Tag: branding

Tips For Content Optimization by Platform

Creating content is hard. Between staying true to your brand values, cultivating engagement, and being creative, you’ve got your hands full. Even harder yet is keeping your content fresh across platforms. Why is content optimization so important and how do you do it? Let’s examine!

Selecting the Right Platforms For Content Optimization

Part of the challenge of consistently creating engaging content is selecting the right platforms. You have to not only know who your customers are and what they want but also where they spend their time. The latter part is especially important; you don’t want to be wasting time creating content few people will see or interact with.

Selecting the right platforms for your content goes beyond posting on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. It’s choosing the most effective media types to raise brand awareness, drive engagement, and engineer more conversions. That means taking advantage of things like videos, blogs, events, and even interactive content.

For example, maybe a blog would help interested customers move closer to making a purchase. But creating and implementing a blog on its own isn’t going to move the needle. What you need is content optimization. That means creating the blog post as part of a series directed at specific customer personas–and supplementing it via other platforms and channels.

Content Optimization Tips

The most important thing to remember about content optimization is that you’re creating content not for your brand but for your audience. That means what you find interesting might be boring to your audience. Know your customers inside and out. That means knowing what they want, why they want it, and who they want to be. You’ll get more people interested in your content, which will ultimately drive more folks through the conversion funnel!

In terms of content optimization, be sure you’re using the right platform for its intended purpose. For instance, blog posts don’t belong on Twitter. A blog would be better suited to your website, supplemented by links and posts on Facebook or Instagram. The actual copy itself stays on your website.

Another way to keep your content fresh and interesting is to lead with emotion. Whether that’s humor, empathy, or something in between, getting your customers emotionally involved is the key to creating an effective relationship with your brand. After all, emotion is the most important driver of purchasing decisions! Look to connect with your customers beyond their wallets and create emotionally-driven content.

Properly optimized content is effective content. If you plan your content optimization strategy in advance, however, you’ll be able to stick to your calendar to help create an effective plan. For example, you might want to improve website traffic and unique visitors–content optimization will help ensure all the content you create aligns with these goals.

Don’t Forget About User-Generated Content!

The best part about user-generated content is you don’t have to create it yourself. The next best thing is, if properly optimized and implemented, it can be more effective than branded content.

Plus, user-generated content shows that there are others with a connection to your brand. Real customer testimony is many times more likely than any brand messaging to inspire other customers to take action because it’s impartial. Why else would word of mouth advertising be so effective? While customers may doubt the authenticity of branded statements and messages, they’re more likely to believe the objectivity of a random customer who isn’t being paid to create that content.

User-generated content captures the attention of both your brand’s followers and the creator’s following, which means it’s a great way to boost your visibility! While you might not be able to nab a big-time influencer to create content on your brand’s behalf, sometimes quantity can trump quality. In other words, if you can create buzz around your brand from average people, it’ll be just as effective as if you landed a celebrity spokesperson!

No Content is Bad Content

Your brand can’t survive if your customers aren’t aware you exist. You also can’t expect to build a relationship with customers without having a personality for your brand–a personality you build through effective content marketing. Your content tells your customers not only what you do but who you are and why you do it, both of which are significantly more important than what products or services you offer.

Unless your content is out of left field, hypocritical, or contradictory, it’s probably not bad content. But if you can optimize your cross-channel content to drive customers through your conversion funnel, you’ll essentially be automating the sales process and building relationships simultaneously!

June 27, 2025
Five Copywriting Tips to Create Winning Content

Sometimes writing copy is the toughest part of creating effective content. There’s a lot to balance–using the right language and keywords, selecting the right channels, and keeping it all interesting. Let’s look at five winning copywriting tips to help make your content more effective!

Copywriting Tip 1: Keep it Simple

Who is your audience? The average person reads at the 7th to 8th-grade level, which means your long-winded copy is probably going to get skipped. Unless your audience is more educated or verbose, keep your copy simple and direct. Use short sentences, try to use commas instead of periods, and keep the fancy words to a minimum.

Even for longer copy, make sure to capitalize on headings, subheadings, and short paragraphs. Before your reader actually reads content, they scan it. If it’s a lot of words, they’ll skip it. If it’s formatted properly and “easy to read”, they’re more likely to give it a go.

In most cases, write the same way you talk. Don’t write words you wouldn’t use conversationally. Think of most content as a conversation with your audience. How can you make sure they feel respected and understand your messages?

Copywriting Tip 2: Don’t Overoptimize

Remember, your content should be written for humans, not computers. While it’s important to include the proper keywords for SEO purposes, forcing keywords not only makes the copy harder to read, it hurts your SEO efforts. Search engines can pick up when you’re trying to keyword-stuff–and they’ll penalize you for it.

Instead, try to incorporate the keyword(s) as often as you can–naturally. It’s okay to break up keywords or phrases with punctuation, articles, or prepositions, especially if it makes the copy read more naturally. Search engines can pick up on this and won’t penalize you for a slight alteration.

Titles, tags, and headings are also great places to capitalize on your short and long-tail keywords, so don’t try to stuff it all into the actual copy. This is most helpful for blogs–for longer, more specific keywords, it helps to put the blog title in the actual URL!

Copywriting Tip 3: Show What You Can Do For Your Audience

Your natural instinct might be to boast the accolades and accomplishments of your brand, but how does that help your audience? Rather than write what you’ve done, write what you can do for your audience. People are much more interested in what you can do for them, and in most businesses, past performance is only as good as the customer’s last experience.

Be direct in stating how your brand, products, or services can solve real problems and meet your audience’s needs. Instead of “our product is great for X,” try something like “Never deal with X again thanks to our product!”

If possible, personalize your copy–especially if it’s interpersonal communications like emails or push notifications. Even taking the time to include your customer’s name goes a long way.

Copywriting Tip 4: Start With a Hook

Scientists theorize that the human attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish. Most people can’t pay attention to something for more than nine seconds, especially if they don’t find it interesting. Let’s face it: your customers probably won’t be inherently captivated by your marketing content. If you can hook them with the first sentence, however, they’re more likely to keep reading.

Capitalize on direct quotes, stories, statistics, and especially emotion. Copy that makes your reader feel something is more likely to inspire them to take action than something bland or uninspired. Plus, if nothing else, it’ll get them to pay attention!

Copywriting Tip 5: Inspire Action

Before you write any copy, ask yourself what the purpose is. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to raise awareness, build interest, or capture more conversions? Since the goal of your content is to drive action, your copy can make a difference. Always include a call to action and try to create a sense of urgency. Even if your offer isn’t time-sensitive, you don’t want a potential customer to think too long on it.

Lead your customers to take the logical next step and act as soon as possible. Otherwise, they’re likely to forget about your offer altogether, and when they finally decide to take action, it might not be with you.

Follow These Tips and Start Seeing Results!

Creating effective copy boils down to a few key components: keeping it simple, direct, and engaging. Hook your audience in the first sentence, keep them hooked by showing how you can improve their lives, and speak to them respectfully–and as a real person would.

If you follow these tips, you’ll create more effective copy–and you’ll start seeing more results, like improved engagement, more brand interest, and ultimately, more conversions!

June 21, 2025
How to Build a Successful Content Marketing Campaign

Creating great content starts with interesting your audience. Building great content marketing campaigns takes it a step further. Not only are you getting folks interested in your product/service offerings, but you’re also building relationships. Let’s examine how to build a successful content marketing campaign from the ground up!

Strategy

The first part of developing a successful content marketing campaign is figuring out who the content is for. Define your audience and their needs. What are they looking for? Once you know who you’re trying to reach, it’s time to figure out how to reach them. That means selecting a format or medium for your main lead magnet. What’s going to attract people and make them want to be a part of your brand?

Another way of looking at your content marketing strategy is through three rings inside one another. The outside ring refers to what your brand does. Inside that ring is a smaller ring; that refers to how your brand does what it does differently than everyone else. At the center is the most important ring–the ring that defines why you do what you do differently than everyone else. That’s where the heart of your content marketing campaign strategy comes from.

With your lead magnet and audience needs in mind, come up with a strategic and useful content plan to get people interested. Once you’ve got your content marketing campaign all planned out, it’s time to execute.

Execution

Planning and mapping out content is one thing–executing it is another. The best way to execute a successful content marketing campaign is through devoted landing pages. Think of your content as a magnet that attracts people to that landing page. If additional content can inspire them to want/need your product or service, that’s as good as a cross-sell/upsell!

Great execution starts with great research, organization, and copywriting. You have to really know what your audience is looking for. If you want to move folks through the funnel, your content has to be organized properly. In other words, each piece of content should have a specific function, whether it’s to raise awareness, drive interest, convert, solicit feedback, or something else. Finally, your copywriting needs to be on-point. Keep things direct, personal, and interesting!

Each piece of your digital presence plays an important function in any successful content marketing campaign. For instance, your social media–a preferred channel for content–complements your website, which is subsequently complemented by email marketing, and so on and so forth. The more you take advantage of each channel, the more likely you’ll be to inspire customers to jump on the funnel!

Follow Up

Content marketing is essentially a way to put your content to work as a salesperson. Since the customer isn’t being overtly sold to, he or she is more likely to pay attention to the content, and in turn, go through the sales funnel. Like a sales pitch, content marketing needs to follow up with the prospect.

However, unlike a sales pitch, your content marketing followup doesn’t involve knocking on the prospect’s door, calling them, or asking for the sale. Instead, the content itself moves them through the funnel. In other words, your follow up typically consists of more content–albeit with a sense of urgency. Let your content tell customers they need to act now. Keep the salespeople at home!

Content Marketing is an Ongoing Process

Though a content marketing campaign might be finite, content marketing is an ongoing process. That means one campaign should follow another. To that end, part of what makes content marketing successful is data and analytics. At the conclusion of a campaign, review all available data. What worked? Were you able to get enough leads? How many of those leads were you able to convert?

As with any successful part of marketing, the more honest feedback you get from your audience, the better. While you can’t directly ask a customer what pieces of content were the most useful in helping them make a purchase, you can review engagement and interaction metrics. Which pieces of content drove the most traffic to your website? Was there a particular medium (text/audio/video/infographic, etc) that got more engagement?

The most successful content marketing campaigns are data-driven. They take the data from past campaigns and then leverage it to create more effective content in subsequent campaigns. Whether you’re promoting a new product or building brand awareness, the principle is the same: content marketing works!

June 14, 2025
How to Rank Higher on SERPs

Less than 1% of visitors to search engines will go past the first page to find what they’re looking for. That means if your brand isn’t already on their mind, it had better be on the first page of search engine results. So how do you improve and rank higher on SERPs? Here are a few tips to propel your site from anonymity to renown!

Optimizing Your On-Site SEO

The single most impactful way to rank higher on SERPs is to optimize your on-page SEO. Fortunately, there are tools available to help. Depending on the content delivery service you utilize, there are built-in SEO plugins to help optimize your content. For example, if your site is on WordPress, you can use the Yoast plugin to make sure your content is properly optimized for SEO before you publish it.

It goes without saying, but you’ll also want to make sure your site has the proper HTML markup, alt tags on images, the right H1/H2/H3 use of headlines & tags, and no grammatical or spelling errors. Finally, your content should be written for humans–not robots. If your copy is unintelligible, stuffed with keywords, or otherwise dubiously presented, you’re doing more harm than good.

A Better Website Will Help You Rank Higher on SERPs-What Does That Mean?

In addition to optimizing your on-site SEO, the most obvious way to rank higher on SERPs is to improve your website. But what does that mean exactly? Does that just mean creating a more efficient website? Yes and no.

First of all, as mentioned, getting to the first page of search engine results requires a considerable amount of SEO work. That means not only choosing the right keywords for your site, but the right density, as well as the proper layout, appearance, functionality, and accessibility. If you have dead links, for example, your site will never reach the first page. If your keywords are off-base from what your brand does, you’ll never reach the first page.

However, if your website is securely hosted, full of reputable backlinks and properly formatted images, you’ll be on your way to moving up the rankings. At the same time, while your site may rank on the first page today, it doesn’t mean it will tomorrow. For best results, continually add to and update your page with engaging, keyword-driven content, connect and sync external accounts (like social media and Google My Business), and take advantage of other channels, like paid ads and email marketing, to drive traffic to your website.

The more search engines pick up that users are engaging, interacting, and sharing your website and content, the higher they’ll rank your domain authority. And while producing long-form content like blogs or whitepapers is more of a lead-generation tactic than SEO, it still has the potential to drive significant traffic to your website–and that’s where the higher ranking comes from.

Data & Analytics Are Your Best Resource!

Since part of ranking higher on SERPs has to do with creating better content, how do you know what content will drive traffic? That’s where data and analytics come in.

Tools like SERanking, SEMRush, and Google Analytics can give heaps of insight. Not only can they tell you how your site ranks for target keywords but they can give further insight into which keywords are driving traffic and what people are looking for. That means you can optimize your website–and content–for those keywords to keep things consistently fresh, relevant, and exciting!

Again, obtaining and maintaining a spot on the first page of SERPs is not a one-and-done process. Like most areas of life, maintaining superiority and success comes with constant hard work and improvement. That means if you want to rank higher on SERPs, you have to consistently put in the work. That means regularly auditing your content, getting feedback from your audience, making constant improvements, and of course, continuing to produce the kind of content that got you there in the first place!

June 6, 2025
Instagram or TikTok: Telling Stories With Video

People love video content. Whether it’s a funny cat video or a how-to on the latest tech gadget, your customers probably can’t get enough of it. Need proof? Both TikTok and Instagram have over a billion active users! When it comes to videos that get your customers engaged, which is better: TikTok or Instagram?

Why is Video Marketing So Effective?

First of all, let’s look at what makes video such an effective marketing tool.

People are 95% more likely to remember a message from a video than from written text. Shorter videos also account for the average person’s shorter attention span. Plus, the multimedia nature of videos makes them more likely to appeal to a wider audience. Finally, more than 50% of internet users watch online videos on a daily basis! It’s safe to say more people watch videos than read long-form internet content–especially on a regular basis.

That’s because video has the power to not only tell stories but show the way things are. Just like customers are less likely to believe a brand statement than a peer review, they’re less likely to believe written content–let alone pay attention to it. Whereas a list of brand features tells you what a product can do, a video of a customer using that product shows you what it can do. For example, including a video on your website or landing page can increase your conversion rate up to 80%!

There’s only so much emotion you can evoke from a still image or even the sharpest copy. Conversely, videos are a fantastic medium to evoke emotion, especially if they’re synced with music, sound effects, or natural human noises like laughter or conversation. Put it this way: which are you more like to interact with–a cat video or a picture of a cat?

TikTok or Instagram?

Again, there are over a billion active users on both Instagram and TikTok. So which is better to help gain exposure, interest, awareness, and conversions for your business? Let’s take a look at some statistics.

TikTok

-The biggest influencers typically see an engagement rate of about 18%.

-Almost half (~47%) of TikTok users are between the ages of 10-29.

–61% of TikTok users identify as female.

–53% of TikTok creators are between the ages of 18-24.

–49% of users made a purchase decision because of a video they saw on TikTok.

Instagram

-The biggest brands & influencers typically see an engagement rate of about 22%.

-Over half (~62%) of Instagram users are between the ages of 18-34.

–55% of Instagram users identify as female.

–53% of Instagram influencers are between the ages of 25-34.

–72% of users made a purchase decision because of content they saw on Instagram.

TikTok or Instagram: The Takeaways

While there’s no denying the burgeoning success and limitless potential of TikTok, Instagram arguably has more power–right now–to attract, engage, and influence your audience. While both TikTok and Instagram allow customers to purchase in-app, there are both more overall users and more users with actual purchasing ability on the latter app, as well as more functionality–like stories, reels, and posts, compared to TikTok’s singular video capabilities.

However, neither TikTok nor Instagram allows you to link external content to your TikTok/Instagram content, and TikTok only stores data for up to 28 days. That means if you want to keep engagement data long-term, you have to do it yourself. Finally, both TikTok and Instagram are pretty saturated with businesses. How can you make your content rise above the rest?

Which platform is more likely to generate interest and conversions in your brand? Is TikTok here to stay or is it simply the flavor of the month? More importantly, where are your customers more likely to spend their time–and where are they more likely to be influenced? Before you dive headlong into a TikTok or Instagram strategy, make sure you have the answers!

May 30, 2025
Five Ways to Make Your Brand More Memorable

Let’s face it: most people don’t remember most of the content they interact with. So what do they remember? Let’s examine five proven ways to make your brand more memorable!

Talk The Way Your Customers Talk

One of the best ways to make your brand more memorable in the minds of your customers is to talk like they do. Using relatable language will make your communications more like conversations than sales pitches. Since customers don’t like being overtly sold to, part of providing value is how you speak to them in the first place.

Instead of making generalized claims, such as “we are the best at what we do”, put your customers in the driver’s seat. Talking exclusively about yourself only plants the seeds of doubt. Is everything you’re saying true?

Focus on your customers and how they can benefit from your content, products/services, and brand as a whole. It’s a lot easier for people to remember how they can personally benefit, as opposed to an obscure accolade or accomplishment.

Create a More Personalized Experience

Is every customer exactly the same? Then why should they be treated exactly the same?

Your customers have different interests, needs, and expectations, which means a “one-to-all” form of messaging simply won’t suffice. Sending the same messages to everyone is akin to throwing darts at a wall and hoping one sticks.

Instead, develop detailed customer profiles to gain insight into how to really appeal to your customers’ unique personalities. Use data to figure out customer habits and create personalized messages–especially using email.

Something as simple as a product recommendation, “you may also like”, or “customers also bought” can go a long way. So can including your customer’s name on a marketing email. Don’t be afraid to solicit feedback. It may help you understand how to better serve your customers’ interests.

Appeal to Emotions

People don’t always remember the words you said, but they remember how you made them feel. The same can be said about marketing communications. Remember, emotion is the primary driver of sales decisions!

Take for example a television commercial that tugs at your heartstrings or makes you belly laugh. You might not remember the exact specs of the ad, but two things should stick out: the brand and the emotion you felt.

When creating content, think about the emotion you want to affect in your audience. How can you tweak your language, delivery, style, or any other component to better draw out that emotion?

If you can successfully appeal to your customers’ emotions, you’ll also simultaneously differentiate your brand–which can also make your brand more memorable. Customers will start to associate your ads and content with those emotions.

Be A Thought Leader

Is your brand a leader or a follower? Do you come up with new, innovative products, promotions, or ways to appeal to your audience–or do you do what your competitors are doing?

Being a thought leader is a great way to both differentiate your brand and make your brand more memorable. If folks look to you for new ideas and inspirations, it means they both trust you and they’re impressed by what you’re doing.

It also sets a standard for your competitors to follow. You don’t want to compare yourself to the benchmark, you want to be the benchmark. Look for new, creative ways to break through to your audience and offer value in ways your competitors aren’t.

Deliver Consistency

Being consistent is a great way to make your brand more memorable. Whether it’s delivering consistently valuable content, a consistently positive personalized customer experience, or a consistently superlative product or service, you want to reinforce your customers’ buying decisions. What better way to do that than putting your money where your mouth is?

From a visual standpoint, keep your designs, copy, and content thematically and visually consistent. If you have a brand color scheme, don’t create a piece of content with a whole new color scheme–it’ll just confuse your audience. Stick to using the same language, messages, and themes and you’ll build a rapport with your customers.

That should extend across your digital content. For example, if your website has a number of different pages, those pages shouldn’t all have different designs and layouts. Keep things steady and consistent across all media and platforms and all you’ll have to worry about is the content itself!

Make Your Brand More Memorable!

There’s no secret magic to make your brand more memorable. It takes hard work, consistency, and a fundamental understanding of your customers’ wants and needs. However, if you can deliver a superlative experience, you’re already on your way to cementing your brand in the minds of your customers. To really make your brand more memorable, keep doing what you’re doing!

May 2, 2025
Plant the Seeds of Brand Growth with These Strategies

Building a brand can be downright overwhelming. Between establishing who you are, what you do, and how you do it differently, a challenge presents itself: why should your audience care? If you can excel in three key areas right off the bat, you can plant the seeds of brand growth and watch your business blossom! So what are those three key areas? Let’s take a look!

Brand Growth Starts With Trust

Trust is instrumental to brand growth. The more customers trust you, the more they’ll think of you as the go-to when they need your product or service. At the same time, how can you earn customers’ trust while you’re just starting out?

The most surefire way to build trust is to create a great product. If your customers come to trust what you have to offer, they’ll associate that trust with not just the product or service in question but your brand as a whole.

Remember, brand growth is built around relationships. Customers have to care about the message behind the brand, not just what they can find on the shelves. Be transparent with your brand values and back up your words with actions. If your brand purports to care about a social issue, show your customers you care about it–don’t tell them.

While the bottom line is most important–especially in the early stages of branding–never put a sale before a customer. Offering a “money-back guarantee” shows customers two things: you stand behind your product/service and customer satisfaction is paramount. Be a brand you would want to do business with and start building your brand growth around trust.

What Do You Do Differently?

What will really ignite brand growth is showcasing what your brand does differently. Let’s face it, if you don’t have competition, you probably don’t need much marketing to begin with–you’ve got the market cornered. For everyone else, why should a customer do business with you versus one of any number of competitors?

The answer is your point of differentiation. Whether it’s lower prices, better customer service, faster delivery, or a combination of attractive elements, show your customers what you can do that no one else can.

Your point of differentiation doesn’t have to be limited to your product or service offerings. If you can create content or value that no one else can, that can work as a point of differentiation! For example, if you sell a product that comes with a “how-to” manual or other valuable literature, customers will have more incentive to buy from you than from your competitors.

Listen to your customers. Find out what parts of the customer journey they enjoy and which parts make them apprehensive. Focus on minimizing their pain points, providing value from start to finish, and reinforcing their decisions with confidence.

Brand Growth and Content Marketing

Brand growth can only happen with increased brand awareness. In other words, your brand can only grow if more and more people become aware of not only your brand’s existence but why other people are so keen on doing business with you. What better way to foster more brand awareness than through content marketing?

If folks are liking, sharing, and engaging your content, more and more people are seeing it. Try to create content other people aren’t creating, find insights others aren’t finding, and do what others aren’t doing.

Creating valuable content doesn’t just help plant the seeds for brand growth, it’s a crucial part of search engine optimization. People can’t find your brand online if you have no content–or if your content is poorly configured for SEO purposes. The more your content helps solves problems and adds value, the more highly it’ll rank on search engine algorithms, meaning the more likely folks will find you when they search for relevant queries.

Start Planting the Seeds of Brand Growth!

You don’t build a brand overnight. The most successful brands today got where they are through an efficient approach to delivering excellence on all fronts. At the same time, there are a few common links between the most successful, renowned brands: we trust them, they do something unique, and their marketing is consistently on-point. If you can deliver on these fronts, you can start seeing more brand growth!

February 26, 2025