New to SEO? Here’s How to Amp Up Your Link Building Game to Improve Your Search Rankings

Looking to open your business to the online world? SEO is the way to do it. With 93% of online experiences beginning on a search engine, getting your website and its content on the first page for your keywords will get your business noticed by your dream customers. By making yourself visible to your prospective client that is searching for things related to you, you are advertising your business without having to shout out about yourself. No one likes cold callers, right?

Some of you may already have a bit of knowledge of link building, but for the most of you, you’re looking for 5* information that’ll put you on the right path. What’s certain is that taking the time to create and carry out a link building strategy is the best way to zoom ahead of your competitors in the search results. In this blog post we are going to explain what ‘link building’ is, how it will help you reach out to your target audience and most importantly – tell you all about the best link building strategies that’ll get you seen and get people talking about you.

First, let’s discuss why you need to build links to your website.

Link building is now considered an art. Gone with days where black hat spammy SEO methods got you to the first page of Google. Google’s got clever. Bots now crawl the worldwide web to identify what websites are linking to you, whether they’re relevant to your website and whether they’re websites are trusted. A high quality link will:

• Direct people onto your website straight from the link on the other website.
• Improve your Domain Authority – in non-technical terms, the more quality Domain Authority websites that link to your site, Google will improve your Domain Authority and get you seen in the search results of your chosen keywords.
• The anchor text (one of your chosen keywords) that is hyperlinked on the website linking to your site will give Google an indication of the topic/industry of your site and in return, improve your rankings for that keyword and increase your chances of getting those all-important page 1 results.

Here’s What You Need to ‘Link’

You Can Build Links Using Your URL

You can build links by simply pointing to your URL for example, www.purelysocialmedia.com. By building links this way, you’ll be working towards improving your overall domain authority which’ll increase all of your other web page authority.

Or, You Can Build Links Using Your Keywords

Before starting your link building campaign, you need to strategize what keywords you’d like to rank for. If you haven’t yet identified your keywords, you need to login to your Google AdWords account, click Tools and then go to the Keyword Planner tool. In the Keyword Planner tool type in the searches and topics related to your business, for example:

If you’re a digital marketing company like ourselves, we may expect our target audience to be searching for the following topics: ‘how to set up a Facebook page’, ‘how to gain followers on twitter’ or ‘how to build links to my website’.

Now – think of things your ideal client will be searching, these are things that you can explain in a blog post, type these ideas and scroll to the list of search terms. Here you will find the most related search term to what you’ve type in and a list of similar searches or in tech speak – ‘long tail keywords’. Pick one of these terms. This will be the keyword you will be looking to build links to from other blogs/websites. Before you start building links to this keyword, you will need to write a blog post about it and use the keyword in your title, URL and repeat they keyword within your blog post content. Once your blog is published you will have a URL on your website that you can point to from blogs/websites.

NOTE: If you’ve not yet optimized your website with your chosen keywords then take a read of our Beginner’s Guide to SEO. In this blog post you will find out our SEO tips and where your keywords need to appear on your web pages in order to get your website optimized!

Now we’ve discussed why and what you need to link in your link building campaign, here are the best ways to get those all-important links:

Get Guest Blogging

Build links, raise your online profile and direct your target audience to your website by submitting helpful + engaging blog posts to blogs and websites with a better domain authority than yourself. You can find out more about the benefits of guest blogging in our recent blog post.

Find Blogs Related to Your Business or Local Area (aka Blogger Outreach)

By building relationships with bloggers you will build links in return. Spend time finding blogs related to your business and/or area you trade in and contact them to see whether they’re interested in working with you. Here are a few ideas:

Ask Bloggers to Review Your Business

If you own a product based business, restaurant or bar, contacting a blogger to talk about your business in a review piece is a great way of getting a link. Most bloggers will take the free product, meal or drinks as remuneration for their post. However, more popular blogs and websites may charge a fee for doing this.

Pay a Blogger to Write About Your Business or Content Related to your Business (aka. Sponsored Post)

Sponsored posts are another way of building links to your website. Most bloggers will either charge a fee for these posts or ask whether you have a budget in mind. To work out your budget or to explore whether their fee is worth it you can request to see their media kit (a document which states their total page views and social media following) and check out their domain authority by analyzing their URL on the backlink explorer on Moz.

Submit Your Business to Business Directory Websites

You can build links to your website by listing your details and URL to business directory websites. But – you may need to pay a small fee to list your website on online business directories.

Create Great Content and Share, Share Share!

What’s more rewarding than seeing your blog posts liked and shared? As well as feeling great for writing amazing content – people linking to your content on their websites will direct traffic to your website as well as being beneficial for your SEO too!

Advertise on a Website

Like gaining a ‘link’ naturally through submitting guest posts, people linking to your content on their websites and sites reviewing your business – you can get a link by paying for an advertisement on a website. Although there’s the drawback of having to pay for the advertisement & only having the link for a short amount of time – paying to advertise on a website gives you the ability to get your business linked on a site with a high domain authority. And, once Google sees a high domain authority site linking to you – Google will give your authority a boost in return!  

Ask Your Customers to Link to You

Built a great relationship with your client? If they don’t know much about the benefits of SEO for their business, give them a run down about how link building improve their visibility on search engines and ask whether they will be interested in linking to your website in exchange for a link to their website from a page on your site. What’s there to lose?

How to Increase Traffic to Your Website Using Pinterest

Regardless of your industry, Pinterest can increase traffic to your website. Obviously Pinterest works better for more visual businesses like those in the wedding, fashion, food and travel industries than what it does for accountants. But even with accountants, you can still pin helpful content that’ll engage with your target audience. For example, pins which relate to money saving and business tips will provide helpful content to business owners which may/may not be in need of a new accountant.

The way to make Pinterest work for your business is by helping and inspiring your prospective reader/client in order to direct them to your website. It’s not about building followers on Pinterest – it’s about using content to attract readers who will get your brand, love what you do & build loyalty to buy from you. Here’s how to get started:

Create a Pinterest Business Account

With a business account you get access to analytics, rich pins (we’ll discuss these in point 3), and the ability to promote your pins. If you’ve not already got a Pinterest account, click to create a business account. If you have a personal account already, click the following link to switch your personal account to a business one.

Verify Your Business Account

Once you have a business account on the go, you can now verify your Pinterest account. By verifying, you’ll be able to monitor the web traffic coming from your pins. Here’s how to verify using the metatag Pinterest generates:

1. Go to your profile and click Account Settings.
2. On profile, in the Website field, enter your website URL and click Confirm Website.
3. Go on to the next page and see the metatag to put in the <head> of your website.
4. If you’re using WordPress, login to your website and go to Appearances,then Editor and in the right hand sidebar click “header.php”
5. Within the header.php file, copy and paste the metatag Pinterest gave you. Insert this code in between the <head> and </head> tags in the file. Click to update file and it’s all go!

Apply for Rich Pins

Qualifying for Rich Pins is another advantage to owning a business account. As well as making your business look more credible, Rich Pins enables you to provide more information with your pin. Currently, Pinterest offer 6 formats of rich pins; articles, recipes, places, products, apps and places.

In this tutorial, we’ll use rich pins for articles to explain how to enable rich pins for your account.

The easiest way to set up rich pins is by using Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress. As opposed to manually adding Pinterest’s metatags to certain places on your site, Yoast SEO does it for you!

To install Yoast SEO click Plugins, Add New and then Upload Plugin. Upload the .zip file for Yoast SEO and click Install Now.  Activate the Yoast SEO plugin by clicking Activate in the Installed Plugins section on WordPress.

Next, go to the new SEO section of your left sidebar. Click SEO and then click Social. Go to the Facebook section and tick the Add Open Graph Meta Data and press Save Changes. Once completed, click the following link to enable Rich Pins by copying a link to one of your blog posts by scrolling to the bottom of Pinterest’s rich pins validating tool.

NOTE: It can take up to 7 days for Pinterest to approve your rich pin application.

Organize Your Boards

In order to engage and gain a following on Pinterest – you need a flawless profile with boards that will attract your prospective reader/client.

Your first 8 boards are most visible. The first 4 are the most important. They show off your brand, show what you’re interested in and show what you do. From this, they’ll get an understanding of what you’re about.

One great way to create an eye-catching Pinterest profile is by coordinating the board covers and name titles. In the world of Pinterest, jumbled up images and mismatched colors won’t do. Your profile needs uniformity. Do this by implementing your brand colors on the board covers and having a style for your board titles. Each board also needs a relevant description that includes keywords your target audience will be using in their search for inspirational content.  

When organizing your boards think:

1. Who is my target audience?
2. What content is my target audience looking for?
3. What do they love?
4. What content will help them?

Here is an example of a Pinterest profile which engages with its ideal audience:

 

Melyssa helps bloggers and creative entrepreneurs build their businesses using their blogs, social media and email marketing. Her board is simple, matches her brand colors and most importantly – her boards are relevant to what her target audience will be searching. For example: entrepreneur tips, social media tips, blogging tips + email marketing tips.

Create ‘Pinworthy’ Images for Your Blog Posts + Other Web Content

Photography

If you shoot your own photography then great, you’re onto a winner! Your photography will be unique & help form your brand. But, don’t worry, if you don’t take your own photographs, there are heaps of websites that provide beautiful stock photography that is blog and pin-worthy (some are free, too!). Here are a few we recommend: Unsplash, Death to the Stock Photo and Pexels. Take note that tall thin images work best on Pinterest.

The Graphics & Text

You have the photography – now you need the graphics. You can use design software like Photoshop and Illustrator, but if you don’t have the budget, Canva is amazing for creating your own eyecatching pinworthy images for your content (like the feature image for this post. You can add your headline, change text size, add icons, adjust brightness and play with color. For inspiration for the most pinned images on Pinterest, check out this link to find out more.

When it comes to adding your text, your headline needs to grab people’s attention at one glance – so the text needs to be clear and simple.  

Join Group Boards

Joining Group Boards is a great way to build your following, show off your content, interact with industry leaders and prospective clients in attempt to increase the traffic to your website. Pingroupie is an amazing website which allows you to find Pinterest group boards which are relevant to your brand.

Filter your boards by ‘Collaborators’ – ones with higher members are more likely to accept.

You NEED to follow the owner of the group board in order to be accepted.
You may need to email the group board owner in order to be accepted.

Once accepted, try to pin 1-4 images to your group board in a day. Anymore than that then you might appear spammy. Build a good reputation by repinning other members content from the group board.

Curate Great Content for Your Pinterest Boards

In addition to pinning your own content, repinning content helps attract your target audience too.

Curate great content for your boards by following people in your industry, liking, commenting and re-pinning their content onto your boards.

The most likely content to go viral on Pinterest are how to posts, top resources, recipes, guides and checklists. Ensure your pinning seasonal and on-trend content too.

TIP: Pinterest is more likely to recommend your board if it contains lots of popular pins. Once a week go through your boards and delete the pins with low re-pins. This’ll make sure your boards appear to only show amazing content people love!

Schedule Your Pins

Scheduling pins helps save you time + allows you to schedule lots of images to be pinned to your board. Unlike most social media platforms, there are no popular times on Pinterest, Pinterest just likes to see lots of fresh popular content being pinned to your board daily. We recommend using ViralTag and BoardBooster to schedule your pins in advance. 

If you have any questions or suggestions, then feel free to comment below or tweet us @purelysocialtip.

Launching a New Product or Service? Here’s How to Create a Content Marketing Plan to Reach Your Audience + Win Sales

Nobody likes a cold caller or an in-your-face salesman that doesn’t let you get away. When it comes to investing in a product we want choices. We like to build trust and find out how it works. In a world where marketers can easily put their product in front of you on Facebook, through Google or pop into your inbox – the “hard sell” can quickly be deleted and ignored. To promote a new service or product, we need to engage, show you’re an expert and provide value. And – that’s why content marketing is key.

Here’s How Content Marketing Will Grow Your Business

Provide value

We love getting as much as we can for our money. And – as a species, we LOVE freebies! And, that’s why offering free downloadable guides and resources work so well. You’re giving your potential client much more than a product or a service. You are proving that you are the solution to their problems.

If your audience has spent time reading your blog or chosen to download a guide, they know you know what you’re talking about. And before getting told about your new product or service, they trust your brand.

Enhance your SEO

In addition to building trust, content marketing ticks all of the SEO boxes too.

Say goodbye to the‘black hat’ SEO days.

Google now sees good, helpful SEO optimized content as the #1 ranking factor your website. The more helpful content you publish on your website, the more search engines indexes you.

And – the more your content is found on a search engine, the more chance you’ll have of connecting with a potential client.  

Engage with your audience + start conversations

By default, we engage with people and emotions. Showing our personality through the content we post on social media, blog posts, emails, online forums – we build meaningful relationships. Our ability to interact is what builds customer loyalty and wins a sale.

Become an expert

We’ve touched on how we need trust to make a purchase.

If you’re making a claim that you’re social media services will increase sales. You’ve gotta give evidence for that skill set. Through your content marketing you can demonstrate your ability to solve problems. You can feature case studies and prove your products/services are worth investing in by posting testimonials.

Using a combination of content marketing strategies you can provide rich information that’ll build your authority and put you ahead of your competitors.

To gain exposure and build as much hype around your product launch as possible, here are a few ideas to connect with your audience and get your name out there:

1. Get Blogging!

Your blog should be your first point of call. As well as boosting your SEO, your blog posts will be the platform for the rest of your content marketing to build on.

Your blog posts don’t need to explain your new product or service, they just need to include keywords, spark interest and get your readers engaged with the advice you are publishing.

Brainstorm blog post ideas around the topic of your product/service that’ll be published in the six weeks prior, during and after your launch following this rough timeline and structure:

Blog Post 1: 2 weeks prior offering a free content upgrade to collect email addresses (after launch – update this post with banner images and product/service details)

Blog Post 2: 1 week before (after launch – update this post with banner images and product/service details)

Blog Post 3: On the day of launch offering a free guide based around the theme of your product/service to build your email subscribers

Blog Post 4: 1 week after launch

Blog Post 5: 2 weeks after launch including a free worksheet based on the theme of your product/service

Blog Post 6: 3 weeks after launch

2. Create Opt-In Freebies to Embed into Your Blog Posts

As detailed above, you’ll see that we recommend creating free downloads to offer to your readers in Blog Posts 1, 3 and 5. These ‘lead magnets’ will get people signing up to your mailing list so you can get to work on priming  your audience for your product launch.

Follow our guide to designing an email sign-up form that can be embedded into your blog posts so you can automatically send out your freebie.  

3. Set up an Email Sequence that’ll be sent to Your Freebie Downloaders & Mailing List

Email marketing is a great way to prime your audience for a service or product launch.

• Brainstorm + write an email sequence of around 6 emails.
• Send out 2 emails before launching.
• And – send your mailing list 4 emails on or after the launch.

Here’s an example of an email sequence to your mailing list or after your freebie is sent out:

1. Advice surrounding the theme of your product/service.
2. Show how you/your business benefited from your product/service – the more personal the better – it’ll show what you’ve learnt from your journey and help your audience connect with you.
3. Product launch email – feature case studies, your USPs and briefly mention your product/service. You may also want to link to recent blog posts related to the topic of your product/service.
4. If you’re planning a webinar or Q&A on Periscope – send an email out to promote what they’ll learn from you & mention what you’re clients say.
5. Pitch your product/service – mentioning an exclusive discount to email subscribers.
6. Mention that it’s the last 24 hours of your discount and briefly go over the benefits of your product/service.

4. Promote Your Freebies on Facebook Ads

Everybody loves a free gift.

As well as creating a post to promote your product/service launch, use Facebook Ads to promote your free downloadable guides.

People are more likely to trust a business that offers them free information in place of an advert of a service you’re offering.

In your Facebook advert, use your email sign-up URL to send out the freebie to your audience. You can find out how to find the email sign-up page URL in our How to Create an Email Newsletter Guide.

By creating a Facebook Ad, you can hit your demographic, offer a freebie to provide valuable helpful content that’ll show off your expertise and collect email addresses to add to your mailing list.

Through your mailing list you can start conversations with your potential customers, promote your recent content in your email newsletter and hopefully sell to them further down the line.  

5. Facebook, Twitter + LinkedIn Posts

Write posts to direct traffic your blog posts and your new product/service for each social media network. For each link we recommend writing:

4x Twitter Posts

2 x Facebook Posts

1x LinkedIn Post

If you’re a member of a Facebook or LinkedIn group, post your content in places where it will be of most use.

6. Guest Blog!

An amazing way to reach your target audience AND improve your website’s SEO is by guest blogging. Here’s how to promote your product/service through guest blogging:

• Firstly, research businesses/blogs/websites which has a similar target audience to yours.
• Email them to see whether they accept guest posts.
• Brainstorm blog post ideas surrounding the theme of your product/service.
• Arrange to publish your guest blog around on or after your product/service launch.

Find out why publishing content on sites is useful your website’s SEO in our article: A Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

7. Upload Images to Instagram and Pinterest to Promote Every Blog Post

Create a pinworthy image for every blog post you create. Pin this to your boards + shared boards to get as much traffic as possible.

On Instagram, publish images featuring a question that relates to the content of your blog post. By posting these images to your Instagram with relevant hashtags you can hopefully kickstart a conversation with your potential audience.

8. Lead a Q+A And/Or Tutorial on Periscope

An amazing way to show your expertise and connect with your potential clients is by using Periscope. Here you can host a livestream of a tutorial or Q+A related to your product or service.

What’s best is that your audience can interact with you and other watchers in the chat running at the same time as your live stream. Unlike educating your audience through a blog post, Periscope allows you to connect with your audience as well as your audience engaging with you.

You can briefly mention the benefits of your product/service and direct watchers to your website to find out more.

New to Periscope? Find out all you need to know in our Beginner’s Guide to Periscope blog post.

9. Host a Webinar

Webinars are an awesome platform for generating revenue – they’re becoming increasingly popular too! Here are a few ideas for your webinar:

• Think of one of your FAQs or what your potential client would like to learn from you. Use this idea for the basis of your webinar.
• You can host the same webinar 2 or 3 times.
• Pitch your product/service at the end of the webinar.

Questions? Comments? Leave them below or reach out to us on Twitter! We love to engage!

Email Marketing 101: How To Grow Your Email List

The power of an email goes without saying. I check my email as soon as I wake up in the morning. I am addicted to joining mailing lists. I jump at the sound of a new email notification.  And, with 24% of Americans saying they check their email “way too much” and 40% of individuals forcing themselves to go onto email detoxes, I am not alone in this.

To get you on to the email marketing game, here are the statistics, the benefits and a guide to growing your mailing list to help you build a profitable email marketing campaign:

• The ROI of Email Marketing is King of the Marketing World

With an impressive 3800% ROI, email marketing is the BEST mover of sales. You earn $38
for every $1 invested into email marketing. 

• You Can Get Personal

Unlike any other content marketing methods, email marketing can get personal. When a subscriber signs up, they give you their name. Their name is key to getting that all important relationship. 74% of marketers claim the use of a name increases customer engagement.

You can use their name in subject lines and in the main body of your email. And, it works! Using a name in a subject line increases click through rates by 14% and boosts conversions by 10%.

• The Engagement Rules the Roost

According to Forrester, only 2% of your Facebook fans see your posts whereas 90% of emails will get delivered to a recipient’s inbox. And, the same adults who are liking your Facebook page are twice as likely to engage with your emails than on social media.

How to Grow Your Mailing List

1. Sign Up to an Email System like MailChimp

A mailing system like MailChimp allows you to send thousands of emails at a click of a button. It allows you to schedule them, make them look pretty and organize your subscribers at the click of a few buttons.

If you’re new to email marketing, MailChimp is the place to be. In addition to being a super easy-to-use platform, here’s are a few reasons why you’ll dig it:

• MailChimp is completely FREE for users who has less than 2,000 subscribers making it more perfect for those who have a limited budget or are just starting out.
• MailChimp is an incredibly popular platform so it can be easily integrated with lots of software & plugins.
• Due to its popularity… you’ll find advice & tutorials on everything!
• It has a very user-friendly, easy to follow interface as well as a drag + drop email template editor…perfect for email marketing beginners!

2. Use Plugins That’ll Grow Your Mailing List

You’ve more than likely been on a website that has a pop-up or a text box in a sidebar asking you to be a member of a mailing list. Here are a few plugins we recommend using:

Activate a List Building Plugin on Your Website like SumoMe

The only way to grow your mailing list is by making your readers aware of your mailing list. SumoMe can help boost your daily signups by up to 20%.  It can help you design pop-ups + sign up boxes to embed into your content.

Invest in Lead Generation Software like LeadPages

If you have a little bit more budget…LeadPages will help you increase mailing list sign-ups – tenfold! It helps you design an opt-in page for your mailing list allowing you to lay out the benefits of joining your list and look uber attractive. Offering a free 30-day detox guide as a lead magnet/free gift for joining your list? Setting up a landing page with LeadPages can help you show off the value of your free gift.

3. Offer a Lead Magnet or ‘Content Upgrade’ on Your Website

People aren’t interested in joining a mailing list unless it benefits them.

So giving away free content is the fastest way to grow your mailing list and make you a trustable source.

Take some time to brainstorm, create and design content that’ll get your audience signing up to your list.

Think about your typical customer or ideal customer.

What advice do they usually ask for? What information will be valuable?

Find out right from the horses mouth by asking your mailing list to email you with questions, looking at popular blog posts on businesses like yours, seeing what topics are hot in forums and Facebook groups and posting on your on your Facebook and Twitter pages and asking your audience to comment what they’d like to know.

Use this information to help you curate your content. Here are a few super effective, tried and tested freebie content ideas:

• An eCourse. Offer a chain of emails as your content bribe. For example, if you’re a personal trainer, offer a 20 day fitness challenge where you send out 20 unique emails with different workouts to get their body into shape.
• An eBook. Design a PDF that shares information that’ll help your reader. Here are a few examples: smoothie recipes, marketing guides, makeup tutorials, web design guides etc.

4. Create A Custom Newsletter Confirmation Page

Once your new subscriber has signed up…your next point of engagement is your confirmation page. Your newsletter confirmation page is your perfect opportunity to show off your expertise and already written content. Make sure you include:

• A little thank you.
• An explanation of what to expect from your emails.
• Feature about + testimonial pages so users can get to know you and trust what you do.
• Link to popular content on your website.

5. Brainstorm and Plan Content for Your Future Emails

An engaged audience is an audience that is likely to grow into loyal clients. So it’s important to connect with your subscribers.

The first thing to master is the subject line. It needs to be short, catchy, relevant and personal. The second this is the content. According to HubSpot, 65% of users like emails that contain mostly images. To ensure your emails connect with your readers make sure you break up your text into small sections, use more visual material than text, attractive use of your brand’s colours and interesting content (see below).

• Send Out Free Worksheets, Guides + eBooks.
  
  We LOVE free stuff. Especially when the free stuff is valuable and helps us improve. The free content will help you start a relationship with your audience, show off your expertise and prime your readers for an offering of paid products/services.
• Recap of Recent Blog Posts + News.
  
  Not all of your readers will check your website on a regular basis. Showing off your most recent content in a recap email will keep your readers updated + help get your audience onto your website.
• Share Details About a Future Service/Product.
  
  72% of people prefer promo material in their inbox compared to 17% on social media.
  
  Launching a new service or product? Get your readers in the know by sharing what it involves, the benefits, discounts + any testimonials you’ve already gathered pre-launch.
• Send Exclusive Content that’s Only Available to Subscribers
  
  Show the value of being a member of your mailing list by sharing MORE than a reader of your website will see. Ideas include sending out a recipe, tips for success and a link to a secret blog post. You can check out our 30 Engaging Blog Post Ideas to help you brainstorm content! 

What’s more – you can gain access to a wealth of analytics. Every time you send out an email you’ll be able to see the click through rates, what links have been clicked, the amount of people who unsubscribed, see what works best and monitor what content is popular. And this important data is what’ll help you refine your email marketing content for future emails.

Email Marketing 101: How to Use MailChimp to Send Your First Email Newsletter

For every $1 you invest into email marketing, you earn $38. With such a staggering return on investment, a strategized email marketing campaign can bring in a hella amount of sales. To get the ball rolling, head over to MailChimp right away to register for your free account and then we can get your first newsletter on the go! If you are wondering why we’re recommending using MailChimp to send out your email newsletters, check out the benefits below:

• You can use MailChimp for FREE if you have less than 2,000 subscribers.
• MailChimp is a widely used mailing system you’re not short of software and plugins that’s compatible with MailChimp. 
• And, as it is so popular, if you’re stuck with something, you can easily find advice & tutorials on absolutely everything!
• It’s also amazing for those of us who aren’t so design savvy. MailChimp allows us to easily put together a beautiful email using the email text editor and add in images and columns using the drag + drop template.

So get yourself signed up for your free account, make yourself a drink and follow this MailChimp tutorial to get your email marketing campaign into full swing! By the end of this blog post, you will know:

• How to create a ‘list’ of subscribers.
• How to create a subscription form for your website.
• What to include in your welcome email.
• How to design and send your first newsletter.
• Why you need to include a mailing address & how to change it.

1. Create Your First ‘List’ of Subscribers

First thing’s first, you need to create a list to start collecting email addresses. A ‘List’ is the area where your subscribers name and email address are stored. You can have as many or as little lists as you like for example, you could create a list solely for those who have downloaded a content freebie from your website and/or dedicate a list to your current clients.

To create a list, go to ‘Lists’, then press ‘Create List’ and then enter your list details (see below). In the “from” email and “from” name – you may want to fill in your contact email address and a recognizable name such as your URL or business name.

You may or may not be aware that it’s a legal requirement to include your address in every email you send out. If you have a business address this is easy. If not – you’re not going to be comfortable with showing your home address, so you may want to consider getting a PO Box.

2. Design Your Subscription From For Your Website

Creating a subscription form that suits your website’s style and brand colors is easy on MailChimp. You can quickly put together a form without the need to learn code by using the easy-to-use form customizer.

Follow these steps to get your sign-up form up and running – believe us – you can literally have one designed and set up in just a few minutes!

Click ‘Sign Up Forms’ and then ‘General Forms’.

You’ll then be taken to a ‘Create Forms’ page. Select ‘Sign up form’ from the drop-down menu under the ‘Forms and response emails’ heading.

Now to build your form. The key is to keep things as simple as possible. On the ‘Build It’ tab you can select what fields you’d like to use. Make it as user-friendly as possible by keeping the fields to a minimum. This will avoid people closing the signup form. Only use ‘first name’, ‘email address’ and at the most ‘last name’. You can remove a field by hovering your cursor over each text box.

Add a message by clicking the ‘click to edit the message’ box. Here you can add a branded image and a persuasive message to get people signing up to your newsletter (see print screen below).

As activation is required – mention in your content by asking your subscriber to check their junk email if their activation email doesn’t show up in their inbox.

To get as many subscribers as possible, you’ll need a lead magnet. Giving away content is one of the best ways to do this. So put some time aside to brainstorm and create a free download to offer to your potential email subscribers (you can find lots of advice on building your subscribers in our blog post – How to Grow Your Mailing List).

MailChimp makes the designing part easy. Click ‘Design It’ to choose your color scheme (our tip here is to stick with your branding colors).

Don’t forget to save the link of your sign up form. This’ll help you promote your email newsletter or lead magnet. And – you’ll be able to promote your URL on social media and on your blog.

3. Create Your Welcome Email

You can create your ‘Welcome Email’ by clicking ‘Lists’, then select your list, click ‘Signup Form’, then ‘General Forms’, then find ‘Final “welcome” email’ from the drop down menu and tick the ‘Send a final welcome email’ option. Scroll down and you’ll find yourself on a page featuring the welcome email editor like below:

Now you can design your welcome email. In the same way you created your sign-up form, you can upload your banner logo/image, edit the color and add a thank you message.

If you’re adding a lead magnet to your welcome email (which we highly recommend) this is where you’ll add the URL so your new subscriber can download their freebie.

To get a unique URL for your lead magnet, save your free download as a PDF, upload to your media library on your website, once the PDF has saved, you will find the URL in the file details AND this is the URL you will add to your welcome email.

The welcome email automatically has the title ‘subscription confirmed’ but you can edit this to sound interesting.

4. How to Design & Send Your First Newsletter

Now you’re ready to design your first newsletter!

Click ‘Campaigns’, then ‘Create Campaigns’, click ‘Regular Campaign’, select your list, press next, add an interesting subject line and edit some other settings if you’d like.

Now to select a template. Depending on what you’re including in this newsletter, you can pick a template that’ll be best suited to your content. See an extremely simple email example below:

If you’re linking to your most recent blog posts, selecting a design where you can add images for each post with the option to write a caption underneath. If you’re using this email to promote a new service or product a design with a 1 column for a top paragraph and 2 to 3 columns below to lay out the benefits of your product may work well.

Next you can type in your text, drag and drop in your images, edit the header text and add URLs for your social media profiles. You can select your colors and fonts for your page, preheader, header, body and footer on the ‘Design’ tab.

Once you’re happy with your email or ‘Campaign’ (in MailChimp lingo), you can click ‘Next’ to save your template. The next page will give you the option to send out the email straight away or schedule it to go out on a particular date or time.

Now you have created one template, you can create multiple email templates to serve a range of purposes; promoting discount codes, special offers, new products, latest content, advice and a recap of your recent blog posts.

TA-DA! Your first email newsletter is finished! How easy was that?! Now you’ve gotten to grips with MailChimp, you can now plan your email marketing strategy to get your sales booming! If you have any questions, please leave us a comment below. 

15 Things You Should Do Before + After You Publish a Blog Post

You have spent time brainstorming your content, you have written your blog post and now you’re ready to press publish. If you’re looking for marketing tips, it could be that you’re missing a few basic SEO elements that can help boost the reach of your blog post. Follow our checklist of things you should do before + after you publish a blog post to get more people reading your post as well as improve your search rankings.

BEFORE YOU HIT PUBLISH

1. Write An Engaging + SEO-Worthy Blog Post Title

8 out of 10 people will read your headline – but only 2 out of 10 people will click through to your post. That said – this makes the title the most important component of the marketing of your blog post. The title serves two purposes; it needs to include keywords for all that SEO value and be interesting enough to attract potential readers to click through to read your post.

An example of a not-so-engaging blog post title:

“What I’ve Learnt About Facebook For Business”

By re-working the title to include your keywords, your target audience and demonstrating your blog post will drive results, this blog post title works better:  

“New Business Owner? Here’s How to Grow Your Business on Facebook”

2. Link to Old Blog Posts

Google likes to see inbound links in your content. One of the easiest ways to boost the amount of inbound links in your content is to hyperlink old blog posts. It will make Google happy as well as keep readers on your website for longer. Put together a list of blog posts that relate to the blog posts you’re about to publish and link them within your content. Remembering to make the anchor text the blog post title for example: How to Use an Editorial Calendar to Grow Your Traffic + Social Media Following and not hyperlinking text like, ‘find out more here’.

3. Is Your Blog Post SEO Optimized?

Now you need to ensure your blog post content is ready for Google. If you use WordPress, one of the best ways to check this is by installing the Yoast SEO plugin. It’ll make it easy for you to edit your page title and meta description. And – tell you how well your content scores for SEO. Here’s are few factors that’ll make your blog post SEO-tastic:

– Have you used your keywords in your content?

Try to make your keywords make up 1% of your content. But remember to incorporate them naturally within your blog post.

– Are your keywords in the page title?

Usually – a page title is autogenerated from your blog post title. But sometimes this won’t include your keyword and can look a bit messy. Scroll down the content of your blog post title in editor and you’ll find Yoast SEO. From there you can edit your page title to tick all of the SEO boxes.

– Do you have a meta description?

Similar to page titles, a meta description is automatically pulled from the content of your blog post. Use Yoast SEO to write your meta description to include a keyword and attract readers. Take a look at the meta descriptions of your competitors in the search results. Using their meta descriptions as a comparison, you can make your meta description stand out from the rest to increase your click through rate.

You can find more tips to step up your SEO game in our Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

4. Break Up Text into Smaller Chunks with Headings

What’s more off-putting than a huge chunk of text? It’s a huge turn off. And – Google knows this.

Make it easier for your reader by breaking up your content into small sections and you’ll find people will stay on your page for longer. More engagement = more chance of winning your reader as a client.

– Read through your content and see where you can break it up. Once you’re finishing editing – Yoast SEO will give you a score as to how ‘readable’ your text is. Aim for a green light!

– Use header tags like <h1> </h1> around the headings of your sections.  In your headings you may want to include your keyword to please Google

5. Use Branded Imagery

Our branding sets us apart from our competitors. And – setting a style for your blog post images will help enforce your brand. For each featured image use a set font, colour (from your website/logo) and style. Create a template to help make your images more consistent with one another. It’ll also speed up the process too!

6. SEO Optimize Your Images

Like we optimize our content, we need to optimize images too. On WordPress, when you upload an image it’ll come up with ‘description’ and ‘alt text’ on the right hand side. Type in your blog post title into this – not forgetting to include your keyword!

7. Proofread, Proofread, Proofread!

After hours of writing on a screen, it’s so easy to miss a typo or miss something that doesn’t make sense. Take a break from your computer for at least 30 minutes to an hour. Return to your blog post with fresh eyes and read in small sections. Using this technique you’ll be able to notice more mistakes + make your blog post flawless.

8. Delete Unnecessary Words From The URL

Once you’ve typed in your blog post title, a URL will generate automatically from this. To ensure your URL scores well for SEO – start by deleting words like ‘the, a, because’ to lay more emphasis on your keyword and main components of your blog post title.

AFTER YOU HIT PUBLISH

1. Write Social Media Posts & Share onto Twitter and Facebook

After you publish a blog post, write a series of unique posts to promote your blog post on social media. I usually tend to write around 8 tweets and 4 Facebook posts for each blog post I publish. Once written, schedule them to go out over the next 4 weeks.

After scheduling, insert all of your social media posts into a content bank so can schedule them sporadically with other posts to keep your social profiles updated and drive traffic to your website.

If you’re not using a scheduling platform yet – take a read of our How to Use an Editorial Calendar to Grow Your Traffic + Social Media Following blog post to find out our list of recommended scheduling websites and plugins.

2. Pin Your Image onto Your Pinterest

You may know this already – but Pinterest is soon becoming one of the best social media platforms for driving traffic to your website. After you publish a blog post ensure your images gets uploaded to the following:

– Pin your image to a blog post board, aka a board used solely to house your blog posts images.

– Pin your blog post’s image to other relevant boards on your Pinterest. Once your blog post has been uploaded to your blog post board, pin your image to any other relevant boards on your Pinterest. That way you will maximise the reach of your pin as you’ll be putting it in front of an audience who follows your boards.

– Upload your pin to shared group boards. If you’re not already a member of shared boards, search for boards relevant to your business so that you can share your pin with both people who are a part of the group board and who follow the shared board.

3. Post Blog Posts in Relevant Facebook Groups

Similar to shared Pinterest boards, there are tonnes of Facebook groups where you can post your content. Join groups that are relevant to your business so you can share your knowledge to an audience who could benefit from your blog post.

4. Upload An Image to Instagram

Instagram is a great platform to show off your branded images. After you publish a blog post make sure you upload an image to your Instagram profile. Not forgetting to include hashtags to reach an audience that are looking for content like yours. You’ll find top tips in our post Using Hashtags Effectively on Social Media.

5. Talk About Your Blog Post in A Round Up Email

Everyone has their favorite go-to places for content. For some of us it’s Facebook, some can’t stay away from Pinterest and some of us like getting their updates through email.

After you have published a blog post, write a quick 30 word summary of your blog to feature in your weekly, bi-weekly or monthly round up email to drive traffic to your website.

If you haven’t got an email marketing campaign in-action, make some time to brainstorm ideas for content that you can exchange for an email address. For instance, if you’re a healthy lifestyle brand, creating a ‘20 Lunch Recipes That Are Budget Friendly + Help You Lose Weight’ guide as a lead magnet for your mailing list campaign. LeadPages is an easy-to-use campaign to help get this set up for you!

6. Link Post in Old & Relevant Blog Posts

Like including links to old, relatable blog posts before you publish a blog post, linking your new blog post to old content will work in the same way. Readers who land on your old blog post will be shown a new blog post that may interest them will help reduce your website’s bounce rate.

7. Tweet People Talking About Your Blog Post Topic

Get conversations started with people talking about your topic. Type in relevant search terms or words associated to your blog post and you’ll find people talking about it in some way. Mention that you’ve written a blog post that’ll help with their problem and engage with their previous tweets/photos. It’ll help direct people on to your website as well as boost your Twitter following.

 

6 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

If you’ve recently started a business or recently invested money into a new web design and you’re not generating as many enquiries as you’d hoped – here are 6 surefire ways to get your ideal customers onto your website and kickstart your online sales:

Is Your Website Optimized to Appear in Search Engine Results?

Ensuring your website is optimized with basic SEO can boost your traffic tremendously! Follow these easy-to-follow tips to help you move up the search rankings for your keywords:

Identify Your Keywords

Using the Keyword Planner Tool on Google Adwords is the key to identifying the keywords you should be optimizing for your business. Once you have found keywords, it will help you get your ideal customer onto your website.

Update Page Titles & Descriptions

Once you have identified your keywords, you can update all of your website’s webpages to include your keyword in your site’s page titles and meta descriptions. Just in case you’re not sure, here’s an example of a page title & meta description:

Adding your keywords to your meta data will ensure Google ranks your website in your target customers’ search results. If you’re a WordPress user, download the Yoast SEO plugin – it makes the process so much easier! Once installed, go onto the editing page of every page you need to update, scroll down and you’ll find the Yoast SEO text box where you can easily edit the title & meta description for each page.

Improve the Content on Your Web Pages

Google favours pages that users spend a lot of time on. Make your content look great by helpful content, breaking up large bits of content into smaller easy-to-read paragraphs and adding engaging images. Do you have pages with less than 300 words of content? Do you have pages that don’t look as great as other pages? That don’t include the keyword your optimizing? Start by implementing the following SEO practices on to your website:

Add Image Alt Tags

As well as adding keywords into your written content, include your keywords into the ‘Alt Tag’ on every image you upload.

Increase Your Site Speed

Google increases the ranking of websites will higher site speeds. Use Google’s PageSpeed Tool to analyze your website’s performance. If your PageSpeed is low – Google will suggest changes to improve the speed of your website.

Do You Blog for Your Business?

Blogging is one of the best ways to get your target audience on to your website. When you begin brainstorming your future content, your audience is your top priority. Think: what would help my audience? What search terms will be audience be using? What’s my target audience interested in? For example, if you offer hypnobirthing classes to help women have calm births, your ideal target audience will be searching for calming ways to ease labour. As your business is the answer to that search query – a good starting point for blog posts will be blog posts based on tips to ease labour, breathing exercises, pregnancy tips and motivational birth stories.

Here are a few ways to create engaging blog posts that attracts traffic:

• Use the Keyword Planner Tool to find out most searched terms to strategize your content
• Make your blog posts easy to read by using small paragraphs with bold engaging headings
• An eye-catching title
• Include links to your services pages and other blog posts that may help your readers
• Post attractive images that complement your branding

Social Media Marketing

One study found that a staggering 93% of our buying choices are influenced by social media. Here are a few ways to master your social media marketing:

Get Your Branding on Point

Use specific fonts or colours on your website? Carry your website branding onto your social media profiles to create a recognizable, strong brand. As visual content attracts more attention than text alone, start by:

• Creating images that uses the same font and brand’s colour scheme to publish with your tweets and status updates.
• Branding your Pinterest boards.
• Using your colour scheme and fonts in your Instagram profile.

Post Regularly

Gain a steady growth in your social media following by publishing content regularly onto your channels. The more people who engage with your brand, the more traffic will be directed to your website.

Be Relevant

Reach out to your target audience by sharing your blog posts, relevant articles, news in your industry and useful written, visual + video content. Even though you’ll be posting other people content – you will be connect with your potential customers and making relationships with people in your industry that may share your content with their audience.

Be Active in Relevant Communities

Building a community around your business is a catalyst for getting your business mentioned and shared online. Delve into the world of social media networking by finding Twitter Chats, Facebook Groups and online forums dedicated to your industry. For example, if you’re an organic skincare brand, you could share your knowledge and connect with your target audience in green beauty twitter chats, Facebook groups and online forums.

Your Email Marketing Campaign – Do You Have One?

With 66% of consumers making an online purchase as a result of email marketing, prioritizing email marketing is very important. Here’s how to get started:

Create Valuable Content to Build Your Email List

I’m sure you’ve landed on a website that either has a pop-up or side bar content offering a free eBook, course or guide in exchange for your email address? If you’re looking to connect with your audience, show your expertise and build your mailing list – this really works. Start by brainstorming ways you can help your target audience.

Create & Send out a Regular Email

Your email doesn’t need to be fairly complicated at first. You could send out a simple but engaging round-up email of all of the content you’ve posted throughout the week, over the last 2 weeks or month. This way you’ll direct traffic to your website and stay in the mind of your audience by appearing in their inbox regularly!

Guest Blogging

The higher your domain authority, the higher you’ll appear in search results. A great way of building your domain authority is by guest blogging. By posting helpful content on websites you’ll engage with a new audience and direct traffic to your website and create that all important, domain authority boosting back-link back to your site. Start by finding websites are leaders in your industry or post similar content to your website and contact them to see whether you can guest blog on their websites. You can also find websites that are seeking guest bloggers on Twitter, forums and Facebook Groups.

Update Old Blog Posts

Instead of writing new blog posts – you can direct more traffic to your website by updating old content. If you have been blogging for a while, you may have a lot of blog posts that could benefit from being improved. Start by looking at your Google Analytics to identify old content that’s popular with your audience.

Add a ‘Pinnable’ Image

Pinterest is a huge driver of traffic. Make your feature image ‘pinnable’ by making sure the images matches your brand and creating a vertical image for each post.

Link Relatable Content

Google likes to see inbound links in your content. Got a blog post that’s focussed on a similar topic? As well as pleasing Google, linking relatable blog posts will help keep the reader on your website.

Update the Blog Title

Your old blog post could benefit from improving its title to include a keyword or to attract more readers onto your blog post.

Add Keywords

Do you mention keywords in your blog post? If not – add them naturally within the content of the post.

Create a Content Upgrade

Could your blog post benefit from offering a worksheet? Or a more detailed guide? Creating a content upgrade will offer value to your readers, show off your expertise and help build your mailing list.

30 Engaging Ideas for Blog Posts

Welcome to the world of blogging. A place where you publish problem-solving content and build an online community that engages with your target audience.  And – by doing it consistently and strategically, you can establish a trustworthy brand that revolutionizes your business.

As you begin blogging for business, you can use this list of ideas for blog posts to create a content plan for your business to attract your target readership and help determine what content works best for your readers.  Just remember, you don’t need lots of traffic to build your business online; you just need an audience who can easily engage with your brand.

1. How-To Post

Blog posts that show your readers how to do something are always incredibly popular. ‘How To’ offer invaluable advice that provides problem solving information that your readers are searching for answers on for example, if you’re a business that sells unique tea blends, this could be as obvious as “How to Brew Tea” or like our blog post on How to Get Steady Customers Fast and Free.

2. Tools That Make Things Easy

Humans are lazy and more often than not – incredibly busy. We’re constantly looking for apps, new processes, websites and plugins that shorten the time it takes to do something and make our lives easier. For instance, we shared our most useful plugins that help schedule social media updates and blog posts.

3. Review a Product Related to Your Niche

Prospective and current readers might be interested in finding out whether a certain product is worth the investment – sharing your insight into the benefits or criticisms of a product will give your readers answers.

4. Inspiring Books

Whether its books that has motivated us along our journey or given us helpful business tips – your readers will find this information useful.

5. A Series of Q&A Posts

Not only will Q&A posts help you interact with your target audience, they will provide answers to your readers’ questions and create extremely helpful content for your website.

6. Tutorials

Create “Top 10” or “8 Tips for” advice posts, product demonstrations or videos about topics related to your niche. We’ve helped our readers by sharing our Top Five Tips for Blogging Success, 5 Best Tips on Sharing Content and Top 7 Mistakes Businesses Made with their Digital Marketing in 2015 & What Can be Done to Fix It in 2016.

7. Promote a Free Downloadable Guide

One of the best ways to build your mailing list is by offering a free downloadable worksheet or guide to help your readers. You can promote your free download by explaining its benefits in a blog post.

8. Inspirational Famous Quotes

Whether you’re a nutritionist, business coach, personal trainer or cosmetic surgeon there are quotes related to your industry. And – people love reading them!

9. Host a Giveaway

One great way of getting your audience to share your content is by giving away free products. You could offer your services, products, prizes or treatments…everybody loves free stuff!

10. A List of Useful Online Resources

Read any blog posts, taken a course or watched videos that have helped you? Share them with your audience!

11. Interview Someone in Your Industry

As well as giving your audience advice, your interviewee will share it on their social media platforms and/or website which will put your brand in front of a relevant audience.

12. Behind The Scenes of Your Business

Post images and short videos showing how your business is run – this will add a bit of personality to your brand!

13. A Link Up of Helpful Blog Posts

A great way for getting yourself known in your industry is by connecting with similar, bigger businesses. Make yourself known by linking their content in a blog post and tagging them into your social media posts.

14. Share a Project You Have Recently Completed

Prove yourself to your audience by showing off your skills by sharing images of a recently completed project.

15. Business Goals for the Year
    

Between Christmas and the start of a New Year, business goals or New Year’s Resolutions get a lot of traction. Share yours!

16. Write ‘Benefits Of’ Posts Related to Your Niche

Similar to tutorials, people are looking for reasons why they should buy into something. Show you’re an expert by writing about the benefits of something related to your industry.

17. Share Your Opinion on a Film or TV Series Relevant to Your Business

Marketing has Mad Men and Steve Jobs to talk about. Write a blog post about based on your views about a TV show or film that has mentioned a topic related to your business.

18. Round-Up of Your Most Popular Posts

Once you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ll be able to see which posts have performed best. Put them all together in a post.

19. Things You’ve Learnt from Recent Training, eCourse or Book

We’re always learning. Writing about things you’ve learnt will show transparency on how you’re always willing to improve.

20. Write About Something New in Your Industry

Last year, Twitter released the forever growing live streaming app that is Periscope so we written A Beginner’s Guide to Periscope to advise people who don’t know anything about the app.

21. Beginner’s Guide

Similar to ‘How To’ posts, ‘Beginner’s Guides’ will give your target audience the information they’re looking for. We’ve written A Beginner’s Guide to Snapchat and A Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

22. Motivational Mottos

We all love things that motivate us. Share motivational mantras and mottos that have helped you get to the position you’re in now.

23. A List of Dos & Don’ts Related to Your Niche

During your time in business, you may have learnt something that’ll prevent your readers from making mistakes for example, when it comes to social media, refrain from publishing your problems or controversial beliefs on your business profiles as it may damage your reputation.

24. Write a Follow Up Post to a Post You’ve Already Published

Written a post you could provide more information on? Write a ‘Part 2’ blog post.

25. Blog About Hot Topics & Trending Events

A great way to publish content on talked about and most-searched topics is by writing a blog post on how your services and products relate to them like this post on Taylor Swift Vs Katy Perry: Which Star Rules Social Media? Or if you’re in the beauty related industry – a post on a trending out of the ordinary thing a celebrity is doing like, Kim Kardashian’s Vampire Facial would engage with your readership.

26. Share Your Business Processes

Nubby Twiglet, a graphic designer has recently shared her knowledge on how to can streamline your business processes by sharing how she communicates with prospective clients, signing on a client, gathering design briefs, putting together project checklists, presenting your work and invoicing.

27. Update Your Audience with What’s New in Your Business

Hired someone new? Releasing a new product or service? Blog about it!

28. Your Predictions

Got an idea what’s going to be on trend in a year or season in your industry? Share them in a blog post.

29. Publish Your Testimonials & Case Studies

Demonstrate you’re worth investing in by showing what your clients say in a blog posts. If you can show how you’ve helped a client by sharing your results in a blog post.

30. FAQs

As your business grows and gets older – you may find you get asked a lot of the same questions. Write answers to your FAQs and publish them into an easy-to-find blog post to help your readers.

How to Use an Editorial Calendar to Grow Your Traffic + Social Media Following

If you are looking for ways to get your target audience onto your website, content is king. By blogging and sharing engaging content on your social media platforms, you can completely revolutionize your business. High quality, relevant content will engage with your potential customers and get your ideal customers onto your website. As content plays a crucial role in your marketing, you need to research and strategize your content to make sure you reach as much of your target audience as possible – and, that’s where an editorial calendar comes into play. For detailed advice on how to increase traffic to your website, you can read our Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

So, What Is An Editorial Calendar?

An editorial calendar is a calendar you use solely to plan your publishing schedule for the weeks and months ahead. Whether you use it for scheduling your blog posts, podcasts, publishing infographics or social media content, your editorial calendar helps you strategize your content marketing to make sure you increase your traffic and brand awareness. See our content calendar series for more details on the step by step process.

The Benefits of Using an Editorial Calendar for Your Blog & Social Media Platforms

Although a lot of us know how important blogging and social media is for growing your business, it can often be something we rush or leave as an after-thought. Using an editorial calendar to plan your publishing schedule will improve the quality, frequency and relevance of your content. Here are a few of the benefits:

Plan Your Content Marketing Strategy

Once you’ve researched the most searched keywords for your business, you can plan content around them. This way, you know that you’re publishing high quality content that is relevant to your audience.

Ensure You are Publishing High Quality Content

We have already touched on how easy it is to rush a tweet or blog post without planning it strategically. By having and creating a publishing schedule, it allows you to write informative, well-researched content that your readers will love.

You will have more time to brainstorm ideas for your posts. And – you may also find that one of your content ideas can be split into a series of posts which will create more content that’ll attract your target audience.

You Will Post More

If content is king then consistency is queen. Not only does publishing 1-2 blog posts every month generate
70% more online enquiries than businesses who don’t blog, studies have also found that consistently publishing quality blog posts makes your brand more trustworthy and enforces loyalty from your readers.

It Will Help Stop Writers Block

Ever open up a blank word document and stared at it in hope of finding inspiration? You’re not the only one. Planning ahead will give you a head start on knowing what to write – which’ll cut down the time you’re wasting on procrastinating.

How To Create An Editorial Calendar For Your Blog

1. Use Google Analytics to Strategize Your Content

Google Analytics gives you an amazing insight into what content works well on your website. Take a look at what blog posts bring in the most traffic to your blog and use the most popular subjects to plan your future content. For example, if you’re a healthy lifestyle brand and your blog posts about fitness get the most attention – you can use this data to plan posts that will generate more traffic. When planning your content, you can also see what page titles and post structure worked the best.

2. Brainstorm Content Ideas

Plan some time to brainstorm ideas for your blog posts to go in your editorial calendar. If you’re running short on time,  carry around a notebook to write down any idea that comes to mind.

3. Evenly Distribute Your Blog Posts across the Month

When it comes to planning what days your content will go live, make sure you distribute your blog posts evenly across the month. That way you won’t publish loads in one week and neglect your blog for 2 weeks thereafter. Being consistent with your content will make your reader more aware of when you are posting so that they know when to check out your posts.

How to Create your Editorial Calendar for Social Media

1. Share a Variety of Content

When you don’t schedule posts in advance, you may publish more of one type of content than another – or you may even post a lot on one day and not a lot on another.  On your editorial schedule you can plan when to post a video, infographic or a link to a blog post to maintain an interesting social media presence.

2. Ensure You are Posting Visual Content

When it comes to social media, when you combine visual content with text & links it works better than written content alone. For instance, infographics are liked and shared on social media 3x more than any other type of content.

3. Organize Social Contests

One of the best ways to reach more people and increase likes, shares and follows is by hosting free giveaways on your social media platforms. For example, Qwetee reached 100,000 fans by giving away t-shirts every week. On your editorial calendar you can plan when a competition is going to be launched, ended and when the winner is going to be announced. On this plan, you can also write blog posts and tweets to get more people engaging with your competition.

4. Schedule in Twitter Chats

An easy way to interact with your audience is by participating in Twitter Chats that are relevant to your business. For example, #CreativeHour is held every Monday at 9pm EST. Using your editorial calendar to remind you when Twitter Chats are taking place is a surefire way to make sure you’re not missing out on potential networking opportunities.

5. Plan Your Ad Spend

As Facebook has made it difficult to reach your audience organically, by planning which posts you’ll boost or when your like campaign is going to take place, you can set your budget for the month and feel reassured that you’re reaching as many people as possible.

6. Write + Schedule

Once you’re plan is in place, you can write your social media posts and schedule them in advance. You can use Hootsuite or Buffer to do this (see below for more information on these).

Plugins and Platforms to Help You Stay Up to Date with Your Editorial Calendar

While some of us may prefer to create our editorial calendar on paper, a few of us may like to manage our publishing schedule digitally. Here are a few plugins and platforms we recommend:

CoSchedule – A WordPress plugin that allows you to plan your posts on a calendar as well as write and schedule social media posts from the post editor. It starts at $15 per month for 1 user with 5 social media profiles.

WordPress Editorial Calendar – Another WordPress plugin that allows you to see all of your posts, drag and drop posts to the desired dates and times and edit titles and content. And – it’s free!

Google Calendar – You automatically gain access to a calendar when you sign up for a Google account. You can easily schedule in posts and set reminders. Unfortunately – this isn’t synced up with WordPress but you can have the calendar synchronized with your phone.

Hootsuite – Hootsuite allows you to schedule Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn posts in advance from your PC and through a mobile app. You can also see how well posts performed. It’s free for one user with 3 social media platforms.

Buffer – Similar to Hootsuite, Buffer makes it incredibly easy to schedule your social media posts. You can use Buffer to schedule Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest from your PC and mobile app. What’s more – you can set up an individual plan for free!

We sure hope you found this blog helpful! If you have any questions, tips, comments, feel free to reach out to us on twitter, email, or in the comments below! We look forward to hearing your take.

Top 7 Mistakes Businesses Made with their Digital Marketing in 2015 & What Can Be Done to Fix it in 2016

It’s the beginning of the year – which means creating New Year’s Resolutions and thinking about the year ahead. We reflect on the positives, we notice our mistakes and we work on how we can improve. Instead of indulging in high calorie food like we do over Christmas, we start cleansing our bodies and working on getting back into shape. And – like our bodies, our business’ need to detox too. The start of a new year is one of the best times to analyse the results of our digital marketing campaigns, try new strategies and create a marketing plan for the year.

Take your business to new heights by eliminating digital marketing mistakes and digitally savvy in 2016 by following these tips:

Mistake 1: Not Using Analytics Tools

If you’re going to promote your products and services online, you need to be able to identify what’s working and what’s not. Tools such as, Google Analytics, HootSuite and Buffer provides you with rich data that helps you build a picture of how your content and social media marketing connects with your customers. Check out these simple but essential things you need to monitor:

• Your social media insights. If you’re using a social media schedule tools like HootSuite, Sprout Social and Buffer, you can create reports on how your social media is performing in a few clicks. This will help you compare results, monitor your following, identify your demographics and see how much traffic is being directed to your website. On Facebook, you can see what time your fans are online, the most popular times are when you should be posting. You can do this by logging into your page, clicking ‘Insights’ on the top panel and clicking ‘Posts’ on the left hand side.
• See what’s popular on your website. Google Analytics provides you with a wealth of data which shows what’s popular on your website. Seeing what content brings in the most traffic can help you create future blog posts that are popular with your audience.
• Identify what’s converting. You might be investing a lot of time and money into moving up the page rankings for a chosen keyword. The keyword might be directing lots of traffic to your website, but the traffic may not convert into enquiries. On Google Analytics you can monitor your SEO campaign so you can identify when to stop optimizing a keyword and concentrate more time and effort on another.

Mistake 2: Forgetting to be ‘Social’ on Social Media

Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Not being social on social media is one of the most popular mistakes businesses make. Check out our article on 3 Ways Social Media Automation on Twitter is Antisocial.  Cut down on selling your products/services and engage with your following by following these strategies:

• Run competitions. Everyone loves the thought of winning something. Show your customers value in following your social media profiles by running a giveaway in exchange for a ‘like’ or ‘comment’. This is an effective way of increasing your brand awareness, social media following and reaching your target audience.
• Share your customer’s content. If your customers take a picture of your product, write a blog post reviewing your service/product – sharing it on social media will show your potential customers what your customers are saying about you.
• Start conversations with your customers and relevant influential people. Social media platforms are a great place to respond to comments from your customers and build trust. Twitter is a great place to get talking to popular people in your industry to build relationships and increase your brand awareness.

Mistake 3: Avoiding SEO

If we want to find something out, we Google it. Google is a very powerful tool to get your business noticed by potential customers searching for your services and products you provide. To kickstart your SEO campaign, take a look at our guide to SEO and use the following tactics:

• Find out the most relevant keywords for your industry. You can identify the most searched keywords for your business and area by using the Keyword Planner tool on Google AdWords. Once you’ve found the keywords, you can begin to optimise them on your website.
• Use your keyword in page titles and meta descriptions.
• Publish relevant blog posts to direct your potential customers to your website.

Mistake 4: Focussing on Promoting Your Services

You may find that a lot of us avoid information about businesses services. When we’re searching online, we are looking to find the solution to our problem. In place of promoting your products and services, start providing content that will show your expertise and gain trust from your potential customer:

• Create and share helpful content. For example, if sell fitness clothing and gym equipment, writing blog posts and social media posts about workouts, healthy recipes and benefits of certain exercises will engage with your audience more than sharing links to gym tops and Additionally, by publishing helpful content, you can work on a wide range of keywords which will drive more high quality traffic to your website.

Mistake 5: Not Having a Budget for Social Media Promotion

Facebook has made it more and more difficult to reach potential customers without paying. Simply by having a small Facebook budget, you can engage with more people and increase your brand awareness. Here are a few posts to sponsor:

• Advertise helpful content. If you’ve recently published a video, infographic or blog post that will help customers – paying to promote the post will help you connect with more of your target audience.
• Boost competitions to maximise your engagement. Similar to sharing helpful content, making more people aware of your competition will help you engage with a larger audience and get more entries.

Mistake 6: Not Having an Email Marketing Campaign

With 91% of consumers checking their email daily, email marketing could be the missing link in your digital marketing campaign. Get your email marketing started by:

• Creating a giveaway to build your mailing list. Try building your database of emails by offering free downloadable guides as well running competitors in exchange for an email address.
• Promoting your latest content. Like sharing your latest blog posts, videos and infographics on social media, you can use your email marketing campaign to share content and direct traffic to your website.
• Advertising special offers. As well as promoting your products and services, running exclusive offers will help keep your potential customers subscribed to your mailing list.

Mistake 7: Not Using the Right Social Media Platform for Your Business

In 2015 you may have not used social media to promote your business or you may have struggled to find the best platform to engage with your ideal customer. You can identify the best social media platforms by:

• Understanding your typical customer can help you create content for your potential customer. For example, if you offer services for businesses, LinkedIn is one of the best places to network and promote your content, but if you’re target audience is people – Facebook is an ideal platform to share your content.

Summary

Get ahead of your competitors in 2016 by keeping your strategies up to speed with the constantly evolving nature of digital marketing. Start understanding your audience, showing your expertise, blogging to boost traffic and using social media to engage with your customers. That way – you’ll reach your potential audience, gain their trust and boost your sales.

 

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