Small Business Web Marketing Strategy: 7 Rules to Follow When Developing Content for Your Website
When developing content for your site, what is your strategy? Where do you begin and how do you stay on track?
When you started your business, chances are, you had a plan. In addition, you probably reevaluated your plan on a regular basis…probably more often than you care to admit. In the same way, when you start a website, the most important thing is to figure out what you are going to say and who you are saying it to.
1) The Who and the What
This is an ever important question as both of these variables, the Who and the What, will determine how you structure your site, your site design, your writing style and so on. For instance, if you are trying to appeal to a technical audience as a consultant, your language would be very different than someone who is trying to appeal to the average person who has a limited knowledge of your product, service or industry.
2) Does my content serve me or my customers?
In a previous post, Be Buzzworthy, No Buzzwordy, Rachel covered some great rules of thumb for your web content. Ultimately, this rule doesn’t change your topics, it just changes the way you approach them.
3) Don’t edit while you write
This rule is definitely not for everyone, but a good method for writing is to just get your thoughts down, then go back and edit. Focus on what you are writing, not the way you are writing.
4) Just Walk Away
In addition to editing after you write, it can also be helpful to let it sit overnight before you post it. You’ll be amazed at how much better your writing gets when you aren’t so close to the project.
5) Define “Effective”
The next question you need to ask is, “What results would make me happy with my web marketing efforts?” The definition of effectiveness is different for all of us. The average website only gets 1% of visitors to buy or contact them after visiting their site. That’s right…most likely only 1 out of 100 visitors will actually take a next step. This is why its important to take advantage of web marketing tools such as search engine optimization and social media marketing. Being found organically on search engines and connecting with potential customers through blogging and sites like Facebook and Twitter can dramatically improve your traffic and, often, increase the percentage of visitors who take the step to contact you.
6) Let it marinate
When you are aware of the effectiveness of quality content, it can be difficult to just let it be for awhile. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be adding content through blogging or adding pages as necessary; just don’t change your main site content too often. Particularly if you just launched your site, don’t change anything for the first 6 months. This will give you an opportunity to monitor how your site is doing.
At the very least, you should begin monitoring your site traffic through Google Analytics to see if your strategy is effective.
7) Re-evaluate on a regular basis
Now that you’ve defined “effective” and you’ve given yourself the analytics tools you need to measure your site’s success, the next step is to use this information to re-evaluate your strategy once in a while. Is the content you are providing attracting search engines and increasing your hits? How many people are visiting your site verses how many people are contacting you? What is your bounce rate (the number of visitors who immediately exit the site)? What pages seem to have the most appeal based upon time spent on page statistics?
If the analytics data doesn’t support your definition of “effective,” perhaps it is time to make some changes. Maybe you see things heading in the right direction and you are excited about it. It may be worthwhile to hire a professional writer, social media manager or SEO Specialist to help give your efforts a boost.
Be Buzzworthy, Not Buzzwordy
I’m here to tell you about our brand new cutting-edge, revolutionary, groundbreaking product. This innovative commodity is a robust, turnkey solution that’s scalable and easy to utilize.
Are you bored yet?
Ok, that’s probably an exaggeration- at least, I hope it is for most of you- but that’s the kind of writing that visitors to your website will tire of quickly. Buzzwords don’t serve to communicate with your potential customers- only to confuse and frustrate them.
There are three big problems with using “buzzwordy” language:
It makes you sound like everyone else.
Recently I tweeted about Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels issuing list of 119 forbidden words to reporters and anchors at WGN. While some of the words on the list seemed a little absurd, the overall goal made sense: to stop overusing and misusing words.
You probably know what words are frequently overused (or used incorrectly) in your industry. If you don’t, take a look at a few of your competitor’s websites and you should be able to build a list pretty quickly.
It’s vitally important that you set yourself apart from your competitors. Your customers need to know why you’ll be better able to meet their needs than the other guy, and it’s your job to tell them.
It comes across as self-serving.
Re-read the first two sentences in this post. What most customers will get from them is “We’re completely awesome.” It’s one thing to be excited about the products or services you offer. You should be excited- people will connect with your obvious passion. But it’s another thing entirely to talk only about your features and benefits without showing that you understand how they’ll affect your customer.
Your potential customers want to hear something from you that’s actually relevant to their needs and interests. Which leads us to the third, and biggest, problem with using buzzwords.
It doesn’t actually tell your potential customer anything useful.
A recent Nielson study showed that the average person identifies better with objective language (as opposed to subjective or boastful language). Take this sentence as an example: “As the leading provider in the contract IT industry, we offer the most comprehensive solutions available.” That sentence is all about the company, and it sounds excessive. By changing it to, “We provide a wide variety of services to help keep your business running smoothly,” the focus is back on the customer.
That’s the ultimate goal: providing your customer with relevant information. To do that, you have to understand their needs and concerns.
If you’d like to learn more about this subject, web marketing guru David Meerman Scott has written a great article on buzzwords and a list of common ones to avoid, entitled “The Gobbledygook Manifesto.” You can download it here.
Content is King…but even a King needs some help.
Recently I participated in a LinkedIn discussion that started as follows:
“OK, I have a website. Now how do I get people to visit?”
As one participant put it, “With all due respect, probably a question you should have asked before you built your site.”
As Rachel pointed out in her last blog post, “Beginning with Content Strategy,” many people fall into the trap of creating a website without giving it much thought. It’s equivalent to the Random Road Trip. “What’s that,” you ask?
Shortly after graduating college a few of my friends and I started an annual tradition of rolling a die that would indicate North, South or West (notice we removed east from the equation because no one wants to travel east out of Denver because east=Kansas). Based on what the die said, we chose a destination in that general direction and would head out. An adventure for sure, but the reality is that sometimes it didn’t work out too well. It would seem that, all too often, businesses start their web marketing strategy with a roll of the dice and just hope they end up somewhere half-way decent.
Many of the responses to this start-up’s dilemma involved developing a social media presence via LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. This is an easy way to at least get some curious visits without spending a small fortune on pay-per-click ads or traditional advertising. But when they get there, what do visitors see, why should they stay and why would they recommend your site to their peers? There are a lot of reasons one may give, but ultimately we are all looking for answers to our questions. These answers (solutions) may be presented in pictures, videos, headlines or the main content (body text).
As a copywriter, I recommend people start with content for a few reasons:
1) Content is the main driver for pulling Google your way. Just make sure you research keywords to pull in the right audience and optimize your site accordingly.
2) While graphics, etc. will lead people to the answers they are looking for, the content spells it out and establishes you as the expert.
3) You Tube has accustomed us all to low-quality video again, which is great for a small business. Videos area great way to allow users to passively receive information, but videos still won’t attract search engines so they can’t be your primary method for transferring information.
4) If you’re a decent writer it is free…if not, it is relatively cheap and won’t turn into an ongoing expense.
5) Ultimately content is the substance of your site, so the site should be built around it – not the other way around.
Once you’ve established something for people to “take away” from your site, it will be easier for you and your fans to be social about your site.
Next, I recommend that everyone get involved in an SEO program. I hired an SEO specialist to run an SEO program and have gone from #54 to #1 for my primary keyword in just over a month. It is relatively cheap considering being #1 will put me in front of approximately 780 customers a month. A solid NATURAL SEARCH RANK will always trump PPC and gives you instant credibility. While expansive content is crucial to your optimization efforts, it will not single-handedly get you first page results.
Lastly, be patient and realize that SEO is never truly complete. Keep your ears open for new methods for web marketing. There is always a little more we can do to better capture the attention of the broadest audience the world has ever known.
Beginning with Content Strategy
In my last post I talked about why it’s so easy to put off- or utterly ignore- writing content for your website. Today I’d like to offer some insight into why it’s vital that you begin a site with a content strategy.
The tech and design of a website gives you a frame to fill, but ultimately the substance of your website comes from your content. When people visit your website, they want to see well-organized may as well go back to handing out business cards.
Many of my clients hire me just before their site goes live, at the last possible second, when they’ve just realized that if they launched today they would have an empty website. This usually means that I am working within an already determined navigational framework, which can be a bit like fitting square pegs into round holes. Your message might not fit into the standard layout of other businesses in your industry. So why start there?
Let’s use a former client of mine as an example. My client had a completed website which had been live for some weeks but was totally empty. The reason is typical: no one wanted or had time to write the content. When I came onto the project, it was obvious that the navigation had been arbitrarily determined, probably based on competitor’s websites.
As we worked together, we realized there were a lot of changes to make. By the time we were finished, we had overhauled the whole structure of their site to better fit the company’s message and communicate with their potential clients. Had we started with content instead of design, my client- and the web designer- would have been spared a lot of extra time.
My advice to anyone designing a new website or redesigning an old one is this: start with content strategy. David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, puts it this way, “What really matters is the content, how that content is organized, and how it drives action from buyers. To move content to its rightful place in driving a successful marketing and PR strategy, content must be the single most important component.”
This means figuring out what you want to say, and how you want to say it. This also means answering some pretty deep questions:
- Who are we as a company, and what differentiates us?
- What areas do we specialize in?
- What is our vision, our mission?
- Who is our customer, and why do they need our services?
By determining the answers to these kinds of questions, you can begin to lay out the navigation and content structure of your website. Using different forms of media like video, audio, pictures, and written word will help you diversify your message and speak to different people who learn in different ways. “It is your role to think like a publisher,” says Scott, “and begin any new site or site redesign by starting with the content strategy.”
Why Do We Avoid Content?
I’ve worked with a lot of web designers and small business owners, providing everything from editing old content, writing blog posts, and creating content for brand new websites. What I’ve found, overwhelmingly, is that most businesses don’t think about the content on their website until the very last second.
Why?
The main reason businesses overlook their content is that it’s often easier to think about color schemes, layout, HTML, and flash animation, rather than actual content. I even found this to be true with my own site re-design, and I’m a professional writer. But why should it be so hard to write about yourself; what you’re good at, what offerings you provide, what you specialize in–shouldn’t this be what you know best?
I think it can be tough for many business owners to write about themselves. The very nature of the task requires you to do some boasting. Because of the fear of sounding like the world’s biggest narcissist, many people just end up putting it off. We, as a society, often have a hard time honoring the strengths in ourselves and others.
I also think people avoid writing their web content because they simply don’t know what to write. Sitting down to write content for your website forces you and your team to nail down your vision, mission, and goals. This is a daunting task for many businesses, especially new ventures and small businesses. In many cases, they’ve never had a conversation to determine what their message should be.
So, instead of biting the bullet and defining who we are and who we are to become, we end up focusing on the colors and artwork of our websites- far easier subjects- rather than the actual substance of our message. Then, typically after months of procrastination, we end up with a website ready to launch but nothing to say.
Next week, I’ll be discussing why starting with a content strategy is so important.