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Month: August 2016

August 14, 2016

Your Business Really Does Need Content Marketing

content marketing

Why Does Your Business Need Content Marketing?

Think back with me for a minute. Back to that moment when you decided to start a business. It’s what you’d always dreamed of – turning your hidden talents into a full-time gig. The end goal? Creating a life for you and your family that was way beyond your wildest dreams. Freedom, financial independence, flexibility – all of those things would come when your business finally got off the ground.

So you started a website. Probably spent a lot of money having it built to your exact specifications. You told all your friends and family to tell all of their friends and family about your new business, told them to check out your awesome new website. Maybe you got a few nibbles, a couple of bites, but no serious customers. And then you waited. And waited. And it seemed like nothing would ever happen. You asked yourself, “What am I doing wrong?” or “Maybe I’m just not cut out for this life!” or even, “Should I just give up?!?”

Hey. Don’t give up just yet. You’ve come to the right place. Keep reading because it gets much better.

Or maybe you haven’t actually started your business yet. Maybe it’s still just a dream floating around in your head. But you’re ready to get serious about it, and you want to go about things the right way. You want to avoid costly hang-ups and get started on the right foot.

You too are in the right place.

Let me ask you something. When was the last time you posted fresh, high quality content on your website? Or, in other words, when was the last time you created a blog post about something related to your business’ niche market?

I’m willing to bet it’s been awhile.

Did you know that creating fresh, quality content for your website on a regular basis can drastically increase traffic to your site and boost sales? All while turning casual visitors into loyal brand customers?

It’s true.

  • Companies with blogs get 97% more inbound links than others (Content +)
  • Blogs on company sites result in 55% more visitors on average(Content +)
  • Compelling content drives social media campaigns, cited by 3 out of 4 marketers to be the main factor in closing sales. (Content Marketing Institute)
  • 9 out of 10 organizations use content marketing (Content Marketing Institute)
  • B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who don’t blog. (Content Marketing Institute)
  • 68% of consumers spend time reading content from a brand they are interested in (Content Marketing Institute)

Publishing quality, informative content to your website on a regular basis, is like pumping fresh oxygen into deflating lungs – a breath of fresh, sweet air. Why?

Because just as your body needs oxygen to function, your website needs fresh, quality content to keep your potential (and existing) customers coming back for more. And the more content you produce, the more your clients will be educated on the necessity and importance of your services. They’ll start coming to you with their niche related questions, begin to consider you an authority on your particular topic/business.

As you continue to build authority within your niche, the level of trust between you and your clients increases, which in turn leads to more loyal customers choosing your business over the next one.

When you know what you’re talking about, people tend to listen, and when you’ve got their attention, they’re more likely to buy.

So, you know you need fresh content on your site. But how exactly do you go about implementing this in your business today?

Content marketing, that’s how.

Plain and simple, content marketing involves maintaining a steady flow of relevant, shareable and useful content to your website via a blog, social media, podcasts, YouTube videos, customer emails, e-books, newsletters or other related vehicles of content delivery. If it involves delivering content to your customers, it’s safe to say you can probably include it in your content marketing plan.

Basically, readers receive little bite sized pieces of information each time they visit your site, check out your social media platforms, watch your podcast or YouTube channel, read your newsletter, etc., which in turn keeps them coming back for more.

Good Content marketing artfully tells your brand’s story, one little piece at a time, in a way that encourages your viewers to share your stories with everyone they know through social media, various online platforms, and, of course, word of mouth.

When you choose to invest in a content marketing plan, not only are you pumping fresh oxygen into your business, but you also become much more appealing to search engines, like Google, who love websites with fresh, relevant content. When they see that people are using your content and sharing it regularly, your site will begin to climb to the top of the search results, which in turn will cause even more people to stumble across your website when searching for keywords related to your niche market.

So, with a quality content marketing strategy set in place, you can expect:

  • Excellent ROI – Return on your Investment
  • To be more easily discovered through search engines
  • To establish yourself as an authority within your niche
  • To convert your audience into loyal, paying customers
  • Better relationships with your audience and clients – online and in person
  • Better engagement within your community, leading to an increase in trust and eventually, sales

And while good content marketing is the lifeblood of your business, it’s quite simple to implement, once you’ve done the proper research.

See, I told you not to give up quite yet!

That life you’ve always dreamed of – the one where you run your own business, are financially independent and free to create your own schedule – it’s just around the corner!

So – the choice is yours. Are you ready to take your stalling business to the next level?

Let’s get started today!

Contact us to set up a free consultation. We’ll discuss what might work best for your particular business and develop a plan and strategy to move forward.

Don’t let your business sit stagnant one more day. Fill out the form below, and we will be in touch with you asap to get the ball rolling. We can’t wait to start telling your story!

Content Marketing References:

http://www.contentplus.co.uk/marketing-resources/infographics/anatomy-of-content-marketing
http://www.contentplus.co.uk/marketing-resources/infographics/anatomy-of-content-marketing
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2011/12/2012-b2b-content-marketing-research
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/11/2013-b2c-consumer-content-marketing
http://www.the-cma.com/uploads/documents/cma-01.jpg

This article originally appeared here, at TheStoryist.com – a sister company to JSL Marketing.

August 01, 2016

How to Plan for Success in Business and in Life

You can talk about what you want to accomplish in life all day long, but nothing ever really happens until you actually take that leap, step out of your comfort zone and make things happen, does it?

At least, this is how it is for me. I’m not naturally a big risk taker – I’ve finally come to terms with that about myself. I think I like the idea of taking risks and being adventurous more than I actually enjoy the real thing. But therein lies the problem: With no risks, there’s no movement. Life is stagnant and dull. Dreams start to die a little. And not only is that utterly depressing, it’s also extremely frustrating.

Anyone else out there know what I mean?

You can plan and scheme and dream all you want, but until you start taking solid, actionable steps toward achieving your goals, you really aren’t going to get too far.

This is why I personally hate resolutions so much. You know, the ones we all make at the beginning of the New Year and then never end up following through with? It all sounds wonderful on paper, that little (or large) list of goals and hopes and dreams, but that’s just it – it’s on paper. And that’s usually as far as they ever go.

We never get passed that phase because we fail to take the necessary steps to get started. We can see the big picture, the end goal, but we lose ourselves in the process, our minds becoming overwhelmed with the amount of time and effort required to get to that goal.

And sometimes it’s just that we have no clue where to start – the end goal seems completely unobtainable and distant, so distant that we begin to backpedal a bit, convincing ourselves that we shouldn’t even try.

And then there are those goals that seem so unobtainable that we’d have to be crazy to actually believe that we’d ever achieve them, and do we really want to waste all that time attempting something that might not work out?

Please, tell me I’m not the only one who has these thoughts.

notebook-300x300Thank goodness there’s a solution.

For the goals that just seem too detailed – we can’t allow ourselves to feel overwhelmed. When we feel like there isn’t a solid place to start – we can’t use that as an excuse to give up already. And when our dreams seem much too lofty, too crazy, we can’t give up on ourselves and our God-given abilities. We have to believe that we can, first and foremost, and come to terms with the fact that we’re just not going to fail. Even if it takes a long time to see the goal through to completion.

Belief and faith and patience are powerful things.

So is planning. And by planning, I mean actually planning. Not just writing our wish list of dreams down on paper.

But what does that look like? And how does it relate to business? I’m getting there, I promise.

In order to plan for success, it’s important to break our large, long-term, big-picture goals down into small, easily accomplishable ones – steps along the path to ultimate success. For example, I’d really like to start writing more e-books, but that’s a pretty vague goal. And the vaguer the goal, the less likely it is to be accomplished because it’s easily put on the back-burner for another time.

So instead of just saying, “I want to write more e-books,” I need to first come up with a list of topics to write about. Once the list is created, I can ask myself, “What is a reasonable length of time to complete one of these e-books and get it to market?” With my current schedule as it is, I’d say I could complete the process within a month. So one month per e-book (note, these aren’t very long e-books – just a small guide of sorts).

One e-book per month equals approximately four weeks of solid work time. So maybe, one week of research, one week for writing, one week for editing, one week for publishing and promotion.

Which means each day, I should be spending at least an hour or so on the specific task for the week so that I don’t get behind (and if I do, I can always work a little more on the weekends to catch up).

And now all of a sudden, the vague goal of “writing more e-books” has become much less vague, much more accomplishable, and actually quite doable.

You can apply this same principle to anything in life. It might seem like you’re not really accomplishing much at the time, but I promise you really are. Small steps along the road to success are much better than sitting alongside the road doing nothing at all (which is what I tend to do if I don’t have a game-plan full of small and actionable steps).

Of course, you can be the best planner in the world and have the most detailed guides, but you still have to go out and do the thing. Even creating a detailed schedule and plan won’t force you to get the work done – you still have to have the discipline to do it. But at the same time, it’s much easier to be disciplined when the task before you isn’t so unobtainable, but rather something simple that, when done in succession long enough, will lead to amazing results.

Have you ever tried anything like this before? How do you stay on track when you have big goals to accomplish?

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