OK, for starters: One simple tip to help build an audience for your blog or website, is to offer a reward to people you want to sign up for your newsletter.
You might wish to offer it for free, but more importantly, it should be a helpful report about an issue that is affecting them and THEIR sector.
Whether you write the report yourself or hire a writer to do it, is entirely up to you.
You must try to make your report sound ‘interesting’ and of value to the recipient, in the way you write your teaser or introductory message.
Bear in mind, that the purpose of your report is simply to encourage your web visitors or blog readers to add their email address to your list – not to sell to them!
It needs to be about a relevant and useful topic for them, not for you.
At M3 Media Publishing, we know from experience, that article marketing can be a very effective way to attract customer traffic to your business. The quality of the content is important, as it is this content that you use to ‘engage’ with your audience.
Many business that I talk with, have been offered poor quality, written content and then were told: “It is only for the search engines, it doesn’t matter”.
Well it does matter!
Content that has ‘value’ for your target customer, can become part of your ‘word of mouth’ marketing, because it can be ‘shared’ by your readers. They will only share what they perceive is ‘valuable’.
Sharing content is vital.
Content marketing is not simply a matter of filling articles with keywords in the hope of attracting the search engines because the critical thing in internet marketing nowadays, is getting your content ‘shared’ by others.
That is what the search engines really want to see, and it is how they measure your popularity, in order to give you a higher ‘Page rank’.
You should use no more than 5 keywords in each of your articles, which should be at least 350 words long.
Ensure that you provide relevant and useful information for your readers or prospective customers, and they will come back for more.
Research is very important and probably the most time-consuming task alongside the writing of your articles.
You need to spend time researching the issues within your client’s sector, thus generating empathy with your prospects.
It will allow you to show that you have some knowledge of their sector and this can be invaluable when you do get face to face with them.
If you haven’t the time for research, my advice is to use a journalist where possible. As opposed to a ‘copywriter’.
At M3 Publishing we use journalists to write content for our clients, as they understand how to do effective research. We find that they invariably come up trumps, with valuable stories that are relevant to our client’s target audience.
Whichever route you take, Good Luck!
David Lomas
www.m3publishing.co.uk
Let's Talk Social Media & Content - with David Lomas 