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.

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.

Cuando Las Redes Sociales Son "Un Baúl De Recuerdos"

Muchos de nosotros hemos hablado ya por algún tiempo sobre las redes sociales. Sin embargo, todavía nos encontramos con empresas que están dando los primeros pasos en el desarrollo de las estrategias de mercadeo en estas redes. Si éste es tu caso, felicidades. Nunca es tarde para dar el primer paso.

Me imagino que ya debes tener en mente qué redes son las mejores para tu audiencia y a lo mejor ya has pensado qué tipo de contenido crear y publicar. Un buen contenido te ayudará a alcanzar tus metas.

El contenido para mercadeo tradicional y el contenido para redes sociales

Muchas veces por falta de tiempo podrás sentirte tentado en utilizar el material viejo, ya usado en canales tradicionales, y simplemente publicarlo en tu Facebook o en tu Instagram. Para tu audiencia será aburrido ver los contenidos ya conocidos, ahora “almacenados” de manera “digital”. 

Sin duda alguna, las redes sociales son frescas y así deberá ser tú contenido también. Algo muy bueno del auge de estas redes es que nos desafían a diario a ver y trabajar nuestro contenido de una manera diferente, de una manera más rica. Las redes sociales se enriquecen de la interacción, del contenido interesante, de nuevas perspectivas visuales, de arriesgarse a ser diferente así como también de actuar rápido y con un poco de urgencia. Sé creativo, olvídate de las mentes cuadradas y cosas demasiados tradicionales y diviértete con tu contenido.

Enfrentando lo desconocido. El primer contacto con las redes sociales

Si aún no has aprendido a usar por ejemplo, el Twitter, no tengas miedo. Mira a tu alrededor. De seguro que encontraras uno de esas personas “digi-nativas”. También hoy en día es mucho más fácil conseguir ayuda en Internet para desarrollar tus habilidades. Olvídate de tu orgullo, busca ayuda y empieza a aprender y disfrutar de esta aventura. Usar los medios sociales no debería sentirse como una tortura. Te puedo prometer que si consigues una red social que sea “tu alma gemela”, la pasarás a gusto.

Crea un contenido nuevo y relevante

Yo soy una persona súper afortunada a nivel profesional. He tenido la suerte de pasearme por varias industrias -por el B2B y por el B2C. En estas industrias de verdad que el mercadeo se mueve de una manera diferente, pero a la final todos le mercadeamos a humanos. Los humanos como tal se dormirán y dejarán tu sitio web o tu red social, si el contenido es tipo “noticia de ayer”.

Entonces, ¿estás listo para escribir tu primer tuit?  Allá vamos, respira profundo y comparte algo que menee un poco tu negocio y tu marca. Llama la atención de tu audiencia. Recuerda, que como todo en la vida, hay que tener un poco de paciencia. Si lo que quieres es incrementar las ventas de tu negocio, hay que darle un poco de tiempo. No obtendrás la venta inmediatamente después de escribir tus dos primeras líneas. Seamos optimistas, pero realistas.

A Simple Marketing Tip: Your Signature Matters

Something so simple yet so important. 

Your email signature says more about your company and about yourself than you think. 

Doing business by email:

 
I receive hundreds of emails per week, perhaps thousands. You might be surprised by the amount of emails I receive from people working for respectable companies without a formal company signature.

Call me old fashion but, if you are contacting me for the first time by email, you need to make a great impression. I understand that we are quite busy and so on but, an email without contact information will take you nowhere. 

If you are trying to sell me something or if you are contacting me to start a business relation with the company that I represent, you should absolutely let me know who you are. Or if you need more information about the company where I work for or about its products, you need to know that I will not be able to give you a price without knowing you. I know there is Google but, your email signature is your business card. It will make our lives easier if you provides us with some basic information.

Use your signature to marketing yourself:


Your signature is not a wasted space on your email bottom. These characters can be used smartly to marketing yourself and marketing your company. Think quickly, how many emails did you sent today? Well, your information has been exposed to all your receivers. Don't lose this opportunity.

You don't need to use anything extraordinary. In fact, I would say that the best option is to use a clean, easy to read information that might help our communication in the future.

6 steps to a useful signature:

1. Add your first name and last name
2. Add your role in your organization
3. Add your contact info (office phone, mobile number, email, etc). Please, if you are in contact with people from different countries, kindly notice this when giving the phone and mobile phones number.
4. Do you want to direct your customers to your website or to your social media channels? If so, the signature is a good place to show the links/gadgets.
5. Make sure that your font style and the font size are good. Follow your brand book in case of using the corporate email signature.
6. Make sure that people in your company use similar signature style.

Your Employees Are Getting Social: Are You ready?

I have always believed that the employees are the best ambassadors of the company, its brands and products. The companies need employees to be represented in front of customers, competitors, and even future employees. It is clear for all of us that if employees are happy, they will share it with the people around- in offline or online scenarios. Online, for example, they will share pictures of the company events or they will tweet about the good time they have at work. Their friends will get this info (and maybe they will get jealous, too) and they will ask for more information and maybe for a job in that “so good” company. Other case could be when your employee’ friends can be your customers, and they will be buying your products, inspired by the company guy’s comments.

With the reach of the social media, the messages that you employees are delivering are part of the company communication, in an easier, informal and yet more powerful way.

The power social media has given to employees can be intimidating for many managers, especially if they are not familiar with the new channels. If as a manager you are getting anxious and even stressed because this is something that you cannot control, it is moment to take it easy -to take it forward. You cannot avoid social media anymore. You cannot control the employees’ communication but, you can help them to understand the importance of their communication and the role they play in increasing your company online presence.

  

The debate about prohibiting to use or to check the channels at work or not has been on the table for a while. Prohibiting employees to take part of the conversation can be more a problem than a solution. Ignoring the role that your employees can play in this social media game just because they don’t master the channels is a fail, too. Instead, arranging some basic workshop on how to use the media, what kind of tonality is appropriate, etc. might help you to canalize the message in the right direction and especially, to avoid negative surprises in the future. The most important thing to remember is to use this workshop to encourage your employees and to improve their confidence in using social media.

The social media channels are inexpensive and give you access to the entire world. See social media as a networking channel which will help you spreading your message and get fans and followers. Employees can see what is happening around your product and in your business. They can also perceive the direction that the industry is taking, and therefore, react on time and innovate.

If you are in one of those industries in which social media is not yet a common practice, enjoy, you are very lucky. Don’t wait for the other companies to go ahead, you have the chance to show how to do it first. Social media is happening, you cannot avoid this anymore.