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  • 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

    a person consuming too much content

    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! 

    an infographic showing the different kinds of digital marketing content across channels like social media and email marketing.

    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.

    an infographic displaying the power of word of mouth marketing as a branding tool

    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!

  • 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

    an SEO infographic

    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

    two people using tools for content creation to create digital marketing content on a computer.

    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!