A Smarty-Pants Marketing Tool

Are you a leader in your industry? Want an audience of raving fans that hangs on every word you write and shares your expertise with everyone they know? Then Content Marketing may be just the missing piece in building your sales empire.

Content marketing (newsletters, blog posts and articles) is a great way to share your expertise and get your name out there. Creating, publishing and distributing content to your target audience can be an excellent marketing strategy to increase business and get your company noticed!

Fresh content posted throughout the year to your website can be a serious boost to your organic search rankings. Plus, sending out an e-mail linking to your site’s fresh content can be the icing on the cake. The average email open rate across all industries is 32%, which is huge, especially when compared to social media and direct mail which often have single digit open rates. Plus email is said to have four times higher return on investment than other marketing channels including social media, direct mail and paid search.

In a recent class, a business-owner student, asked me if I recommend email newsletters as a marketing strategy. The answer is a resounding, “Yes!” but only if you follow these rules.

1. Have ideas.

If you’re going to have an email newsletter or a blog, you must have unique ideas. There’s no short cut here. There is no getting around the fact that you must have ideas. Your own thoughts. From your own head.

If you have a ton of great ideas, it can still be a challenge to put them down on paper. Even a hotshot, smarty-pants thought leader will struggle to write 500 words a week covering every nuance of the totality of subjects known to man.

So, maybe you aren’t the best at punctuation or sentence structure or sitting for hours typing away at your keyboard. That’s OK. Hire a copywriter who can conduct an interview with you and write the content. Or use an editor to help you fill in the gaps in your articles. See my offer below for help with getting your newsletter looking great and published on time, every time.

2. Share the good stuff.

In order for content marketing to work, you have to share your very best stuff. Not just stuff you are selling. And not the stuff everyone else has already talked about. Adhering to the 80/20 rule is a crucial formula. 80% of what you write and send out must be useful, educational content that helps your readers get to the future they want to create. Only 20% can be advertising your own business and selling your offerings.

Don’t send someone else’s article with your comments added like, “Great article! I especially like what the author says about...” No. You’ll never be considered a thought leader if all you do is “ditto” someone else’s work.

3. Ship it on time, every time.

Have a schedule and stick to your shipping date. If your email newsletter is once a month on the first Tuesday of the month, then you must send it out on that day. Every. Month. Waiting for the perfect moment or a muse to inspire you to write is what amateurs do. It’s easy to write one article. It takes much more discipline and guts to do it every week or every month. But with all the larger results.

Let’s say you set a goal to blog every week. Then you must publish that blog. Every. Single. Week. Sounds dreary and unexciting? You bet your numb little tushie it is. That’s why there are people like me who enjoy writing and marketing. I can help shine a light on your business in a powerful and strategic way that drives results.