Why You Should Be Doing Content Marketing Right Now

Content marketing is, perhaps, one of the most flexible marketing strategies ever. It works for almost every industry, company size, product and even cultural scenario. Hence, content marketing cannot be just a trend. It should be a long-term approach to your marketing.

Content marketing is a powerful way to influence people. By letting your customers know what your company, brand or product offer is, you could persuade them to do (almost) whatever you want. By creating content, you share your company's values, ideas, purpose and why not, your company taste and humor. All these elements are essential to attract and retain customers.

Why is content marketing important?

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

No marketing, no customers

Having a fantastic product has no value if people are not aware of it, right? That is why companies do marketing.

Unfortunately, nowadays, marketing is not so simple because we are kind of overloaded with all the information and content around us. If you want your company or product to be found, it is no longer enough to just do some marketing campaign here and there. You (or somebody on your behalf) should talk about your product constantly and on many channels. 

In addition, this “talk” needs to evolve as you will be reaching different consumers and prospects simultaneously. Some of those are more ready than others to buy. This means, your content needs to fulfill the “knowledge gap" they (all) will be phasing before purchasing any product.

Content marketing is a flexible and affordable way to bring information to your customers and prospects and build that journey -from creating awareness to getting the deal (and even after that).

Creating content and keeping this "talk" flowing is not an easy task, as many companies including your competitors are willing to fulfill the same gap and to build the same journey. There is where a differentiated quality content will put you on the map, or better to say, on the rank of the search engines.

Content marketing is not just a marketing task. It can be the best ally for you company success.

5 reasons why you should be doing content marketing right now:

 - You can reach prospects who did not ever know that you existed. Content marketing can effectively help you building brand awareness. For example, by writing a blog you can increase the possibility to be found. At the same time, you can attract new traffic to your website.

- By helping people with your content you can build valuables relationships and gain the trust of people in an affordable way.

- You can reach a different kind of prospects -from a customer who does not know what he/she wants, to another who is ready to make a decision. You can provide suitable information and content to help them both to make the next move.

- You can enhance your brand image and your reputation, by for example sharing your expertise and your uniqueness.

- You can increase your customer engagement by opening new ways to communicate with them (and to find the solution for their challenges).

Remember, content marketing is not a sprint. It is more like a marathon. Constancy and perseverance are essential. You cannot expect to get results by just publishing two pieces of content. The more content you share the more people will see your content and remember your brand. Of course, quality matters. Make sure that your content is helpful and well-written.

How To Encourage Your Employees To Share Your Content

Sharing is caring they said but, what to share if your employees do not know about your company's steps, happenings, and plans? 

By creating and sharing content, your employees can add value to your marketing. They can be the voice of your company and, help you to increase your company's visibility and your brand awareness. Unfortunately, in many companies, employees are still underused as a marketing force.

Here, six ideas to encourage your employees to share your content:

1. The first step to increasing your employees’ participation is to share information with them. I know it sounds very obvious but, sometimes, communication can be underestimated in some companies. If your employees don't know what is going on, they cannot help you to spread the news. Make them know what is happening and, encourage them to create and share their own stories.

2. Stop random marketing and create a clear marketing strategy. After this is created, you have to share it with your employees. No excuses! Knowing about your company's future plans and direction will help them to make decisions on what kind of content they can create and share.

3. Create good quality content that at the same time is easy to share. It is important that they feel proud of the content they are sharing. A well-written and visually appealing material has more chances to be shared than a poor one.

Give your employees the chance to create and share their own content

4. Educate your employees to become your brand ambassadors. If fact, you should train them even before they start to use the social media channels. Communication and social media training will help your employees to feel comfortable when creating and sharing content. You might train them, for example, on how to use the channels as well as on how to follow the company’s social media guidelines. As soon as the content start to be shared by them, it will be useful to share best practices among your employees. Make sure your employees are spending time on the right social media channels, based on your company strategies and goals. 

5. Encourage your employees to try new things. It will not only help you to innovate and develop your communication and marketing but, also it will make their fear of saying or doing something wrong disappear and they will be sharing more and more.

6. Take actions yourself as a manager. You could create and share inspiring content and celebrates your employees' social sharing. Be present and engage with your audience.


Be aware that no all your employees will be willing to take part of these activities. That is ok, too. They are not required to act as your company's brand ambassadors so, you cannot force them to do so. On the other hand, it is important to reward those who take on this role. Make them feel valued.

Do you have any other tip? Share your experience.

Does Your Company Need A Social Media Guru?

The company's brand ambassadors are hot right now.

There are quite many blogs, books, and social media conversations covering this topic. It looks like everyone is talking about the relevance of the brand ambassador. The benefit of using this figure to promote your company and your products is undeniable. 

I totally support the idea of "people" (instead of "companies") taking a more active role representing the company in different events as well as on the social media channels and blogs. However, when the advice for the companies is to hire a "social media guru" to take care of this, it makes me think, is this really necessary?

Forget the external social media guru. Focus on your employees. 

First, let me clarify that I have nothing against the "social media gurus". In fact, I feel a sincere admiration for the guys out there who are able to engage masses and become influencers by giving fantastic speeches, creating catchy content, or sharing amazing pictures and videos. That requires a lot of talent and dedication.

My point here is that no all companies can hire a "social media guru". Sometimes, it does not even make sense. This can be very expensive and the company might not be "mature" enough to take this step and to make this investment. The hiring person might not understand how to start the hiring process or what kind of skills are needed for the role.

The good news is that social media management is a skill that can be developed. In most of the cases, you can develop the skills of somebody who is already in your team. By training well your employees, you can convert them into your own social media gurus and brand ambassadors.

Never underestimate the power of your employees

The advantage of using you employees as brand ambassadors is that they already know your company, your products, and your people. They will be able to network inside your organization and get the information they need to create their content. Of course, it will help a lot if your company embraces a culture of sharing content.  

Your employees' strengths and talents can be shown in different ways. Some employees might be very good writing on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Others might be better at taking pictures and using Instagram, or presenting in different shows or events. There will be space for everyone interested in being your company's ambassador. 

6 reason why you should convert your employees into your brand ambassadors

- Your employees might have already thousands of connections across multiple networks. Therefore, they might reach a much larger audience than the one you are reaching now by using your company channel.

- It is well known that the content shared by employees receives more engagement than the content shared by the company channels. People prefer to follow people.

- If your employees share content that is relevant for your brand and for the industry in which you operate, they will create a personal brand. This means they will be seen as experts, and they will be contacted for advice. If your prospects think about your employee and his/her expertise while finding a solution, they might be purchasing your product or service. 

- Employees talking and sharing content about your company and your culture will help you to create your employer brand. If the shared content is positive, this might help you to attract and source new talent.

-  When your employees participate actively sharing information on the social media channel or they participate in the industry events, they also get more information. The social media channels and the events itself are a great source for learning new skills and perfect for networking with people in your industry.

- Encouragement and new responsibilities can increase motivation. The beauty of allowing your employees to use and experiment with the social media channels at work is that at the same time you will inspire them to do something new and exciting. This will also create a positive buzz and an infectious excitement among the rest of the employees.


Summing up, it is time to start your "treasure hunting" inside your own company. Find people interested in this development area and help them becoming your company ambassador and your own social media gurus. 

No More Random Marketing

Is your marketing team throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks?

Are you doing marketing without a plan? Are you more like waking up every morning, going with the flow, and creating marketing content based on your feelings or on your boss' surprise assignment? Are you normally executing marketing acts which need to be ready ASAP without a budget, without connection to the rest of your company strategy or without results measurement?

If your answer is YES, sorry but, you are just doing random marketing. Too much randomness is a recipe for a marketing disaster. 

Why We Do Random Marketing

Marketing offers us a lot of opportunities perhaps, too many to manage. If we mention the major social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, Snapchat, there is already (more than) enough room to create content. Sometimes, this can produce some pressure for the company to create "just something". Many companies are too worried about being everywhere. That is a problem itself.  Strategically thinking and planning can save you a lot of those worries (without mentioning the time and the resources).

Other companies, simply, have no resources to hire somebody to take care of marketing. In the worst of the case, a random person inside the organization needs to manage this when she/he has some extra time. So, they try their best and publish something here and there without a real connection. 

Random Marketing Success 
 
I cannot lie to you. Sometimes, an act of random marketing can get good results. For example, your video can get viral even if this is randomly made with a reduced budget. You can get more followers after a funny picture than after a well thought and prepared campaign. The sad part is that if a random act of marketing works, it might encourage your company to continue using those. This particularly happens when company focus, for example, more on followers than in treal lead generation. But, the (long term) truth is that going to one fair trade here and there, printing an expensive glossy brochure, publishing a LinkedIn post once a year and publishing a couple of new pictures on your website or on your Instagram when you remember, will take you nowhere. When we talk about long term branding and marketing, random is not the best way to go. 

Strategic Marketing Matters 

As in any relevant part of your business, to do marketing successfully you need to have a game plan.

The first step is defining what do you want to get from your marketing (e.g. visibility, increase sales, recognition). Later, you need to define your strategy. Instead of trying to figure out what to publish in each channel, use your time smartly and define where is worth sharing content and what kind of content is worth sharing.


Sometimes in marketing, less is more. No doubt, random marketing is one of these cases. You should give it a try.

The Status Quo Never Leads To Wonderland

Sometimes people forget how much 365 days actually brings to their lives. They just wait years to do something new, to take risks, or to pursue a dream. They just settle. The same happens to companies… 

So, if you are starting a new chapter why not to use this new year to change, and to do things differently and better than before?

Embracing change can be good for your company

Unfortunately, to many people, change means something negative, something to fear. Change can be seen as something dramatic or painful, instead of something positive -an evolution.    

In many organizations, people are just afraid of change because it means shaking solid organizational cultures, procedures and behaviors. People might feel afraid of losing the power or the status they have achieved during the years they have worked for the same organization. In some cases, they might be afraid of losing their jobs or of being forced to do something very different.  

Customers' needs, economic and political situations in the country, market and industry changes, and even competitors' actions force companies to change. This means, changing is not an option but mostly, a need.

A change will bring more experience to your employees and to your company. It will help you to rediscover your potential and to see the business from a new perspective. A change will take you out of your comfort zone but, at the same time, will help you to explore new dimensions of your business, new opportunities.    

Picture: pixabay.com

So, you think you don’t need to change? Think twice.

There is not such a thing like a perfect company. This is perhaps the most common mistake we face in some organizations. We believe that everything is good and therefore, we want things to stay in that way -without risks. We can get used to certain conditions because those are quite OK for us. We believe that the status quo is good because we feel safe and comfy.

It is perhaps when the employees have been there for a while, without changes or surprises; or when the company has been selling regularly the same amount of products every year, or when the company believes that its relationship with its partners is stable. Those symptoms can make us settle. However, the truth is that settling can damage your company in the long term.

If you are wondering why to change if everything is fine in your company, let me tell you something, the status quo might be a comfortable status but, it is not enough for your company success. Most of the organizations need to adapt and change if they want to survive in the wild business environment that we are facing nowadays. 

If you're doing things the way you always have, you might be already obsolete or you might be losing a lot of opportunities to grow and to expand. Think about online selling, globalization, social media marketing, customer service, and digitalization. These are only few examples of things which have dramatically changed in the last years. No doubts those things are already affecting your business, right? 

The status quo and your employees

You are not the only one responsible for creating and maintaining the status quo. Your employees play an important role in creating and breaking it. However, it is your responsibility as a leader to choose and support your employees wisely.

Supporting the status quo is not good for your employees. When the employees get comfortable because everything is good, they get complacent with the status quo. They do the same things over and over again. If fact, they will resist changing due to the risks that change entails.

So, what should you do now? Well, it is time to review your employees' behavior. Despite of some managers' believes, a good employee is not the one who just do what is required to do without challenging him/herself or challenging the company situation. They might be good in their actual jobs under the actual conditions, but they will find challenging thinking outside the box, doing things in a different way or adapting to new conditions.

When focusing on the employees mentioned above and when giving all the credits to them for doing things "as we always have done", you might be pushing away your top performers or not using their real potential. Bringing new people to your organization will help you to break this status quo. (Of course, if you let them do their job). They will bring to your company new skills and new perspectives. Remember, it does not make much sense to try to change them and make them act as the rest of your people.

Change management and leadership

Challenging the status quo is not easy. Change is not easy.

Change management is all about persuading people to break with the status quo. As a manager, explaining to your employees why we need to change it is extremely important but, not enough to achieve the goal and to change. You need to create a realistic plan with tasks and activities to lead your company to the new direction. The activities and tasks can be small, too. This means that you could change step by step. You have to motivate your team and employees to support the change and all the change initiatives that are generated in your organization. You need to get them involved.

Unfortunately, most companies talk about change far more than they actually engage in it. So, as a leader, your most important task is to walk your talk. There is nothing more frustrating and confusing than having a manager that want innovation while exhibiting behaviors that endorse doing things as “we have done before”.

You have a new year, a new opportunity to break the status quo and take your company to a better situation. Make each day count.

Stop Overselling, Start Storytelling

Once upon a time there was a product and a seller.

Jackson, the seller, woke up and saw that there was no money left in his wallet. He was concerned about this situation. He needed to do something about it and quickly. He needed to promote more his product. He needed to sell more.

Of course, Jackson knew everything about the product. Therefore, he decided to write all the information down. It took the entire day to get this ready but, he did it! He felt very proud of how much information he collected. His text was long and complex. "Beautiful", he thought. The text described the technical specifications and the attributes of the product. In addition, He mentioned the benefits that the customers can get from his product. In fact, he wrote everything he knew about the product. He was very eager to sell.

When the text was ready, He made a list of all his contacts. He added some other email addresses that he has found online. He sent the text by email to all of them.

Meanwhile, in a remote location in Europe, John was waking up. John is Jackson’s old customer. It was cold and dark and John was tired. However, John was willing to read his emails before the sunrise. John took his cup of coffee and turned his computer on. He started checking his Inbox while drinking the coffee. John was glad to see that there was a message from Jackson on his inbox. He opened it immediately with a smile on his face. "It has been a while", John thought.

He has not heard from Jackson for a while, perhaps, since he bought the product a few years ago. “That is a very good product”, John whispered. 

John took another sip of coffee but, something happened that wiped the smile off his face. He was a bit sleepy still but, this did not stop him. With a firm movement, he took the computer mouse and clicked the email from Jackson. He marked it as SPAM.
Jackson never heard back from John, despite sending multiple emails to him.

Instead of spamming information about your products or about your company, create stories. As the world is overloaded by advertising, and your customers’ attention is harder and harder to maintain, storytelling might help you to differentiate and to connect in a unique way with your customer. The fact is, no one cares about your selling goals and only few care about your technical details. But your customers like a good story especially if they feel identified with it.

SEO, Content Creation, Social Media and Courage: A Summary Of My First Year Of Blogging

A year ago I decided to start my own blog. I was missing writing so badly.  I wanted to practice my writing and to develop my marketing,  communications and social media skills. As you might know by now, my background is in marketing and in communications, however, during the last two years, I have been working mostly on sales.

Starting my own blog was something new and very personal. When you do marketing for a company, you focus more on the product, on the brand or on the corporation. In addition, you have to align your content with your company messages and you have to schedule your posts according to the company's plan. My blog is a perfect place to talk about the things that I am interested in. Here, I can focus on my own thoughts and I can arrange my own schedule.

The main goal of my blog is not to sell or to promote a company. It has been a personal experiment, a development plan. I have learned so much from my readers, and I am very thankful for that. In fact, there have been more readers than what I expected at the beginning of this journey. Some of my articles have been read around 1000 times. This is very encouraging and motivating.

I have experimented a lot and learned from each post. Here, the three most important things I have learned during this year of blogging:

1) Creating the right content for your blog

The process of creating content for my blog has been fascinating and challenging at the same time. It is good that you cannot see my drafts. At the moment, there are ca. 40 messy ideas. This blog has helped me to find a writing opportunity in almost everything in my life. Sometimes, I get topic ideas from things I see at my work place, other times, from my friend's conversations and experiences or from a book. I have accumulated a lot of ideas, however, some of those need to be very polished before I actually can publish those. Ideas are not very useful if I am not able to create something relevant from those.

Yes, content is the king, but I have learned that the way I present my content is also very important. It is not only about having fancy pictures but, more about having the right structure. SEO matters and you can see that very clearly when you have the chance to try these structures, titles, subtitles and wording, and measure the results by yourself. It is a great learning experience.

In a nutshell, a blog post should be:
- Relevant (information that matters)
- Easy to read
- With the right structures (titles, subtitles, etc.)
- With the right keywords to be found.

2) Mastering Social Media: 

To share your content on other channels is a must if you want to be found.  In my case, I use social media to promote my blog and my posts. Most of the visitors come to my blog from Twitter or from Google+. There is some organic search, too. I have used Facebook only a few times and I have gotten great results. However, I don't use Facebook so often because half of my contacts are not speaking English. It feels like I would be spamming them.

When I publish something on my social media channels, I can see the changes to the visitors' statistics. Following the Google and Blogger analytics have been very important part of the development of my blog. I have had the chance to play with many messages and content and see if those work or not.

There is something about the timing, too. I get more visitors to my blog if I promote at the right time for my audience. In my case, I write mostly in English so, half of the visitors are coming from the USA. When I tweet at the USA time I get more visitors than if I tweet at my local (Finnish) time. However, Finns are reading my blog, too. (Kiitos!)

Social media is all about interactions and getting to know people. I have noticed that if somebody "relevant" likes or share my tweet promoting my blog post, I get more visitors. If I am the one sharing other's people content, I also get more visibility. Sharing is caring.

3) Courage:
Jeff Bullas said once that "The biggest challenge for any blogger, social media marketer, content creator, and publisher is to -start- ". I could not agree more. It took a while for me to start this project, but, I am very glad I did.

Writing a blog is getting exposure. This can be very intimidating at some points. It took me a while to start my blog trying to find the perfect topic (or even the perfect language). The truth is that the perfect topic does not exist, so you just need to write and publish. I have done this experiment and I am glad about the results and the learning. Sometimes, I write and publish. Other times, I come back and edit. It is all about experimenting.  Hopefully, you have enjoyed this year on my planet as well. Thank you for be there.

Are You Ready to Listen To Your Employees?

Every day employees find small problems and challenges at work. However, this is not a bad thing. In fact, each challenge can spark ideas for improvements. Even the simplest idea can have a positive impact on your company performance improving your revenue, your safety and also your employees' engagement rate. 

When you open "the employee's suggestion box" with an open heart and especially, with an open mind, you can make your employees feel valued, therefore, their performance can reach a completely new level. 

Your employees can help you to improve different processes and areas in your company

Are you currently receiving fresh and innovative ideas?

- You have asked your employees for opinion and you have gotten no answer
- You have a suggestion list on your internal system with no marks
- Nobody comments on ways to improve performance
- In team meetings, your employees are mostly silent and agreeing in everything you say. 

It is time to check why this is happening.

Corporate culture for innovation: 
 
In many companies, suggestions seem to disappear into a dark hole. In others, employees with new ideas might be seen as an unfit for the organization. Sometimes, the company's priorities list does not include managing employees' suggestions. Or perhaps they are just "too busy" to improve.  

If you want to properly use your employees' suggestion to improve your company's performance, you need a corporate culture that matches and supports it. It this is not the case at the moment, you must reboot your existing corporate culture. 

Be ready, this is not an easy task.
 
How to work on your employees suggestions: 
 
Evaluate your corporate culture: if you are not receiving fresh and innovative ideas and your employees remain silent when you ask for suggestion, it is time to evaluate your corporate values and rituals. Change those in a way that your new values supports the employees' suggestion experience. 

Create a safe environment for suggestions and input: make sure that your employees feel free to talk about their ideas and point of views. Your employees' collaboration will be better when they feel comfortable providing input without being demeaned.

Be welcome and open for ideas: as each employee is different, you might get ideas, proposals and points of view which are different than your own. If people want to do things in different ways than your way, it does not mean that they are wrong, that they don't know how to do things or that they want to go against you. When you add different approaches to your company actions and processes, you inject richness into your company.

Be empathy: let say that your employee is sharing a solution to a problem he is facing at work but, this problem does not resonate to you, remember to put yourself in this person's shoes and try to understand his situation.

Facilitating spaces for experience sharing:  I have learned so much from the professional experiences of my colleagues located in other units and regions, that I cannot recommend this experience sharing enough. The point is not to imitate the tactics that others are implementing but, to learn from them, take some inputs from the cases and perhaps, adapt and use those inputs in your own activities. Make experience sharing a regular part of your communication and processes. 

Give space to the anonymous: The truth is that not everyone feels comfortable to share the own ideas, however, this does not mean that they have no ideas at all, or that their ideas are invaluable. By giving the chance to share their points of view in an anonymous way, you are getting also another set of ideas and approaches.

Focus on things that add value: positive and constructive criticism is accepted, to be negative and nasty, is not.

Prioritize: you might receive many suggestions and it might feel a bit overwhelming. Talk to your people a select those topics and actions which are more urgent. Make a priority list and go trough the cases according to the list.

Engage people in solving the problems: you don't need to be in charge of solving all people's problem. In fact, you should delegate and engage your employees in solving their issues. Making them responsible of some improvements, will make them more committed.

Follow-up tasks: work together with your employees and create clear plans and deadlines for these improvements. You can, for example, manage those as projects. In this way you can follow up and evaluate the results.




Receiving feedback and suggestion from your employees will help you to develop as a manager and especially, to develop the way your company is doing things. Remember to be open minded and make your employees part of the process. Your employees will feel that their opinions are valued and they can have an impact on changing things to better. If at the moment you are facing difficulties receiving feedback, you might need to transform your corporate culture into one that is open for employees' suggestions and feedback. For that, you need organizational commitment, clarity and ongoing communication

Marketing For Non-Sexy Industries

Heavy machinery, engineering jargon, niche markets, kind of unknown products...

It is not an easy task for a marketer or a communication person to get the attention of the media or of the public when the product or the industry is everything but sexy. Right?! If you feel represented, trust me, you are not the only one struggling with it. But, what are you doing to make your content more interesting?

It does not help just giving up and falling into the trap of thinking that your brand is too boring or too traditional. 

Remember even in the weirdest industries, 

there is an audience waiting for information 

and getting ready to make a purchase. 

 Make it happen. 

Be brave, take risks.

 

8 Marketing tips for challenging industries: 

1. Share useful content: Remember the content main goal is to inform, educate and entertain. You should give your customers what they actually need (not just what you want to share or -better to say, to sell).
2. Make the content appealing: the content should be interesting and relevant but, please, do not forget using the right font, good layout, and the visuals. There are so many channels and tools out there, that you can try new things even at low cost. No excuses.
3. Focus on one topic at the time: The more common mistake when writing about a product that is not that "sexy", is that you try to say too much. Just visualize for a second a brochure with too much text and too many pictures, well you know the feeling...Forget to try to speak about everything. That will not increase your blog readership, either. Instead, focus on main points.
4. Write for a wider audience: rather than writing from engineers to engineers, (sorry for my honest example), try to make your topic more interesting for other people. Forget that technical jargon. It is not making you look as an expert or smarter. This is very relevant if you want your content to be shared on different channels. If more people understand your content, you will have more readers and therefore, more chances to get shares, likes, and comments. This approach will help you when working with the media, too. A journalist will not write about something that is too difficult to understand or that needs many hours to get deciphered. Keep it simple.
5. Stop measuring a number of readers (or likes); focus instead on quality leads: I know you think I am contradicting myself but, my point here is that you need to get more readers, but a number of readers does not guarantee the sell. You need to create content that will attract the buyers, too. A funny picture can get thousands of likes, however, they are not buying your product. 
6. Stop selling or advertising: Nobody wants to read a blog post that is only an advertising in plain text. What about talking about cases or examples in which those benefits are shown? Don't push your products. Make your customers discover the benefits between the lines of your stories.
7. Make your employees your ambassadors: If you are running out of ideas why not to talk to your own people. They can help you finding great ideas, new perspectives, new topics and why not, they can help you creating the content. What about getting a great picture from your factory, or the story behind the guy who creates your latest hit... Your company is not only about selling products, there is much more happening inside the organization. Share it! 
8. Track the results: You have the chance to try many things, but the only way to know if those have an effect on your results is by measuring. You can measure the changes to the sell, the reach of your stories, the media coverage, changes to the brand awareness, etc. Decide the measurement tools according to your goal.