Sep 10
LinkedIn content ideas

LinkedIn content ideas

By Copywriting, LinkedIn, Social media No Comments

What should you write about in LinkedIn?

Are you ever stuck for LinkedIn content ideas? Here are some ideas for you:

* Blogs that you have written.
* Case studies describing how customers have benefited from your products / services. People love stories and they remember them.
* Client / customer information and news.
* Events that you are running including open days, open courses, webinars, in-house workshops.
* Exhibitions, where you are exhibiting.
* Exhibitions, where you are attending as a visitor; you can tell your network and ask whether anyone else is attending.
* Feature announcements: you don’t have to wait until the next product launch.
* Images containing numbers / statistics displayed in interesting ways.
* Industry news (i.e. the industry that you work in).
* Job postings (full time, part time).
* LinkedIn questions, ‘Can someone tell me how I do this…..?
* LinkedIn tips and ways of getting more out of LinkedIn.
* Milestones including 1 year, 5 years, 10 years etc that your business has been trading and personal milestones (“I was surprised that, between us, our management team has been working in this industry for XXX years. Some of the changes we have seen include….)
* Photographs including customers using your products / services in interesting ways.
* Predictions are always interesting, as people want to know what is happening next.
* Podcasts, new.
* Products that you sell: tips and ideas for getting the best out of them.
* Products that you are launching.
* Public speaking engagements for yourself / colleagues.
* Research that you have produced.
* Services that you provide: tips and ideas for getting the best out of them.
* Services that you are launching.
* Thought leadership pieces.
* Trends for your industry and the products / services that you market.
* Videos that you have created. Either one-off or a series. They can be short, i.e. one minute or less, or much longer. Yes, I know that many people say not to post long videos, however, if the subject and delivery are interesting, you will be surprised at how many views they receive. It is said that videos work five times better than other forms of content.
You can either post brief ‘status’ updates or articles, which can be long form (i.e. high word count).
* Photographs including customers using your products / services in interesting ways.
* Predictions are always interesting, as people want to know what is happening next.
* Podcasts, new
* Products that you sell: tips and ideas for getting the best out of them
* Products that you are launching
* Services that you provide: tips and ideas for getting the best out of them
* Services that you are launching
* Trends for your industry and the products / services that you market
* Videos that you have created. Either one-off or a series. They can be short, i.e. one minute or less, or much longer. Yes, I know that many people say not to post long videos, however, if the subject and delivery are interesting, you will be surprised at how many views they receive. It is said that videos work five times better than other forms of content.

You can either post brief ‘status’ updates or articles, which can be long form (i.e. high word count).

Nigel Temple provides LinkedIn training.

Aug 15
startup

Startup marketing checklist

By Business, Marketing strategy, Startups, Success No Comments

If you are a startup or if you are thinking of launching a new business, here is a marketing checklist:

  1. Have a written marketing plan. Writing it all down will make you think through the key issues.
  2. Create a visual brand identity, including a logo, font and brand colours.
  3. Build your website after you have created your plan.
  4. WordPress is a free website CMS (Content Management System) that looks good from the start and will grow with your business.
  5. Your website has to: a. work as an online brochure and b. bring in sales leads / sales (if you have ecommerce).
  6. Choose your promotional mix carefully. You can get a free ebook containing 300 promotional techniques when you join:
    The Marketing Compass
  7. Write something every day. This could be a blog, new website page, newsletter content, press release or social media piece.
  8. Start working on your in-bound marketing using SEO as soon as you can. Start with a keywords list.
  9. At the same time, start to reach out and contact potential new customers. For example, this can be done via Facebook and LinkedIn. Be aware that legislation (such as GDPR in Europe) frowns upon unsolicited messages to people who have not given you permission to communicate with them.
  10. Use MailChimp for your newsletter. It is free for up to 2,000 subscribers and it integrates with the software that you are likely to use.
  11. Start to use a CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) as early as possible. A CRM that works well with MailChimp is:
    Capsule CRM
  12. Start talking to journalists. Tell them why you are launching your new enterprise and what is different about you (take this from your marketing plan).
  13. Have a system for improving your conversion rates.
  14. Get some external advice on marketing.
Aug 14

WordPress plugins – how many can you have?

By Internet marketing, Websites, WordPress No Comments

There is not a clear cut answer to this question.

However, in general terms, the answer is: ‘the fewer, the better’.

The Marketing Compass recommends that you don’t have more than 20 plugins (there is a WordPress Group there). Even this number feels quite high.

At the time of writing, there are some 50,000 WordPress plugins available.

Popular plugins include Akismet (anti-spam); forms (numerous plugins offer form creation capabilities); Google Analytics (so that you can get analytics working throughout your site): Jetpack (site performance and many helpful features); MailChimp (email marketing); Yoast (which helps with SEO); and WooCommerce (ecommerce).

There are 7 plugins in the above list and it is easy to keep adding new ones. This happens when you think of something that you would like to do within your website. I know, as I have nine WordPress websites.

The challenges of having too many plugins start with website loading speed.

This is a Google SEO ranking factor.

If your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load you have a problem.

Many website visitors will not hang around waiting for your site to appear.

What is more, plugin conflict can occur: i.e. one WordPress plugin can upset another plugin. If this happens to you, it is a good idea to backup your website before you start working on it.

Nigel Temple is a digital marketing consultant.

Jul 25

How to increase email click through rates

By Email marketing, MailChimp No Comments

Best practice within email marketing avoids the wording ‘click here’ as click-through text within email marketing campaigns.

Many subscribers won’t click if you do this, as it is unclear where the link goes.

It also leaves out important information that disabled users require and suggests clicking a mouse, whilst many subscribers view emails using a touchscreen on their smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop.

Ensure that your link text is descriptive. It is better to have compelling and long click-through text, rather than uninformative, boring and brief text.

Point the click-through URL to the most relevant information currently available. Tell the reader that this is what you are doing.

For example, if you are referencing a product or service, send the link directly to the most up-to-date web page or resource. Write something like:

Click here to see the latest version of product XYZ

Include multiple links to the same content within a single campaign.

This is relevant for MailChimp campaigns with a single call to action (other email marketing platforms are available).

Place CTA (Call To Action) buttons within several campaign content areas.

For example, towards the top and the bottom of the campaign.

Try wording the text links differently.

Treat the click-through text as you would a headline.

Experiment with questions, use trigger words and make it so interesting that the reader feels that they must take a look at the end of the rainbow.

Then look at the MailChimp campaign report to see which version of the click-through text were the most effective.

Don’t worry about having multiple links to the same content: this will help to increase your click-through rate.

Nigel Temple provides MailChimp email marketing training – click here.

Jul 24

Increasing conversion rates

By Internet marketing, SEO, Success, Websites No Comments

Digital marketing definition of conversion rate

The percentage of website visitors that reach a given goal, i.e. reaching a specific web page; filling in a contact form; making an e-commerce purchase; registering as a user; subscribing to your newsletter; downloading a free trial; or asking you for more information.

The big question is: do you know what your conversion rate is for specific areas of your digital marketing process?

To increase conversion rates:

  • Increase the amount of website traffic that you receive by using more of the 300 promotional techniques that are available to you
  • Have a website that loads as quickly as possible
  • Write in the language of benefits, not the language of features
  • Pay more attention to your headlines; if they don’t like the headline the rest of the content is a waste of time
  • Pay more attention to the structure of your webcopy; I have spent 30 years studying this and I offer webcopywriting training – how much experience does your website writer (or writers) have?
  • Include social proof i.e testimonial statements, case studies etc
  • Include a guarantee that you will deliver whatever is promised
  • Consider the design of your page: does it work in relation to the conversion that you are trying to achieve? For example, is there too much clutter and too many distractions?
  • Ensure that optin boxes, forms etc are highly visible; ideally they should be visible when the screen loads; if this is not possible include signposting
  • Include more calls to action and make them stronger
  • Minimise the number of fields within enquiry forms
  • Did you know that green is the most effective colour for Buy Now buttons?
  • Test different approaches and variants
  • Continually measure what is working and what isn’t and adjust accordingly
  • You can measure sales, sales enquiries, contact forms filled in, registered users, number of downloads, number of unique visitors, number of pages read and many other things.

If you need help with conversation by all means get in touch – click here.

Jul 24

Promotional mix categories

By Internet marketing, Marketing strategy, Promotional techniques No Comments

36 Promotional categories
There are 300 ways to promote your business. They are divided into promotional mix categories. An example of a promotional category is Advertising which includes adverts in newspapers, magazines and online, i.e. via Google AdWords.

Choose your promotional mix carefully, as it is a good idea to stick with it (stop / start marketing doesn’t really work).

Many of the techniques available to you are free, some are low cost and others require a budget.

Here is a list of the 36 categories (which we discuss within The Marketing Compass community: www.marketingcompass.co.uk):

  1. Advertising
  2. Alliance Marketing Partners AMP
  3. Articles
  4. Audio recording
  5. Authorship
  6. Celebrity endorsements
  7. Channel marketing
  8. Corporate clothing
  9. Corporate identity
  10. Corporate hospitality
  11. Customers
  12. Direct mail
  13. Email marketing
  14. Events
  15. Internet marketing
  16. Location marketing
  17. Media relations
  18. Mobile marketing
  19. Networking
  20. Packaging
  21. Point of sale
  22. Printed matter
  23. Professional selling
  24. Promotional gifts
  25. Referrals
  26. Retail
  27. Sales promotion
  28. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
  29. Social media
  30. Sponsorship
  31. Telemarketing
  32. Vehicle livery
  33. Videos
  34. Website
  35. Word of mouth
  36. Writing

With regards to the last category, copywriting used to be a specific skill, used within the advertising industry. With the advent of internet marketing, the ability to write clearly, combined with an explosion in innovative software means that writing is a promotional device in its own right.

Written by marketing consultant, trainer, speaker and author Nigel Temple.

Jul 22

Internal website links are important

By Internet marketing, SEO No Comments

Links (sometimes called backlinks) coming into your website are still a good idea. However, from an SEO perspective, they are not as important as they used to be.

On the other hand, links within your own website are definitely important.

Anchor text should be part of your SEO link building strategy.

Anchor text is the text contained within a hyperlink. The search engines analyse this. For example www.marketingcompass.co.uk …or… The Marketing Compass impartial marketing advice.

Search engines examine anchor text in order to figure out what the destination web page is about.

They are doing their best to help the searcher. Think of it this way, Google would like to know as much as possible about the subject of the page to which the link points.

Therefore, inserting keywords into anchor text helps search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo to do a better job.

Have you noticed how Wikipedia uses anchor text? One topic leads to another and yet another. It is tempting to keep clicking there, isn’t it?

Wikipedia is at the top of page 1 for millions of items and I have no doubt that its extensive use of anchor text has helped it to get there.

If you are interested in SEO, here are 12 SEO tips. I use these tips regularly.

Here is a tip for you: having written a web page or a blog, go back through it and think about other relevant pages or blogs within your own site that you could link to.

If you have an easy-to-use CMS (Content Management System), such as WordPress, you will be able to do this without getting involved in the HTML code.

This blog is based on an entry within The Marketing Compass Encyclopedia.

Jun 13

What is inbound marketing?

By Internet marketing, Marketing professional services, Marketing strategy, Psychology No Comments

The vast majority of your market is not looking to buy your product or service today.

Or tomorrow, for that matter.

A small percentage is actively looking.

Inbound marketing brings these people to you.

The result is more sales enquires and sales.

Inbound marketers share information with prospective customers via digital marketing, in creative, interesting ways.

The information needs to be helpful and informative.

The problem is that many enterprises do not wish to share their knowledge.

“We have never done this before!” they exclaim.

“Why should we give away what we know for free?” they ask.

The counter-argument is that their competitors are already out there doing it.

Sharing knowledge sure beats asking strangers if they would like to buy from you (I know, as I used to do this for Rank Xerox when I was a young salesperson).

Besides, I have found that the more I share, the more I have to learn.

Here is an entry within The Marketing Compass Encyclopedia regarding inbound marketing.

Here is a blog regarding Push versus Pull marketing.

Jun 07

Are you using the word ‘you’ sufficiently within your copywriting?

By Copywriting, Writing No Comments

When it comes to marketing copywriting, don’t write about yourself, your product, your service, your enterprise or your brand the whole time.

Replace the words ‘we’ and ‘our’ with ‘you’ and ‘your’.

Your copy will become more engaging for the reader.

Use the word ‘You’ as much as possible.

It is difficult to overuse this powerful word.

A good test is to go through your copy and count the number of times that you have used the ‘we’ words.

Use ‘You’ four times as often as you use ‘I’, ‘Our’ or ‘We’

When people read your copy, it will come across as more personal and engaging.

Reference: Copywriting – using the word ‘you’ ….within The Marketing Compass Encyclopedia

May 30

How to structure your knowledge

By Internet marketing, Marketing strategy, SEO, Writing No Comments

If you are a subject expert, you may have written a single book, several books or a series of blogs. You may have slide decks, course handouts or articles that you have written. You have probably answered questions via email and during meetings.

The information surrounding any given subject is continually expanding and you may have considered creating a knowledgebase, wiki or encyclopedia.

For some time, I have been in this position and I have looked at a number of ways of achieving this. Finally, I opted for a premium WordPress plugin called Enclyopedia Pro.

Here is the project so far:  The Marketing Compass Encyclopedia

There is a long way to go, as I have several thousand entries to add.

I am finding that this project is making me think about my subject area (marketing) in new ways and how everything fits together.

There is an SEO benefit from publishing your knowledge.

Personally, I do not have any problems with sharing my knowledge. I wonder whether you feel the same?