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How To Build a Content Calendar

By Kelly Weppler · Comments (0)

Friday, April 19th, 2013

We’ve all written a great deal about the value of inbound marketing and using content to pull in prospects. But how do you make sure you’re planning your content to deliver the most value to your business? With a content calendar. The secret is to build a content calendar so that the content you’re delivering really maps to your core business objectives. Otherwise, it’s like you’re going on a cross country road trip without a map.

There are 5 key steps to building a content or editorial calendar that will serve your business well. Follow these steps and you’re certain to see how you can use your content to drive your business in the direction you want it to take.

1. Get the calendar out. The best way to start building a content calendar is to physically start with a calendar and put all the holidays on there. Start with the statutory holidays and the holidays that you plan to take throughout the year. If you record your holidays now, then you’ll know where you’ve got to fill in content when you’re actually out of the office.

If you think about the calendar holidays and seasons now, you can actually plan out the content that makes the most sense for your business. Regardless of the holiday or event, with a little thought you can create some content that’s relevant to those holidays.

2. Map Your Core Business Objectives to Your Content Calendar. This is really important and suprisingly, so many business owners overlook this critical point. The whole reason for creating content is to drive your business forward so let’s make that content relevant to whatever objectives you set for your business.

If you’re launching a new product or service, you can use your content to prime interest in this new offering. Remember, rather than outwardly promoting your solutions, you want to demonstrate that you deliver a solution to the problem they’re trying to solve so create your content that way. Use the same concept for any other parts of your business you’d like to promote. The key is to produce content around your products and services that’s valuable, educational, and builds trust.

This is where you should also look to your marketing calendar and translate that calendar directly into your content calendar. Be sure to reverse engineer any programs or special promotions you plan to offer so that you’re introducing the content early enough to spark people’s interest.

3. Strategic Partners. After you’ve filled in your calendar to map to your marketing calendar and your business objectives, it’s time to look to what you can do with your strategic partners. Look to see when they have events or programs you could promote. Interviews with your strategic partners also make for great.

Guest posts have become very popular as well. You could offer to write a post for a colleagues blog in exchange for one of your own. If your partners have other content like white papers or ebooks, there is also opportunity to promote those pieces that have value for your audience. At the end of the day, it’s about you being a high quality, complete source of information for your audience.

4. Developing a Series. A series could take a number of different formats. It could be a series of posts on a certain topic that is timely and relevant or it could actually be a type of content that you’ll post on a regular basis. It could be a post that you write on a weekly or monthly basis about the latest tools or technology or it could be a video interview series that you’re doing with authors in your industry.

Some popular concepts for a series could be “Wordless Wednesdays” and that could be that every Wednesday you post some video content. Maybe a CPA firm or law firm decides to integrate some humor into its content with a weekly cartoon. There are a number of ways to add a series to your content calendar–it’s just a matter of putting it down on the calendar so you know what you need and when you need it.

5. Look to your most popular posts. At this point, your calendar will have some remaining holes and it’s time go back and fill those with more content on the most popular topics you’ve written to date. If a topic received a number of shares or comments, that’s proof that the topic is of importance to your audience. Those topics that get shares and comments are helping your audience solve problems or answer the problems they’re experiencing. Take the time to map out the topics that get the most traction with your audience and be sure to plan out those pieces in your calendar.

We all have a tremendous amount of content at our fingertips. It’s just a matter of taking a strategic look at how you can deliver that content over time to help you accomplish your business objectives. And putting these details right into a calendar will help you deliver the right content at the right time.

I’d love to hear about any other concepts you’ve used to plan your content and the success that you’ve experienced as a result.

About Kelly Weppler

Kelly Weppler is a Master Duct Tape Marketing Consultant located in Southern California. She works with small businesses to take the Mystery Out of Marketing. She focuses on building marketing routines--routine and consistency build momentum and business growth.

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Categories : Blogging, Lead Conversion, Lead Generation

Tags : content marketing, lead generation

Your Total Online Presence Affirms Your Credibility

By Kelly Weppler · Comments (0)

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

You don’t just need an online presence. You need a quality total online presence. That’s true even if your business is strictly word-of-mouth.

Does your total online presence make the phone ring?

Think about it. When someone gives you a referral or hands you a business card, what’s the first thing you do? If you’re like me, you go online before you make the call. I want to find out whether the company’s total online presence lives up to the expectations my colleague has created.

Does that company have good reviews on Yelp or LinkedIn? Does its website communicate the same warm, fuzzy feelings my friend has communicated about the firm’s business operations? Will a visit to the website be more likely to encourage or discourage a potential client from contacting you?

That online check is akin to what my friend calls her “management 101 check.” When she goes to a business location, the first thing she does is check the restroom. The attention to detail in the restroom speaks volumes about the attention to detail in the rest of the business.

Don’t be left out. The hard facts are that 97 percent of consumers now go online when researching products or services in their local area, according to BIA/Kelsey’s User View Wave VII, an ongoing consumer tracking study conducted with research partner ConStat.

You have to think of your online presence as a credibility platform.

So if you’re concerned about credibility (and you should be; credibility is the key to business success), here are five questions you can use for a self-audit. They will help you determine whether what you’re communicating online is useful to your target audience.

Is what you do clear and easy to understand? Keep your language simple, and be diligent about translating industry jargon into layman’s terms.
Does your website describe the kind of problems you solve? People need to know what you can do for them and why they might want to call you. Make it fast and easy to figure out, or they’ll go elsewhere.
Is your site visually stimulating—or does it consist of long stretches of text? Provide some compelling eye candy to entice people, so they will stay on your site and look around.
Are your location and contact information easy to find? You want people to contact you so make it easy for them. If you only provide limited access, such as an email address, that might suggest you’re aloof and unreachable.
Have you made any changes or updates to your website in the past 30 days? If not—and if it’s clearly been years since you changed anything—it’s past time to start thinking about updating your online presence.

Of course, these five questions don’t equal a comprehensive audit. If that’s what you’re looking for, fill out our complimentary marketing audit form, and we’ll provide you with quality feedback.

About Kelly Weppler

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Categories : Lead Conversion

Tags : credibility, total online presence, web presence

5 Tips To Creating An Engaging Website Introduction Video

By Kelly Weppler · Comments (0)

Monday, September 10th, 2012

5 Tips To Creating An Engaging Website Introduction Video

photo credit: v8media via photo pin cc

Studies indicate that in 2012, online video viewers will reach 169.3 million and 53.5% of the population and 70.8% of internet users will watch online video. This data was compiled alongside some other eye-popping internet marketing statistics from Hubspot. And other survey data suggests that marketers plan to use video more frequently in their marketing actions over the next couple of years.

One of the reasons video has become more appealing is simply because of Google’s ownership of YouTube and how it influences search results with the number 1 search engine. And YouTube has also established its presence as a well-known search engine coming in at number 3 and it’s the second-most visited site on the internet. With such strong appeal as it relates to search, it’s important to understand how to use video as an integral marketing tool.

Some of the appeal with video is that it allows your prospects to see you in action and experience what it feels like to work with you. It also allows you to show your audience ‘how to’ instead of simply telling them. Because video is especially effective for sharing those stories that motivate and educate, the first video you might consider creating is a video introduction or get-to-know-you video for your web site.

If you’re using this to introduce yourself to prospects, you want to be sure to create something that’s engaging and appealing. Here are five suggestions for creating that video that warms you to the crowd.

1. Include real people in your video. Just like stock photography screams impersonal, so will video without real people. Real people add that element of authenticity and personality and that allows prospects to start to experience what it’s like to work with you.

2. Feature a real story about your company. You’re creating the video to help you build a stronger connection with the prospect. Tell them about a challenge or a problem that you, as a company, overcame while you built your products and services. The idea here is to demonstrate that you’ve walked in their shoes, you know what it’s like, and, most importantly, you know how to solve that problem.

3. Enhance your credibility with other sources. If possible, try to include clips that highlight clients or your strategic partners who’ve worked alongside you to help bolster your credibility. Again, encourage storytelling with these sources because it’s a great tool for inspiring others to act and it creates something memorable about your company.

4. Interact with the audience. How can you use this video to create some level of interaction with the video? Your ultimate goal with your video is to get people interested and engaged to interact.

5. Call to action. Now that they’re intrigued, what’s next? Like any other content, your video needs a call to action. Ask your audience to do things–maybe it’s fill in a survey, download a document or register for an event. Use your video to encourage your audience to take some sort of action.

Video is an incredibly powerful tool at converting traffic. Give your audience the chance to get to know you better and encourage them to take some kind of action to engage with you further.

About Kelly Weppler

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Categories : Lead Conversion, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy

Tags : Hubspot, website introduction video, YouTube

5 Places to Find Blogging Inspiration

By Kelly Weppler · Comments (2)

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

By now, we are all well-versed in the reasons why content is so valuable to our business. Not only does it help reinforce our credibility and the concept of trust, it also provides a number of online benefits like new and fresh content to a web site. The most common form of content you might think of is educational content in the form of a blog. Regardless of the format though, think of this as your opportunity to make your prospects better consumers of your industry.

Run out of blogging ideas?

But that question that always surfaces around content is ” How do I find content ideas and inspiration on an on-going basis?” This can be a challenging reality, so here are 5 ideas to motivate your writing efforts.

1. Check your Outbox. Your Outbox already has the answers to questions your clients and prospects ask you everyday and it’s already in written format. Check some of the email responses you’ve sent out because it’s quite likely many of these emails can provide inspiration for topics and potentially a good portion of a blog post. You already know the content is of interest to your audience, you know it’s relevant, and it will inherently have some key search terms in it.

2. Slide Presentations, Talks, or Workshops. Any presentation that you’ve given is a great place for inspiration because it’s content that you already know well and have opinions on. Take a slide or two from your presentation and simply write about the concept presented. You’ve got plenty of space to add in examples and stories to reinforce your point.

3. Conversations with your Customers. Go through your notes from client meetings and you’re sure to come up with some great content. Think about the stories they tell you and think about the reasons why they hired you. What do they tell you about their daily challenges that you could write about and provide educational value to your audience?

4. Old Blog Posts. If you’ve been blogging for awhile now, you know that your writing skills and your opinions on topics have evolved. Take a look at some of your older posts and re-write them today. Trends, tools and opinions are likely to have changed over time based on your enhanced knowledge and experience today.

5. Use Google. Open up a Google search and start typing (use words like how, why, can, when and include some of your industry keywords) and Google will show you what people are searching for. Be sure to take some thorough notes and that should keep you going for awhile.

Inspiration should come from all around you. Life events and the people you come in contact are great sources of content and inspiration to keep you from writer’s block. Where does your inspiration come from?

About Kelly Weppler

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Categories : Blogging

Tags : blogging content, content marketing

Marketing Routine–5 Reasons Why You Need One

By Kelly Weppler · Comments (0)

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

The key to producing marketing results has a lot to do with consistency. If you’re guilty of ‘once and done’ marketing, it’s unlikely that you’ll see any kind of success. Routine and consistency help to build momentum for your business and that’s why I talk about the value of having a marketing routine.

Create a marketing routine that's right for you and your business.

Many small businesses practice marketing when they ‘get around to it’, but ongoing consistent marketing is critical for actually growing a business beyond its current size. There are five key reasons why it’s essential that every small business have a marketing routine.

1. Momentum produces results. The most prominent reason we pro-actively market a business is to produce some growth, and, again, without some level of routine, it’s unlikely that any business will actually produce decent results. If your message only goes out once, you have to hope that message reaches your audience at their greatest time of need. And, by the way, hope is a terrible strategy.

2. A marketing routine is beneficial for training. If you as a business owner establish a marketing routine–a list of marketing activities that are executed on a regular basis and you record this system on paper for others in the organization to see, you can use it for training purposes and the opportunity to get your team to buy-in and execute on the routine as well. When new people join the organization or when someone leaves, with the routine recorded, it’s very easy for the rest of the organization to pick up where someone else left off allowing for consistency in the system.

3. A marketing routine helps when life happens. This is particularly true for smaller businesses with a single owner or just a few people inside the business. Should you get sick for a week or two or have some other life event happen, with a regular routine in place, you won’t lose much momentum and it’s so much easier to pick up where you left off. In fact, if you’ve been practicing your regular routine, you might not even notice the brief lapse in work.

4. A regular routine helps to eliminate the peaks and valleys in cash flow. Peaks and valleys in cash flow are typically a result of stop and start lead generation practices. Getting your business into a regular and consistent marketing routine should help to produce a more consistent and predictable revenue stream and help to even out the cash flow.

5. A marketing routine provides a level of metrics to monitor against. Establishing a routine that includes activities that are executed daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly provide the first level of monitoring–whether it was completed or not. The second level of monitoring then is to see how effective your activities are in generating leads and nurturing those leads to deliver revenue. This then allows you to update and correct for continuous improvement.

Building a business with a marketing system created to deliver routine and consistency is what will produce long-term opportunities. Without routine and regular execution, it’s almost impossible to build the level of momentum required to deliver growth.

Do you practice a marketing routine?

About Kelly Weppler

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Categories : Consulting

Tags : Kelly Weppler, marketing routine, marketing system

3 Key Marketing Lessons From the Chief Underpants Officer

By Kelly Weppler · Comments (0)

Monday, May 14th, 2012

“The brand is the amusement park, the product is the souvenir.” Nick Graham.

Build an experience that includes anticipation and long-lasting memories.

Nick Graham is the CEO of Fresh Happy People and Founder/Chief Underpants Officer of Joe Boxer. And, he’s a brilliant marketer.

These are the words from someone who clearly delivers on 3 key marketing lessons. Here’s what we can learn from Graham.

1. Building a unique and lasting client experience. Small business owners tell me all the time they can’t come up with any way to differentiate themselves, and I say hogwash. Developing and continuously building upon that client experience is the easiest way to deliver a point of differentiation and get people talking about your business. Think about Graham’s words. How does your brand create what someone gets from an amusement park? How do you build that giddy anticipation someone gets from planning a trip to an amusement park? How can you build a fond a memory into your experience for days or maybe years to come?

2. Incorporate some of your personality into your business. At the end of the day, people want to do business with people rather than companies. Adding an element of your personality into your business will help move prospects along the know, like and trust continuum faster. Our friend at the underwear company teaches us to use words in our business that inherently produce a smile and a chuckle, and who doesn’t want that? Fresh Happy People and Chief Underpants Officer–those words make me want to check it out and shop there.

3. Go ahead and be different. To stand out from the crowd, you’ve got to take some risk. Sometimes that’s just some refreshingly different thinking. Graham and his company managed to innovate in a category of clothing we traditionally covered up into something we now want to show off. One of the biggest reasons we don’t show how we’re different is because we’re scared–we’ve got to overcome that fear. Sometimes, the more un-businesslike you are, the more you’re loved and remembered. When you’re a little edgy, you give people a little more to relate to. If your title alone can strike up a conversation or produce some intrigue–you’ve got something you can play around with.

We’re all looking to work with a company with edgy thinking and someone that gives us something we can talk about and tell others. How can you build that in your business?

About Kelly Weppler

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Categories : Marketing Strategy

Tags : client experience, Joe Boxer, Nick Graham

Engaging the Other 4 Senses to Create a Client Experience

By Kelly Weppler · Comments (0)

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

Throughout the Duct Tape Marketing Network, we always talk about the importance of differentiation because the last thing you want to compete on is price. But this is a challenge for many business owners. They often come back and ask about the ways that a business can show how it’s different.

One of the best ways to set yourself apart from the competition is to create a client experience that people will talk about. And one of the best opportunities to build upon that client experience is to think about engaging the other four senses. More than 90% of our typical branding is visual so this is certainly a way to stand out from the crowd.

Below you’ll find some other ideas to help you engage the other four senses to create an experience to remember.

1. Engage the olfactory senses. This is a real opportunity for any kind of brick and mortar business to create an impression. For some businesses, this could simply be whether or not your office has coffee on when clients come in or fresh baked cookies in the afternoon. Some hotels and spas have taken to creating their own signature scents so that patrons can extend the experience and take it home with them to build an even stronger loyalty. And for car dealerships, we see them taking the opportunity to continue the new car experience by sending out a bottle of new car smell on the annual anniversaries for customers.

2. Touch. Think packaging. There are a number of creative things you can do with packaging to add to a customer experience. Jewelers are known for packaging items up in elegant, rich velvet bags and as a Duct Tape Marketing consultant, I often send items out in the mail in an envelope covered in duct tape. Companies can use packaging to demonstrate a commitment to the environment using brown bag designs and even reusable packaging.

using senses to create a client experience

Engaging more than just the visual to build an experience.

3. Taste. Direct mail campaigns are much more memorable when you add an element of taste to them. And they present the perfect opportunity to add an element of surprise with a food or drink item in a direct mail piece that creates a taste or aroma that reflects your business. Other confectionary items like jelly beans or red hot cinnamon hearts can also create a fun, yet curious situation.

4. Sound. The sound of certain music in your office seems like an obvious opportunity to extend the experience but don’t forget about the simple hold music you might use or even the voice mail greeting on your phone. The musical introduction to any online videos that you might be recording or the sounds and music that you might play at a workshop or in your trade show booth. The idea is to use sound to build out the brand and experience you want people to remember.

Engaging the senses other than visual gives you the opportunity to build your brand into your client experience and really make it more memorable. These are the kinds of things that people talk about and tell others about and it’s a huge opportunity to differentiate. What will you to engage the other senses to build a brand experience?

About Kelly Weppler

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Categories : Lead Conversion, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy

Tags : client experience, differentiation

Tell Your Story—Get The Attention You Deserve

By Kelly Weppler · Comments (0)

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

Even a short time ago, the “About Us” page on a web site wasn’t really that considered that significant or useful. You typically talked about your training and how long you’ve been in business, and that was it. In today’s high tech world, where gadgets bombard us with messages at every turn, not so fast. You could be wasting one of the most valuable opportunities you have to connect.

Use storytelling to create a personal connection.

A Story Creates a Personal Connection.

Telling your story is what draws people in. We care less about how long you’ve been doing what you do and much more about why you do what you. After coming through a time of irrational exuberance, when we pulled out our wallets faster than they drew guns in the Old West, we’re not so quick to part with our hard-earned dollars anymore. With fewer dollars to spend these days, we need to feel good about who we are spending our money with and take the time to get to know them.

It seems we want to do business with people, not companies, and we want to do business with real people—people we know, like, and trust. And telling your story is a way for people to get know and like you. The story about how and why you started your business helps to develop a personal connection where you give them someone and something to relate to. People forget facts and figures shortly after they hear them, but telling your story provides them an opportunity to become more personally involved and it’s a way for you and your business to become memorable, so you can stand out from the competition.

A story to relate to and the face of a human is what helps to create that emotional connection. It’s very common for business owners to fall in love with their product or service as they search the world over to find and create the best solution. But what they forget is that the rest of us need to be romanced by that story too. The story helps to create context and shows us how the product or service is even relevant.

Most of the messages thrown at us today come and go quickly because they just don’t resonate with us. As a business owner, there’s an opportunity to create an emotional attachment to a brand because we talk more passionately about things we care about. We have little capacity anymore to remember much, but we can usually recall the highlights of a story—including the problem and the outcome.

Optimist, author and Ted Talks contributor, Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to motivate people. As a former advertiser, Sinek argues that the problem with most advertising is that it’s uninspiring. He suggests that people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And his theory is that we want to do business with people who believe the same things we believe. So, in a sense, we as consumers, are also trying to create some level of personalization.

For business owners, telling your story is what helps create that personal connection. A story that’s authentic, open, and honest promotes good feelings and builds trust and loyalty. And that’s just human nature. If we’re given a choice, we’ll always spend our time hanging out with people we like, and if it’s convenient and practical, we’d also rather buy from people we like. Revealing your story confirms you are human just like the rest of us and want the same kinds of things the rest of us want.

Many companies have extraordinary, and, in some cases, even gut-wrenching stories. The ability to connect by way of a personal story is one of the best advantages that small businesses have over big businesses. Your story can be an effective marketing tool because it allows you to do things that just aren’t possible with traditional marketing and advertising. And more importantly, a story is something we can easily remember and repeat. And that’s critical in today’s super social world where we like to share stories that inspire and draw us in.

About Kelly Weppler

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Categories : Social Media

Tags : trust, web presence

Author Archive for Kelly Weppler

How To Build a Content Calendar

About Kelly Weppler

Your Total Online Presence Affirms Your Credibility

About Kelly Weppler

5 Tips To Creating An Engaging Website Introduction Video

About Kelly Weppler

5 Places to Find Blogging Inspiration

About Kelly Weppler

Marketing Routine–5 Reasons Why You Need One

About Kelly Weppler

3 Key Marketing Lessons From the Chief Underpants Officer

About Kelly Weppler

Engaging the Other 4 Senses to Create a Client Experience

About Kelly Weppler

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