Zero-click content is the norm: most social media platforms will take away precious organic reach if you dare to add a link in your post. So most users try that awful gimmick called “link in comments”. It makes things harder for everyone, the person who posts and those who read but we’re willing to o to extreme lengths for better reach, aren’t we?

Zero-click content is prevalent in the SEO world, as well. Featured snippets were introduced by Google in 2014, almost a decade ago. Much like social media platforms, Google too tries to limit the number of clicks.

You can now see the weather without clicking on a weather website or even convert feet to meters directly in Google. SparkToro has an excellent analysis on zero-click content and they are responsible for coining the term.

But their piece appeared before ChatGPT took the world by storm. Things are even murkier now.

The Rise of AI and the Fall of the Once-Mighty Click

More than two-thirds of Google searches end without a single click. But do you know which searches always end up with no clicks? AI searches.

As AI assistants help us browse through oceans of data, we no longer need to click. We’re all fundamentally lazy and when AI promises to cut our working time in half, we jump on board, accuracy and originality be damned.

For marketers, though, AI’s promise to simplify our work doesn’t really hold water.

Yes, it may take less time to produce content. You can use ChatGPT for as a cognitive labour assistant or as a helper in the ideation process. I wouldn’t recommend anything else because AI content is essentially plagiarism and it does not sit well with search engines.

In other words, AI commoditized content. When (mediocre) content is easy to churn out, marketers need to work extra hard on other things, like distribution and making sure that their content (which is ideally not mediocre) gets seen and read.

How to Thrive in a Zero-Click World

If you’ve been reading my column here for a while, you know I’ve always recommended building your house on your own digital land. Social media is borrowed land.

While you can still use links in your social media posts, use them to draw users to your own website – the asset you have full control over. Remember that you’ll never get a heads-up before a social media algorithm turns against you.

Next, use less gated content and offer more upfront value. If you create a whitepaper or an eBook, make sure it’s worth downloading. It has to be 100% original work, a research report, or something similar.

Lastly, go back to the classics: email is still the best marketing channel in terms of ROI. Better yet, you have complete control over who sees what you send. You own your audience even when you decide to change platforms. I use ConvertKit to send emails to my subscribers because I think they have the sturdiest, easiest to use platform, but you can choose any other one – there are tons of them out there!

You can always change your email services provider without losing your audience but you can’t switch from Instagram to LinkedIn and still keep your followers.

Final Thoughts

While a zero-click world may sound like the end of an era (and it might be!), for savvy marketers it’s just a re-adjustment. The principles stay the same, only the channels we use and the way we approach them change.

It is, however, important to mind the context. You can’t rely on a social media platform for the bulk of your leads, for instance.

If you need more insights into what the future holds in store and which marketing and business trends you should prepare for, subscribe to my newsletter, Ideas to Power Your Future. My subscribers say my analyses are “worth paying for”. I send them for free, though, every Thursday. See you in your inbox!

The post A Zero-Click Digital World May Be Closer than We Think appeared first on SiteProNews.

Let’s dig in!

B2B Buyers Are Younger than You May Think

65% of B2B buyers are part of the Millennial and Gen Z generations. As more Gen Zers join the workforce and get promoted to decisional positions, this number will grow constantly.

Gen Z are (almost) digital natives. The oldest of them had access to internet in their childhood or pre-teen years. Millennials are the generation who essentially built the digital solutions we use today.

How to use this: digitally-savvy B2B buyers are the norm now. Make sure that your website is easy to navigate and that Buy buttons can be easily found. Self-service is also important: if your products or services can be sold directly, without endless sales calls and emails, do that!

B2B Buyers Will Draw Harder Lines between Nice-to-Haves and Must-Haves This Year

Budgets are shrinking everywhere, so expect B2B buyers to conduct more in-depth analyses before buying. You may even see some of them dropping services and SaaS solutions they used in the past.

How to use this: avoid trying to please everyone. Focus on potential buyers you can really help. This will prevent you from stretching yourself too thin and investing too many resources into leads that will never convert. Moreover, explain exactly what your product does. Help digitally-savvy buyers decide for themselves whether they need it or not.

Risk-Aversion Gets more Prevalent (and Long-Lasting Relationships Become more Important)

A consequence of shrinking budgets, B2B buyers’ risk aversion will translate into holding on to providers they already work with. Vetting new providers is costly and time-consuming, so if they already have a good relationship with you, they’re more likely to keep it.

Risk aversion also translates into more vetting for new providers. More than ever, B2B buyers need to make sure they’re choosing right.

How to use this: invest in loyalty programs and keep your existing customers close. It was always cheaper to sell to an existing customer than to acquire a new one – now it’s also less risky.

You will still need new clients, though. To get them, invest in a spotless online image, along with all the social proof you can gather: testimonials, success stories, case studies, reviews – publish everything you have to the point of obnoxiousness.

B2B Buyers Have Trust Issues

Since Millennials and Gen Zers spend most of them time online, it’s safe to say they were hacked or scammed at least once. Before they tap their credit card number or sign a contract with you, they will do a thorough check of your business.

How to use this: make sure that your online presence extends beyond your website. Government platforms (like the Better Business Bureau), review websites (like G2 or Yelp), and social media profiles all matter more than ever.

B2B Buyers Aren’t that Different from B2C Buyers (Just a Tad more Complex)

It’s finally time for the distinction between B2B and B2C to matter less. Sure, you may be doing business with another business but at the end of the day, those making the decisions are other humans, not impersonal legal entities.

How to use this: account for both emotional and rational factors that go into any purchase decision. B2B buyers have their own ethical code and set of values and it’s often not identical to that of the company they work for.

Make sure your values are aligned with theirs Invest in social or environmental initiatives if it’s what your buyers are passionate about.

More than anything, forget B2B versus B2C. Try H2H (Human to Human). No bots make buying decisions on their own (yet).

Need more strategy insights and analyses to help you build a resilient, future-proof business? Subscribe to my newsletter (it’s $0) and get them straight into your inbox every week.

The post In Your Buyers’ Mind: What Do B2B Buyers Need in 2023 appeared first on SiteProNews.

A recent study revealed that kids aged 8 to 11 would rather become YouTube stars than astronauts. If you’re surprised about this, you’re not alone. Join me in deciphering why the creator economy is so seductive and how to leverage it.

Creators – Who Are They and What Do They Do?

Finding a perfect definition of creators is a tall ask. Some think that a creator is anyone who makes money online by creating a follower base and then leveraging it to sell digital or traditional products, sponsorships, merchandise, or get brand deals.

By this definition, creators = influencers. I disagree.

You may remember a previous article of mine here on SiteProNews where I postulated that influencers are entertainers. Today, the term “influencer” is a bit derogatory, usually referring to content that has zero substance and relies on glam.

You know what I’m talking about: the devoid-of-meaning captions you see on Instagram slapped on heavily-edited photos, typically of conventionally-attractive people.

Influencers are a sub-genre in the creator economy.

The new breed of creators appeal to a more sophisticated audience. Their followers aren’t usually looking for inspirational or aspirational quotes. They are there to learn a skill, a craft, or to consume above-average content. They want to build a business first and foremost, not a cult following.

The power of example comes in handy here: Charli D’Amelio is an influencer. Rand Fishkin is a creator.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s take a look at what fuels the creator economy.

Get in-depth analyses like this one and future-proof strategy advice straight into your inbox every week. Subscribe to my newsletter here.

Why Does the Creator Economy Keep Growing Exponentially?

This is the question I wanted to answer when I first set out to analyze this industry: why is everyone attracted to it, from children to big corporations and venture capital funds?

The answer is pretty simple: personal brands are gaining more traction than faceless corporate brands because people look for human-to-human interactions. Big corporations (and the companies who strive to earn that name) are often seen as enemies: they pollute, they overwork their employees, the avoid paying their taxes, and so on.

Human-first brands seem more trustworthy, which prompts them to gain more traction – fast! Of course, when a creator becomes extremely famous, they have to deal with hate. They are the corporations of the creator economy now. Still, the scrutiny isn’t even comparable with what traditional corporations get.

There’s a second reason why the creator economy keeps growing at an incredible pace: it has a lot of support from a lot of other industries.

Let me reveal a secret about how I differentiate between trends and fads: when in doubt, follow the money.

VCs are already taking the creator economy seriously, pouring millions in solutions that support their work. And it’s not just them.

A lot of existing companies have amended their products and added new features to support creators: from easy online payments on Stripe to full-stack solutions for marketing, selling, and emailing your followers like ConvertKit, you can get started for free and without writing a single line of code. At most, you’ll pay a commission out of your sales, as it happens with Stripe and ConvertKit.

Low Entry Barriers, Towering Growth Barriers

The low entry barriers like being able to get started completely free make the creator economy even more attractive. And that’s perfectly understandable: who wouldn’t want to ditch a monotonous job and build their own products – plus a massive fan base?

However, with low entry barriers come very high growth barriers.

Only 10% of creators make more than $10,000 per year. Very few of them make a livable wage, which is why a lot of them still hold on to their day jobs.

As the creator economy expands, I expect the competition to get even tougher. This is why I recommend you spend at least three months testing your idea before you quit your job or your lucrative business to sell digital products.

You can spend the first month in the ConvertKit Grow Your Audience Challenge – it’s completely free to join and it will take you through all the steps you need to start building an audience online and to vet your idea.

My top recommendation for anyone looking to join the creator economy is to take a close look at their skills and at their marketing prowess. Is there something that you could be talking about for 30 minutes with no advance notice?

If so, you’ve found your niche, congratulations! Don’t worry if it seems too small or too esoteric. There are people making six figures a year selling crocheting courses.

The next step is to find the right approach: should you be selling courses, eBooks, digital downloads, community access, or all of these things? I advise you to start with one and then expand.

How to Leverage the Creator Economy

If you’re a company looking to partner with a creator to increase visibility, you can offer them a deal for direct advertising (following the influencer model), you can sponsor their newsletter, or you can partner with them on pretty much any type of campaign you can think of.

Not sure how to choose the right creator? I recommend you look beyond their numbers: sure, large audiences mean more people will see your brand. But this is useless if there is no real fit between your brand and that of the creator.

The first thing to look for is an audience overlap: does the creator’s buyer persona match your own?

Secondly, look for engaged communities. How often do their followers engage with the creator’s post? Do they get meaningful comments? Can they spark real conversations?

Lastly, look for trust signals: how successful are the creators in selling their own products? If they have a 1% email conversion rate that’s stellar – but expect yours to be much lower in case you decide to sponsor them. Trust transfers are never 100%.

Wrapping Things Up

The current beauty of the creator economy is that it’s open to anyone. But make no mistake: it’s just as hard to “make it” there as it is to climb the corporate ladder, especially if you have no connections to fuel your growth.

However you feel about creators, it’s important to know they are here to stay. Some of them will morph into behemoths, while others will enjoy catering to a niche audience – just as it happens with any kind of business.

The post The Creator Economy – What Fuels It and How to Leverage It appeared first on SiteProNews.

I recently sent out a newsletter to my subscribers advising them to look into this as one of the two major trends that will dominate marketing and business in 2023. You can subscribe to my newsletter and get analyses and strategy advice in your inbox every week here.

Until then, let’s take a closer look at decentralized platforms.

With the recent changes at Twitter, the world seems to want to move away from billionaire-owned social networks. And now, there are alternatives.

Mastodon is the most popular Twitter alternative at the time of writing. Jack Dorsey (Twitter co-founder and ex-owner) is building a blockchain-based social network, Bluesky (currently in beta). Thus far, it has been well-received.

What does this mean for “traditional” social media platforms? Will decentralized platform take over and leave the oldies user-less? Let’s explore!

First, a quick primer:

What Are Decentralized Social Networks?

Decentralized social networks are platforms that operate on independently-run servers. Traditional social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter operate on centrally-run servers that the company controls.

Mastodon, for instance, is a “federated” network, which means that the servers are run by a diverse range of users instead of a mega-corporation. As a Mastodon user, you have two options:

1. Choose a server operated by someone else and trust that they won’t use or manipulate your data.
2. Run your own server.

As expected, this federated model comes with a new host of benefits and downfalls.

Decentralized Social Media: The Good

The first obvious benefit of decentralization is the fact that costs are spread out among users, so the “mother lode” doesn’t feel such a stringent need to monetize their data.

Plus, with blockchain in the game, everything becomes more transparent.

Users also have the option to join the server that fits their communication needs best. From free speech for all to carefully curated and watched servers, there’s something for everyone.

Decentralized Social Media: The Bad

Let’s start with the tech issues: a lot of Mastodon users complain that the server they are on doesn’t run the latest version of the platform. This makes interaction slow, buggy, and unpleasant. While some are willing to put up with a lacking, stripped-down version of Twitter for freedom’s sake, others prefer to sacrifice some of that freedom for comfort.

More importantly, running a social media platform costs money. Traditional platforms sustain these costs with your data.

Decentralized social networks spread these costs among users. If you’re not a media corporation or someone who uses a decentralized network assiduously, you may get by with joining someone else’s server – this means social media is still free for you (at least theoretically, we’ll get to that in a moment).

However, it also means that the server owner can boot you whenever they want, with no explanations, just like it often happens on Facebook or Instagram. Moderation policies can change on independently-owner servers as well, so you’re not exactly safe forever.

Now think about media giants, like The New York Times or the BBC. Their costs for running a Mastodon server are huge – the more media, the more expensive.

Solutions? There are some.

The most obvious: pay and try to monetize.

Or: pool resources with other giants and share the costs – but also the benefits. Of course, this comes with a plethora of other problems, like who has the final say in moderation decisions.

Decentralized Social Media: The Ugly

For now, decentralized media looks like a happy place for everyone. That’s because it lives in a legislative void.

Unlike traditional social media, where regulatory bodies can intervene – and they have done it –, it’s hard to regulate…well, everyone and their mother. Sure, laws and regulations evolve, but they often merely play catch-up with technology.

Complete freedom at all cost fans may have a tough pill to swallow when they realize that decentralized social media isn’t free – in the monetary sense or in the free speech sense. No, not even if there’s no governing law or set of regulations to impede on your free speech.

Similarly, strict law devotees won’t find their safe haven on decentralized social media either. It’s mayhem – by design. Which means that abuse in all of its forms is possible and very likely.

Last but not least, the federated model doesn’t ensure zero data exploit. If you join someone else’s server, there’s very little guarantee that they won’t be using your data for…pretty much anything they want.

Final Thoughts

We don’t know what the future holds in store for the budding new social media trend. Will users flock to it?

Bloomberg’s Vlad Savov has makes an interesting analogy: “[T]he world prefers running Windows and macOS over the much more flexible and customizable Linux operating systems. We choose convenience even when it comes at the cost of capability. We want things done for us. And, most importantly, we take a lot for granted with free services like Twitter.”

He’s partially right: some users don’t have the tech chops for running their own social media infrastructure. Others, don’t have the time, and some others don’t care enough about it.

Yet, we mustn’t forget that the newer generations are authority challengers. They are digital natives, which means that acquiring new digital skills is a walk in the park for them.

The evolution of decentralized social media depends a lot on the traditional platforms – if they play their cards right, very few will have the incentive to leave them. Lawmakers play a big part here too: they need to carefully tread the fine line between protecting users and allowing social networks to monetize user data.

It’s too early to call it. But it’s definitely not too early to start experimenting with it.

Read more about recent trends to keep an eye on and get strategy advice on my blog.

The post Decentralized Social Media: Mega-Trend or Fad? appeared first on SiteProNews.

I learned everything the hard way – on my own.

This is why I am now on a mission to talk about the things you can get right without too much trial and error. You can get it right from the first try and you can build a resilient service business in any economy.

Quick intermezzo before we dig into today’s topic: if you want to build a business that’s resilient in any economy, you may be interested in my weekly newsletter, Ideas to Power Your Future. It’s free, it goes out on Thursdays, and it comes with analyses and tactics to future-proof your business. You can subscribe here.

Now let’s get back to business! This is what I’ve learned after building three businesses without a coach, expensive courses, or mentors.

1. Only Sell Services You’re Darn Good At

No, a quick online course won’t turn you into an expert on…well, anything. Before you sell your services, polish your craft. Make sure you’re damn good at it.

You may be able to sell your services to a few clients and build some chops on their dime. But that’s not the way to build a sustainable business. Plus, seasoned (read: high-ticket) clients smell vaporware a mile away.

Learn from my mistake: a couple of years into my first digital marketing agency, Idunn, I noticed an increased demand for Google Ads services. I already had a bit of experience with the platform. I got the Google certification and sold the service.

I even got some clients. And the clients had good results. But they were nowhere near the results my team and I had had with our core services – content writing and social media marketing.

I dropped the service after a few months and got back to what we knew how to do best. This way, we also got back to getting the stellar feedback we were accustomed to.

Speaking of this:

2. Don’t be Everything. Service Excellence Comes from What You Choose NOT to Offer

Would you work with someone that’s mediocre at everything or a superstar at one or two things?

Lady Gaga can pull off singing and acting. But not even she has tried to add tennis, football, cooking, and crocheting to the mix.

I’m not saying that you need to niche down and offer a single, tiny service. Sometimes, offering everything a client needs helps a lot with retention – but only if all those services are up to par.

Personal example: I took the Google Ads lesson above to heart. When I saw an increased demand for link building and link outreach, I said no. We kept offering SEO content writing services, but we never dabbled in selling links.

I tried such services for my own businesses and quickly realized that it’s incredibly hard to avoid the spam and the scam that comes with this industry. So I chose to decline every offer I’ve received for this service.

Yes, I left money on the table. But I left $10 one day and got $1000 the next day.

Having a backbone in the service industry helps!

3. Be a Partner to Your Clients, Not Their Hireling

Remember what I said in the beginning about tired tropes that harm your business? “The client is always right” is one of them.

The client isn’t always right. That’s why they hire experts like you. They don’t need their ego massaged, they need your expertise to tell them how they can improve. When you help your clients grow, your business grows as well.

Partnerships are the key to sustainable and future-proof businesses.

My agency has clients that have been with us for seven years and counting. But we never treated the work we did for them like donkey work.

We also pointed out when they could do something better. For example, we offered content marketing suggestions to go with the content we produced for them. This was outside the scope of our work but we knew that, without the right promotion, even the best pieces of content will only remain best-kept secrets.

This is the type of attitude that makes you a partner to your clients, not an easily replaceable hireling. Don’t be afraid to stand up and stand your ground – it always pays off!

Conclusion – Sustainable Service Businesses Aren’t Built Overnight

Just like any other kind of business, service ones have their ups and downs. However, a steady stream of clients and predictable income comes only if you have a backbone from the moment you launch your business.

Don’t try and grow to seven digits in a year. This is nearly impossible and it often involves “unorthodox” tactics. If you want to keep your business for the long run, make sure its name remains stain-free.

This may involve letting go of bad-fit clients just to make room for better ones. That’s OK. If you stick to your initial vision and code of ethics, you will attract the right type of client.

The post The 3 No-BS Must-Haves for a Future-Proof Service Business appeared first on SiteProNews.

We do know some things, though: the Euro zone will be hit first due to its high inflation, but no one is safe. The economists predict a global growth rate of only 2.9% in 2022, down from the 4.6% predicted at the beginning of the year.

As consumers adjust to soaring inflation rates, most companies will see their cash flow take a hit. An old cliché says that, in times of recession, cutting down on your marketing budget is a bad idea.

As most clichés, this is half true: you need marketing more than ever to convince clients to keep parting with their diminishing income. However, a quick reality check tells us that you may not have that much money to spend on marketing and advertising.

You will have to make some cuts. Let’s see how you can do that and still grow your business (or, at the very least, keep it afloat).

Dig Deep into Your Analytics and Metrics

If you have been investing in marketing for a while now, you surely have some metrics to analyze. Start there.

You can re-allocate some funds from some of the tactics that haven’t been faring too well to those who bring you most of the clients. To know what is what, make sure you look beyond vanity metrics like traffic and likes: look at money in the bank instead.

Next, look at your best and worst performers. Do you have any channel that hasn’t brought in a dime? Cut that mercilessly. For the rest of them:

Reduce Instead of Cutting

Let’s say your social media isn’t exactly bringing a ton of leads. But it still brings some eyes on your content, which you can then use to convert people.

Don’t cut it altogether – you don’t want your profiles to turn into ghost towns. Just reduce the effort and the budget you invest in the tactics that aren’t direct money-bringers.

A word of caution here: metrics can be deceiving. For example, you may decide to cut down on a tactic that has a high CPA (Cost Per Acquisition). That makes sense at first glance. But what if the customers who come in through this tactic have the highest LTV (Lifetime Value)? Look for context for every metric you analyze.

Zoom in and out alternatively to get the whole picture before you decide on what to cut and what to reduce.

Do More with Less

The kneejerk reflex in tough times is to cut things that cost money. But your and your team’s time is equally valuable.

There are things you can optimize and templatize to help you save time – and then re-invest that time in strategy. For example, start repurposing your content:

• Turn several blog posts on similar topics into an eBook.
• Create several blog posts from an eBook.
• Add an audio version to your blog posts to reach more people.
• Cut longer videos into shorter ones that you can publish across many platforms.
• Post parts of your blog posts as Quora answers.
• Turn blog posts into infographics.

The combinations are limitless here. The goal is to reach a wider audience: there are people who prefer written content, while others respond better to visual or audio content.

You probably have some high-performing pieces of content that can be repurposed already and with minimal effort. Start there.

Go Back to High ROI Basics

In my experience (15+ years in marketing), the best channels in terms of ROI across industries are email and content. I’ve seen and helped build businesses from scratch on these two alone.

While content is not cheap, it’s a worthwhile investment; it’s something that keeps on giving for years. Case in point: one of the blog posts on my agency’s website still brings in quality organic leads. It was posted in 2017. That’s five years of banking on a single well-written blog posts.

Email, on the other hand is cheap. It’s the cheapest communication channel you have with your clients and leads. If you’ve been ignoring your contact list for a while now, it’s time to re-assess.

Start sending regular newsletter and work on growing your list. Third-party platforms like social media networks come and go but your mailing list is yours to keep – you’ll always have access to those contacts.

Need additional help navigating your marketing on a lower budget or building a better strategy? I send a weekly newsletter with analyses, tips, tricks, and advice. Sign up for it here!

The best marketers are those who make it on a shoestring budget. Or those who emerge victorious from a crisis.

Take your time – the recession is not yet fully here. You still have time to analyze, learn, and pivot.

The post Marketing During a Recession: What to Cut and What to Keep appeared first on SiteProNews.

And herein lies the key.

Everyone checks at least one email account every day. If you can make your way into that account, you’re golden.

Let me rephrase that: if you can come up with a good reason for people to subscribe to your newsletter and good email copy, you’re golden. People aren’t going to read just any emails; but they’ll read the good stuff.

I believe this strongly enough that I recently launched a business that relies almost entirely on email. My newest website is the place where I dissect the future, analyze trends, and teach my subscribers how to prepare for them. And I’ve bet on email as my primary marketing channel for everything.

The statistics are in my corner.

Email Will Stay Relevant in the Future – a Data-Backed Statement

Email marketing is easy to use, affordable, and suitable for any business. Plus:

• Email marketing ROI stands at an impressive $36 for every $1 spent. Beat that, Mertaverse!
• There are currently 4 billion daily email users in the world and their number is expected to grow to 4.6 billion by 2025.
• Email marketing revenue is nearing $10 billion in 2022 and will grow to $17.9 billion by 2027.
• 37% of brands are increasing their email budget and only 1.3% are making cuts.
• In B2B, 81% of marketers say that email newsletters are the type of content they rely most on.
• 99% of users check their email every day and some do it even 20 times a day! (I’m “some” too!)
• Email is the most personal way to receive communication: 74% of Baby Boomers, 72% of Gen X, 64% of Millennials, and 60% of Gen Z agree with this statement.

If you look at all the statistics and projections above, you’ll see that email is still (!) growing. If you were planning to get serious about email marketing, now is your chance – everything gets over-saturated at some point.

And email isn’t far from that point.

• People spend less time reading brand emails. They used to spend 13.4 seconds per email in 2018, then 11.8 seconds in 2020, and only 10 seconds in 2021.
• 63% of businesses reduce their emailing frequency based on the level of engagement.

Since brand emails and promotions have become ubiquitous in our inboxes, it’s only natural that users reduce the time allocated to each email. After all, there are more and more of them fighting for the same attention span.

This is where quality comes into play. GOOD emails will continue to be read. Bad emails will be deleted without ever being opened – yes, even if you add a discount code to your subject line.

Remember how I said that my newest business will rely almost entirely on email? Well, here’s how my emails stand out in crowded inboxes (and get results).

How I Create Emails that Subscribers Read and Act Upon

Most emails are sent to sell something. That’s perfectly alright, after all this is how a business can survive.

The only problem is that recipients see right through this. Pushy and sleazy email campaigns looking to instill FOMO above all else (if you don’t buy NOW, you’ll lose this chance you never asked for) don’t fare so well anymore.

Readers need content (and that includes emails) that sparks a human connection. Yes, everyone knows that we use automated tools to send emails to thousands of recipients at once.

But you can still make every email feel personal. Here’s what I do before I hit Send in ConvertKit (my email marketing platform):

• I use a story to capture attention. My stories typically get personal. It’s nothing creepy or NSFW, but it’s personal enough to create a real connection between me and my reader.
• I offer them something valuable: an analysis, an interesting point of view, entertainment, a memorable or an inspiring story – every newsletter I send has one of these ingredients. This way, even if they’re not interested in what that email pitches, at least they know they didn’t waste their time reading it.
• I emphasize the human aspect of every email or business transaction I pitch them. For instance, I’d never say “here’s a coupon code for 25% off”. Instead, I’ll explain why I chose to offer a coupon – why now, why this amount, why to them, and so on.

Briefly put, I bring the human factor back into what has become an impersonal means of communication. I think it’s a shame that we have stripped email of all human touches. And I plan to right that wrong.

Since I started out on this journey with a bit of bitterness at the current state of email, I’ve also put together a digital download for my subscribers. You know, as a way to help spread good emails to as many people as possible.

If you have a product or a service to launch soon and if you want to try a different, more human-centric approach in your email marketing, this ready-to-send sequence of 5 emails will be right up your alley. All you need to do is download it, add your own details (product name, elevator pitch and so on) and hit send. It takes less than a minute per email to send out something truly worth reading.

The post Email Is Still the Best Marketing Channel – Here’s Why (and How to Do it Right) appeared first on SiteProNews.

At the same time, 64% of respondents in a Flexera study said that they have more apps than they need. I bet you can see where this is going.

It’s going straight into app fatigue.

Before you get there (you’ll see why you should avoid overcrowding your tech stack below), I suggest you try and stay as lean as possible. For my three businesses, I rely on far fewer than 73 apps. In fact, I made a list of (almost) everything I use – free or paid apps –, along with tips on how to leverage each them to the fullest. You can download the list for free here.

Now let’s get back to app fatigue.

Why Is App Fatigue and Why Should You Care?

App fatigue is a term used by developers when users no longer want to download and use apps.

Remember the “there’s an app for that” catch phrase? Well, it caught so well because there’s an app for everything. From checking a detailed weather report on a mountain peak to tracking your fitness level or the hours you spent on apps (the irony is strong here!), you can find an app for anything – business, personal, or pleasure.

But, while Gartner forecasts annual SaaS spend will keep on growing, app fatigue is slowly creeping in.

Business managers are wary of adding one more thing to their tech stack, especially if that thing involves a steep learning curve for the personnel. More than half of enterprise apps aren’t managed. This means that no one pays close attention to renewal dates or app usage.

With no centralized management, app spend will, indeed, increase, but not for good reason. With more and more employees solving their own app-related needs, IT managers will soon find themselves paying far more than expected in subscriptions and renewal fees.

How I Kept My Tech Stack Lean While Managing Three Businesses

I’m skeptical by nature. So whenever I heard about a new app that can improve productivity, save time, streamline processes, or any other promise that pretty much everyone serves these days, I felt a red light flicker inside.

All of the apps I’ve ever added to my tech stack went through a thorough scrutiny process:

• Does it really do any of what it promises?
• And even if it does, is it worth it? When I say “worth it” I’m not just talking about the money you need to pay for subscriptions. What about my time?
• Is there a better way to do this – or a free way?
• Will my team learn how to use it fairly quick?
• Does it integrate with other apps I use?

Just to give you an idea, I spent three months testing social media management platforms before I landed on Sendible. And that was almost eight years ago, when there weren’t that many apps.

It may seem like too much trouble, but I’ve never needed to switch to another social media management platform since then. My team and I tested almost every tool that launched in the meantime, but we stuck by our choice – because we put in the time to make sure it was the right one.

Right now, we use less than 40 apps, services, and online solutions in total. We rarely use more than five of them each day. Some are used frantically, of course, like Google Docs, but others, like our VPN, is only used occasionally.

With less than 40 apps, I manage two digital marketing agencies and a newly-launched consulting business. And I’m not planning to add anything new anytime soon.

How to Not Overspend on Apps (and Still Stay in the Loop)

I’m not suggesting that you dust off your fax machine and travel back in time. I’m suggesting you give every app you purchase a second thought.

Think about your business as a machine. The more options and parts you add to it, the higher the chances something will break and bring everything to a halt.

Apps have a way of creeping in. A productivity app here, a browser extension there, a newly released SaaS, and you’ll find yourself frantically switching between dashboards and wasting the time all these solutions promised to save.

Secondly, think about the data that runs through all of these apps. Is any of it critical data? Can you get into trouble (legally or financially) if the company running the app makes a cybersecurity boo-boo and exposes your data to the world?

Lastly, run an audit at least once a year. Go through all the apps you use – paid or free. Are they still worth it? Could you replace them with something better or let go of them altogether? I promise you’ll feel lighter every time you remove an app from your tech stack.

I spent the last eight years building the tech stack that runs my businesses and I still optimize it constantly. If you want a sneak peek into what I use, download the list here. Maybe you’re already using some of them, so just in case I added my own tips and trick on how to get the most of each. Or how to use free or cheaper alternatives to expensive solutions.

The post Is Your Business Using Too Many Apps? (and How I Keep My Own Tech Stack Lean) appeared first on SiteProNews.

An architect receiving the umpteenth unbeatable offer sprinkled with dozens of buzzwords can’t do much about it. But as marketers, we have the responsibility to clean up our language.

Why bother?

Well, if not for the sake of language itself, do it for the sake of conversions and sales. Phrases that are devoid of meaning…don’t mean anything (shocking, I know!). Readers don’t know what to do with them. A lazy CTA won’t get anyone to take action. A buzzword will be glanced over and forgotten the next second.

Sales and conversions happen where meaning exists.

Here are some examples that lack meaning, depth, or common sense.

1. Going Viral

“How fast can you make my social media posts go viral? What about my article?”

Yes, I’ve been asked this by some of our potential clients. (They never fulfilled that potential, by the way.)

When I hear someone asking about going viral, I know they have no idea how the internet works. Going viral was a thing back in 2005-2010. Even then, you couldn’t make things go viral just because you wanted them to.

If this expression could die a painful (but fast!) death, I’d be incredibly happy!

2. People-First Culture

I know, I know, using this common phrase is supposed to humanize your brand. But guess what? It does the exact opposite.

It makes you sound sleazy, like you’re organizing genocides for petty cash. (Can you tell I really hate this expression?)

If your company or organization isn’t fighting for animal welfare or for the Amazonian forest, then you INHERENTLY have a people-first culture. You don’t need to mention it. Every culture built by people is built FOR people.

Of course people come first, what else – the cookies you sell or the code that runs your SaaS? The real question is this: exactly which people come first?

When I hear “people-first culture”, I imagine a company that only cares about the CEO and the board. The employees, the customers, and the other “smaller” stakeholders are replaceable.

Let me give you an example from another culture: the ancient Egyptians built pyramids for some people and mud-brick houses for some other people. See where I’m going with this?

If your company really cares about people other than the big guys at the top, do yourself a favor and name them. “People” is far too generic.

3. Reach Out

Reach out became famous back in the 80s, when AT&T used it in an ad. It was spot on for that ad because it referred to AT&T’s long-distance phone call plans. “Reach out and touch someone” was a great slogan.

Some of your customers today may not even know what a “long-distance” plan is since they are too young to have ever used a landline.

Instead of reaching out, today everyone calls. Or texts. Or emails. See, you’ve got options!

4. Touch Base

Still using this? Please don’t, unless it’s about basketball.

25% of respondents in a Glassdoor survey named it the most hated office buzzword.

I especially hate it when it’s forced into a sentence: “Let’s touch base about this report next week.”

Why not “talk about this report next week?” What happened to good, old simple, zero-cringe language that we can all understand?

5. Digital Transformation

We have all transformed so much (digitally!) that we’re barely recognizable now. This pet peeve was nearing its much-deserved end, when the pandemic hit.

And boom! We needed yet another digital transformation. Laggards needed to adopt technology FAST so they can pivot (another gem that could easily be on this list), early adopters needed to…adopt MORE technology, and so on.

In itself, digital transformation has meaning. It refers to replacing obsolete systems with digital-first technologies with the goal to improve business processes.

However, the poor phrase has been overly used and abused so that it now refers to buying yet another solution or subscribing to a new SaaS when you already have 12 similar ones in place. This is not digital transformation. This is digital evolution at best and an overcrowded tech stack that falls under its own weight at worst.

6. Thought Leader(ship)

Ever had more than 100 reactions to a social media post? Congratulations, you’re a thought leader!

Again, nothing wrong with the phrase itself. It’s the users that stripped all of its meaning.

Being a thought leader should mean that you have some clout in your online or offline community and that people follow you (and your advice) because you care about ideas. So you strive to promote thoughts, ideas, principles.

This would mean that there are very few thought leaders and a lot of followers.

But who wants to be a follower these days? Everyone wants to innovate and disrupt (I’ll get to this in a second). Thus, we’ve gotten to a point where there are more thought leaders than followers.

Sadly, this also means that there are fewer and fewer real thought leaders and that we have a harder time separating the wheat from the chaff.

7. Disrupt(ion)

Have you noticed how everything disrupts nowadays? Saying that your solution improves something is far too mild. I mean, do you even want to be a thought leader?

If so, you need to disrupt.

There’s just one problem: very (VERY!) few things actually disrupt something.

Let’s bring the dictionary into this one: “To disrupt a market or a technology is to change the way it works by introducing new methods that are completely different from those that have been used in the past.” (Bolded text belongs to me.)

Before you say that your product disrupts something, make sure it’s completely different from its predecessors.

For instance, an amphibious car is a car that can stay afloat as much as a boat. If it can “briefly” stay afloat, it’s a useless (and dangerous!) submarine. OK, Elon?

Rant over! What about you? What expressions do you hate with a passion?

The post 7 Overused and Overly Annoying Marketing and Business Expressions appeared first on SiteProNews.

When it comes to writing jobs, the jury is still out.

AI and GPT-3 have come a long way. However, I strongly believe that human writers are still very much needed. But I still have to test the AI-powered “competition” to get to an informed prediction, right?

I was planning to write a post about “How to Improve Your Organic CTR”. Instead of writing from scratch and doing my own research, I decided to let AI take the reins.

For this post, I used the most advanced AI writing solution currently on the market, Outranking. I used Outranking before, but mostly to create briefs for the SEO writers on my team.

While the briefs generated by this solution are on-point from a technical perspective, I still added a lot of human touch before sending them to our writers. However, this still saved me and our writers about two hours’ worth of research.

But I got greedy and I wanted more. If AI is supposed to replace us completely, let’s see what it can do.

So I went the “lazy” way and let Outranking do all the work.

Here’s who it went.

Generating an Article with an AI Solution: the First Steps

The first thing I did, was feed Outranking my main keyword: “improve organic CTR”. It has an average difficulty, so it’s perfect for testing purposes.

It took two minutes for the solution to generate a list of headlines.

What I love about this list is that it knows that brackets improve CTR, so it added some of them. Of course, they need some editing, but it’s a good first step.

Pro: Lots of options to choose from and they are well formatted to improve CTR and get more views.

Con: Not all of them sound human, they definitely need some tweaking.

I chose a title and moved to the next step, the outline.

The list of H2s is much longer than I can fit in a screenshot, which is a good thing for me, since I love long-form content.

Pro: Tons of headlines and they all adhere by SEO good practices – they might even get me one of those coveted answer boxes.

Con: You can tell they were not written by humans. They are all dry and impersonal.

So far, I’ve got my title and my outline. I could send the brief to my writers. But I won’t, since Outranking promises to handle the writing too:

I went for the final option: researched writing with AI.

Let’s see what I got.

AI Writing: Could You Do It Better?

I waited around four minutes for my research from Outranking, although it should last around 20 minutes, as you can see in the screenshot above.

The solution got me the research I needed for the entire article:

Pro: I can go through the research, add to it or remove some of it – a useful feature if the AI decided to link to some of my competitors.

Con: I did go through it (for science!), but I didn’t change anything, although I can see the AI recommends 16 to 31 sections and I only have 9.

Let’s build that draft:

I went with the Premium first draft option, since I really want to see this solution work.

These are a few screenshots with the results:

I especially loved the part below because it’s written in a way that just might get me a Google Answer Box:

If I don’t want to go for the answer box, I can simply add more meat to each of the 6 bullet points and transform them into H3s. That would also solve my problem about the number of sections, so if I were to actually need this article, that’s what I would do.

Pro: everything is legible and it doesn’t have that “cheaply spun content” feeling.

BIG CON: sometimes, AI confused organic CTR with the CTR for paid ads. This means that you need to know a little something about the topic and make some significant edits yourself.

As you can see, at this point, my article has no intro. But it’s OK, my AI friend promises me a Brilliant Introduction. Or other types of introductions, as well, which are pretty fun to try.

I went my favorite, the Problem-Agitate-Solution intro. To generate it, I got un-lazy for a moment and edited the title slightly. I also added a target audience:

And I got this:

Pro: it’s legible and it gives me a good starting point.

Con: it’s extremely impersonal for a PAS approach and something a beginner writer would produce.

You can do the same thing for each section intro, as well as the conclusion.

Moreover, you can also add links, images and alt tags.

I did everything related to the content and nothing related to the images (we’re on the clock here!), but I won’t bore you with screenshots of everything.

AI SEO Writing: The Result

This is my final screen before exporting everything to Word or directly in WordPress.

I circled the export options for you and my SEO score. It’s 67, not too bad, considering that I have no links and no images. I’m sure that those two alone could get me to a decent 75-80.

I proceeded to save it in a Word doc, since I won’t be publishing it. I got 1128 words, which is a good start for a long-form blog post.

Total time invested in this:

47 minutes! I took this screenshot from Word, so it includes the time I spent writing this article (thus far, at least). I type quite fast, but I also had to take screenshots, crop and edit them, and then add them here.

All in all, I estimate that it took less than 30 minutes to generate this outline.

AI Writing vs Human Writing: My Verdict

It’s been some time since I tried an AI-based writing solution. I’m surprised (and somewhat scared) that they have come such a long way.

The article that Outranking generated is a far cry from the illegible texts I received a few years ago from other tools. You can read it, it makes sense, it even adds value and relevant information.

Would I publish it as is, though?

No. It definitely needs heavy editing and some extra additions, on top of the links and images the tool suggests.

Most of the edits it needs, however, are of the “human touch” type. You know, something that engages the reader more than a lawn mower manual.

All in all, I’ll keep using Outranking to generate outlines, ideas for new posts, and SEO briefs. I will also keep paying my human writers to do what AI can’t do yet.

If you want to try it out for yourself and see if you can compete with an AI writer, you can start here.

The post I Used AI to Generate an Article. This Is the Result appeared first on SiteProNews.

Recession is coming. It’s all about surviving it now. Some even mention thriving during a recession.

Every media outlet has at least a handful of articles about the upcoming recession and how to prepare for it. While very few officials speak of recession as a certainty, the media certainly does.

Of course, the world may get super-lucky and avoid recession. But the cards seem stacked against us at the moment, so it’s probably time to stop ignoring the articles urging us to prepare for the worse (and hope for the best, naturally).

For my part, I plan to do what I do best to weather the upcoming storm: rely on SEO. Along with content marketing, it’s helped me build two successful businesses in the past seven years and get through another crisis (the pandemic) scot-free.

Here’s why I’ll rely on SEO (and how I’ll do it):

SEO Is the Tactic that Keeps on Giving Even after You’ve Stopped Investing in it

Publish an article today and get traffic from it (and even leads!) for years to come. Sure, PPC ads are faster (SEO takes time). But as soon as you stop pouring money into them, the results will stop too.

If you rely on PPC now, especially SEM, I advise you to re-allocate some of that budget to SEO. You can’t know for how long you will be able to pay for ads in the medium-term future, so it’s wise to start building something that doesn’t need a constant investment.

Case in point: an article published on my agency’s blog in 2017 (!) still ranks for an important keyword for us – hire SEO copywriters –, and it still brings in leads five years later. One article, years of revenue with no additional investment – what more can you want, even in a recession?

Use SEO as a Forecasting Tool

If you already have a library of content, you can use it for more than drawing traffic or leads. It can be the basis of your trend analysis. Log into your Google Search Console to see which of your content pieces got the most clicks in the past month. How is this different from the past three or six months?

Can you notice a pattern? If so, you may have just spotted a new trend, like increased demand for a product/service of yours or decreased demand for something else.

Stay Agile and Ready to Switch Things Around

Things are different in a recession. For instance, while the economy was booming, your content strategy was most likely focused on acquiring clients.

During a bad economic spell, you may need to regroup and re-focus on top-of-the-funnel opportunities. Perhaps there are fewer opportunities to sell, but there are definitely more opportunities to engage with new prospects, gather new contacts, and more.

The key to surviving a recession is to do what you can when you can. If you can’t push your big-ticket products now, it may be time to take another look at your content strategy and see how you can regroup. Don’t close your content stream and wait for the storm to pass. Be there to offer shelter in the form of relevant information to those who need it.

Capitalize on Trends

When times are uncertain (did you miss this term?), trends change faster than usual. Remember the spike in demand for pet adoption and at-home workouts during the lockdowns? They came as fast as they went.

The companies that foresaw these demands thrived when others barely made ends meet. How did they do it? They simply capitalized on emerging trends.

They didn’t wait for everyone who needed an online fitness trainer to contact them. Instead, they used their now-empty gym to live stream workouts.

One way to spot trends before they are long gone is Google Trends. You can type in a keyword that’s related to your industry and see how the search for it evolves. Here’s an example – about recession, since it’s the topic at hand.

The 5-year trend graph for “recession” has two major spikes: one when the pandemic first started and everyone was expecting a recession. Since it didn’t happen that fast, the search volume declined, only to be picked up later, because of an Eastern European war, spikes in energy and gas prices, and other similar “goodies”.

Wrapping Things Up

The ability to pivot quickly is always important. But during a recession, it can make the difference between shutting down your business and thriving.

During harsh economic times, your audience doesn’t have the disposition to read your latest blog article just because they have a few minutes to kill. They want to read something actionable, something that really helps them.

This is why you need to ground your SEO and content marketing strategy in what people are searching for now, what their interests are now, and how you can help them now. Speaking of now, now is also the time to start investing in SEO so that you have a few ranking pieces of content that you can rely on when thngs get tougher.

Not sure where to begin? My team of SEO experts and I can help! Check out our SEO content writing services and let’s talk!

The post How To Recession-Proof Your Business Through SEO appeared first on SiteProNews.

Fame is not really your speed?

There are countless other reasons to build a personal brand:

• It will help you land a better job.
• A personal brand can help you advance at your current workplace.
• A personal brand is essential for solopreneurs, startup founders, coaches, and more.
• You can grow your existing business through personal branding. Even if you are not a solopreneur and you don’t run a small startup, your (potential) clients still prefer to put a face to the company they make business with. Through personal branding, your face doesn’t just become better known; it also becomes more trustworthy.
• A personal brand will help you build a valuable network.

You can do all that with a minimal investment – more often than not, all you need to invest is your time. And I promise you will be rewarded for it.

Here’s how to do it.

Building a Personal Brand through Content Marketing – the Basics

As with every marketing tactic, you need to start with the most important thing:

What Goals Do You Want to Achieve?

Are you looking to further your career, to land a new job, to build a business, or to improve your current company’s brand awareness? Your end goal will dictate your approach and the platforms you use.

For example, if you want to land a better job, you can start by improving your LinkedIn profile and post more often on the same platform. If you want to pad your company’s bottom line, there may be other platforms where your potential clients spend more time, like Twitter, Instagram, or Reddit.

Create a Mission Statement

Who are you? What do you stand for? What are your values? Do you have a cause that you’d fight for endlessly?

All of these things should appear on your public profiles on every platform.

This is my contributor profile here on SiteProNews:

And this is my Twitter bio:

They are pretty similar and they both talk about my businesses and my love for the tech industry and my experience in working with companies in this field. These are the messages I want to get across on all platforms.

Of course, the exact wording needs to change depending on where you publish your content. But it’s useful to have some consistency across the board.

Define Your Target Audience

Now that you’ve written who you are and what you excel at, let’s talk about your audience.

• Who can benefit from your knowledge the most?
• Who is the ideal person to support your goals – bring extra ROI to your business, promote your startup, get a new/better job?
• How can you best reach these people?

Out of the three criteria above, the first two are crucial – and they work best together, so always (always!) make sure that your audience’s needs are aligned with your goals. Let me give you another personal example: for me, it’s very easy to network with other content marketers and agency owners. We have a lot in common.

These connections are very important: I learned (and still do!) a lot from my peers. Sometimes, we even found opportunities to work together or promote each other’s businesses.

But the type of connection that brings actual ROI to my business is not exactly this. I need to reach business owners, so I hang around where they do and write and talk in a way that makes sense to them, not to my marketing peers.

Which brings me to my next point:

Choose Your Platforms Wisely

Despite constantly-dropping organic reach on all social media platforms, they are still a great place to make your voice heard. But you have to choose them wisely.

For example, if you work in financial services (the scruffy kind, not the startup kind), you may want to replace TikTok with something more “serious”.

Go where your audience is. You’ve defined it above, so you should have an idea about where they hang out most often.

You don’t need to be everywhere. You just need to be where it matters.

Talk About What You Know Best

Everyone is good at something. If you already have a few years of work experience or if you run a business, you surely know a few of your strong traits already.

Write on a blog. You don’t even need to buy a domain, you can simply publish on platforms like Medium or even LinkedIn. Record a video and post it on YouTube or Vimeo, write in Facebook groups, join Twitter chats, create TikToks – the possibilities are endless.

The key here is to leave a digital footprint behind – the kind you want people to find and follow. You don’t have to spend ages creating content – even twice a month is enough. Consistency is far more important.

You can write about the processes you use, the strategies you create or implement, your success stories, the mistakes you learned from – pretty much everything will resonate with someone, somewhere.

Plus, you can use solutions like Sendible to schedule your posts in advance and see your personal brand grow even while you’re on vacation.

Assume that everyone you will ever do business with (or work with) will Google you after they first meet you – because they do! And it’s not just recruiters.

I’ll admit – I have a bit of a detective inside, too. I’ll vet any new clients for my agency and any new hires. My Google Fu is strong and I’m not ashamed to use it to make sure that I don’t go into business with a very good scam artist.

Whenever my detective work unveils a decent personal brand, I’m already half way convinced. I’m more likely to hire a content writer that has a visible personal brand a more likely to respect a client who has invested some time in building a brand – and not just for their company, but for themselves too.

Finally: Take Your Time with Building Your Personal Brand

Internet fame is fickle. Almost everyone wants it, so you’ve got some competition.

Don’t assume that one or two posts on LinkedIn are going to turn you into an overnight sensation. That happens extremely rare. And when it does, it usually lasts too little to reap real benefits from it.

Take your time. Write. Speak. Test. Redo, do better. Rome wasn’t built in a day; you can’t expect it from your personal brand.

The post How to Create a Personal Brand through Content Marketing appeared first on SiteProNews.

When I launched Idunn, our blog was a goldmine of information: how-to guides, precise step-by-step instructions, trade secrets, and more. We got a ton of traffic, but very few leads.

This is a cautionary tale that I’ve told quite a few times. And I’ll keep telling whenever I see a content strategy that seems like a perfect fit for Wikipedia, but not for a business that needs ROI.

What was wrong with our initial strategy – and a lot of content strategies I see today? They’re informative, but they lack the connection to what the publisher is selling.

This is where product-led content comes into play.

What Is Product-Led Content?

Product-led content is a type of content designed to help the reader solve a problem by using your product.

Does this mean that we’re done with informational content? Not at all!

You see, the strategy I used when I launched my agency was trendy back in 2015. In the meantime, marketers have realized that offering information is great, but only if you can also tie it with your own products.

Thus, product-led content is information, but it also weaves in details about the product/the solution you are selling.

Product-led content is not a sleazy long-form ad. It’s a way to offer information to your reader – trustworthy, in-depth information – and to get SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads) in the process.

More importantly, product-led content does not promote your product directly. It offers your product as a solution among others.

Example time: on a blog post titled Understanding and measuring your Customer Effort Score (CES), Hotjar tells you everything you need to know about CES. They’ve got definitions, examples, screenshots, how-tos, and more.

But they also have this part:

You receive important impartial information: how to differentiate CES, NPS, and CSAT. Plus a way to measure NPS using their solution, with a screenshot to make things easier to remember.

This is how you get content that’s valuable for the reader AND for your business.

Why Is Product-Led Content Important?

Let’s think about how product-led content works using the definition and the example above: it offers answers to readers’ questions and a quick solution: your product.

Granted, not everyone who reads a product-led blog post will become a paying customer. In fact, very few of them will convert right away. But:

Product-Led Content Improves Brand Awareness

People looking for the difference between CES and NPS will stumble upon Hotjar’s article. Thanks to that eye-popping screenshot, they will start associating NPS with Hotjar. When they need a solution to measure NPS, they will remember this.

You Can Get More SQLs

A product-led blog post that answers a real need will be read by people who need your product. The leads pre-qualify themselves.

Better yet, when people subscribe to your newsletter to get more of that awesome content they just read, they already know about your product. People who subscribed to our newsletter back when our strategy wasn’t product-led had no idea what we were selling.

They were so far from being qualified that most of them were actual competitors of ours. Learn from our mistakes and from Hotjar’s wins!

You Retain Existing Customers

If your product is complex (for instance, a feature-heavy SaaS solution), then it’s likely that very few of your subscribers use it to the fullest. However, since they are typically also subscribed to your newsletter, your product-led content can help them leverage their subscription to the fullest.

You wouldn’t want them migrating to a competitor just because that competitor did a better job of promoting a feature you also have, right?

Ready to create product-led content? Let’s see how you can do it!

How to Create Product-Led Content to Attract and Retain Customers

Just like any other marketing tactic, product-led content is not for everyone. We’ve had the best results for our clients in:

• SaaS/XaaS (case study here)
• Consumer and B2B tech (case study here)
• Digital marketing (for our own agency and for partner agencies)

Of course, you can apply the advice below to any field. But before you do, start by making sure that product-led content is right for you.

1. Identify Customer Pain Points

This should be a fairly straightforward step, since you have to do this to develop your product in the first place. I advise you to re-trace your steps for content purposes this time.

Go even more in-depth with the pain points.

Let’s say your solution helps the user save time. That’s great – everyone wants more free time.

But what exactly is that something that takes up too much time? Can you break into more activities?

Here’s an example: in my agency, we use Sendible to schedule our social media posts for our own accounts and for those of our social media management customers. This saves us time in several ways:

• No more switching between profiles or platforms.
• Consolidated and customized reports that we can send to our clients with a single click.
• Fresh ideas for content to post within the Sendible dashboard.
• We can manage all the accounts from our Sendible dashboard – see messages, tweets, comments, and reply to them directly from Sendible.

Each of these answers to our pain points can be turned into a product-led piece of content.

2. Choose Topics that Your Product/Solution Can Really Solve

You can mention your solution anywhere. But if it’s unnatural, it’s useless.

For example, I chose this topic because my agency creates a lot of product-led content. So I can take this opportunity to tell you that if you want well-written, ROI-generating content, you can contact my team.

One thing my agency doesn’t do is offer backlinking services. I know very well how this works, but since we don’t do it, you won’t see me write an in-depth article about backlinking because it doesn’t match my business goals.

What I could do, though, is write 2,000 words about how to get backlinks and mention our SEO writing services. The two are connected – and you will get more backlinks naturally with good SEO content –, but the topic doesn’t tie in directly with what we do.

So while I may mention backlinks and their importance, my focus will always be on topics about needs that our services can solve directly.

3. Go for the Low-Hanging Fruits

In this case, these are long-tail, low-volume keywords. They will get you less traffic, but they will be easier to rank for and you’ll find it easier to match topics with needs your product can solve.

Can you write product-led content without SEO? Absolutely, but you’d miss out on the opportunity to attract new customers. It will still work for retaining existing ones, though.

In my experience, the best way to leverage this type of content is through SEO. Optimization gives you the perfect opportunity to reach new audiences and to increase your brand awareness, as well as to get new SQLs.

Final Thoughts: Don’t Forget About the Informational Purpose of the Content

It’s very easy to completely turn things around and forget that your content should answer real questions or pain points first and foremost – not promote your product. Remember that your content should be product-led, not product-centric. You’ve got testimonials, case studies, and ads for the latter.

Need help with creating product-led content? My team of expert content writers and I are just a click away. Let’s talk!

The post What Is Product-Led Content and How to Use It to Maximize Your ROI appeared first on SiteProNews.

But here’s the thing: most blog articles go viral for unknown reasons. Everyone who’s ever had a “viral happy accident” happen to them subsequently tried to re-create that scenario. They rarely succeed.

There are two major problems with chasing online fame (and nothing else):

1. It rarely happens. Most blog posts get fewer than 10 views.
2. As cool as it may be, fame doesn’t pay the bills.

While views and shares are important, they are not the most important metrics you should be tracking for a business content marketing strategy. The only bloggers who should focus excessively on these two metrics are the ones who run ads on their blogs and get paid by the number of views.

If that’s not your case, read on.

3 Better Metrics to Track Instead of Views, Shares, and Likes

If you run a business blog or create any other type of content (like 91% of B2B marketers do), you have to evaluate your performance regularly, right? Cool! Here’s where to begin:

1. Brand Awareness

I’ll be the first to admit: this one is tough. Extra tough!

There are very few ways to measure brand awareness and most of them are unreliable. Plus, you’ll need to correlate them with other factors. Some of my favorite (albeit imperfect) strategies include:

• An uptick in overall web traffic – correlate with the amount of people who discover your website through one of your content pieces.
• An uptick in organic visits – a great way to find out which types of content perform better in terms of SEO.
• Referral traffic – how many people link to your content?
• Search popularity – are people searching for your brand? If so, can you track it back to content?
• Earned media value – does your content bring in earned media? For instance, do media outlets reach out to you for an interview or for an expert take on a topic because they consider you an expert thanks to the content you publish?

Again, all of these are very, very hard to quantify. It’s why you’ll rarely see a CMO say something like “our content strategy brought a 23% YoY increase in brand awareness”. It’s next to impossible to determine exactly how many people know about your brand and how many of them found it via content.

I run two digital marketing agencies and I only have a vague idea about it. I know that our content attracts readers and customers, as well as social media followers. I also know that it has earned me personally spots on lists like the top 100 content marketing influencers by Semrush.

Of course, all of these things are very important for a business. But I could never tell you exactly how much cash they brought in.

I can tell you, however, without a doubt that any business will thrive on a spike of brand awareness – especially if people become aware of your brand for the right reasons.

2. Lead Generation

This one is much easier to track. Simply look at your analytics account to see how many people who read a blog post of yours (or any other type of content) subscribed to your newsletter or left their contact information in any other type of form.

An in-depth look at this metric will also tell which types of content perform better and should be replicated. Look for patterns: are “how-to” articles performing better than customer stories or is it the other way around?

Last but not least, look at the quality of the leads. A huge email list is worthless if most of the subscribers will never convert to buyers – which takes us to my next point.

3. Conversions

Yes, this is the one metric to rule them all. Your conversion rate tells you how much money your content is bringing in. This is the ultimate goal of every marketing activity, so I hope you’re measuring this regularly.

[Side note: in my experience, not even this can be measured accurately. My agency has had plenty of clients who read an article on our blog, closed the page and took no action…then. But when they needed someone to help with content or copywriting, they remembered us and went straight to our website. In Google Analytics, this falls under direct traffic. I only discovered the real source of our conversions after asking the clients directly.]

Now, about what I mentioned earlier: not all leads gained through content are ideal. Sure, a blog is a great way to get some street cred. 68.5% of users think blogs add credibility to a website.

However, in order to move from street cred to money in the bank, you need your content to match not just your users’ needs, but also your business goals.

Here’s a how-not-to example from my own business: when I first launched my agency, our blog was filled with in-depth articles about copywriting and content writing strategy, tips, tricks, and pretty much anything you can think of. They check all the boxes: they ranked well, they offered thorough explanations, and they were fun to read.

They even brought in leads.

But they weren’t the kind of leads we were looking for. Our leads were fellow copywriters looking for the next hot industry trick. Needless to say, leads were pouring in, but conversions rarely happened.

Now, I love to educate, but I also love paying my bills.

So I changed the strategy: the articles we published were designed to meet our potential customers’ needs AND our business goals. For instance: “How to hire the best SEO copywriters” brought in a lot of qualified leads, while “How to write an About Us page that converts” brought us street cred alone.

Do learn from my mistake: make sure your content checks both boxes if you want it to convert (and I know you do!), not just get shared massively.

Final Thoughts

Write well, write often, but most importantly write with a purpose. If you feel like you’ve strayed from your purpose and your content isn’t performing as expected, I suggest you revisit the KPIs you use to measure it.

Those KPIs can vary widely from business to business. Check out this list of 15 content marketing KPIs that you can add to your tracking list for a more comprehensive view into your content’s performance.

The post Beyond Views and Likes: How to Choose Better Metrics to Measure Your Content Marketing appeared first on SiteProNews.

A headline can be a blog post title, a YouTube video title, an H2, even a social media caption. All of these have the same purpose: to get people to delve deeper into your content. Or to be so irresistible that they will share your content without reading or watching it.

How do you get there? Well, there are plenty of ways, of course. Here are the ones we use most frequently in my content marketing agency.

1. Write the Headline Whenever You Want to Write It

Pretty easy, right? I’ve started with this little nugget because most of the headline-related articles out there will tell you to write it once your entire article is done. This way, you’ll know exactly what’s inside and you’ll be able to summarize your content more accurately.

However, there are people (myself included) that start with a headline. Most of my article ideas have their origin in a headline that seemed catchy enough for me to start working on the rest of the content. Plus, the argument also goes the other way around: if you start with the headline, you’ll have fewer chances at losing your focus and straying away from the topic.

There is no right or wrong way. In other words: you do you.

Try writing it at the end. Try starting with it. You’ll figure out what works best for you or for each piece you write. Just remember that not all the advice you read online works for everyone. And that’s OK.

2. Make Sure Your Headline Is an Accurate Summary of Your Content

Remember what I said above about losing focus and straying away from the topic? The same thing can happen when you work too hard at crafting a good headline. By its fourth iteration, it may not even be close to the topic of the article.

Before you settle on a headline, make sure that it accurately reflects what your content is about. This piece, for instance, promises to help you write great headlines through a set number of tips.

The headline creates an expectation: you can skim (or read entirely) five tips about writing great headlines. So you won’t see me rambling about why the conclusion section is important, just like I won’t write more or fewer tips than I promised at the top of the page. Consistency matters!

3. Always Be Clear About Your Headline’s Purpose

Is your headline supposed to entice readers to click on an article or an email? Or perhaps sign up to your newsletter? Should it help with your SEO too?

Answering these questions will help you stay focused on your goal. For instance, this article’s headline is not meant for SEO. If it had been, I would have probably chosen something like “How to Writer Great Headlines in 5 Easy Steps” because “how to write great headlines” looks like a long-tail keyword that people might actually type into a search bar.

Your purpose dictates the type of words you use and the length of the headline. A headline in a PPC ad should be more actionable and speak about the benefits more clearly, while a whitepaper headline should be focused on showcasing the quality of what’s inside.

4. Why Would Someone Read This Piece of Content?

We’ve spoken about your goals, now it’s time to focus on your readers’ goals. A headline should always be the promise of an accomplished goal.

This particular headline promises to give you a few insights on how to get better at writing headlines. If your goal is to better your headline writing, it’s the right piece for you.

Make promises in your headlines, but, as discussed before, make sure your content lives up to them. Don’t stray; stay on topic and make sure that you bring real value.

Ideally, before you settle on a headline, do a quick online search for it. Does it stand out from the crowd of content pieces on similar topics? If not, keep polishing it. You’ll find some ideas on how to do it below.

5. Great Headlines Pack a Punch

There are a few attributes of great headlines:

• They are concise
• They use active verbs
• They use common language (they need to be easy to understand) but also a few unexpected and/or powerful words.
• They convey a clear benefit

Let’s look at today’s headline (5 Essential Tips to Help You Craft Killer Headlines) using these new lenses:

• Brevity: nine words, most of which are pretty short – we’re good here!
• Active verbs: help and craft qualify.
• Common language: yes, it’s easy to understand, no pretentious jargon. Killer is my unexpected word of the day and essential is the powerful one that takes tips out of anonymity – it’s a pretty common word in headlines.
• A clear benefit: you will craft better headlines.

David Ogilvy’s 20 most influential power words is a good place to start looking for words that pack a punch to incorporate in your headlines.

Would You Click on It?

Instead of a conclusion, I’m going to leave you with an additional thought: if you’re not sure your headline is powerful enough, it probably isn’t. Would you click on it?

Try to answer this sincerely (I know, it’s hard to be unbiased when it’s your own work) and you’ll know if your headline is ready to be published.

The post 5 Essential Tips to Help You Craft Killer Headlines appeared first on SiteProNews.