Great… but what should your business blog about? For teams that may not have experienced content marketers, coming up with blog topics can be trickier than you think. Next time you gather your marketing team or agency, use these four questions to spark ideas. 

1. What do we want to accomplish with this blog piece?

Ultimately, the objective of your blog strategy is to drive business outcomes; you’re not blogging for the sake of creative expression (well, at least not primarily). So don’t let the tail wag the dog: start by identifying specific objectives, then think of blog content that can support them. 

Maybe you need to drive registrations for an upcoming webinar. A blog post introducing key concepts of the presentation could be followed by a CTA to register for the webinar. Maybe your objective is less specific, like trying to drive brand awareness on LinkedIn. Just be sure to set specific KPIs you can use to measure success, like impressions or clicks. 

By identifying a specific objective up front, your team can ensure each blog post is optimized to deliver results.

2. What problem can we help our audience solve?

Your audience doesn’t want to read about how great your company or product is. Their interest in your brand extends only as far as their interest in how your brand helps them. 

Your content team shouldn’t be writing long-form ads. Instead, each of your blog posts should help your audience solve a specific problem they face. Maybe you detail how to perform an essential business task (like blogging!); maybe you explore the impact of a developing industry trend; maybe you describe how your company’s recent funding round will improve the customer experience. 

Start by brainstorming the types of problems your business solves for customers; great blog topic ideas will flow from there. 

3. What does the sales team think?

Nobody knows your customers and the problems they face better than your sales team. So shouldn’t they have a role in developing content to engage those customers? 

Get your marketing and sales teams on a call and have your sales folks review your buyer personas and the typical paths to purchase. What challenges do these individuals and their businesses face? How does your company solve the challenge and how can you best communicate your solution? 

Then have both teams brainstorm blog topics that address specific problems faced by potential customers. Discuss how that content can be crafted and delivered in a way that moves leads along the sales path. 

This process of account-based marketing, or ABM, creates more efficient, targeted campaigns and will increase ROI.

What search terms do we want to rank for?

Blog content is a great way to improve search rankings for your company website… but only if you take a strategic approach. 

Have your marketing team pull the list of search terms your business is trying to rank for, then use it to brainstorm blog topic ideas. But don’t just turn these into product or service descriptions; go back to point 2 and think about the problem facing someone searching for that term. Then create blog content that helps them solve it. 

If you’re offering real value, users will stick around to read the blog, boosting your website’s engagement metrics and signifying to search engines that your business is an authority on that subject. That will, in turn, improve your website’s SEO and drive more potential customers to your site. 

Still need help developing a blog content strategy? Contact a content marketing pro at Studios.

The post Not Sure What Your Business Should Blog About? Ask These 4 Questions. appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

Now comes the critical step: aligning that SEO plan with your content marketing strategy. Readers of the N6A blog already know why this integration is critical; but how do you go about activating the integration? How can your landing pages, product pages and blog articles be optimized for search?

Here are six tips you should follow every time you publish new content on your site.

1. Write for humans.

Yes, you want to please those Google bots crawling your site. But your first priority is writing something humans want to read. 

A piece written with only SEO in mind can come out awkward, repetitive, lacking voice and, worst of all, boring. If people who come across the content don’t enjoy it or can’t easily find the information they came for, they won’t stick around. That high bounce rate is going to undo all of the careful optimization work you put in. 

So ask yourself a few questions: What information does this content deliver to my customers? Is that information easy to find? Does the voice sound the same as the voice used across the rest of my brand?

Once you have a human-friendly draft, you can always work back to layer in SEO. Write for people, then optimize for search.

2. Don’t stuff keywords.

You’ve probably heard of keyword stuffing before. It’s an antiquated tactic used in the early days of the internet, when search engines weren’t sophisticated enough to do much more than count the number of times a keyword appeared on the page. 

The smart folks at Google have long since figured out how to teach their algorithms to contextualize on-page keywords. So if you’re trying to rank for “automated customer CX”, you don’t need to repeat that phrase in every other sentence. Perpetrators of keyword stuffing—intentionally or otherwise—will see their search rank go down instead of up. 

The best way to avoid this? Go back to point one and write for humans. If a keyword is repetitive or annoying, cut back.

3. Focus on headlines.

Anyone familiar with HTML—the computer language that constitutes the majority of the web—knows that the size and style of a heading is dictated by something called a heading tag. 

The heading at the top of this page that reads “6 SEO Tips…” is an H1 heading tag. The subhead a few lines up? That’s an H4. The lower the number, the larger it typically appears.

Heading tags aren’t just relevant to web designers concerned with aesthetics. Search engines know that H1 tags are the most important indicator of a page’s content and scrutinize them accordingly.  

What does that mean for you? Make sure you’re getting the most important keywords into your H1 tag… and, preferably, early in the heading. But don’t forget Rule #1: if the heading isn’t readable or appealing to a human, it doesn’t do you any good.

4. Break up copy with subheads. 

Once you’re done optimizing that H1 tag, turn your attention to subheads. The goal here isn’t so much to optimize for search engines (though including keywords isn’t a bad idea), but to optimize for readers. 

Let’s face it: our attention spans on the web aren’t particularly long. We’ve become scanners. Anything that helps break up a page and make it more scannable will likely increase time on page. Remember, good SEO strategy not only drives people to your page but keeps them there; longer time on page and lower bounce rates means higher search rankings. 

5. Don’t forget metadata.

Think of meta tags as instructions written to search engines in invisible ink. The people who visit your website won’t see them but they convey valuable information to the search bots crawling the page. 

When preparing your content to publish within your CMS, you’ll come across metadata fields like page description and keywords. Put some real thought into filling these fields, as they can have an impact on search ranking. 

But be selective: trying to cram too many keywords into these tags can blunt their significance to a search engine. 

As Moz puts it: “Think of your page code as a set of step-by-step directions to get somewhere, but for a browser. Extraneous meta tags are the annoying ‘Go straight for 200 feet’ line items in driving directions that simply tell you to stay on the same road you’re already on!”

6. Share your content on social media.

Whether social sharing has a direct impact on a website’s search ranking has long been a topic of debate. If there is a direct impact, it’s likely minimal. 

But sharing on social certainly has an indirect impact. Social sharing in general can raise the visibility of your brand and drive higher engagement rates. Sharing any particular piece of content increases site visits from loyal followers who can boost page-specific, SEO-relevant engagement metrics like bounce rate and unique pageviews. 

So share that blog on Twitter and Facebook. You’ll see long-term benefits. 

None of these six steps on their own provide immediate virality and millions of views. But following each one consistently over time can be the difference in publishing away in obscurity and getting your content in front of potential customers. 

Need a hand building your content marketing strategy? Contact a Studios expert today.

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But how do you go about choosing the right one? You’ve tabbed through dozens of search results and read countless case studies. You’re not sure whether to trust online reviews. Friends and colleagues offer conflicting advice. There’s a lot riding on this decision.

Fortunately, picking the perfect PR agency doesn’t have to be so complicated. Take your top considerations and walk through this checklist. If an agency checks all 10 of these boxes, you have a winner!

1. The agency has been around for a while. 

Longevity isn’t everything, but the ability to last through the years is an indicator of strong leadership, reliable outcomes and a commitment to clients. Ask the agency how long they’ve been in business; if the answer is only a few years, you may want to look for a more established shop.

2. The agency is committed to outcomes. 

They embrace accountability. Where others shy away from measurable results and focus on vanity metrics, your perfect agency works to deliver tangible business outcomes. They’re constantly looking at the big picture, working to get your company where it needs to be today while planning for where it’s going tomorrow.

3. The agency has a proven track record of success.

Those claims of delivering outcomes aren’t just claims: they’ve brought receipts! The agency has case studies that detail big wins delivered for clients. They discuss insights gained from those wins and how they can be applied to help your business.

4. The agency has expertise in your industry. 

The best consumer retail PR agency in the world may not be of much value to a MarTech business. Your perfect agency has worked with other clients in your field. They speak with authority on industry trends and how they can be leveraged to benefit your business.

5. The agency has bona fide media connections.

This doesn’t just mean having a big rolodex (fine, Google Contacts list). Your perfect agency has long-running, meaningful relationships with notable journalists at relevant publishers. Relevant is the key word there: these publishers cover your industry and are read by your target audience.

6. The agency is fast and flexible.

They are reactive to the news landscape, moving quickly to contextualize their clients’ work within developing trends. They empower clients to keep pace with their ever-shifting industry.

7. The agency can do more than just PR. 

Press releases and earned coverage are great, but your perfect agency goes above and beyond. Not only can they secure a byline at a big publisher, they have an in-house content team that can help you craft it. They’re not just implementing tactics, they’re a strategic advisor that provides value to your overall business.

8. The agency is the right size for your business. 

A mega agency may not prioritize your business, while a boutique shop may not have the resources or connections to deliver outcomes.

9. The agency has done their research. 

They know the ins and outs of your business at the very first pitch meeting. After all, if they don’t demonstrate that level of personalized service and attention to detail before they win your business, what makes you think they’ll do so after you sign?

10. The agency feels like an extension of your team. 

Their team is responsive, friendly and easy to get along with. You can chat with them about weekend plans, the weird movie you just saw or that recent industry article and how it relates to your business. They clearly prioritize your needs and go above and beyond to ensure your business is moving toward desired outcomes.

The post How to Know Which PR Agency is the Perfect Match for You appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

As the structure of traditional PR comes down, so too do the walls that have historically separated PR and marketing teams. No longer are the two groups siloed, one working to promote specific products and services while the other focuses on improving the reputation of the business as a whole. Together, they’re working toward a unified communications strategy.

Almost half of PR professionals and more than 60 percent of marketing executives believe that their two disciplines will become more closely aligned in the next five years, according to the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

If your business isn’t aligning PR and marketing, it’s more than just an efficiency issue. You’re missing out on a critical step in connecting your communications strategy to your core business outcomes. 

Here are four reasons why PR and marketing should be aligned:

1. Marketing amplifies earned coverage

The new model of PR—what N6A calls Outcome Relations—is built to deliver tangible business outcomes, like completing a capital raise or hitting a sales benchmark. The PR team works to secure earned media results that support that outcome. 

But the work isn’t over once that big company feature is published in Forbes. This is where the marketing team can provide the critical step in connecting earned coverage to measurable outcomes: amplification. 

Maybe they pull a quote from the feature and create a branded graphic to publish on Instagram; maybe they create a paid LinkedIn campaign targeting new leads; or maybe they share the article in an email campaign to your existing clients. 

Once the PR team has earned that big media piece, the marketing team ensures the right people see it. 

2. PR can increase your search visibility

Marketing teams spend a lot of time working to increase the search visibility of their brand’s website, be it bidding on search terms as part of an SEM plan or optimizing organic content to increase rankings.

Effective PR teams can play a key role in that strategy by generating organic search traffic and backlinks.

Being featured in a major publisher will naturally create more search traffic as readers seek out additional information about the featured company. If your business is mentioned in an article from The Wall Street Journal, you can bet you’ll see a significant spike in organic search traffic.

Some publishers may also include backlinks, or links from other websites to your own website, in their coverage. These backlinks are considered by Google and other search engines to be votes of confidence for your site. If a credible publisher is linking to your site, Google figures, it must be pretty credible as well. Up goes your search ranking.

If the PR team is aligned on the key search terms your business is trying to rank for, they can pitch to relevant and credible publishers to drive increased visibility.

3. Joint news monitoring can benefit PR and marketing teams

PR pros spend a considerable amount of time monitoring media coverage for opportunities for newsjacking, or leveraging a major news story to draw attention to their own brand. Content marketing teams, meanwhile, are constantly monitoring social media feeds looking for relevant news and conversations the brand can engage with. 

When PR and marketing teams coordinate, this news monitoring system becomes more efficient.

Let’s say a PR team working on behalf of a cyber security client comes across a story about the data breach of a high-profile company. In addition to pitching publishers on a byline from the cyber security brand’s CEO, the PR team flags the news to the marketing team, who publishes the original article on LinkedIn along with a few insightful tips for avoiding security breaches. 

The well-timed social post could drive significant visibility and help establish the brand as an authority in their industry… all because the PR team was quick to flag the news.

4. PR can boost marketing campaigns

Designing a marketing campaign to increase lead gen or hit a sales goal? Think about how PR can support the effort. A byline or feature in a relevant publication can drive people to your site, then funnel them into the campaign.

Let’s say you’re an automated CX brand who’s just published a lead gen campaign built around a PDF download. In addition to budgeting for Google Ads and designing a social media blitz, you pulled your PR team in to support. They’ve been busy pitching and landed a CEO byline with a major publisher, which publishes the day you launch your lead gen campaign. That byline drives a ton of qualified readers to your website, where they’re met with a pop-up offering the PDF resource in exchange for their email. 

By bringing the PR team into the campaign design early and aligning timelines to create a cohesive campaign, you can significantly expand your reach.

None of these things are possible if your PR and marketing teams are sitting in separate departments—or separate agencies—with little to no communication. Aligning the two disciplines from initial outcome development all the way through messaging and campaign deployment is key to optimizing ROI. 

If your PR and marketing teams aren’t working together to drive business outcomes, you’re not getting the most out of either.

The post 4 Reasons Your PR and Marketing Should be Aligned appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

According to a recent HubSpot report, 48 percent of companies with a content marketing strategy utilize blogging and 56 percent of those who do say blogging is effective.

Blog content can improve search ranking, build customer trust, and provide recyclable content, all with modest resource commitment. If your business isn’t blogging, 2022 is the year to start. 

Blog content improves SEO.

Blog content can do heavy lifting lower in the funnel as you look to convert leads—a topic we’ll get to shortly—but it can be just as valuable at the top of the funnel. One of the primary benefits of blogging is the increased visibility it brings to your brand through SEO. 

For starters, blogs give your website more surface area for search engines to crawl, increasing the odds a given page on your site will rank well for a relevant search. More importantly, blog pieces give you the opportunity to enrich your site with key search terms relevant to your business. You’ll have more flexibility to organically include these terms in a blog piece than you might in a product description or about page. 

Blogs also provide opportunities for internal links (links to other pages on your website) that can increase your search rankings. Throw in backlinks, pictures, and other rich content elements and the SEO benefits can be significant: according to a HubSpot study, businesses that blog get 55 percent more visitors to their website. 

Be wary of keyword stuffing, or the antiquated practice of loading a web page with keywords to manipulate search engines. Google’s algorithm has long been smart enough to sniff out this tactic; it’s also smart enough to recognize quality, organic content relevant to a user’s query. Develop a few key search terms to build content around and write for your customers, not an algorithm. The results will follow. 

Blog content builds customer trust and loyalty. 

Blogging can lead to immediate wins—a search query during the decision phase could turn up a relevant blog and lead to a quick conversion—but the medium is really about the long play. 

Whereas other marketing channels may focus on product value and the hard sell, blogs allow you to go beyond your own products and demonstrate knowledge of the broader problems your customers face. 

Let’s say you sell CX software. A potential lead early in the discovery phase comes across your blog, “5 Reasons Customers Abandon Carts” while Googling the subject. There’s no mention of your specific product or even your business but the piece addresses a need the potential customer has at that moment. Maybe that same person comes back to your blog the next time they need info on CX software; maybe they even bookmark the site.

When it comes time to consider vendors, where do you think they’ll begin? Most likely the one that’s built their trust throughout the purchase journey.

By providing authentic value rather than making a hard sell, blog content establishes your brand as an authority within the category and builds long-term loyalty. And the knowledge you’re providing works on multiple levels: not only have you built trust through education, the more knowledgeable customer will require fewer resources and less time at the conversion stage. 

Blogging carries low overhead and high ROI. 

Video marketing is all the rage right now and for good reason. But creating quality video can require significant resource investment. 

All you need for a blog post, on the other hand, is a good idea and a competent writer. Everyone in your business is an expert at what they do and, combined, you possess a treasure trove of industry knowledge that will help your potential customers solve their problems. 

One of the primary benefits of blogging is its accessibility and affordability compared to other forms of content marketing. With that lower overhead comes a better return on investment. In fact, 10 percent of marketers who blog say it’s the content type that generates the biggest ROI, according to a recent HubSpot report. 

Not that blogging doesn’t take effort or discipline. Once you’ve built the expectation that your blog is a source of valuable information, you’ll want to establish a consistent publishing cadence to keep your audience coming back. Only bite off what you can chew; publishing once every month is better than publishing four times in a month and then going quiet for a long stretch. 

Blog content can be recycled. 

As if blogs didn’t already offer significant ROI, the ability to repurpose them across other content types stretches the value even further. 

Sections of a blog piece can be pulled out and featured in social media posts; quotes from team members can be fashioned into branded quote cards; stats and figures can be built into infographics; a well-written blog post can even become the basis for a video script. Once the information has been collected and organized in a blog piece, there’s near limitless opportunities to recycle it across other platforms. 

An entire blog piece itself can be repurposed. As explained in our previous post about repurposing content, new language and some additional insight can make an old blog fresh and relevant again; like putting a new coat of paint on a wall.

The low costs and high benefit potential of blog content make it a must for businesses. If you’ve been on the fence about blogging, 2022 is the year to get after it. You’ll increase your business’s search rankings, build customer trust, and generate easy content for your other marketing channels. 

And here’s one more reason to blog: it’s fun! This is your opportunity to show off your hard-earned expertise and talk about what you know best. Get creative.

Need help crafting your blog strategy?

Or don’t have the capacity for blog writing on your current team? Contact a Studios expert to learn more about our content creation services.

The post Yes, Your Business Should be Blogging in 2022 appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

These articles are often well-researched and insightful. But let’s be honest: simply detailing trends stops a step short for busy business leaders who realize marketing is a means to a business end, not a means in and of itself.

Below are five steps business leaders can take to ensure their content marketing efforts accomplish tangible business Outcomes in 2022.

The post 5 Steps to Drive Real Business Outcomes With Content Marketing in 2022 appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.