Lead Liaison

What Does Context Have to Do with Content Marketing?

/0 Comments/in , /by

What Does Context Have to Do with Content Marketing?After Google’s latest algorithm change, context is the new king of content marketing. This means that regardless of how much keyword-optimized content, how many words you have on your page or how great your content is, you may not rank the way you’d like to if you aren’t answering the questions users pose with search queries related to your site.

We’ve talked extensively about Google’s Hummingbird update. This and other changes by Google ensure that context is the most important criteria in a user’s search. Users aren’t just looking for info about a certain topic, they’re looking for information that specifically answers whatever questions they’re trying to pose.

Context and Content Marketing

This is where you come in. These days ensuring you’re giving users the right context can be about over explaining things. In the pre-Hummingbird days, one of the most important things you could do in developing site pages is keep the user on your site for as long as possible, not overwhelming them with content and giving them the right navigation to “fall down the rabbit hole” in your site – exploring page after page to browse content in several areas. Post-hummingbird page strategy isn’t that different. You still want users to get happily lost in the wealth of information you’re giving them – but you want the pages they land on to answer the specific questions they’re looking for answers to.

For instance, “What kinds of flowers should I plant in spring” should bring up an intro page on a site with a wealth of information about different kinds of spring flowers and individual pages on how to best plant them – not just an article about “The 10 Best Spring Flowers to Plant.” This may not happen just yet, but keep in mind Google is crafting search to lean toward content, so the more information you can provide that answers user questions, the better.

How Do I Change My Site?

Less is not more – don’t worry about rewriting existing pages on your site. If anything, add more content to those pages or link to content that ensures users will get their questions answered. And most importantly, if your content marketing isn’t truly answering any questions, start by thinking about what your users want to see from you. If you don’t know the questions it’ll be hard to come by the answers.

Lead Liaison has a truly unique content marketing platform unlike any other marketing automation dashboard out there. Our writers can craft content marketing focused around the general questions your site visitors want answered. Let us show you how!

Lead Liaison

5 Lead Generation Techniques That Work

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Lead Generation Techniques That WorkDoes your digital marketing strategy work well for you? Are you able to generate leads for your product or service? If your answer to those two questions is no, then you are not doing it right. Read on and you shall learn five important lead generation techniques that will definitely produce a positive impact on your marketing strategy.

1.     E-Books

This is a great lead generation tool. E-books are helpful in the sense that they have plenty of detailed information about a certain service or product and they can be easily downloaded. So you can write an e-book for your business and distribute it to your intended audience. As a plus, you can decide to have the e-book available only to those who provide an email address. Consequently, you create an even wider lead.

2.     Email marketing

With the entry of webinars, blogs, eBooks and videos, most people think that email marketing is history. Contrary to this belief, it still is considered to be the most common channel for promoting business. The effectiveness of email marketing is going to increase now that consumers can access their email through their tablets and smartphones.

3.     Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This basically entails enhancing your website for different search engines with an aim to have your website listed in the highest search rankings, according to the keywords your potential customers use when looking for services or products. You can do this by seeking professional help from experienced SEO agencies whose work is to keep websites at the top ranks of search engines thus increasing traffic to your website.

 

4.     Company Blog

Blogging has developed from being a channel through which people communicate their day-to-day experiences to a channel through which businesses create brand awareness and manage to establish a close connection with their target market. Studies carried out have shown that companies that have a blog manage to drive more traffic to their websites more than those that don’t use blogging. The kind of content you should include in your company blog is mainly content that provides solutions to the problems of your target audience. There is no doubt that blogs are a good way of generating leads.

5.     Online Video Marketing

This is one strategy that businesses have not taken full advantage of. Produce short videos about your brand and post them on sites such as YouTube. It is an easy thing to do. Video marketing is turning out to be a very economical lead generation technique due to the huge numbers of people who use the social networks to get information. Remember when posting your video to sites like YouTube give it an appropriate description by using certain keywords that will also raise your ranks in search engines.

If you put these five lead generation techniques into practical use you will definitely experience an effective digital marketing strategy. As a company your brand awareness will increase, you will create more leads and eventually generate more sales for your service or product.

Lead Liaison

Should You Be Creating Infographics For Your Company?

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Should You Be Creating Infographics For Your Company?Creating infographics is one great way to share information with your audience base. For many small businesses, one of the main challenges in creating infographics is finding the time or the talent. It’s also important for small business to integrate graphic creation into an already-existing content strategy, rather than making them chief in the strategy.

Network dissemination is also important to consider – if you’re only using Twitter and you’re posting mostly infographics, chances are your audience will never see this content. Finding network-appropriate content should be part of your overall marketing strategy.

Is Creating Infographics Difficult?

Pretty much anyone can use a free graphics editor and slap together an infographic, but keep in mind that your audience wants to see streamlined content. The difference between a low-quality and high-quality infographic is something your audience doesn’t have to be graphics experts to pick up. Other businesses have set the bar with high-quality graphics and content, so it’s important to ensure that a graphics and design expert is looking over or even making your creations.

So is creating infographics difficult? Not necessarily – but creating high quality infographics is something you might need some help with. If nothing else, high quality templates are available for purchase from stock photo sites. You can always use a simple photo editor and modify these to suit your needs.

Diversifying Content

We’ve talked about how creating a content strategy that fits what your audience wants to see is the most important thing you can do. Once a small business gets a good method going for creating and disseminating infographics, these graphics often overtake a business’s social media stream.

Treat the infographics created by your company as you would any other type of content. Make sure that you’re measuring responsiveness – do more people comment, like or share infographics than they do text or image content you release? Do you find your numbers dropping when you use more or less graphics? As with any other social media content, the way you use graphics in your social media feed is an experiment at first. If you find tons of people responding and engaging when you post infographics, you’ll want to make sure. Opposite results should yield less infographics in your social media streams.

Brand Your Company

Don’t forget to include your company’s branding – including company name and logo – in your infographics. You don’t want another company sharing your images and taking credit for them! Branding ensures people will know the useful and beautiful data they’re seeing comes from you.

Your infographics should contain great data as well as beautiful imagery. Let us help with the data! Our content writers can put compelling stats together for your images. Talk to the Lead Liaison team about getting social media and content help for your company ASAP!

Lead Liaison

Solidify Your Email Marketing Efforts in 2014

/0 Comments/in , , /by

email-marketing-tips-for-2014Good email marketing requires not only the ability to create compelling content, but a strategy for ensuring click throughs and open rates increase throughout your marketing efforts. For many companies, time is such a factor that developing a strategy around increasing readership and engagement becomes difficult. If you’re looking to solidify your email marketing efforts in 2014 look no further, we can help.

Fortunately, there are some strategies companies of all sizes can implement to ensure they’re getting the best content to their reader base and are increasing engagement as time passes. Now is a great time to start thinking about how your company manages email marketing and if there are potential ways to increase your stats and reach your readership more effectively.

Consider Your Subject Lines

If you haven’t yet created a subject line that features a call to action why not test one out? A call to action typically begins with a strong verb that compels the reader to do something. Good examples of strong subject lines are:

  • Be the change you want to be.
  • Enjoy the holidays for once!
  • Open your own store today.

It’s important that your email subject line be fairly brief and concise. Verbose subjects don’t tend to get a lot of opens, particularly since most people use an email client that obscures part of the subject line. It’s always a good rule of thumb to get to the point quickly.

Strategically Place Links

Don’t just put a URL leading to your site in the sidebar of your email. Prominently feature a link back to your site or content in a few different places. One great way to get people clicking is to feature an interesting article that includes about 2-3 paragraphs of text in your email, and then post a “Read More” link where your article starts to get really compelling.

You can also experiment with creating a footer or other area in your email that groups “related content” links that allow people to click through to your site.

Vary Your Email Marketing Techniques

Rather than just sending out the normal company newsletter, try creating a new post when your company has a big sale, news or even if there’s a new blog post available to read. Check your email stats and take stock of what your client base seems interested in reading. By managing your stats, you can get an idea of how to best get the open rate and click throughs that you’re looking for.

If you need help creating content or managing your email marketing stats, Lead Liaison would love to help! Let us show you how today.