August 30, 2019

Expert Content Marketing Insights That You Can Actually Understand (& Do)

Content marketing shouldn’t be rocket science, but often people get bogged down with all the advice out there, the rules, the algorithm changes, and recommendations. It’s easy to forget about the truth of writing online – that you are writing to people, not just Google or your computer screen.

But after you re-focus on writing for real people, there are a few (simple) tips that you can understand, and do, that will improve your content writing, marketing skills, and outcomes.

Let’s view six of our expert content marketing team’s top insights for writing, promoting, and measuring your content’s reach.

Know (& State) Your Goal

This is hugely important (hence, it’s number one spot). You need to know your goals for your content marketing and be able to explain them (and measure them – but that comes later).

Are you looking to sell a product, a service, gain a click, or simply be seen, read, and known? Do you want to help your readers understand a problem, solution, or process? Make sure you aren’t marketing your content as informational and then actually creating content that is promotional.

An example could even be this article – it’s clearly labeled and written to give value, information, and knowledge to you (the reader), not to sell you something (promotional).

What is the Buyer’s Journey

If you are working to create a killer content marketing plan, then you need to do your research and understand your ideal client’s buyer journey.

What are the pain points of your ideal client? How can you help? What are the questions your ideal client or customer are considering, asking, or trying to answer?

Putting yourself in the shoes of your client to understand their process and interweave that process with your own content plan is a great way create content that your customer base wants to read (and will find value in).

Consistency is Key

Writing or updating with consistency is good for both the search engines and your consumers. This is because you are showing that you’re active (for the search engines) and letting your consumers see and read your news and content on a regular basis (which helps you maintain your reader base).

Consistency builds trust for your readers and relevancy for the search engines.

Track & Measure

This is something that many potential content marketers forget about – you can’t have a successful content plan without being able to measure that successful content marketing plan.

It’s kind of like saying ‘oh, I’m great at swim racing – I always do well’ but then not knowing any of your event times or how you’re doing in comparison to others. Though that kind of confidence and self-belief might be good for your psyche, it isn’t good for business.

Make sure you have known goals, as well as a relevant way to track and measure those goals. There are tons of software tools out there that can help you understand who is coming to your site or blog, what their actions are, how many become clients, etc. – use that technology.

Know Your Voice, Love Your Voice

This is something that some writers just have, and others have to consciously think of and work at. Our content team works with many clients, and every client of JSL Marketing has a unique online voice.

Some are more professional, technical, or informational, some are more friendly, conversational, or casual. Your online voice is the way people will view you because your content is your main form of communication with your clients.

Having one page seem professional and a little drier, with the next being casual and conversational with humor smattered in will confuse your clients and lacks that consistency we talked about earlier.

This doesn’t mean you can never have a serious post if you are more conversational, or never have a ‘holiday wishes’ post if you are a tech company, it just means you need to create a voice that connects with your target audience and then use in that voice.

Repurpose your Content

This is a tip that will save many content marketers loads of time – especially if you have a large site or extensive backlog of blogs with lots of content already.

If you repurpose your current content (turning blogs into eBooks, eBooks into infographics, articles into page content, two articles into one more comprehensive one, etc.) then you can get more mileage out of the same amount of content/work.

But that’s cheating, isn’t it?

If you take a blog from 6 months ago, rename it and post it as-is, yes, that’s cheating and doesn’t give any value to your customer base, readers, or the search engine’s ranking of you. But, if you take a blog from 3 years ago and reformat it, add to it, and edit it into an eBook or online pamphlet, then no, it isn’t cheating. Because you are giving your clients something new, something of value, while only doing half the work (since some of the content was written before).

Maybe you have a blog that didn’t get a lot of traction in its heyday, try it again with updated stats, information, some new sections, and a new format (infographic, eBook, pamphlet, one-sheet, etc).

What I mean to say is, sometimes you’ve got to give your content a second chance.

Need Content Help? JSL Marketing’s Content Creation Team is Ready & Waiting!

JSL Marketing loves writing – I mean, just look at all the posts we’ve done, with more coming every week! And moreover, we update the copy on our website often too. So, it makes sense that our website would be doing so well, but it also makes sense that we don’t just write for writing’s sake, but because we enjoy updating you on our activities, services, and more.

Maybe you don’t have that writer’s bug, and that’s okay, let us handle your online voice, consistency, blogs, and copy updates so you can get back to the parts of your business you truly enjoy.

Contact the JSL Marketing team today to learn more about our Blogging, Content Marketing, and Copywriting services or fill out a form and have us contact you.

March 07, 2019

Spring Cleaning Your Content with JSL Marketing & Web Design

JSL Marketing & Web Design is all about keeping tidy, keeping organized, and reminding anyone who will listen that content is king!

That is why we thought there’s no better time to clean up your website’s content than in the spring! After all, you spring clean your house, garage, car, and Facebook friend’s list – why not clean up your website’s content too?

We love creating new content, from blogs to eBooks, infographics to videos. And if you have a strong SEO strategy for the year, you’re probably creating new content on a monthly, or even weekly, basis as well.

That is part of the beauty of truly optimizing your website and SEO strategy – it’s never done! You can create, tweak, and implement different aspects every month. But that can also lead to content overload or too much that can either confuse readers, slow down your site, or become redundant and unnecessary.

To avoid this, JSL recommends a spring cleaning for your content. Check out our easy, 3-step system below!

Step One: Catalog Your Current Content

This step is much easier (and mainly superfluous) if you have a content plan implemented for the quarter or year. But because many don’t utilize a content plan in the best way, or at all, we thought including this starting step would be helpful.

However, if you want to learn how to create a solid content plan and avoid this step in the future, check out our instructions here.

Essentially, cataloging your content means going through every piece of content you have created and organizing it in some way.

We recommend organizing it in a meaningful way – not by date or in alphabetical order – but instead based on subject, purpose, and medium.

After you have your content cataloged, you can see what you have, what you lack, and maybe what you have duplicates of.

Now here, you could make your first cuts or edits, but we recommend waiting until you look over step two to know which content pieces or pages are performing the best (and which need some help, or the ax).

Step Two: Check Your Content & Page Statistics

Now that you have your content cataloged, and you know what duplicates or overlap you have, you can look into their numbers.

Here, you can look at everything from interactions, views, reads, comments, time spent on the page, tags met, etc.

Why do you need this to check your content’s stats?

Well, let’s say you have two pages that both deal with branding services you provide. One gets 10 hits per month and one gets 40. The former is ranking for no keywords, but the latter is. The former has a high bounce rate, and the latter doesn’t.

Which page do you think you should cut? Which page should you absorb into another? What content is truly helping you here?

Without the content’s statistics, you wouldn’t know which page to work on, and which to possibly get rid of.

By cataloging and then researching your content, you can know exactly which pages are performing and which are possibly stealing clicks and competing for the same keywords as other better-performing pages.

Additionally, perhaps your research will show you that you could be linking your content better. Let’s say you have an eBook, blog post, and infographic on similar topics – but they are all different mediums.

Because the topics link, you should be able to lead your readers through each of the mediums by placing an internal link and a call to action (CTA) for your readers to learn more.

Obviously, JSL loves our research, but it’s times like these when it becomes clear why.

Success comes to those who know, and those who know had to learn it from somewhere.

Make the effort to always gain knowledge. Then reap the rewards of that knowledge down the line.

Step Three: Kill Your Darlings & Make the Necessary Edits

The end game of all the above steps for your content spring cleaning – the actual cleaning part.

Make sure you have analytics backed-up reasons for all of the edits you are making – like curbing underperforming pages, content, or posts.

And though you don’t have to delete blogs or social posts which didn’t do well, you should be able to learn from them and see what might have been different about them or what might have caused their demise.

Hopefully, with that insight, you’ll know what to avoid in the future.

Content is Created to Be Seen, Make Sure Yours is Doing its Job

If creating a content plan, creating the actual content, edits, research, and pruning all seem like a lot for you to handle – you aren’t alone.

Many of our clients come to us because they just can’t do it all. They can’t manage their business while also managing their website, SEO, content, and advertisements.

Sometimes the best way to help your business is to understand that you don’t need to do it all. Sometimes delegation is more important than control.

So, if you are looking for someone to make your content the gleaming, organized, high-performing king it was meant to be, then check out our content services, or contact us today.

We won’t make you wait, we won’t make you wonder – we’ll get back to you quickly and clearly instead!

Until then, comment, share, read more, and enjoy your spring cleaning!

February 08, 2019

How To Make A Solid Content Plan

It is possible that creating, planning, and implementing a ‘solid content plan’ is a little daunting for many businesses or website owners.

And that isn’t surprising, as many people’s understanding of content marketing only scratches the surface of what it really is – and what it can do for your online presence, rankings, and overall SEO.

But what does a true content plan look like? How do you start it, maintain it and schedule it? These are just a few of the questions our superstar content team will answer in our latest blog post.

Have additional questions? Need clarification or extra tips and tricks? Check out our previous blog posts about a wide range of subjects, or you can always comment, message, or call us for more information.

We would love to help you create the perfect content plan for your business.

Who knows, you might even enjoy it.

What is a Content Plan?

A content plan is fairly basic when you look at the terms used. At its most basic, it is a tool you can use to layout and plan your content.

See? Pretty much just like it sounds.

But, here’s the tricky part – your content isn’t just the great written word. It is anything, any media, that you create for your company.

Pictures, blogging, on-page content, landing pages, social media posts, downloadable content, even videos! All of this should be planned and will, therefore, fall into your content plan for the year (or the quarter – which is often a more manageable timeframe to work within).

JSL Marketing uses quarters for our content plans, meaning we make four content plans a year. One for January through March, April through June, July through September, and finally, October through December.

This is the ideal amount of time for your content plan to run, as it is manageable in smaller chunks and can be adjusted fairly easily based on changing business needs or seasons.

Essentially, your content plan should be a part of your marketing plan and it should show your clients or customer base who you are, what you are doing, and what you know.

Content is king in recent years – so make sure your king deserves the crown.

Create Your Content Plan

Creating a content plan starts with a template or some form of visual organization.

You can use a grid, a chart, or even simple, evenly spaced lines. As long as your content plan is easily understood and able to be followed, then the aesthetic design is up to you.

Here is an example of a simple content plan format.

Let’s pretend it’s for a Yoga Studio in Topeka, Kansas, called Toga Yoga.

	January	February	March
Newsletter	New Year, New Yoga Classes with Toga Yoga
Blog 1	New Year Resolution Yoga Classes with Toga Yoga
Blog 2	Beat the Winter Blues with Hot Yoga in Topeka
Video Topic	Toga Yoga: Relaxed Home Yoga Routine
Content Additions	*Update schedule & class information for 2019
Facebook	Posts about new yoga classes in the new year, healthy resolution help, hot yoga classes, home yoga routine & link newsletter, blogs & video
Twitter
LinkedIn
eBook	The Best Yoga Style for You \| Toga Yoga
Infographic	The Benefits of Yoga in Topeka \| Toga Yoga

The above chart is easy to make, easy to understand, and easy to follow – three key factors when making a plan that involves many moving pieces or different team members.

Now, of course, I didn’t fill in February or March. But you would simply repeat the process for each month and make sure there was some continuity, without being repetitive and while keeping your keywords and their frequency in mind.

Additionally, you might not make eBooks or infographics for your company. Maybe you don’t post to Twitter but do on Instagram. Or maybe you have emails instead of newsletters. That is all fine, the above is merely an example.

One more difference between a true content plan and my example above is that all content plans need to be rooted in research, all the way down to the keywords you choose to try rank for.

Can you guess what some of my make-believe keywords were?

Toga Yoga, Yoga Classes, Yoga in Topeka, Home Yoga Routine, Best Yoga Style, and again, Yoga in Topeka

Now, I didn’t actually do the SEO research for this made-up company and made-up content plan. But you can see the reasoning and see the train of thought I was having for this particular company.

They have a local market, so some localized keywords would help get them faster movement on Google.
Their keywords are things that individuals looking for those services would easily type and search for.
Their name is a keyword, as we want people to easily find them if searching for them directly
There is a semi-theme throughout the first quarter – new year, winter, etc.

The exception to the themes mentioned above would be the video, infographic, and eBook. This is because they are more timeless and can be pushed or promoted for the remainder of the year and don’t have to be tied to any singular season as much.

When & Where to Publish

So now you understand what a content plan is. You understand the basics of how to make one, and you know you need to do the research before you put any other pieces in place.

But what do you do now that you have all your ducks in a row?

Research some more, of course!

Did you know there are specific times of the day, and days of the week, that have better open rates for emails? Or did you know that certain social media platforms cater to certain crowds and demographics?

If you did, then great job! You are ready to start publishing your content with confidence. But if you didn’t, perhaps you should consider who you are writing to, how they receive their information, and when.

Making a buyer persona can help here as well, as it can give you a (fictional) customer to try to understand and research.

Check out these helpful hints about social media platforms, content, written voice, and more!

Can JSL Marketing & Web Design Help Your Content Plan Be a Success?

If the research, planning, charting, writing, and implementation of a content plan seems a little over your head, or simply too time-consuming, then you are in luck.

Our content marketing team loves to research, plan, create and write. But what we love even more is seeing your business succeed.

Give us a call today, leave a comment, or message us directly to learn more about how we can help your business thrive in 2019, and how we can make your content king.

We can’t wait to hear from you!

Tag: content plan