Tag: What is Content Marketing?

What Makes Great Website Content?

Written by Peter Beare on April 27, 2014.

This year website content and content marketing are at the forefront of any results focused website. So what is great content? Is it frequency? (how many times you update your website), is it fancy fonts and highlights with every page designed uniquely? Or, is it content copied from a leading competitors website that you know must be good cause they are a great company!
In essence there are three basic forms of content on a website.

Static Content (Content that qualifies you)

Static content generally tells a web visitor about the business, products and services that you provide. Usually this should be a general overview and bigger picture content and it should give qualification to your business. Static content is items such as about us, our team, our mission, our locations, our products, our services, contact us, and it should be foundation that you identify the primary business services and products you provide (generally without major detail).

When a prospect comes to your website they are trying to establish if you are qualified to provide the service or product they need. If you fail here – the visit is generally over and you won’t get their business. Static content should be updated annually (or as required). One of the great mistakes a website owner can do is to create static content when they launch their new website (and never update it again!). Static content is where your primary keyword and key-phrases “categories” are established.

Product/Services Content (Content that details your capabilities and/or product line).
The second type of content is detailed content which is really decision making content. If your website visitor can review this information and make a decision to do business with you (call, inquiry, buy a product) then you have GREAT CONTENT! Google job is to match a prospects question with great content (The answer to the prospects question). Great content provides prospects with answers that they can take action on. How you formulate your content here is very dependent on your business model. Product/Services Content is where your keyword and key-phrases are detailed and highlighted.

If you have ever had a design meeting with Bear Web Design this should help explain why we asked SO MANY QUESTIONS about your business model. Design of a site includes design layout, development functionality and content to support the design & development. Every company has a different business model so we have to ask a lot of question in establishing how your website is setup. A good example of this is when selling products it is critical to provide every piece of information a prospects needs to buy the product (answer every question). Great product descriptions are rewarded highly by google and drive online sales.

Content Marketing (Content that drives prospects to your website).
The third type of content is Content marketing. Content Marketing is any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers. More and more companies are putting time and money into their content. So with all things equal (Everyone is getting better and better websites) it really comes down to how well that website and its content is marketed (specifically who it reaches). Blogging is the king of content marketing in our eyes and it is also the most sustainable form.

A great blog should be about a topic, an area of your business (key word or key-phrase) aspect of your business. It should always written in the form of answering a question (notice our title – “So What Makes Great Website content?”) I am answering a question that every client we have wants to know the answer to. (as do all our prospects). Once a great blog is in place then it comes down to your reach, website visitors, social media, e-news, other websites that wish you share your expertise.

So next week we will look at Static Content in more detail (and in the next few weeks we will be covering an area of content) to help you apply this to your own website! And be sure to plan on attending our next Website Content Management Class planned for September so you can start to take full control of your website’s content!

Do You Know What Content Marketing is?

Written by Peter Beare on April 20, 2014.

Our company has traditionally worked closely with our client base to ensure that they fully utilize their content management system (Joomla) in order to maximize their website results and their visitors experience on the website. We have done this primarily by teaching classes (both formal classes and onsite training) as well as providing a “how to” support role to ensure that the client not only has a great looking and functioning website but the content is easily updated with fresh, up to date and relevant information. This is not only great for website visitors and but also great for Google. Your content on your website determines your search engine and keyword positioning and this determines how many prospects you are reaching (Google is all about the prospect!).

To our delight some of our clients today are absolute experts at managing content on their website. They maximize the opportunity of using their website by having timely information on their site on a continuous basis. They have learned how to use Joomla and each edition they get more sophisticated tool to work with. Quite often their content is integrated with blogs, social media and e-news to maximize the messages reach. Keeping in mind that when a visitors comes (or are drawn) to your website they are generally looking to answer a question and that in essence is what good content does – it answers questions and ultimately leads to an action (a purchase, an inquiry or a phone call).

So What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers. It has become the “big thing” in internet marketing in 2014 although it has always been very important in our eyes thanks to the creation of great content management systems (Joomla, WordPress and Drupal). This is great news in our opinion as your website should be clearly ranked by the look, the feel, and the great content on your website. This is also a good shift in the area of search engine optimization that was previously dominated by website manipulation, confusing and questionable internet marketing companies that promised a lot but couldn’t deliver quality prospects.

So how can you start to focus on Content Marketing?
Understanding your website, how to manage and update content and what content you place on your website (both permanent and ongoing content) is a great place to start. Today our sites are very well structured in this department starting with static content and core content (both text, images and multi-media) that tells your visitors about your business, products and services while blogs, social media and e-news get news campaigns and messages out (and generally aim to pull the visitors back to your website). And then it comes down to the quality of your content and frankly that is the area that should have your highest focus.

Excited? Then Join us at our Upcoming Web Content Management Class!
Our upcoming Web Content Management Class is Friday April 26th 2014 at Lebanon Wilson Chamber of Commerce (Upper Conference Room). The class is will be focusing on Joomla 3.X (and 2.X) and this is a great opportunity to find out how your content is structured, what tools you can use directly for Content Marketing and ultimately learn how to use your content management system (which is centered around your editor and media manager).

For more details on this upcoming class and registration information CLICK HERE…

Our next blog will be breaking down Content Marketing and really focusing on what is good content. (its not just sending someone an update – it is what you actually say!)