusion

The interactions that you have online for your business are key to your success. The relationships that you share with others must be cultivated, nurtured, coddled, and maintained on a regular and consistent basis. At the heart of those relationships is human emotions. The hard sell has no place in that phase of the relationship. The reason that people will eventually want to buy from you is that they trust you and believe that you will give them the best products and services for them based on your deep understanding of what they need and want.

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Building an Effective Content Strategy

Carolyn Cohn — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:00:00 +0000

All of your online marketing efforts will amount to nothing if you don’t have an incredible content strategy that will entice people into reading what you have to say and in wanting to read more and more from you.

If your content is really good, it will compel your visitors to connect with you and your business and will make them feel that they want to keep coming back. Good content will eventually result in people buying what you are selling. There is a very effective, methodical approach that you can use when it comes to your online content strategy.

Identify the issue and the need: It is critical that you always put yourself into the shoes of the other person. Not only should you empathize with the other person but you should always remember that your responsibility is to solve their issue(s). It doesn’t matter how wonderful you and your business are if you are not able to fulfill their wants and needs. Before you can actually help them with anything, you must establish a relationship with them. Of course, it stands to reason that you won’t be able to help anyone before you have established some level of trust. You must prove to your online connections that you are a person with whom they should connect because you have the knowledge and the power to help them solve their problems. You need to find out

Which issues they need help solving
Which information is important for them to have from you
What motivates them as customers
What they really need to know
How valuable they consider your products and/or services

Once you have proven to your online connections that you understand their issues, you will be able to help them to solve those issues.

Offer a solution: Remember never to do a hard sell on anyone. What you do need to do is to touch people emotionally. The way that you can appeal to their emotions is by expressing to them how much they will benefit if they use your products and/or services. You need to appeal to their needs so that means that you need to customize the description of your offerings to do just that. It needs to reach them in a way that makes them clearly understand that you have something that will satisfy their needs. All good content tells a story. In this case, the story makes them feel how much better their lives will be if they buy from you. Your content must be unique and must really express what you are offering in a way that only you can. In short, your content needs to make them feel as though they can’t live without what you are offering. Some of the questions that you need to answer with your content are

What does the product do?
What issue does the product resolve?
What makes your products and/or services completely unique?
How will your customers’ lives improve based on your products and/or services?

Getting people to act: If you succeed at getting people to act, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are getting them to buy something. Your call-to-action can be as basic as asking people to sign up to receive your monthly newsletter, etc. The next step that you want your online connections to take should always be very easy and quick. Make sure that you are clear about what you want them to do. Never leave them confused about what they should do next. The questions that you should ask yourself before writing this part of the content are

Which action do you want your customers to take next?
Precisely what should they do next?
How will your next steps lead them to actually buy from you?
What specific information do they need to get them to the point where they actually buy?

Conclusion

Most people clearly recognize the importance of content when it comes to online presence in your business. Of course, it is not enough to just have excellent content. All content needs to be marketed appropriately and effectively and excellent content requires excellent-quality content. Your strategy of how you are going to make the most out of your content must be top notch and iron clad. Half of the battle is producing compelling content and the other half is sharing that content in a way that it will benefit the most people in the shortest amount of time. You must always go for maximum impact.

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The Coupling of Social Media and Journalism

Carolyn Cohn — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:00:00 +0000

With social media having such an incredibly strong foothold and print media stepping back a bit, you may wonder what is in the future for journalism. In the future, how will social media connect with journalism?

Social media has tremendously changed the way that journalists do their jobs. In order for journalists to be successful nowadays, they must be heavily involved with social media. They need to be tweeting, updating their various social media profiles and blogging. If they are not doing that, other journalists will be involved with social media and they will have a serious advantage over them. In the world of journalism, all successes depend on getting the story before anyone else does. Social media has created a filter for high-quality content. Another wonderful edge that journalists who are involved with social media have is that they are gaining the trust and credibility of their readers and they can interact and continue to strengthen the relationships. Journalists use social media to collect and syndicate the news. So, what will the relationship between social media and journalists be like in the future?

Journalists’ involvement in social media

Many businesses are actively using social media platforms to include news content in their web presences. There is an emphasis being placed on the quality and uniqueness of the news content. Many social media companies are either partnering with or buying news sites so that the two can offer both quality and quantity. The news content is customized for individuals and there is as much content as a person could possibly ever want or need.

Social media’ involvement in journalism

Nowadays, there are many journalists who no longer work with traditional print journalism at all. Their writing skills haven’t changed at all, however, the dissemination has changed dramatically. Because of the expansive capabilities of social media, journalists can offer all sorts of opportunities to their readers (such as being able to vote for their favorite news story, for example) that have never been available before. In short, the readers have much more direct and personal involvement with the journalists than ever before. With the interactive feature of social media platforms, it is completely conducive to the readers getting involved and interacting on a regular basis.

What will the future hold?

Social media will allow more people to be heard. Of course, the one thing that can happen is that a large amount of the content will not be high-quality content. Most people will only be interested in content that they really enjoy reading. When it comes to journalism, the facts must be backed up by credible sources and the credibility factor must be very high. There must be a great deal of substance to the content. Pretty, empty words really won’t go very far with the readers.

Conclusion

Journalists and the entire journalism industry has always been incredibly important. It is important to remember that staying in touch with the public is an objective that is at the top of the priority list and truly fulfills the needs of both sides—the journalists’ needs and the needs of the readers. The industry is ethical, filled with integrity, exciting, informative and educational. Journalists are a group of professionals who are well respected. It makes a great deal of sense for journalists to get involved with social media because, after all, it is all about the content and content is king!

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