Home Grown vs. Professional Video – Each Has a Role to Play in Small Business Marketing

Guest Poster: Peter Stassa of Davideo Company, corporate video production specialists.
You probably don’t have an unlimited budget. We get that, neither do we. We understand that while you value the use of video content to build brand awareness and credibility, you still need to stay within your means. So, ask yourself this:

Where is your content going to be seen?

If you’re posting short videos to consumer-driven social media (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc.) to promote live events or short-term special offers, go right ahead and shoot those yourself. The audience on those platforms is used to seeing a more impromptu, “selfie” style and is less critical of production quality.
But what about the important video content that lives on your website or is being embedded in email campaigns and newsletters? The “about us” videos that explain what your organization does and why you do it? The testimonial stories that are intended to build trust?
You may think: “My phone has a really good camera, I can save money by producing marketing videos in-house instead of hiring an outside company to do it!”
Yes, you can – you can also save money by doing your own dental work with a mirror and a pair of pliers, but it will cost you more in the long run.
For one thing, it takes more than just a good camera. Do you have the other necessary tools and skills to properly record and edit the raw footage so that the end product is worth watching? Do you have the time?

You have to be careful when cutting corners on the production process because home-grown video can backfire on you.

For example, a Brightcove survey of more than 1,200 consumers revealed that the quality of a video has the potential to change the perception viewers have of your brand:
“When consumers are confronted with poor-quality video, they are 62 percent more likely to have a negative perception of the brand that published the video.”
“23 percent of consumers who have been presented with a poor-quality video experience would hesitate to purchase from the brand.”
Sure, the world of B2B and B2C communication has become relatively casual in recent years, and some marketing pundits have been saying that consumers prefer video that is more “spontaneous”, less “flashy”, and thus more “authentic”. But if your camera work is shaky and your image is dark and your audio is hard to hear, your viewer will not stick with it long enough to absorb any of your “authentic” content.

Poor production values are a turn-off. They distract from your message.

Today’s buyers are doing most of their initial research online before they ever get to the point of reaching out for a proposal, which means your odds of getting onto their shortlist depend largely on the quality of the content you post online.
As the saying goes, “you get only one chance to make a first impression” and if the video content on your website, on business-oriented platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, and in your newsletters and email campaigns looks amateurish, it will pale in comparison with the content offered by your competitors… and you won’t be getting those calls.
Effective and engaging video does not have to look like the opening to the Super Bowl, but sticking to the basic best practices of clean production will allow the viewer to focus on your content. For this reason, you should stay away from a “homegrown” video for critical applications and consider working with a professional when your target audience is made up of your core prospects and potential partners and supporters.
 

Understanding Searches Better Than Ever Before

Google is understanding natural language in searches better than ever before, so well, that it represents “the biggest leap forward in the past five years, and one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of Search …
Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning [1 in 10 searches], Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query. You can search in a way that feels natural for you.”

EasyAuthoring, a Smart Content Marketing Tool for Small Business

Creating and sharing useful, quality content is time-consuming. Many of our clients have found that EasyAuthoring provides a perfect balance, helping make the most of their time while providing quality content for their customers and prospects (and Google).

Best of Growth Spurts – Focus on Maximizing Your Content Marketing Efforts

In this month’s content roundup, we’ve focused on different ways you can get the most out of your content marketing and blogging efforts. After all, content marketing is often one of the biggest components – in both time and dollars – of many small business marketing budgets, so it makes sense to maximize that investment.

To be successful, it’s important to see content marketing not as a silo tactic, but rather something that is just one component of your overall integrated marketing strategy. So, a single blog post can be used to support your SEO, email, social media, PR, and retention efforts, to name just a few. The goal is to get the most out of every piece of writing, whether you share it on social media, link to it in your email signature, syndicate it, create a companion download, or even pay to promote it.

Here are 5 timely and relevant posts that look at maximizing your content marketing efforts.

How to Reuse Old Content to Boost Your SEO and Keep Your Audience Engaged, marketingprofs.com – Does your content plan include “evergreen content”? While it’s critical to have a steady flow of fresh, quality content, you can often maximize your impact by including at least some content that doesn’t “expire” (in other words, it will still be relevant a year from now). This content can then be re-used and repurposed for SEO and social media. Read the full article here.

How to Create Content That Keeps Earning Links (Even After You Stop Promoting It), moz.com – Content + linkbuilding = powerful SEO strategy. And the key? Creating something that people will find and link to when they’re in need of sources to cite. This puts you in a good position to earn a lot of passive links.

This article describes the content types most likely to satisfy people in need of sources and tips on how to execute these content types. Read the full article here.

7 Ways to Ensure You Maximize Your ROI from Content, quicksprout.com – From “picking 1-2 channels and designing around them” to “never stop promoting, ” this post offers solid advice for getting the most out of your content marketing efforts. See all 7 ways here.

How We Grew Our Organic Traffic by 43% Without Publishing a Single New Blog Post, hubspot.com – An interesting approach one company took to maximizing its content marketing efforts by putting into place a strategic plan that included the whole staff. Read the case study here.

28 Ideas for Content Upgrades to Grow Your Email List, sumo.com – Get more out of your content creation efforts – whether you’re doing the writing or have hired a writer – by creating a companion “upgrade” or bonus (tip sheet, checklist, video, slideshow) that you can promote and give away for the “cost” of an email address. See all 28 ideas here.

The variety of ways a business can get the most out of its content marketing efforts can be overwhelming. Sales Renewal has programs that can help, from our comprehensive JointSourcing Solution™ to our guided Marketing Essentials Solution™ to our on-demand Flex Marketing™. Get in touch today.

Writing a Blog to Grow Your Business

“What do I write about?”

It’s inevitably the first question any business starting up a company blog will ask. And it’s inevitably the question that will continue to be asked as long as the company blog exists.

If you’ve done any research into business blogging, you have probably encountered endless articles about why you should have a business blog. These articles are often supported by survey results and data analysis. They typically explain that it can be a successful, cost-effective way to bring traffic to your website. An active blog means the search engines see your fresh content, which, if set up properly, can help improve your SEO performance. An active blog means you have plenty of fodder for sharing on your social media networks. You can also email articles to prospects and clients, and encourage people to contact you in the post itself (calls to action). All this, in turn, can grow your leads, increase sales, build your authority, and expand your market reach.

Write to Delight

Dive in a little deeper, and you are guaranteed to find even more articles about how to put together a blogging program. And they all make it sound so quick and easy.

Chances are you’ve come across some version of this advice: “To bring readers to your blog, all you have to do is write to delight and inform.” This is usually accompanied with plenty of tactical (?) advice:

• Plan your content in advance
• Use an editorial calendar
• Headlines/images/bullet points sell
• Understand your personas
• Blog daily/weekly/monthly/regularly
• Write to delight (there it is again!)

Sounds nice at a first read, but if you stop to think about it, what does it really mean? Can a business owner really turn this advice into an effective company blog? We don’t think so. At least not without investing way more time into understanding what it all means than anyone actually has. Because first and foremost, you still need to answer the question, “what do I write about?”

A Thoughtful Way to Structure Your Blog Content

There’s some old-school advice about writing that can be more constructive: “Write what you know.” You know your business. You know your customers. So in theory, you know what your customers need to know about your business.

We’re getting closer, but we need to take it to the next level by adding some manageable way to plan your content that takes into account all the benefits we discussed above: SEO, social media sharing, individual distribution.

So let’s start with what you know: your products and services. Ideally, your website is structured so each category of products or services has a dedicated page (on the SEO side, think broad key concept, or a category of keywords). These Category Pages link to individual Product or Service Pages (for SEO, this equates to “longer-tail keywords”). There may be one or two additional, highly-targeted pages for each of those services, focusing more in-depth on various aspects of that service or product.

Enter your blog. Each of your product or service pages offers near endless fodder for blog posts. Product updates, news, customer reviews, customer examples, how-to articles, all make good blog content.

Put the pages and blog posts together, and you have a content hierarchy that can be used to strategically answer the question, “what do I write about?” Not only will you have something to write about, but you will have content that will help your SEO efforts, move your prospects along the sales funnel, and allow you to reach out via social media networks.

An Example: Sit, Stay, Home – an Electric Fence Company

Let’s use Sales Renewal’s fictitious company, Sit, Stay, Home, to demonstrate the power of this model.

• Our top-level Category Page “Electric Fence Models” gives a summary of all our electric fence products.
• Each summary is linked to a Product Page, for example, “Model 1 – Electric Fence with GPS Collar”.
• This, in turn, links to a Special Features page, explaining “How the GPS Collar Works.”
• We can then generate Blog Post content for these Product or Special Feature Pages to enhance the reader’s understanding of your product: how the idea was developed (company insights); true-life example of how a dog was saved by wearing the collar (testimonial); why it works even in snow (geographic reference); what types of dogs it is best for (customer example); how to prolong the battery life (tips).

You’ll want to go through this process for each category of product or service you offer. At the end, you will find you have plenty to write about. And you will be able to systematically plan and schedule your content so you develop a well-rounded website, with pages and posts that support and explain your business.

With this birds-eye view of your content, you can balance they types of posts you write, as well. For example, one week you might write about why the GPS model works in the snow, the next week a customer testimonial about how Model 2 worked better than anything she had tried. Week 3 announces a software update for Model 4, and week 4’s post offers tips and tricks for better training.

Of course, once you know what to write about, you can rely on readily available advice for how to write it, being sure to take into account readability, WIFM (what’s in it for the customer), delight (!), SEO, and social sharability.

Best of Growth Spurts – Our Favorite Posts from March

Since we update our Growth Spurts blog several times a week, our readers know they can find a lot of actionable marketing & technology advice in it. And in case you’ve missed them, we offer a regular summary roundup of the most popular/interesting posts of the month where we extract the most useful information into tips you can use, and in many cases, provide a link to learn more.

Here, then, are our 5 favorite posts from the past month:

Advertising and SEO

Goodbye, Google Sidebar Ads – What You Need to Know – If you’ve done a Google search on a laptop or desktop in the last few weeks, you’re sure to have noticed a big change. There’s a lot of white space on the right – gone are the sidebar ads and the maps and local listings. What impact will this have on local marketing, SEO and search advertising? While the changes are so new the verdict is still out, we’ve gathered insights from a number of experts in order to get an early read.

Content Marketing

5 Ways to Make Your Blog Post Interactive on the Cheap – Is it time to breathe some life into your blog posts? This article features five tools you can use to draw your readers in and keep them engaged.

How to Grow Your Blog Audience: Here Are 5 Tips – So you have a great blog. You write great content with lots of important information worth sharing. You publish frequently and promote your own content. But still, you aren’t getting many hits. Does it mean your content needs reworking? Not necessarily. Breathe new life into your existing posts by following these 5 steps, and you can transform your low-traffic blog with a high bounce rate into a blog many new people will actually read and come back to.

Social Media Marketing

60 Facebook Advertising Mistakes that Make You Look like a Rookie – Facebook advertising can be deceptively simple and straightforward. This article provides concrete examples of what not to do.

How Small Businesses Can Use Social Media to Grow Their Online Presence – for Free! – After conducting our own social platform/content test for several months, we were able to prove that by investing a minimal, but regular, amount of time and effort, any business can grow its online social presence – for free. Learn how here.

Stay up-to-date with marketing news and advice for your business – Subscribe to our Best of Monthly Digest here.

How to Grow Your Blog Audience: Here Are 5 Tips

So you have a great blog. You write great content with lots of important information worth sharing. You publish frequently and promote your own content. But still, you aren’t getting many hits. Does it mean your content needs reworking? Not necessarily.

Breathe new life into your existing posts by following these 5 steps, and you can transform your low-traffic blog with a high bounce rate into a blog many new people will actually read and come back to.

The SEO and Analytics Steps to Follow to Grow Your Blog Visitors

1. Make sure your blog posts are visually appealing – and contribute to SEO

Looks aren’t everything. But are people more likely to take your blog seriously if it is professional looking? You bet! You put a lot of time into your blog posts, and it should look like you do. Be sure your layout is organized with defined sections. Add aesthetically-pleasing, yet relevant images. Furthermore, use relevant keywords in the alt text field (the text that will show if an image doesn’t render correctly) to maximize SEO. Put the effort into making your blog look like it is worth reading, and your bounce rate will drop, and average time on page will improve.

2. Increase readability, improve SEO and lower your bounce rate by using headers to create clear, concise subtitles and bullets

If your blog post is a list-type post in a bulleted or numbered format, think “SEO” when writing the headers of these lists. Each header you include should be a clear summary of what is to follow in the paragraph(s) below. And by including popular (and relevant, of course!) keywords, you’re reinforcing for Google what the post is about. This, in turn, increases your chances of showing up in search results.

3. Optimize your Meta Page Titles

Your meta title, the text in the top left corner of your web browser, should clearly depict what the post is about. This text can be picked up by directories/webmasters, too, if they decide to link to your post. Be sure to include the “focus” keyword of the post. Keep it relevant. Keep it specific. Keep it simple. (60-70 characters, max!)

4. Create/Update your post’s Meta Descriptions

The meta description neither plays a major role in SEO nor improves your rankings in a Google search, but it is still very important. Because, while there’s no guarantee that this description will be used by Google, if a search query matches it closely enough, Google may choose to display it in the search results. This gives you some control over what is displayed, and could mean that the searcher may be more likely to click on your post, as it will appear to be a good fit.

If you have not put much effort into your meta descriptions, they are easy updates to make. Start with your top-viewed posts and add focused, keyword-rich descriptions. Again, while it should be concise, the meta description give you more space to expand upon your page title. Think of it as a short summary to hook your readers. This will make it more likely for readers to find your post. (150-180 characters)

5. Re-promote your older, evergreen posts on all of your social media accounts – with appropriate hashtags

Sharing your posts with your followers is a great way to gain new views, but Twitter especially gives a potentially large opportunity for new readers. You can tweet out your posts, even if they are older posts, a few times a day with different text. Fool around with hashtags and find out what works best.

Don’t be hesitant to periodically – even aggressively – re-promote your “evergreen” posts (posts that stay relevant over time). Each time you tweet, a new person may find your post. Chances are, someone is looking for exactly what you are posting about, so let them find you through relevant hashtags. Even just one retweet can have a dramatic impact if it comes from a user with a lot of followers. (Read about evergreen posts for local businesses here.)

Click to tweet this post to share with your followers

So how do you know any of this actually works? Well, we tested it ourselves, and we think the results speak for themselves.

Our Blog SEO/Analytics Test Explained

We took four older blog posts and tracked their performance over the course of six months (a period we will refer to as Period 1). We then implemented the five changes listed above, tracked the posts for the following six months (Period 2), and compared the results of Period 2 to Period 1.

To start, we updated each post to be more visually appealing and up-to-date. This included the addition of new graphics (as the old ones looked dated), changes in font, and the switch to a more simplified format.

Once we were satisfied with the overall layout, we went to work on updating our SEO. This involved some keyword research to see if any new keywords had become popular since the original post date, as well as reworking headers and bullets to include these keywords.

Following the steps listed above, we then changed meta page titles and meta descriptions as recommended in steps 3 and 4, and we repromoted the posts on social media. We promoted each post once a week on Facebook, and up to six times a week on Twitter.

So what do the results of our test reveal?

After implementing the 5 tips provided above, we saw noticeable improvements in three areas that are good indicators of page performance:

• Page Views (how many times the post was viewed)
• Unique Page Views (the number of individual visitors to your page)
• Bounce Rate (the number of visitors that leave your site after viewing only one page – the lower the bounce rate the better)

Analysis of the page performance of these posts indicated an increase in page views/unique page views, as well as a decrease in bounce rate from Period 1 to Period 2. In fact, unique page views saw an increase of 24% following the implementation of these steps, which means more people were able to find our posts thanks to the SEO benefits provided by these changes.

The bounce rate decreased by about 5%, meaning that these changes brought visitors who actually stayed on the website rather than immediately bouncing off the page. In short, this means the viewers of the updated posts were quality visitors that were actually interested in the topic, rather than visitors that navigated to the page by accident.

All in all, the results of our test allow us to conclude that implementing these 5 tips can breathe new life into your older posts. Optimizing the posts for on-page SEO and regularly re-promoting them can have a positive impact on the number of individual visitors who can find and read your posts. And, of course, by incorporating these tips into any new posts, you’ll be one step ahead of the game from the start.

How Small Businesses Can Use Social Media to Grow Their Online Presence – for Free!

A large business with widespread consumer appeal can naturally expect organic social media growth in terms of followers and interaction: people already know your name, are interested in your brand and are looking for answers. In this case, you may spend more time interacting with customers and keeping up with questions than you do just promoting content.

But we were curious: does this mean that if you are a small business with fewer resources, or in an industry not known for an interest in social media, you should abandon all social media efforts?

The simple answer: No!

We don’t mean that you can sit back, do nothing and watch the Likes roll in. But after conducting our own social platform/content test for several months, we were able to prove that by investing a minimal, but regular, amount of time and effort, any business can grow its online social presence – for free.

Share this post using hashtag #SalesRenewal and be entered into a Free MIA (Marketing Investment Analysis) Giveaway – $250 value.

Tweet: See how any business can grow its online social presence – for free. #SalesRenewal http://ctt.ec/P3SwN+

Which Social Media Sites Will Work Best for My Small Business?

The answer will vary based on your particular market, but we recommend starting with the “big 3”: Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Each platform allows you to interact with different audiences that when used together allows you to create a unique community of peers, prospects, clients, and more. The key to getting the most out of your efforts is to understand these differences and use them to your best advantage.

But first things, first. Before we get into the details, let’s talk strategy, because whether you’re a large or small business, you shouldn’t “do social media” for the sake of doing social media.

What is the goal of your social media? Is it to increase sales? Is it to build awareness of your business? In our test, we’re focusing on the latter.

The next step is to set expectations for the three different platforms and understand how all three will contribute to your unique community. Our test confirmed that we can:

• Use Twitter to build relationships with others in the same industry
• Use Facebook to build a solid base of interested fans
• Use Google+ to increase reach among those who may not be familiar with your business

Finally, figure out what content you are going to promote. Do you have original blog posts that others might find interesting? Can you share images of recently completed projects? Is your business part of a larger industry of which you can curate news to share with followers?

Once you understand your content, you can set up a schedule for finding, creating and publishing on each social media platform.

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So how does my small business use Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ all at the same time, but in different ways?

Use Twitter to Build Relationships with Others in Your Industry

Even if your individual business is small, chances are it is part of a somewhat larger industry. And even if you are in an industry whose customers do not actively interact with you on social media, chances are your peers are ready and willing to “talk”. This is where Twitter can be of great benefit to you. You can use Twitter to build a business community which could lead to partnerships, referrals and even potential customers. If you can create this connection with your peers, then your content has as greater chance of being noticed by other businesses and shared among your industry and beyond. Here are three ways to help get you into the game:

1. Start following others in your industry. For example, if you have a painting company, follow others with “painting” in their name. At the very least, you may get some good sources of content from these companies, but they will most likely follow you back. Both you and your followers gain sources of content, and you gain new followers as well. Win-Win.

Our test: By following this simple step over the course of 12 months, we managed to organically grow followers for one client by 93%! By growing followers, we also grew impressions and interaction in a similar fashion, which means all of our content is now seen by a much larger audience.

2. Promote your original content via Twitter. Share it with those in your industry. Tweet at specific people to get noticed (think @ and #), and tweet often. Then, with those followers that you’ve recently gained, you will likely get likes and retweets from those in your industry. Once you break into the scene and share great content, others will notice and remember your name.

Our test: We began our content campaign in September, and by the end of the year we had already seen 80% growth in interactions, including mentions, retweets, favorites and replies. Keep in mind that we already had a working Twitter account before the campaign, but you can see when we changed tactics by the results in our chart. We saw similar results with all our clients, so believe that you, too, can see similar results with your Twitter account.

3. Interact! Retweeting and favoriting posts will gain recognition, and soon enough you’ll be part of your industry’s social media world. Once you’ve tapped into this network, your impressions are bound to increase exponentially.

Our test: We started this “interaction” campaign in November. As you can see, we grew our reach by 25% and more than doubled interaction in just two months!

This is only the beginning. By keeping up this cycle of following, promoting and interacting with those in your industry that care about the same topics as you do, you will see exponential results over time.

Share this post using hashtag #SalesRenewal and be entered into a Free MIA (Marketing Investment Analysis) Giveaway – $250 value.

Tweet: See how any business can grow its online social presence – for free. #SalesRenewal http://ctt.ec/P3SwN+

Use Facebook to Build a Solid Base of Interested Fans

Unless you hired a firm that offered to grow your fans for 5 cents a Like (please tell us you didn’t do that!), chances are the majority of your followers are folks who are genuinely interested in you. These are valuable prospects and customers, because they already know your business and they care about your success. The most important types of posts for a small business are those directly related to your company. This includes images of recent projects, company news, products, etc. If you want to see interaction spike, including shares, impressions and reach, your best bet is to promote as many of these types of posts as you can. (Of course, we would never advocate 100% of your content be about you, 80% is a good target.)

Our test:In a study conducted with our signage company client, we posted three types of content over the course of a one-month period: projects/company news, original blog posts, and curated content/industry news. The same number of posts for each category were promoted at similar times of day for similar days of the week.

By far, the posts that got the most views and interactions were related to recent projects or company news. Original blog posts came in second, but only received 62% of the reach of “projects” posts. Curated content was least effective, only scoring 41% of the reach when compared to “projects” posts.

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Now we know what works best, but does this mean you should limit yourself to only one type of Facebook post? Of course not! It just means you can emphasize recent projects and company news, and intersperse this with curated content. Remember: Curated content is always important because it brings variety to your posting – people don’t want to only hear about you.

Use Google+ to Reach Those Who May Not Know Your Business

Google+ may not be the social media platform Google was hoping it would be. But you know what? That’s okay, because that means you do not have to split your efforts to grow multiple fan bases – stay focused on Facebook and Twitter. If you do have a decent following on Google+, that’s great. You can still post to it and receive clicks and interaction as you would with Facebook. But Google+ brings an added benefit – SEO! – that does not require you to have followers.

When you post to Google+, your posts then have a chance of showing up in a Google search, which can increase traffic to your site. When you post to Google+, you want to make sure you have clear and concise titles for posts, as well as descriptions that include relevant keywords. When people search for these keywords, they may be directed to your Google+ page, which could then lead them to your site.

While we spent the majority of our interactive efforts on Twitter and Facebook, we regularly shared our content on our Google+ page. By making sure our our titles and descriptions were targeted to a specific key concept, we found that our Google+ posts showed up in Google searches for those key concepts. This allowed us to reach yet another “community” – searchers who may not necessarily know our business but who are interested in our topic.

Make it a part of your routine to share to Google+ whenever you post to Facebook. It only takes an extra minute or less.

It is often difficult to show a direct correlation between social media marketing efforts and the bottom line, particularly for smaller businesses. But when social media is viewed from the right perspective – as means of building your community of peers, prospects and customers – it’s clear that it is an important tool for marketing a business, large or small. And while it may be harder for smaller businesses with a small following to earn followers and interaction, we’ve proven that it can be done by understanding and taking advantage of the strengths of each particular platform. By following these tips, you can grow your following, increase reach, and gain valuable interaction in just a few short months.

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SR EasyAuthoring Integrated Blog Tool

Sales Renewal is pleased to announce the launch of SR EasyAuthoring™, an innovative, integrated blog authoring tool. SR EasyAuthoring was designed for small businesses to help them easily offer original and “curated” content in the single blog platform they already have on their websites.

Original + Curated Content

Fresh web content in the form of a business blog can be critical for both search engine optimization and to stay engaged with prospects and clients. But creating original content that resonates with its intended audience on a regular basis can be a full time job, and one that not every business can afford. With EasyAuthoring™ installed on their website, a business can easily supplement their blog’s original content with much less expensive curated content while still supporting their SEO efforts.

“Fresh web content in the form of a business blog can be critical for both search engine optimization and to stay engaged with prospects and clients, ” says Keith Loris, Sales Renewal President and CEO. “But creating original content that resonates with its intended audience on a regular basis can be a full time job, and one that not every small business can afford. With SR EasyAuthoring™ installed in their blogging platform, the business can easily supplement their original content posts with much less expensive and time-consuming curated content. And unlike comparable solutions that can cost anywhere from $1, 000-$6, 000 per month, EasyAuthoring is available from Sales Renewal for only $99 per month (and a $99 installation fee).”

Content curation is the process of finding existing, interesting content online and putting your own spin on it. The world is overflowing with information, so sorting through this content and finding the best bits to enhance with your own take or perspective can be as useful & attractive to visitors as writing original content. Content curation has many of the same benefits as original content blogging:

• informing your audience;
• showcasing your expertise;
• keeping your website content fresh
• contributing to your SEO efforts (but only if done right)

And one major advantage: It is a lot easier to comment on other people’s ideas than it is to come up with your own and then craft it into well written blog post.

Contact Sales Renewal to find out how EasyAuthoring can help you with your content marketing needs.

The Increasing Importance of Content Marketing in 2015

A new infographic from ExpressWriters nicely illustrates Content Marketing’s increasing importance to growing your sales and brand.

Some factoids we found particularly interesting:

• Coca-Cola now spends more money creating content than on television advertising
• Marketers invest over 25% of their marketing budget on content
• 77% of marketers plan on increasing content production in 2015
• 61% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand that shares custom content
• 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing