Category Archives: Marketing

How To, Marketing, News

Content Marketing: Find Your Audience, Find Your Voice

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We’ve talked about content marketing quite a few times on this blog, so you know it’s something you should be doing. But do you know how to get started?news content

The first step is to find your audience, which will help you find your voice. Your voice is how you write: your tone, your style of writing and your punctuation just to name a few. Here are the first steps to take towards great content marketing.

Find Your Audience

Plain and simple, who are you creating content for? If you’re creating content to support your business, think of your ideal customer. Who are they? What are their interests? These are thing to be aware of with each piece of content you create. You can also find your audience by deciding what your goals are for each piece of content. Do you want some to submit an email address to learn more? Share with their friends? You should create a document with the answers to these questions to guide you as your write.

Find Your Voice

Now that you know your audience, it’s time to write for them. If your audience is short on time, be aware of that when you lay out your content. Is your audience curious to learn more? Then consider gated informational content. Think like your audience, and then write for them. This will develop your voice. Maintaining this voice throughout your content will help your audience know what to expect and ensure you’re attracting the right people for your goals.

Affiliate, Email, Marketing

Effectively Using Email Marketing Part II

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mailboxWhat Next

The purpose of your email marketing may be to get subscribers to complete an action they weren’t on your website. To do this, it can be as easy as just asking. If you want users to sign up to be an affiliate, provide them real value and information with your emails, then ask them to consider signing up and share your link. If you want them to visit your business, provide a reason why, like a special. Always consider what your goal is for your readers when drafting an email.

Allow for Unsubscribes

People who signed up to receive your email may change their mind and wish to stop. You do need to accommodate this. To again avoid being labeled as SPAM you must provide an option for receiver to unsubscribe from your email list in each email. This can be accomplished by adding small text at the bottom of your email with unsubscribe information.  This information is whatever action the receiver needs to take to no longer get your email. An example of this it to add the text “Please reply to this email with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line to remove yourself from this list” or something similar. This will meet the requirement of having an unsubscribe option. If you do use a separate email marketing service, this is already included in each email you send.

Miss Part I of this series? You can find it here

Affiliate, Email, How To, Marketing

Effectively Using Email Marketing Part I

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mailboxYou’ve created a great website and you’ve got traffic, but not the kind of signups or actions you would like. What do you do next? Consider using email marketing. You don’t need to sign up for an email marketing service, you can do it yourself easily. Emails sent by you can help to support your website and engage your audience. Once your audience is engaged, you can ask them to the do the next step, whether it’s signing up to be an affiliate, buying your product or visiting your store in person.  An example of a type of email you might send to a website visitor is one with more information, a deal, or an action item. It’s up to you to decide the content of your email to take your audience to that next step.

Before you get started with email, here are a few points to keep in mind.

Users Must Opt In

To avoid being labeled as SPAM or worse, people who will be receiving emails from you must first opt-in. This means that they must provide their email address to you, understanding that they are signing up to receive emails from you. This can be accomplished by a simple contact form on your website. Both SiteBuilder and WordPress allow you to add a contact form to your website. Simply adjust the text above the contact form to say something like “To learn more by email” or “Subscribe to our email list for deals” and you’ve met the requirement for opt-in. Double opt-in are helpful as well, but require more services. If you’re interested in using a double opt-in, you can learn more here.

Provide Real Value

Now that you’ve got subscribers to your email, you want to make it worth their effort. You can do this by providing real value. Value can be helpful information, a coupon or deal,  or a collection of links that may be interesting to your new subscribers. Consider all the emails you see in your inbox, what makes you open the few you do? Keep this in mind as your draft your email and your email subject line.

Check back for Part II on Friday. Please leave any questions in the comments.