by Karen Petrauskas | Jun 11, 2020
With social media being the most popular way for people to communicate with a business, it is a given that businesses need to be responsive and interact on social media to keep their customers and audience engaged. A place where consumers can discover more about a brand, learn more about a product or service and get to know and trust a business before making a purchase.
The growing popularity of social media makes it an essential place for businesses to be and to reach their audience right where they are. It provides a faster and more personal touch to any conversation and allows the follower to feel cared for and part of a community. However, there are some rules and things that you can adhere to, to ensure that you’re covering the right basis and interacting in a positive way.
Post valuable content
Whatever social media content you produce needs to (and should always) produce value. Personal profiles are the place where other non-business things can be shared and talked about, but when it comes to your business profile, your customers want to see that they can rely on you giving value and being supportive when they need it. Whether you’re giving an inspirational quote or sharing a tip or advice, make sure that your followers can benefit from it.
It doesn’t always have to be something that you have written, this is called curated content. If another business or industry expert has written a relevant and valuable blog post, why not share this to your audience? Tip: You can use other people’s content to grow your own brand awareness!
Show some personality with your voice
You are your brand, yes, but the voice that you portray across social media content should reflect the right tone for your business. People will see through split personalities and conflicts of interests – be true to your brand, the core values that you believe in and the way you want your business to be seen and heard.
Create a voice across social media where you can be yourself and give a good impression of every aspect of your business. Your unique voice is your authenticity and is essential in speaking to the right people, engaging with the right people and reaching the people that are going to want to grow with you and the brand.
Creating your unique voice will make you stand out in a crowded digital space, make you stand apart from the other businesses and competition, and increase your chances of being heard and appreciated, trusted and loved. Become known in a digital world that is fighting for attention by being authentic.
Keep your social media simple
There’s nothing worse than trying to jump on every social channel, keep up with the large organisations and compete with everyone out there – it’s not going to work! Keep your social media marketing simple, make it as easy as possible with the best possible results. Learning to be effective and efficient in your online marketing will make life a lot easier and will help control stress levels which can increase when someone tries to everything all at once.
If you establish that you need to be doing more and keeping up with bigger competition, or even that you’re not the right person to be doing the marketing (everyone has their strengths and weaknesses) then why not think about outsourcing your social media to a VA (virtual assistant) or a digital agency that has the resources and expertise to be productive and reach your business objectives.
When it comes to simply, start with sticking to the point in everything that you post – captions, images, text & copy – keep it simple and easy to manage. Once you start making it complicated and adding in extras, your audience will expect that every time and it is obviously harder to keep up with. Start small and increase as you have the time and skills to do so.
Monitor your social channels
There’s one thing to create a great social media plan and schedule every post for a month in advance, but it’s something else to monitor the reactions and engagements that come from those posts. Be reactive and responsive on the content; when someone comments, respond. When someone shares, thank them. When someone recommends, engage. At all times monitor your social media profiles along with other people’s content that mentions you – this is called social listening and is a very valuable tool.
Make the most of User Generated Content
Your followers and consumers are the people who drive your business forward, who are an influence to others seeking out your business and are the people that will help you build trust and confidence with new customers.
UGC not something that is essential in your social media strategy but always an action that will help.
When someone shouts out about your business – engage with them and share their posts on your social channels. Their reviews, experiences, journey with your business can be shown to other people looking in – utilise User Generated Content wherever possible. Not only will it help with finding a variation in your content, but it will provide insight and reassurance to others.
Above all when it comes to your online marketing efforts, be consistent and on the ball with everything. Diffuse controversy, especially when it’s something that effects your business or nature. When you say you’re going to post, post. When you get into a routine, be sure to keep it up – people expect what they are used to and can get despondent or bored if they feel let down. Be true to your brand and let your personality shine through in your content. Organise, plan and prepare everything – there’s always room to add in extras, but ensure you have your basis covered first.
How do you manage your interaction and engagement on social media? Are you finding that you’re not effective or productive? Do you love social media and have some success stories to share with your audience? Are you looking to outsource your online marketing so you can focus on other parts of your business? Do you need a marketing strategy to work towards? Whatever your situation, we’d love to listen or help you engage and interact with your online audience, feel free to get in touch and let’s talk!
In the meantime, our Social Media Checklist can help, you’re welcome to download our FREE resource to give you the first step up. Click the link below.
by Team KJP | Mar 6, 2020
How often do you come to write your content and find yourself hitting a brick wall? You’ve set aside time to put pen to paper but you simply have writer’s block! How do you get around that or how do you make the writing process easier when you’re on a tight schedule?
Find inspiration around you
Start to notice the things going on around you and take note of what other people are doing or share about. Use other people’s experiences to give you ideas and inspiration. All you need is an idea or a seed and you’ve got something to start from.
Plan ahead
Take a few moments every week to make a list of relevant topics or titles which you can use another time. Research what is trending, what other people are writing about and most importantly, what your audience will want to read or hear about. Your content should be relevant to the people who are likely to read it so they can gain the value and insight from what you have to say.
Keep a notebook
One of the best ways to never find yourself with writer’s block is to keep a notebook with you all the time and to jot down ideas as you think of them. Someone may ask you a question which you could later turn into a blog post. You may see something on an advertising board that gives you an idea about a series of ‘how to’s’ or tutorials. You may be in a coffee shop and find inspiration from the conversations that you hear. In all these situations, you don’t need to write a load of content there and then but make a note in your pad so that you have something to write about the next time you sit down to put your content together.
Research
When you hit writer’s block, hit the research button! Spend some time looking at other reputable businesses and industry leaders to see what topics are hot at the moment. Use Twitter to see what questions people are asking or what people are searching for – what’s popular and what subjects need to be addressed.
Research is a good process to go through regularly anyway, whether you have writer’s block or not – it keeps you up to date and in touch with those around you.
Ask your audience
What better way to give your audience the content they want to hear by asking them the question.
Ask them: what do they want to know about \ what would they like to learn \ what would inspire them \ what would help them in their business or life situations?
Gain insight directly from the people who the content is for. If you’re asking them what they need and you’re writing content to accommodate, they will come back for more.
When you hit writer’s block if can be an extremely frustrating time however with planning and keeping your eyes open to what is around you, it becomes easier to overcome. Have processes in place that when you get to a time when you are drawing a blank on content, you’ve already got a backup plan to help you through.
Keeping on top of social media content and regularly posting to a blog takes time and effort. If you’re using a multiple of social channels and are committed to providing valuable content to your audience, it can be a lot of content to write! Try to keep your message from going stale, keep relevant to your audience and be sure to be giving them content that helps them. If you’re providing value, you’ll have loyal followers, you’ll grow your audience and (hopefully) grow your business.
Remember that in everything you do, refer back to your initial marketing strategy and keep to your goals – long and short term – in order to measure what works, what you are achieving and the direction you are heading.
If you still find yourself hitting writer’s block and you know that writing is simply not your thing – talk to us about our content marketing packages.
Why not download our FREE Awareness Days Calendar to see if the day you’re stuck, there is something you could write about – at least you’ll be on trend!
by Team KJP | Feb 27, 2020
Where do you start when marketing your business online? Do you struggle with getting a relevant, interesting and authentic message across? Do you find it difficult to come up with content that doesn’t repeat everything else you say?
Sometimes when a marketing message goes stale, we need to take a step away to refresh, recharge and revisit our mission statement. What we think we are saying, what we really say and the way that message comes across can be completely different things. Do you find yourself in the trap of repetition and regurgitating the same content over and over again? It’s time to freshen up!
Go back to basics
Go back to the drawing board, it’s time to brainstorm.
Start at the very beginning of your mission statement and the values that you hold, the things that are most valuable to you and your business. What is it that drives you forward, that gives you the motivation to do what you do? These are the fundamental elements that glue your business together and make you want to succeed. And these are essential parts that your audience need to know about when getting to know who you are and what your brand about.
Start the storyboard
Moving from your mission and values, start to set the scene and tell the story of where you’ve come from to where you are now. Everyone loves a story and for you to be authentic and unique will set you apart from the competition. Get the story rolling by sharing the heart behind your mission, the thought process of why you do what you do, the emotional angle of what’s precious to you. And then you can move on to the services you offer, why you offer them, what products you have, what value you give, what people can get from you and everything that physically makes up your business. By now your brainstorm should have lots of parts to it, all different aspects relating to the make up of your business.
Now you can start to link them together and begin to pull a common thread through it all. All these things together are what you’re going to share with your audience. You don’t just have one message to share but lots of multifaceted aspects that make up your brand.
Your message will not have a chance to go stale when you constantly go back to the basics, revisit the drawing board and brainstorm regularly to bring new ideas and visions to the table.
New content with new ideas
Once you have the ideas flowing and you’ve got everything that says what your business is about, you’ve got an opportunity to create some new content to go with it.
- Blog posts
- Newsletters
- Ebooks/Books
- Social media content
- Webinars
- Podcasts
- Videos/vlogs
How can you put your message into the above types of content? It’s about getting creative and sharing your message in different ways. Jump behind the scenes and share a video about what’s happening/ what’s going on/ your team/ your network/ your office. Interview people or create a podcast, this could give an opportunity to work with industry professionals – it’s not necessarily you doing all the speaking but it’s giving value and a variety to your audience. How much more engaging can a video or podcast be rather than a simple blog post? Both varieties have their merit but by doing both blog and video you automatically have two types of content that you can use across your social media, which you can then re-purpose and use again and again.
Once you’ve written a blog post, how many images or types of posts (i.e. infographics / how tos etc) can you create that share a similar message which you can use across your channels? Re-posting the same blog image could get repetitive but 5 or 6 different images that relate to the same thing will give a variety to your readers and your audience.
Complacency
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut of what’s always work should always work – but that’s simply not the case, especially in a fast paced online world where there is so much competition and fight for attention. There is no place for complacency. You may be comfortable, you may love what you do, but are you seeing measurable results from it? If the answer is no, you’re just wasting valuable time that could be better invested in your business. Try not to sit on the fence hoping that something will change ‘soon’, if it’s not working, something needs to give. Go back to the drawing board and figure out what your message is truly about and give your marketing some fresh substance for people to get a hold of.
At the end of the day, your message needs to be fresh, consistent, inline with your values and mission and giving value to your audience. If it doesn’t meet these needs, you’re going to struggle to make it work. Use this opportunity to get creative in your marketing, to relight the fire and passion about what your business is about and to think of new ways of getting the attention of your audience. What is it they want to see, what do they want to hear that will solve their pain points? Be there in the forefront of their minds, show up when no one else does and give purpose to your brand. If you love it and share that zeal, then other’s will catch on and be there with you.
If you’d like to chat over your marketing plans or strategy or simply know that it’s time to outsource your social media marketing to a team that want you get results – and know how to get them!, we’d love to talk. Contact us today for an initial consultation.
In the meantime if you’d like some inspiration on what to talk to your audience about, why not download our FREE 2020 Awareness Days Calendar – and start the conversations today!
by Team KJP | Feb 13, 2020
In order to understand how content marketing can impact a business, we need to understand what content marketing is and the benefits it can have on business owners.
What is content marketing?
According to the dictionary, content marketing is defined as: A type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.
Another way of looking at it, is how the Content Marketing Institute put it: Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
The main thing to remember is that content marketing is about being educational and not all about selling a product.
What is content marketing good for?
The reasons we look to content marketing is not ultimately to promote a product but about building a brand and reputation. Here are some other reasons:
- To build an engaged and interested audience – making sure that you’re taking the people that you want to speak to and not generalising at anyone that will listen.
- To educate customers – teaching your customers or potential customers about your business or industry.
- To increase sales in the long-term.
- To build a loyal customer base and create a brand that people will know, love and trust.
What do people know about your brand?
If you search Google or the search engines for you / your business, what do you find?
This can be a great exercise as you get to see what other people can find out about you.
Do you like what you find? Are you surprised by the results that you find?
By building on your content marketing, you can start to create a base and substance for what people are going to find when they do their due diligence and research your business. You can start to get control over the content people find about you. And the more good content you create, the more reputable your business will become.
Practice – Patience – Persistence
It can be easy to get worked up when you don’t get it right all the time but that’s just part of the process (and a part of life!). Not everyone is good at creating great content, but you will get better if you keep practicing, have patience and are persistent in your approach.
Results will happen when you have patience. But you have to be consistent and persistent. Don’t forget that if you really find that you’re not great after all at content marketing, there are people there ready to help. Outsourcing marketing is a common occurrence and just means that you’re looking after the interests of your business, focusing on what you do best and allowing an expert to take care of the other stuff.
Understand your business goals
Producing content for the sake of it will not get you anywhere fast, it will just increase stress, workload and worry about not producing results. Every piece of content should be created with a business goal in mind. Although this may seem a long process, for everything you produce, ensure that it aligns with a business goal and establish how it is going to benefit your long or short-term goals.
Consider your business goals, where do you ultimately want to get to, and think about how your content can contribute towards achieving them…
- Raising brand awareness
- Build an email list / customer base
- Provide a good customer journey and experience
- Upsell existing customers
- Help customers to be an advocate of your brand
Understand your mission and values
Just as you did with your business goals, each piece of content has got to be in line with your mission and values. There is absolutely no point in creating content that goes against what you believe, or doesn’t sit right with the people you want to reach, or even with the values that you promote. Your content needs to true to what your brand is about.
Consider your values or mission and how your content can contribute towards aligning with these:
- Who can you help the most with your content?
- What type of information can you provide?
- What is the desired outcome with the content that you’re producing?
What type of content can you use?
There are a wide range of resources that you can use to create your content marketing ideas, way to many to list but back to what we said at the beginning, all content must be educational or informational – not selling a product. Therefore the list can begin with:
- Books / ebooks
- Webpages / websites
- Infographics
- Podcasts
- Videos
- Blogs
- How to’s
- Surveys
And the list can go on. There is so much content that you create to build your brand, without directly selling.
But the question may come down to what you love to do, what you enjoy doing, what makes you smile and sits right with you personally. Looking at the list about, what jumps out at you and makes you think “yes I can produce that”? These are the things you need to start with. It doesn’t have to be hard, it just has to be true to your brand.
The more you start to think about writing or creating content that adds value rather than selling, the easier it will become. In all you do, the audience should feel like they’re receiving value, or being looked after.
Implementing the process
Once you’ve established what content marketing is how you can add value to your audience, it comes down to implementing it into your marketing strategy. Social media plays a big part in today’s society in reaching a wide and engaging audience and is often the best way to market to your customers. Build your content ideas into your social media strategy, creating a solid foundation for your business to gain respect, become reputable and trusted within your chosen niche. The more solid and authentic your content is, the more people will become to trust you, in turn becoming loyal and valued customers.
As we mentioned before, great content can increase your brand awareness, it can help build an audience that is interested in what you are about and ultimately it can lead to long-term sales and business growth.
If you’d like to get started with content marketing but are still unsure of how to get off the ground, or would like to look at outsourcing, we’d love to chat with you. Contact us today – let’s talk marketing!
And in the meantime if you’re looking to create engaging content around some of the issues that are important to your audience, why not download our free 2020 Awareness Days Calendar – it’s always good to have new ideas to share!
We look forward to hearing from you.
by Karen Petrauskas | Dec 15, 2018
It’s not difficult to work out that if you write well, people will want to read what you’ve written. But writing well doesn’t come naturally to some people and some find it hard to put pen to paper (or fingers to keys!) to express what they want to say.
If you’re new to content marketing and are looking to engage more with your audience, you need to concentrate on creating content that speaks directly to your reader. So let’s focus on the writing aspect of content marketing, how can you improve your writing skills?
Create powerful headlines
This is the first thing that your reader will see when your post or article appears, your headline is the most important part of your content. Grab the attention of the reader, and they’re more likely to keep reading the rest of what you have to say.
Within your headline highlight the most important concept of what you want your reader to know. Rather than padding out with ‘waffle’ be blunt and to the point. Many people skim read and when people are using mobile devices whilst on the go, they will only pick out content that hits them hard with something that will give them value. Stating that in your headline will give them curiosity and the desire to read more.
Make your writing easy to read
If you’re using Yoast SEO in your blog posts, it will let you know whether your article is easy to read. This is a great start when you first start blogging or writing.
Next, take time to read through your content and see how easy you find it to read it. As we mentioned, many people skim read so it’s a good idea to lay out your writing in a way that allows the reader to just take out the bits they need. This comes with your headlines, but it also comes with the way that it’s laid out and presented. Big chunks of text with no space for breathing can be hard on the eyes. Neatly titled sections allow eyes to skim through much easier. Adding in images to your content breaks up the text too. Although this isn’t part of ‘writing’ it shows that you are thinking of the reader when you’re putting your content together. Images and visuals can be as powerful as a good title, so use this within your writing to create breaks and demonstrate what you are talking about. Presentation should always be good.
Ensure correct grammar
Editing as you write is not a great idea, you may lose track of what you’re writing about or lose momentum and miss the point. Our advice is to just write, write and write and then afterwards go back and check for spelling and grammar. Take time after you’ve finished to edit and make amendments, even ask for a second pair of eyes if grammar is not your strong point. You could even use an app to check this for you. We can recommend Grammarly which is a great tool to get both spelling and grammar correct. 
Proof read
This is part of the above point but always proof read everything you write. This goes for your blogs for sure, but it also goes for all content that you are producing, whether it be a Facebook post, a quick tweet or even the hashtags in your Instagram posts. If you have spelling mistakes within your content, it looks unprofessional and like you haven’t had the time to check correctly.
When it comes to your social media posts, if you have time, create a marketing calendar each month where you can schedule or draft all your posts ready to publish – then you can go back and proof read them all to ensure they are correct. Or you can send them to a friend to check for you.
Get into the habit
Writing is like anything and the more you do it, the better you will get. Practice makes perfect! If you’re blogging or writing a lot of articles it’s a good idea to get into the habit of writing. If you can manage a little every day, it will improve your writing skills. The more you write and the more frequent you get into the habit of writing, the more natural it will become for you.
Benefits of writing daily…
- Writing can make you happier
- Writing leads to better communication and understanding
- Writing gives you an outlet to share expression
- Writing leads to better learning
- You’ll actually be surprised at how easier it becomes the more you write!
Don’t fill for the sake of it
People are busy and they want to read the necessity, grab what’s valuable and then move on. If you spend ages writing about something that’s not providing value or adding sections that are not relevant to what the article is actually about, you will lose your audience. They are there to read what the title says it’s about – not what you had for lunch! Longer articles are not always better. A short, to the point and valuable blog post is much more effective than a long, drawn-out article that hardly touches on the point in question.
Use your proof-reading time to take out any filler content which will make your article much easier to read and more appealing to your audience. 
Read lots
If you’re wanting to write for other people, it makes sense that you read lots yourself. This gives you an idea of the type of content that you enjoy reading and the type of content that your readers with similar interests will enjoy too. You should be passionate in your writing and have good understanding and knowledge of the topic that you are writing about. Reading and researching provides this back up and resource for your own writing. Always take notes – this is a great habit to have as often you’ll have a whole load of notes that you can put together to create worthwhile reading.
Try subscribing to websites that you enjoy reading from and bloggers that can give you advice on the topics that you love to write about. You’ll gain lots of inspiration and valuable ideas that you can utilise in your own blog posts, help you learn which style of writing you want to aspire to and then help you to create killer content that everyone loves.
At the end of the day we are all unique and have our own style of writing, but keep in mind that when you’re writing for an audience, you are writing for them! Be unique in your style and create your own story telling ways, be inspirational and motivational where you can to give your readers something to take away from your posts. And most importantly, check everything more than once and ensure that it reads well, spelling and grammar are correct and that it tells the truth. A key to good writing is providing value – nail this and you’re well on your way!
Here at KJP Creative we love writing. We write on behalf of a number of clients across a variety of industries. If you’re looking to add good content to your online marketing but simply don’t have the time, ask us about our Content Marketing packages, we’d love to help. Get in touch today!
