Internet Marketing

Content marketing is one of the big buzz words in search engine optimization. Is it just another fad that will vanish with the next Google update?

If you’re curious about this and if you want to attract steady streams of traffic regardless of what updates the search engines roll out, this might be one of the most important articles you’ll read this year…

Why Content Marketing is the Future of Marketing

According to iMedia Connection 78% of internet users claim that they use the internet for product research. More than 46% of the searches conducted on a daily basis are people searching for information about products and services. The key word in that last sentence is “information.” Web users are looking for content, not advertisements. This is the first clue as to why content marketing IS the new SEO.

The goal of search engines is to give people what they want. People want content that will help them learn about which products and services are best suited for them. So if you want to reach these people, you want them to find your content when they type your keywords into the search bar.

The only want to do this is by publishing content that people will find just as interesting and useful as the content they read in their favorite magazines.

Makes sense right?

People are addicted to good information, always have been. It’s advertising that turns them off. So here’s where content marketing fits into this picture…

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing isn’t new.

It’s been around since before the internet. Every single magazine you’ve ever read has used content marketing to build a profitable business. Here’s their simple business model:

1.      The media company puts together a publication that’s full of valuable and relevant content.

2.      They sell advertisements to companies who want to market their products and services readers.

Simple right?

In the information age, you simply use content marketing to do the exact same thing that media companies have been doing for years. So here’s the only difference between “old” content marketing and information age content marketing:

1.      YOUR company puts together a publication that’s full of valuable and relevant content

2.      YOU advertise your products and services to your readers.

Simple enough right?

How to Use Content Marketing in Your SEO Strategy

Just like the old methods of search engine optimization, there’s a right away to do content marketing and there’s a wrong way. The wrong way is to talk only about your company, your products and your services using the same generic, keyword optimized language that everyone else is.

That’s not content marketing, that’s direct marketing. The right way to do content marketing would be to provide content that has intrinsic value. In other words, the content itself has to provide enough value to your readers that they’d be willing to pay for it just as they might pay for a magazine subscription.

That’s the primary difference between having a content marketing strategy and simply publishing content and hoping it gets picked up by the search engines. Spend 90% of your time creating and delivering this kind of content, and tone down the direct advertisements.

Start thinking like a media company and remember that content marketing has already been working for decades. The only difference is that today, it’s quickly becoming a requirement for companies who want to stand out in the information age economy.

Why are you reading this article right now?

Probably because of the irony. Here’s a marketer TELLING you that he’s out to make a sale. It’s a little out of place isn’t it? Yet, this is exactly what your customers see when they read articles that just talk about your company and what you have to offer.

People don’t care. Sorry to be so blunt, but we all know it’s true. When customers search for information online, how many of them are saying:

“I sure hope I find a great advertisement so I can buy something.”

People want useful, verifiable information that will help them solve their problems and make smart buying decisions or that will entertain them. That’s why people read trade magazines, websites, review sites and articles in the newspaper.

People LOVE to buy things, but they hate advertisements. That’s one of the primary things to keep in mind when you’re writing your search engine optimization content. Ultimately, what you’re after is trust, not rankings. TRUST builds rankings. Trust makes you an authority and earning trust can help you earn a ton of money.

If You Build it RIGHT, They WILL Come

You’ve probably heard SEO experts and web design companies squawking at people for having the “if you build it they will come,” mentality. They claim that if you assume your website will automatically attract visitors, you’re making a mistake.

Excuse me, but have you noticed that this still happens…even today?

Take sites like Facebook and Twitter. Someone built those, and people came. A WHOLE LOT of people. Billions of users flocked to these social media hang outs and the numbers are still growing. So apparently, you can build a website that people just come to.

But you need to give people what they want.

You need to give them useful content that’s relevant to their lives and that helps them make smarter buying decisions. You might not even have to talk about your products or your services at all. If you build trust with your readers, and if they represent your target market, the sales will come, here’s why…

Create Trust and the Rankings Will Follow

If people come to trust you as a source of dependable and entertaining information, how easy will it be to earn their business once they decide they need your products or services? Pretty easy. Just look at how easy it is to sell advertising in a popular magazine that has high readership. The people trust the content in that magazine, and the advertisers make sales.

If you create content that builds that level of trust with people, you’ll become your own media company. You’ll make money through your own advertisements. But it starts with publishing trustworthy content. People buy from companies that they trust. That’s been true since long before the internet was ever created and the internet hasn’t changed that.

The internet HAS, however, made it easier for customers to do business ONLY with the companies they can trust. This is why earning trust with your content needs to be your number one priority.

So get Your Google author account set up, start a solid content marketing strategy and start giving people what they want. The time will come when those readers are ready to buy your services, and if they trust you, you’ll be the first person they come to.

Of course you want to rank on the top page of Google, who wouldn’t?

Over 50% of the organic search traffic is gulped up by the top three ranking web sites. From that position, the traffic decreases exponentially. And if you’re on the second page? Forget it. You might as well be invisible.

That’s where the nifty art of search engine optimization comes in, but according to the data, search engine optimization is anything but free and it’s STILL a mystery, even to some experts.

Marketing Charts.com reported that 21% of businesses who outsource SEO are with the results with the results. Of those who opt to handle their SEO in house, only 11% are satisfied with the results. Those aren’t very encouraging numbers, especially considering how expensive SEO services can be. The data also shows that SEO is one of the fastest growing industries in today’s marketplace.

Conductor Blog reported that job postings for SEO specialists on sites like indeed.com have increased nearly 2,000% over the past few years. Yet, only 21% of people using SEO agencies are happy with the results? That doesn’t exactly make you jump up and down and say “Look at me! I need SEO Services! Who wants to help?”

If you’re outsourcing your SEO, you’d better make sure the company you hire knows what they’re doing. You want someone who has a track record for getting results. But more important, you should ask yourself if your company really deserves to be on the front page of Google yet…

Cashing in On SEO Starts with a Reality Check

Let’s do a quick experiment which I guarantee will increase your traffic over the next year. Open up another tab on your browser right now and type your keywords into the Google search bar. Then, go to the top three sites in the search engine results. What are they doing that you’re NOT doing?

If you were a customer looking for a trustworthy company, which website would you choose…yours or one of our competitors? Unless you’re 100% positive that you’d choose your website, it’s time to do some work on your on page SEO.

Make a checklist. Look at your copy, your design, your site structure and your content. Is your website doing your company justice? Is it positioning you as an authority in your industry? Are you consistently posting useful information and positioning yourself as a trusted content source?

If not, you might be interested to know that 78% of internet users say they use the internet to research products. Well over 40% of the daily searches are searches for information on products and services (source: iMedia Connection). People are shopping for products and services online. People love to shop, but they’re not looking for the same things they look for when browsing through the mall.

They want information. GREAT information that will help them make smart buying decisions. So if you want to hoist your website to the top page of Google, you’d better start giving people what they want. Otherwise, you’ll have to sit at the bottom of the search results, hoping for a few crumbs to fall from the table of your competitors.

More and more businesses are talking about “content marketing,” but few businesses know what it really is and how it impacts search engine rankings. Simply put, content marketing is positioning yourself as a trusted course of authority content FIRST, and letting that reputation attract more qualified customers.

Marketing isn’t’ just about advertisements anymore; the information age has changed that. Today, people want content. Nearly half of the searches that take place today will be conducted by people searching for valuable content? Is your website delivering?

If you have doubts, call MSI right now and let’s talk about getting your site worthy of the Google page one rankings.

You’re probably expecting a lecture about spamming. But that’s not how most Marketers are misusing social media marketing. Most of them are well-meaning business owners just trying to grab more market share.

But there’s a strategy to marketing online, and it’s completely different than the strategies that worked during the 20^th century. The new economy has changed the way people make buying decisions. You already know this. When you buy something, you do a lot of research before you make a decision don’t you?

You look for companies you can trust. You look for online reviews. The companies who earn your trust through their online presence earn your business.

But something peculiar happens the moment you put your marketing hat on. You market using the same methods which businesses used before the internet. You create ads for your products and services and you try to get them in front of your target customers. If you’re tired of doing this, only to have your ads ignored, you’ll definitely want to read this…

Where is the “Marketing” in Social Media Marketing?

Social Media marketing is all about earning trust.

If social media marketing isn’t working for you, it might be because you’re trying to earn sales before earning trust. In his new book “No BS Trust-Based marketing,” Dan Kennedy claims that trust is the currency of the new economy.

This shouldn’t surprise any of us. Stephen Covey talked about it in his book “The 8^th Habit,” and that was in the early 2000’s. If you want to earn money, you need to earn trust first. You do this, not by marketing to your prospective customers. You do during the follow up and fulfillment stage.

Customer service has become a powerful marketing tool. It helps you build relationships that naturally spur customers to write positive comments about your company. When these comments start showing up on social media sites, your brand becomes instantly more credible to prospective customers.

So if you want to leverage the full power of social media, stop trying to earn sales. Instead, start using great customer service to increase trust after the sale is made. Earning money will be a piece of cake after that. But if you try to do it backwards, you’re likely to spin your wheels trying to use social media as a direct marketing tool.

For example, according to B2B Lead Blog, only 12% of marketers considered social media to be “very effective” for lead generation. Nearly 30% of them claimed that it’s “not effective.” It’s SEO that makes the biggest dent when it comes to lead generation, but that’s not where most of the sales come from either.

According to MarketingSherpa, over 40% OF B2C marketers claim that SEO drives the traffic, only 29% claimed that it was a good source for conversions. Another 25% of them claimed that email had the highest conversion rate.

Are you starting to see how these three strategies (SEO, email and social media) work together?

SEO drives traffic and generates leads, but the relationship is built through email and that’s where the sale is made. Then, social media becomes the strategy for building relationships with existing customers in a place where your future customers can see your positive interactions.

If you’re going directly for the sale on your website, in your email and on social media sites, you’re just playing blind archery. You’re trying to earn as much business as possible through the direct marketing strategies that have become nearly irrelevant.

Is it time to restructure your online marketing strategy and to start building relationships? If so, call MSI at the number on this site and let’s talk about your online marketing strategy. Today’s marketplace is too saturated to rely on direct marketing alone. You need a strategy for building trust.

If you have that, the rest will take care of itself. Call MSI right now to get started.

What’s the best way to optimize your SEO content for maximum rankings in 2013?

Two words…

Go viral.

A blog that goes viral and amasses hundreds of social signals (Facebook shares, likes, Tweets, Google + votes) will add tremendous value to the credibility of your site. In fact, if you’ve been focusing all your energy and attention on link building, you should already be making a shift into collecting social signals.

Links are still important, but don’t forget why they were once the most important thing in SEO. It was because they were considered to be “votes.” As far as the search engines were concerned, a link meant that someone thought your content was valuable enough to link to.

But today, social signals are quickly taking the place of back links. So let’s look at some strategies for creating blog posts that can go viral and lift your rankings in 2013...

The Facts on How People Share Content

Going viral starts with creating great content, but assuming you have that taken care of, your next step is to make it easy for people to share your content. This is where you need knowledge of your target market. For example, did you know that B2B buyers are most likely to share content using email as opposed to using social media sites?

That’s right, email is number one for B2B. So you need an email option at the bottom and top of your blogs, not just the Facebook and Twitter shares. In fact, nearly 80% of B2B buyers prefer to share content via email, 53% of them prefer LinkedIn, while only 39% are likely to use Twitter and a measly 18% will use Facebook. (source: Earnest Agency)

So your target market is important to consider when deciding how you’ll encourage content sharing. By making a simple shift in where you share your content and how you invite people to share it, you could increase your response rate dramatically. If you’re interested in applying what works for YOUR target market, you’ll need to know how they share content.

You’ll want to find out which social media sites they use most often and start targeting your approach accordingly.

Going Viral is All About “Showing Up”

Going viral isn’t just about creating great content and getting your readers to share it. It’s about showing up consistently in places where your target market is likely to be found. This means Social Media marketing needs to be a part of your SEO strategy. Don’t think social media will help your business?

Think again. Nearly 90% of small businesses say that social media has helped them either a little or a lot over the past year (source: Marketing Charts.com)

Yet, only a quarter of the U.S. small businesses use social media to engage with customers while 20% of them have an ad hoc approach to social media (source: eMarketer). If you show up where your customers are “hanging out,” they’ll be more likely to see your content. But if you’re not using social media, you have to rely only on search to get your content visible.

This means people will only find your content if it’s ranking well. But for it to rank well, you have to be visible, and to be visible without using social media, you have to rank well. Are you seeing the problem with this?

Marketing Charts.com reported that 56% of marketers claim their “customers expect them to be on social media.” What about your customers? Are they expecting to see you on social media sites? If so, and if you’re not showing up, it’s time to start getting out there.

Remember the purpose of social media isn’t to get new leads and sales. Less than 15% of marketers even consider social media to be effective for getting new leads (source: MarketingSherpa). But social media is the key to building brand awareness, adding tremendous value to your content, and getting it to go viral.

Not everything you do in marketing is about making a direct sale. Sometimes, it’s about getting the public talking about you. Sometimes, it’s about getting visible. The more visible you are, the easier it will be for your target customers to find you.

So if you want to go viral, learn how your customers are sharing content, keep showing up in places where you know they are and stop obsessing over sales. Get visible, go viral and the rest will take care of itself.