Category: Business Development

Why Podcasts For Content Marketing is Timely

We all know how big podcasting has become recently. You can basically start a podcast in any niche and make money. And we all know that the value of content marketing is huge. So why haven’t you integrated your podcasts for content marketing? This blog article is about helping you make that move. What is podcasting and why should your business be using this in a content marketing strategy?

Podcasts can be a powerful form of content marketing

If you’re looking for a way to attract more customers, podcasting might just be one of the greatest forms of content marketing.

For years, podcasts have been steadily growing in popularity. In 2006, only 9% of Americans had listened to a podcast. By 2018, that number jumped to 51%. And with Google’s announcement that it will start indexing podcasts, you can be sure that audience will continue to grow.

According to a study by Infinite Dial, 67 million Americans are listening to podcasts every month. As a result, more than half of marketers say they plan to include podcasting in their content marketing strategy.

The interest in podcasts is no surprise. Podcasts are easy to consume and are perfect for today’s on-the-go lifestyle. But what does this mean for your business?

Podcasts are another useful way to distribute content, but they come with their own unique set of benefits. If you’re looking for a new way to attract customers and generate buzz about your business, starting a podcast might be the solution.

The beauty of podcasts is that they are easy to repurpose into written or video content. They are an excellent content marketing vehicle because they enable you to build an audience that increases their loyalty to you and promotes your work.

“The most important thing is to get people who love you and want to hear from you,” Andrew Warner, host of Mixergy, said. “Then it becomes a lot easier for them to refer other people because they think of themselves as part of a community.”

Podcasts are an effective way to share information about your business, boost SEO, and generate leads. They can also help you build relationships with your audience and promote your brand as an industry leader.

Why Podcasting Should Be Added To Your Content Marketing Strategy

Podcasts are an effective marketing tool. You don’t want to miss out on growing your business by not leveraging podcasting so here are the top 5 reasons why you should consider adding podcasting to your content marketing strategy:

Podcasts are easy to consume.

People listen to podcasts while they commute, exercise, run errands, cook, or do chores around the house. They can be listened to on a smartphone or tablet with the help of a podcast player app like Instacast or Pocket Casts. They can also be accessed through Spotify and Apple Podcast. This type of content is mobile-friendly and can easily be downloaded for offline listening.

Podcasts are easy to produce.

As long as you have a smartphone or a laptop, you can make your own podcast. For example, if you have an Android phone, you can start recording with the Voice Recorder app installed on your smartphone.

There’s no need for fancy equipment when you start. You just have to press the record button on your voice recording app, maybe edit it a little bit, and upload it on your chosen platform.

Podcasts create brand awareness and trust in listeners.

As stated, podcasts are effective in sharing information about your business and this can help because listeners learn more about your company through your show. Because listeners find value in your information whether or not they have opted-in to receive communications from you, they see that your company is credible and trustworthy.

Podcasts help drive traffic back to your website.

Podcasts are an effective way to drive traffic back to your website because podcasts are treated by Google as a reliable source of information. If you have a podcast that is regularly published, Google will start listing episodes in search results related to your industry and topic.

Podcasts can be a source of written content

With podcasts, you can create transcripts for your episodes and this can be great for your site’s SEO. These transcripts can be repurposed and can be used as blog content.  

Pros and cons of podcasting as a form of content marketing

Just like how a coin has two sides, there are also pros and cons when it comes to adding podcasting to your content marketing strategy. Let’s talk about them.

Podcasting Pros:

Promotes Your Expertise

People listen to podcasts for a variety of reasons: They like being entertained, they like learning something new, or they’re taking a trip somewhere but want something interesting to listen to. In other words, podcasts are perfect for the busy entrepreneur who doesn’t have time to read blog posts or attend seminars and conferences that will help promote their expertise in their field.

Podcasts can do more than entertain. They can establish you as an expert in your field, a resource for people who want to hear your opinion on the news, and even a source of advertising revenue. Telling the world about your expertise on important topics can make you an authority in your industry. By creating a podcast, you can help people with questions that they have and answer questions that people are asking.

Podcasting gives you a voice. People will listen to what you have to say and what you recommend. They may even find that they love the sound of your voice and want to hear more from you!

Helps With Brand Awareness

Podcasting is a great way to build brand awareness. As you publish new content regularly, you’re building a library of content that people can go back and explore to learn more about your business. By providing relevant information, either educational or entertaining, you are able to get your company’s name out there in front of a new audience.

As podcasting expands your reach, you have the opportunity to expand your audience as well. You can reach more people who are interested in what you have to say and help them learn more about your company and why they should consider using your products or services. The more people know about you the better chance you have of gaining new business from them.

Increases Community Engagement

Podcasting encourages engagement.​

By being a regular podcaster or a podcast guest, you have the opportunity to leverage the audience of the show, along with the social platforms that are promoting the episode. In addition, it gives you an opportunity to share your story and your expertise on a much larger platform. This can result in more exposure for your brand, products, and services.

Humanizes Your Brand

Podcasts can humanize your brand. By interviewing guests or just talking about interesting topics in your industry, you can give people a glimpse into the inner workings of your company and show them what working with you is really like. It’s like dropping by someone’s house for coffee – but without the caffeine jitters.

Great for Lead Generation

Podcasts are terrific for lead generation because you can use them to offer free content in exchange for contact information. The principle is simple, deliver excellent information that inspires action and capture the contact details of those who want more of it!

Podcasting Cons:

There are certain cons when it comes to having a podcast for your business so if you are interested in creating your own show, be aware of these cons.

• The bandwidth can be a bit costly so prepare to have a budget for this.
• Sometimes, the ROI can be a little bit difficult to track.
• When you have limited resources, you’ll find it harder to produce high-quality audio content. You’ll have to invest in good equipment to have a better setup and audio quality.
• If you lack on having regular creative and compelling content for your episodes, you’ll lose your audience.
• Lastly, you can’t fake optimism and enthusiasm. When you go into podcasting, make sure you are passionate about what you are talking about.

Final Thoughts

Content marketing is evolving and moving to other platforms. While videos are currently one of the best ways to draw in new readers and followers, podcasts can also be part of a content creation strategy. Not only are podcasts entertaining and engaging, but the right podcast series can also attract audiences that would be otherwise impossible to reach with any other content medium.

The truth is, content marketing comes in all shapes, sizes, and flavors when it comes to topics. The more diverse or specific your niche content is, the better you are able to attract targeted visitors and the more social activity you’ll get in return. Using a podcast as an element within your content marketing strategy will help you stand out in search engines organically and appear more human as well. Just make sure your podcasts aren’t too promotional-sounding.

Also Read:

• 7 Digital Marketing Podcasts You Should Definitely Listen To

Why Backlinks Are Important To Your Business

Business owners may have heard that backlinks are important to their online marketing, but they might be uncertain of why. You might also wonder what a backlink is and if you even need them. These are all fair questions and without them, you could be leaving a lot of gold behind if you’re not using one of the most powerful business tools for growing your traffic and overall sales.

Content is king, but backlinks are queen – and a crucial one at that.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks are used to build the authority of a website. These are links on a website that will lead to another website. Site owners put these links in their content to provide more information about a certain topic. Backlinks Are Important.

Backlinks are incoming links to a webpage. When a webpage links to any other page, it’s called a backlink. And major search engines look for these backlinks to use them as ranking signals when generating search results. The more links with authority point to you, the higher your site will rank in search results.

This is an example of a backlink.

Why Quality Backlinks Matter?

Backlinks from high-quality websites are essential for improving your search engine rankings. For example, if you’re selling a product or service, then you’ll want backlinks from authoritative industry publications. In addition to improving your SEO, these links will help increase the trustworthiness of your brand in the eyes of your customers.

Backlinks are a huge part of SEO. Google uses backlink information to help determine the popularity and relevance of your website. The more popular your site is, the better your search engine rankings will be.

Some people think that they can cheat the system by purchasing fake or spammy backlinks, but this is a huge mistake. Engaging in link schemes violates Google’s guidelines and can result in a manual action against your site. This means that all of your site’s pages could be demoted in the SERPs and you could even be removed entirely from Google’s index!

How To Gain Backlinks

The number of backlinks to your website is a critical metric for SEO. The more backlinks your site has, the higher it’s likely to rank. Backlinks Are Important 

There are three ways to earn quality backlinks: natural, manual, and self-created links.

• Natural Links are links that are built without deliberate action on your part. They can be based on the quality of your site or content, or maybe because someone likes what they saw on your site and wants to share it with others. People refer to these as “editorial links.” Natural links are earned indirectly and take time and effort to acquire, but they are all worth it.
• Manual links are the ones you create by actively seeking out opportunities. This could mean submitting to an article directory or submitting guest posts to blogs in your niche. The benefit of these types of links is that they can drive traffic directly to your site and improve your search engine ranking relatively quickly. The downside is that manual links require ongoing effort, unlike natural links which occur without any input on your part.
• Self-created links are achieved by creating a link on your own website that links back to another site. For example, this could be a blog post or an infographic. Backlinks Are Important This is typically done through a blog network — a series of blogs that link back to each other in order to boost each one’s rank on search engines. Just be careful when making self-created links because some tactics tend to become spammy and tend toward “black hat SEO” which can negatively affect your search engine reputation.

Why Backlinks Are Important To Your Business

Whether you’re a solopreneur looking to expand your business or a massive corporation, backlinks are an important part of your SEO strategy when you want to get the best out of digital marketing.

Backlinks Can Help You Reach Your SEO Goals

Backlinks work best when they’re natural and unforced. Backlinks Are Important. When someone mentions your business or product in an editorial piece, they’re essentially vouching for you and leading viewers toward your site. Backlinks can also help drive and boost traffic to your site when they’re placed on high-traffic sites. When visitors click through to your site, these links basically act as an advertisement for your business. 

The backlinks from another website to yours are like a signal to search engines that other internet users promote your content. If different sites link to the same website or page, search engines can then record that content as something worth linking to therefore making that website appear on a SERP. Backlinks Are Important Earning backlinks will have a positive effect on a website’s ranking and search visibility. That’s why backlinks are important—they make your website visible to online searchers.

Takeaway

Backlinks from quality websites on your niche are essential for your SEO if you want to rank. They can make all the difference when it comes to reaching your SEO goals. Backlinks Are Important Use this information to help you create a strategy that works best for your business.

Final Thoughts

And there you have it—everything you need to know about backlinks, how to gain them, and why they matter. Backlinks Are Important Hopefully, this guide will help you understand backlinks in a way that will be useful to your business. And even if it doesn’t, one thing is certain: the world of SEO is complex and ever-changing. If you want to stay competitive, you should familiarize yourself with new developments on a regular basis. That way, you won’t get taken by surprise when Google makes a change to its algorithm. And if nothing else, developing your understanding of SEO will help you pose intelligent questions for your web developer or SEO professional.

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How to Easily Create a Digital Marketing Plan

Wanna know how to create a digital marketing plan? We’ve covered the basic things for you, just read on!

This blog post will cover how important having a digital marketing plan is for your business. We’ll tackle the elements, on how to get the right marketing strategy, and choose the right platforms for your business. You’ll also get to create a content calendar that you’ll use for execution. 

All of these create a digital marketing plan that you can use to help grow your business – both online and offline. 

Why Should You Create a Digital Marketing Plan?

Your digital marketing plan will serve as the guide for your online marketing efforts. By planning well and creating a detailed strategy and guide to follow, you will have an easier time executing and tracking your marketing efforts regularly. This way, you can also ensure that your marketing messages will reach and connect with your customers.

When you create your digital marketing plan, you need to consider how, where, and how often you want to interact and engage with your customers. Writing all these down into a formal plan will help you create an easy-to-follow roadmap that’s easily trackable and measurable which you can use to set in your business’s digital marketing metrics.

The advantage of tracking and measuring your marketing efforts is that you’ll get to match the current trends in your industry with the trends in your marketing. By mapping out your channels, you can determine which marketing effort works best for your business and niche. This information will be helpful to how you run your projects when to change your marketing mix, and even when to make small changes and improvements to your plans.

When you create a solid digital marketing plan and leverage it well, you can account for regionality, seasonality, and any other time that you expect to see slower and better sales.

Elements of your Digital Marketing Plan

Your digital marketing plan should include four sections:

• Overall Digital Marketing Strategy
• Tactical Action Plan for each digital channel
• Business topics and/or weekly themes i.e. your marketing messages
• Editorial Content Calendar (to help you track and implement your plan)

Choosing a Digital Marketing Strategy

Your digital marketing strategy will basically have two parts: your goal and your plan. 

Your goal is the primary objective you want to accomplish using digital marketing, and your plan is the step-by-step guide on how you will accomplish said goal. While it’s possible to have more than one goal, you should only limit it to two or maybe three. It will be unwise to spread your focus too thin, otherwise, you’ll dilute your marketing efforts and you won’t be able to connect with your audience the way you originally intend to.

Goal + Plan = Strategy of

Create a Digital Marketing Plan

Always think about the best-case scenario for your business when you choose a goal or two. Do you want to build brand awareness? Or do you intend to bring more people to your store’s physical location? Be as specific as you can.

For example: if you have an eCommerce website, your number one goal may be to increase your web traffic or it might be to increase the conversion rate among your site visitors. Those goals will definitely result in an increase in sales but each one will require a different approach in creating content and marketing the website. 

Think about how you want to approach your business and which goal is best for its growth. No matter the goal you choose, you’ll need a plan to achieve it. Your plan should expand on what steps you need to do to accomplish your goal and it should also include some of the outcomes you hope to achieve as you execute them.

Think about what you want digital marketing to do for you and your business. If you have an eCommerce and physical store, maybe your goal would be to increase both brand awareness and sales. So your plan should include creating a brand presence online that will replicate the product shopping experience in your physical store. Figure out what you can do through online marketing to accomplish the high-level strategic goal that you set for your digital marketing.

Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Channels

After identifying your digital marketing strategy, make a list of channels where you want to do your business online. Include your website, email newsletter, and any other social media platforms that you want to tap into. Also, include any other media outreach you want to take, like partnering with bloggers or podcasters, etc.

A website and an email newsletter and two non-negotiable channels that you must have in order to ensure the success of your digital marketing. The reason is that both your website and your email newsletter are 100% within your control. Social media is never guaranteed. If Facebook or Twitter or Instagram shut down tomorrow, or change the way they do business, then you’ll lose all of your followers, your connections, and your marketing progress made in those platforms. Unlike your website and email newsletter, no matter what happens on any other social media platform, you’ll still own all the content inside your site and email list. Create a Digital Marketing Plan. 

Prioritize your Efforts Create a Digital Marketing Plan

When you’ve already decided on which channel you’ll have, list down 5-10 things that you can do that will help you leverage that platform to execute your strategy. It should read almost like a checklist like so:

• Account setup and apply for a business account (if needed)
• Set up tracking
• Post consistently on your website or blog to build credibility and authority
• Post consistently on your social media to build your following and engage your audience
• Create an image of your ideal future state and act on the small steps you can take to get there
• Pay for media if it makes sense
• Create a Digital Marketing Plan

Starting with your website, if you haven’t yet, start with tracking your analytics and improving its content. Fix broken links, misspelled words, and any other simple improvements. When these simple fixes are done, you might also want to rewrite some of your old content, add a blog, and maybe create a sales page. Prioritize the activities you need to do for your website based on its current state because sometimes, the smallest improvements can make the biggest difference.

After each change, check your analytics to make sure that things are moving in the right direction. You should see an increase in traffic, higher conversion rates, and higher average order values if that applies to your business. Consistency in both timing and topic will help your audience relate to you and trust in your brand.

The next step is to work on your email newsletter. How can you improve it to better relate to your audience and have better open rates? Do you write on a regular basis? How’s your current open rate? Experiment and test different times and days of the week to find out the best time and day to send your newsletter. Try changing one thing at a time so that you can easily track them and determine what’s working best for your business. Detail the steps that you can take with your email newsletter on your action plan. For your social media, find out which platform/s will work best for your business. What do you plan on sharing on your socials? Do you have a visual business and want to share images and videos? Consider making an account on Instagram and Pinterest. List down the types of images and posts you’ll use. This will make it easier for your to create your content calendar. You’ll also want to develop a regular schedule for your social media. By having a plan, you’ll be able to work ahead of schedule and really take advantage of your calendar to regularly put out content throughout the week. Consistency in both timing and topic will help your audience relate to you and trust in your brand. Create a Digital Marketing Plan. 

When you’ve already built a solid engaging following, you can do paid media as well. Create a list of the actions that you need to check for each social media account. Once you have a list of those free channels, move on to the paid channels. How will you promote your business on social media? Will you pay for Facebook ads? Will you promote pins on Pinterest? You’ll only want to pay for channels where you’ve already engaged with your audience anyway. Don’t expect to promote on a channel where people cannot already find you. You will not get the results you want.

Do you plan to run pay-per-click ads? How often? How much do you plan to spend on these efforts? Think about how you can use pay per click to augment your other efforts to get in front of your already engaged customers and potential customers. Note these on your action plan as well. And finally, on to your other media efforts. If you plan to partner with bloggers, make a list of blog types that you want to be affiliated with. Find out who their audience is, how many visitors they get, and what you have in common. Make a detailed list to easily find blog partners and weed out those blogs that don’t fit your requirements. Have a standard email you can send as a request for partnership to bloggers you want to work with. Create a Digital Marketing Plan. 

Once you have an action plan for each digital channel, you’re ready to determine your marketing content topics and how you create them with your content calendar. Create a Digital Marketing Plan. 

Weekly Themes and Content Calendar

Now that you’ve identified your strategy and created action plans for each digital marketing channel, you can define your weekly themes and create a content calendar for your business………Choosing Weekly Themes Create a Digital Marketing Plan ……..Planning your content themes and topics will help you create consistent marketing messages for your audience and this will build up your authority and credibility in your industry. The list of topics you made will be used to create your regular content, so this should include the areas where you want your brand to be seen as an expert. If you are selling workout clothes, perhaps you want to be an authority on all things physical and getting fit. Choose the topics that will help you choose who you collab with when you do decide to do those blog or brand partnerships. You can leverage the topic list you create for both your own internal content and what you develop with others.

Have a running list of at least 20 topics so you’ll have enough for daily or weekly themes to use on your website, emails, social media channels, and those partnerships. Start with a list of 20 and weed out the ones that don’t provide value to your business. Add more topics as needed. Remember, just because something doesn’t make the cut now doesn’t mean you can’t use it later. Put your list of topics in a fluid document where you can edit it regularly. You can always add and delete ideas if you need to. Once you have your topic list, you can use that list, plus your channel action plan to help you develop your content calendar.

Create a Content Calendar.

Use any tool that works for you.

Create several versions of the same message or different messages that follow the weekly theme

• Plan ahead
• Be consistent
• Track your marketing over time
• Measure performance of each platform and message

Organization is definitely the key to success in digital marketing.

Your content calendar should be an editorial calendar and should show each digital marketing channel and how you plan to use them to promote, build, and increase awareness about your brand. You can use a spreadsheet, a note-taking tool (like notion), a notebook, or anything to create your content calendar. Whatever it is you’ll use, make sure it’s something you can actually check, fill out, and report back to regularly to measure the progress of your campaigns and projects. The tool you use doesn’t matter. The planning is what matters. Moreover, be organized. Be mindful of the calendar and be mindful of the market. The organization is definitely the key to success in digital marketing.……………Create a Digital Marketing Plan

Create a Digital Marketing Plan, Once you made your content calendar and have your weekly topic or theme, you can build each post around each topic. You can then easily work in advance and spend less time on the day the actual post goes out. Learn how to schedule ahead of time so you won’t be scrambling on the day your messages go live. Write all of your copies in advance. Create all of your content in advance. Choose your images in advance. Then check your marketing messages for consistency with your brand and your overall theme in order to set yourself up for success over time.

Planning is vital for your overall digital marketing success. Use your content calendar. You should be referring back to it as often as needed in order to be successful in your digital marketing.

Wrap Up

Congratulations on creating your digital marketing plan! I hope you use your plan to help you create marketing messages and content that connects with your customers.

Review your plan every few months or so to ensure you get the maximum benefit for your business and for your customers. You can repeat the entire process outlined in this blog post or just revisit the execution aspects if you know your strategy is still on target.

It’s easy to create a digital marketing plan with these steps. Hopefully, this post helped you in this endeavor.

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Tips and Strategies for Strong Link Building

Link building is essential for SEO strategies, especially when one is looking for a boost in their traffic. It involves creating both inbound and outbound links in your website, keeping in mind that the end goal in strong link building is boosting your credibility and increasing your rank in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

Although it sounds easy, building links takes work and effort and must be ethically done. Practice white hat link building – the process of creating organic and relevant links that improve your user’s experience. Avoid using spam tactics as a quick way to advance your SEO, this will backfire on your website negatively.

Here are some tips and strategies you can use for strong link building.

Reach out for Links

You can reach out to anyone you know, either personally or online, who has a relevant site that relates to the content you have. Make sure that the content you produce gives value so that others will happily link to you when they create their own content. 

Do Strategic Guest Blogging

Nowadays, more and more companies have embraced blogging because the benefits are great. Brands that blog regularly generate 97% more inbound links and 55% more visitors according to HubSpot. Be selective about the sites you guest blog and set a clear goal at the start. If you want to drive more traffic into your website, your guest blogging should be targeted to the blogs that will send you traffic. Look for blogs that aren’t only accepting guest blog posts, but also where their readers are likely to share that guest post in their social media accounts.

Guest blogging is a great way to get links, but you need to do it the right way. Before doing any guest blogging for a site, you have to study the site’s audience, popular posts, and user experience. When you understand the blog’s audience, it will be a lot easier for you to create content that they will enjoy consuming. 

Contact those you have linked to or mentioned

When you are creating your own content, you will be linking out to others. A simple and effective strategy is to reach out to those you have linked to and let them know about it. You can always ask for a return of favor on the side. This can eventually turn into a harmonious link exchange among businesses – just make sure not to sound too pushy and rude.

Use Infographics

Infographics are great weapons in content creation, and until today, they can play a significant role in your link building strategy. Infographics are great for strong link building because they are shareable content. When you put out a great infographic, your website will generate organic traffic, which will help you get quality links. Visual content should never be neglected in this digital age. 

Be Active on Social Media

It’s no secret that social media has changed the world of marketing. In your link-building plan, being active in various social media platforms can be a great boost to your efforts. Share your posts, photos, infographics, and other updates to let your audience know that you are active.

Being active on social media can also boost your engagement. You can expose your brand and website to more people who can be possible sharers of your link. 

Add your links to all your social media platforms

Make sure you have added all your links to your social media platforms that you are active on. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or even Pinterest, put your link to your profiles and description boxes. Links that are shared can gain engagement and can increase your page rank. (Retweets are particularly powerful)

Make the most of YouTube Links

YouTube is an excellent and effective medium for connecting with your target audience and showcasing your brand. If you have a YouTube channel, don’t forget to include your links in your profile, channel description, and video description. 

Leveraging Influencer Marketing

In the past few years, influencers have become integral in marketing strategies. They have brought a lot to the table in connecting brands with new audiences. Whether it’s through a shoutout, a sponsorship, or a product review, influencer marketing is effective in your link building strategy because these influencers will almost always include your links in their videos, posts, stories, or photos. They can also encourage and “influence” their followers to check out your brand. Leveraging influencer marketing can boost your brand’s reputation and naturally increase your ranking.

Take Advantage of the Broken Link Building Strategy

Broken link building is an effective strategy for getting those broken links back up and running. It’s easy and there are only three main steps. First, find a site that’s similar to yours or one that’s relevant in your niche, check their content for any broken links (look for links that return a 404 error because those links have been removed), and then suggest your link to the website owner as an alternative. 

Focus on Growing your Brand

This step is one of the top strategies to do. Your brand is you. It shows your audience who you are and who your company is. Personalizing your brand will be most beneficial, especially when done right. 

When it comes to link building, growing your personal brand will help other people naturally link to you. A natural link means that your link is earned organically, without sponsorship or anything, because people truly find your content relevant and valuable. 

Create Link Roundups

A great way to receive the right links you want is to give first. Don’t be selfish with your posts by just linking to your internal pages. Link out to other blogs and websites that are relevant to your content as well. A lot of bloggers do link roundups, and it is the simplest way to share what fellow bloggers have posted. Link roundups are a great networking method and an equally great link building strategy as well.

Building a strong link building campaign starts with diversity, meaning your outbound links need to be from a wide range of trusted sources. More importantly, the links should be high quality and from reputable sites that are considered important by Google.

Planning and executing a strong link building strategy is not easy, it takes time and effort. Fortunately today, there is a plethora of information and tools available to help you.