What trends to follow in 2015 while posting content on social media

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We are all on one or another social media or social networking platform, right? You must be spending considerable time sifting through updates on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and if not, maybe content creation apps like Flipboard. Social has become a part of life. It is no longer a fad. From grannies to toddlers, everybody these days has one or another social media account.

Where there are people there is business, whether one likes it or not. It is not just about businesses, even people running the social media websites need to make a buck. Normal people using Facebook aren’t going to pay Facebook unless they are really desperate to use it. The same goes with Twitter. With LinkedIn, of course things are different because anyway it is a business networking platform so people don’t mind paying it to use some of its features. But the other social networking platforms need to depend on businesses to make money even just to sustain the platforms.

There are two ways you can promote your business on social media: (1) advertising and (2) posting content and interacting with your followers and connections.

Although you may have your own preferences when you create and post content for social media and social networking websites, this Content Standard blog post lists three trends to follow in 2015 that can bring you success. These are

  1. Use more of the platform you’re already using: This perfectly makes sense. You must have spent lots of time creating your presence on a particular social media or social networking platform so why not use it instead of starting on with something new? Besides, the social networking platforms are constantly introducing new features that you can use to promote yourself and your content. For example, on LinkedIn you can create articles and blog posts exclusively for the platform to showcase your expertise.
  2. Create your own network of influential people: No, it is not something like starting a new version of Facebook or LinkedIn. What it means is, be proactive and establish contacts with influential people in your field. For example, if I provide content writing and content marketing services, in order to promote my content, I should establish contact with people who are already doing great in this field and have gathered a massive following. Even if once one of them decides to promote one of my blog posts, it can bring me lots of exposure.
  3. Start making money with your content: Well, some of us have already been making money with our content, if not by directly selling that content, then definitely by expanding our presence.

How to make your content marketing better in 2015 than it was in 2014

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A few days ago I had written about how to make your content marketing more effective in 2015. As I had mentioned, the basic fundamentals remain the same, it’s just that every year comes with its own latest trends, techniques and opportunities that were not available in the previous year. A trait of a successful marketer is that he or she is able to leverage the available resources.

Nonetheless, sometimes we don’t even follow the fundamentals, whether they are pertaining to content marketing, or other aspects of business and personal life. Just as we make resolutions for the New Year, even for our content marketing goals, we can make some resolutions, some decisions that were not maybe followed the previous years but we want to make sure that they are followed in the New Year.

The most neglected activity is auditing the existing content. While writing this I assume that you already have lots of content on your website but you were creating it in a phase when you didn’t mind much whether your content was optimised or not, whether it was useful or not, whether it was relevant or not. You were simply creating it to improve your search engine rankings. You could have hired very cheap content writers from poorer countries. You paid least regard to its quality.

If this is something that you have been following until 2014, and perhaps in 2015 you can decide to audit your existing content.

If you have got lots of webpages and blog posts, running into hundreds, then it will be better to dump all the URLs in a spreadsheet. Then start going through each and every URL and see what improvements you can make.

Last year I did the same with my own website (I hadn’t written cheap content, but it needed some improvements). If you are managing your website with WordPress, there is a plug-in that lists all the blog posts and webpages that you have created so far in a simple HTML page. You can copy/paste this list into a spreadsheet. Even if you are not maintaining your website using WordPress, on the Internet you can easily find perl or PHP scripts that will go through your directories and give you a list of all the URLs that you have created so far.

From 2015 onwards, when it comes to creating or updating content for content marketing, focus on relevancy rather than search engine rankings

Search engine optimization is important – everybody needs better search engine rankings – but it shouldn’t be done at the cost of quality and conversion. When you needlessly use keywords to attract traffic from search engines you end up creating lousy, nonsensical content. If such is the content you have been publishing up till now, this is a good time to make amends and audit your existing content.

What all should you take care of while auditing your existing content to make it more in sync with 2015?

  • Make your page titles and headlines more compelling and meaningful
  • Introduce focus – focus on one topic or one subject per webpage or blog post
  • Correct spelling and grammatical mistakes wherever you find them
  • Remove superfluous language and replace it with conversational language
  • In every blog post or webpage try to solve people’s problems rather than promoting your product or service
  • Introduce call-to-action phrases and links without being intrusive
  • If you have used images without alt tags now it would be good time to insert them
  • Create shorter sentences out of longer sentences
  • Create shorter paragraphs out of longer paragraphs
  • Organize content under headlines, sub-headlines and bullets
  • Use keywords and key phrases contextually rather than force-writing

Of course content marketing doesn’t mean just editing existing content and adding new content. A major part of it involves marketing that content, distributing it, making sure that it reaches the right audience. If you have been neglecting this aspect of your content marketing, then focus on this. There is no use creating new content if you haven’t established a mechanism to distribute it.

There are 4 ways you can distribute your content in 2015:

  1. Improve your search engine rankings and get traffic from search engines
  2. Create a vibrant presence on social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn (just to name a few) and broadcast your content using these channels
  3. Build your mailing list if you haven’t already built one. Having your own mailing list is a great way to broadcast your content.
  4. Focus on different formats of content apart from textual content, such as videos, images, Slideshare, ebooks and downloadable reports

If the thought of making your content marketing better in 2015 than what it was in 2014 a bit overwhelming, just focus on one aspect. Sometimes the beginning is difficult and once you start doing something, things start falling at their places on their own.

And of course, working with a professional content writing and content marketing service can always help.

The importance of knowing your content marketing KPI

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Knowing your content marketing KPIs

Content marketing is more effective if you know your KPIs – key performance indicators. What exactly do you want your content marketing to achieve for your business?

  • Engage your visitors
  • Improve your search engine rankings
  • Increase your revenue (this is something broad, actually)
  • Get more visitors from social networking and social media websites
  • Improve your conversion rate

These are the basic KPIs that you need to keep in perspective while working on your content marketing strategy. This way you know exactly what you are trying to achieve. Remember that the narrower your KPIs are, the better you will perform. This will also help you optimize your resources.

Why is it important to know your content marketing KPIs?

The problem with content marketing is most of the people don’t know exactly what they are trying to achieve. They know that it works. They know that it is working for other businesses. But all they know is, people are publishing one blog post after another, one article after another, and taking social media and social networking websites by storm with their “killer” content. Somehow they cannot figure out how to add method in the content marketing madness. Exactly what is happening? What sort of content gets you what? How does it actually get you more business?

As I mentioned in the above bullet, having a KPI like “Increase your revenue” is quite broad because by the end of the day, even if you have performed 1000 activities, you want to increase your revenue. Every for-profit business wants to get more revenue. This is an existential truth nobody can escape. So you can take “Increase your revenue” out of the bulleted list.

When you have figured out the KPIs of content marketing in your case, you don’t worry about other aspects of your business.

Suppose the most important KPI for you is, getting more newsletter subscribers. It doesn’t matter how your search engine rankings are. It doesn’t matter the level of engagement you can manifest on social media and social networking websites. Heck, it doesn’t even matter what sort of conversion rate your website enjoys. What matters is, if you were getting 5 newsletter subscribers per month previously, after you have set your content marketing ball rolling, and after it has been awhile since you set your content marketing ball rolling (for, it needs some time to show results) you should be getting 50 newsletter subscribers or 500 newsletter subscribers every month. If you set this as your KPI – getting more newsletter subscribers – then your content marketing is working for you. Once you have figured out that your content marketing is working for this particular KPI, if you want, you can put in more resources to get even better results. This is why it’s important to know the KPIs of your content marketing.

Some good examples of content marketing KPIs that you can set for your own business

  • People begin spending more time on your pages and blog posts: It means they’re finding what they’re looking for. It also means that they’re not being distracted by other things while they’re visiting your website. The more they stay on your website, the better will be the prospects of them turning into your customers and clients. If this is the KPI you have set for your content marketing, it can be good indicator of its success.
  • You’re getting more unique visitors to your website: Of course repeat visitors are good, but they will become repeat visitors if they come to your website for the first time, right? So the more unique visitors you have, the more repeat visitors you will get and repeat visitors are the ones who normally do business with you, the most. If you’re getting more unique visitors and if this is a KPI that you have set for your content marketing, you’re going in the right direction.
  • More people download your e-book, case study or report: Suppose the growth of your business depends on the number of people downloading your e-book, your case study or the report that you have prepared so that you are known as an expert in your field. If you have set this as your KPI, you will be publishing content accordingly.
  • You are getting more subscribers for your newsletter: Building your mailing list is a timeless piece of wisdom. The more people hear from you (without feeling annoyed) the more eager they will be to do business with you. This is why many businesses solely focus on building their mailing list and getting more subscribers for their newsletters. This sort of content marketing KPI would be perfect for those who are looking for long-term business development goals. They want to establish relationships and communication channels so that eventually these relationships and channels metamorphose into business partnerships.
  • You are getting more inbound links: There was a time when inbound links were extremely important for your search engine rankings. Although this no longer is the case, why solely depend on search engine traffic if you can get traffic from other websites? In fact there are many businesses that completely ignore search engines – something that I don’t advise – and completely focus on getting inbound links from high-traffic websites. Having this as your content marketing KPI will keep you focused on publishing highly useful and high-quality content so that people voluntarily link to it from their own websites and blogs.
  • Your search engine rankings are improving: Which business doesn’t want better search engine rankings? By the way having better search engine rankings as your primary content marketing KPI doesn’t always help because eventually it is the conversion rate on your website that matters. So, yes, aim at improving your search engine rankings but not at the cost of quality, meaningful content.
  • More people are engaging with you on social media and social networking websites: 82% people in the USA are engaging with their preferred brands on websites like Facebook and Twitter. I’m getting decent amount of work from LinkedIn. Some businesses are targeting Google+. No matter what social media or social networking channel you plan to target, eventually it is engagement that matters. If you’re simply posting content to fill your profile with information, it doesn’t help your business. People need to regularly interact with you, and this is a worth pursuing content marketing KPI.

Again, why haven’t I included things like “Increased revenue”, “more leads”, “more sales” and such terms as your KPIs? Because, no matter how important they are – in fact, the most important for any business – they are a by-product of the KPI attributes mentioned above. If your content marketing takes care of those KPI attributes, you naturally begin to get more revenue, more leads and more sales.

Looking for a content writer who can work remotely?

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Content writer working remotely

A content writer who can work remotely can be of great advantage. If you’re looking for one, it means you want to avail great talent at minimal cost and with greatest efficiency. Why is it so?

For a big business it makes sense to have in-house content writers because, to be frank, many of the resources in big businesses are simply wasted. People are hired for no obvious reason. Salaries are paid without knowing why they are being paid. New software is purchased at the drop of a hat. Even when good software is available in the market, they get their own software developed. What I’m trying to say is, when it comes to big business, they’re not very much concerned with using their resources efficiently.

Small businesses on the other hand need to be very careful. If they are not careful, they’re going to lose their business. As a small business you don’t want to employ an in-house content writer. Looking for a content writer who can work remotely would be the best option for you.

Why look for a content writer who can work remotely rather than employing a full-time content writer for your small business?

Saving money is just one of the many reasons. Personally, why I would recommend a content writer who can work remotely is because you don’t get stuck with the content writer you have hired. Let’s accept that – human beings are unpredictable, and so are their talents. Maybe the person who appeared for the interview seemed awesome at that time, but now, he or she just cannot come up with the sort of high-quality content you need for your business. Even if occasionally he or she can come up with great content, the persistency is lacking.

As a business owner you also know that hiring someone can be a pretty expensive affair. You have to place an advertisement. You may have to go through an HR agency and then pay that agency. You will need extra space. You will need extra computer or laptop. You will need extra software. You will need extra resources like electricity and Internet connection and telephone and furniture. There will be many hidden costs that won’t be apparent immediately but will leave quite a significant impact on your account books. If you need to hire multiple content writers, then you can multiply these expenses.

There are no such problems if you hire a content writer who can work remotely. You don’t need to pay an HR agency. You don’t need to invest in infrastructure such as furniture, computers and software, electricity, office space, employee benefits and risks of litigation. You simply tell your content writer (who works remotely using his or her own resources) what you need and he or she delivers. That’s it. Don’t like the work? You can simply move onto another content writer. Isn’t it simple?

Another big advantage of working with a content writer who can work remotely is that you can negotiate the compensation. I’m not suggesting you pay peanuts for the quality content you need for your business, but if competitive rates are available, why not avail them? This is not the case when you hire someone full-time. Whether you can afford or not, you have to pay industry rates. You can surely negotiate, but some of the expenses are simply non-negotiable.

When you look for a content writer who can work remotely, global talent suddenly becomes available to you

As a realistic person, a business savvy worldly wise person, you know that the talent you require isn’t just confined to your geographic region. I’m a content writer based in India, but most of my work comes from English-speaking countries like USA, Britain and Australia. Why don’t they work with native English speaking writers? Aside from the sort of fee that they charge, it isn’t always necessary that they’re going to be better than someone placed elsewhere. An ability to write well is totally different from an ability to speak a language. Being a native English speaker doesn’t mean you’re also a good writer, but you can certainly be a good writer even if you’re not a native English speaker (I’m using English just an example, you can apply this logic to any other language).

So when you work with a content writer who can work remotely, you can access global talent. You don’t need to depend on the writers available in your city.

Even the difference of time zones can work to your advantage. Many clients send my work when it’s night on their side and on my side it’s already day. I work on the document and send it and by the time their day starts, they already have the needed content with them.

So are you looking for a content writer who can work remotely? If yes, do contact me to carry this conversation forward. Who knows? You may decide to work with me. Although, yours is the ultimate decision.

What to take care of while posting content on Facebook and Twitter

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Social networking content marketing

As a business marketer do you take special care when posting content on social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn? In my case I’m not very particular about Twitter because there I exchange all sorts of views including content writing and content marketing, politics, religion, literature, philosophy, and pretty much everything I find amusing, interesting and worth sharing. If you want to follow me on Twitter for a particular reason, I’m afraid you’re not going to get it. These days I am mostly followed by either those who somehow discover that I post lots of stuff on content marketing and content writing, or the Indian right-wingers because of my political leanings.

On Facebook, on my personal profile I rarely post content marketing-related content. It’s mostly personal, political, social or religious and yes, literary.

On LinkedIn it’s strictly business. I use my LinkedIn profile to promote my blog posts, articles and other content writing and content marketing related webpages. I’m happy that, due to this, I have got some nice assignments from my LinkedIn connections.

Google+ is a mix of business as well as business-related interesting stuff. I don’t share my political opinions on Google+.

On Twitter I have a separate profile to handle my business content, though. Even on Facebook I have created a dedicated page to promote my content writing and content marketing services. But unlike my blog, I’m not very regular with my business profiles on Facebook and Twitter, although, I must dedicate some time to it.

Jeff Bullas in his recent blog post rightly says that not all social media networks are equal. He says:

Social media is a great way to attract that attention. But that doesn’t mean you can just throw your link out there and people will come flocking. If you want your content to succeed on the major social media networks, you must consider who you are sharing it with. Then, you can write the perfect copy and produce the best content and optimize it for each social network to lure them in.

He also explains, comprehensively, what sort of content is appropriate for which social network and which sort of content elicits the most vibrant response.

How do I write content for my clients for their social media and social networking platforms?

Yes, I do take up assignments for writing content for my clients for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and even Tumblr. How do I decide what to write?

Just as Jeff has explained, I choose different content for different social networking profiles. I also carry out a study of their connection profiles. For LinkedIn you can be sure that only professionals are going to exchange information but a platform like Facebook can be capricious. You can find professionals as well as colleagues and relatives. For instance, in the fag end of the previous year I got a very plum assignment from one of my Facebook friends. Even before that I got 3-4 good project from Facebook. So it also depends on what sort of people you follow and what sort of people follow you.

Fortunately, all the clients who have approached me are not as casual about their social networking platforms as I am with my Twitter profile. They normally post very focused content and this is what they want when they hire me. I carefully go through the content they have posted so far, and the content their followers and friends have shared, the nature of the content that elicits greater response (Likes, Shares, Plusses, Retweets and Favorites) and the frequency with which their users and friends use the platforms. Accordingly I formulate their social media content strategy.

Whereas I have got work from Facebook and LinkedIn, surprisingly, Twitter, where I am the most active, I have never gotten work from.