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The secret to content marketing

08/19/202212/02/2021 by scmarketing

For small business owners we know that you’re tight on time. There’s so much on your plate to running a successful business and so many roles you have, from sales, marketing, HR, recruitment and finance to name but a few. With this many hats you’re wearing, thinking about regular content marketing may be blue sky thinking, however the benefits of fresh and regular content are vital for helping your business be found in search engine results pages (SERPs).

So, with the little spare time that you have, how can you ensure you’re sharing regular content across multiple channels?

The secret is to utilise and repurpose the content that you have.

When you write a blog and upload it to your website, you’ll have spent time writing at least 500 words or so. Therefore, use it. Whilst a blog in itself can help with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), as search engines look for fresh content with relevant keywords on websites, there’s so much more you can do for SEO.

Follow this simple process to maximise one blog to its full potential:

Write social media posts. Review the content of your blog and break that down into bite size chunks. You’ll find that you can schedule a number of different social posts simply by lifting a few sentences from the same blog and sharing them on social. You may have to tailor them slightly for the different social channels you use, but it will take you a lot less time than having to think up fresh new content.
Remember to add a link back to the full blog post and add an image (your own image or purchase a stock image – do not use google images as these carry copyright).
Get your employees and colleagues to also re-share what you post on social media to spread the news through your social network.
Conduct a poll question relating to your blog. This is particularly good on LinkedIn as it engages well with your network and allows them to comment.
If you have an Instagram or Facebook account, share the social post to your Stories to highlight that you have a new blog post. The gifs on Instagram are great for stand out.
Add a summary of the blog as an update to your Google My Business page with a ‘learn more’ button with a link back to your blog. And, if you are on any other listing directories such as associations or event websites, check if they have the option of adding regular updates from you as this all helps with link building.
Send an email to your marketing database. If you have an email database then start to utilise that. Create a template for an email. Platforms like Hubspot allow you to create great looking email templates. Then use a small snippet of the content from your blog in your email and add a ‘read more’ button.
If you want to build on your creative skills, why not create a short video with information taken from your blog? You can record a message simply on a mobile phone. Check out our blog with ideas for creating video for your business.

You can chat further with us about video creation if you want to know more about the scope of what you could do.

Digital marketing strategy

All this activity will help with search engine optimisation (SEO). With the blog itself, ensure you have keywords included (the words and phrases that you want to be found for in search engines).

For social posts, email marketing and business directory uploads always ensure that you have included a link back to your website. Link building with quality links also helps show search engines that you are a thought leader as well as improves brand awareness and lead generation.

We provide digital marketing including SEO, Email Marketing, PPC campaigns and social media marketing.

Tips for image and video creation

08/19/202212/02/2021 by scmarketing

Having a consistent look and feel for images or video you produce provides the perfect solution for a digital marketing campaign. You can repurpose imagery across channels from website through to social media channels and email marketing campaigns. It helps to build your brand identity and therefore awareness and importantly trust.

With 62% of B2B marketers rating video as an effective content marketing tactic, here’s some top tips for optimising your images for your website and social media.

Website design

Imagery helps create an engaging website. Images can break up the text on a page maintaining interest and importantly helping to keep a visitor on your website for longer.

Social media

Maintain consistency with your website and create a header image to be used across all social channels, this is certainly relevant for Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. However, resize them for the respective channel. Here’s a summary of image sizes for the popular social channels:

Facebook
- Profile picture – 180 x 180 pixels
- Cover photo image – 820 x 312 pixels
- Social post image – 1,200 x 630 pixels
Twitter
- Profile picture – 400 x 400 pixels
- Header image – 1,500 x 500 pixels
- Social post image – 440 x 220 pixels
LinkedIn
- Company logo – 300 x 300 pixels
- Cover image – 1536 x 768 pixels
- Shared image – 1104 x 736 pixels
Instagram
- Profile picture – 110×110 pixels
- Photos – 1,080 x 1,080 pixels

Best to use all in either jpeg or PNG file format.

Video

Smart phone technology allows you to create short and snappy videos that are ideal for sharing on social and placing on your website.

We find that doing face to camera at events is a nice informal way to chat to your audience. Keep it simple, it’s what you’re saying that’s important. If you attend a regular networking event and feel your audience would benefit from joining themselves, then tell them why they should attend. Give stats on the number of people who attend, how many businesses are signed up to the group and give an overview of what to expect from the event. All this done in a short face to camera video that can be easily uploaded to social media.

If you create a YouTube channel you can add all your videos here and use it to share links.

Content to post

If you have blogs create short videos focussing on key elements as part of your script to help bring these to life on your web page and social media channel.

You could also create unique images utilising quotes from a case study to help create stand out on social media which can help encourage people to click the link and read the full story.

Ultimately the goal is to attract people to your website and images help create standout.

Be aware of copyright

Do not use images from Google for any marketing campaign. Images come with copyright and you will not have permission to use them if you take them from anywhere online. Either take pictures or video yourself. Or, use a reputable stock library to source these from such as Adobe, Shutterstock or Envato.

Digital marketing strategy

If you need a hand with imagery and video content, we can help you factor these into your overall marketing strategy from ideas and script creation through to video production and editing.

Digital marketing must-haves for 2022

08/19/202211/23/2021 by scmarketing

Now is a great time to take a look at some of the digital marketing trends that you can tap into to help your business be seen online.

Create and manage your database to greatness

So, a database may not be a marketing trend as such, but it is a key asset for your marketing strategy. If you haven’t already got a database, consider this vital for ongoing personalised communication.

There’s a number of tools that can help with gathering data in an organised way that allows you to manage creating your email marketing database moving forward.

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can help such as Hubspot. However, you need to capture people’s details in the first place so it’s important to have tools such as a pop-up box on your website so that you can ask for web visitors email address in return for receiving something such as a regular newsletter.

Think about what may entice people to part with their email address such as creating some interesting one-off campaigns for quality content such as an ebook with sector insight relevant to your target audience, or industry specific templates or discount codes.

Video

We’ve said it before, and we’ll most certainly say it again – make sure you incorporate video as part of your marketing plan. The pandemic made sure that video was vital for communication. But even more so for stand out when you are marketing to cut through the noise and be visible on social media.

Once you have web visitors, videos are known to increase engagement which keeps people on your website for longer.

Word of mouth

Let your customers become part of your marketing. Whilst the traditional view of the marketing funnel sees the customer at the end, if you change mindset and envisage a circle with the customer at the centre, then this becomes a very exciting proposition.

Keeping the customer central to all that you do will help them become brand advocates and help to promote your service through word of mouth sharing to their networks on social media.

Improving content

Fresh and regular quality content is so important for search engine optimisation (SEO), but you may sometimes feel overwhelmed at the thought of having to write blogs each week and constant social media or monthly e-newsletters. So, firstly think quality rather than quantity.

Then look back at all the content you have produced over the years. You’ll find that on your website you can look back at historic blogs and repurpose them with up-to-date statistics, new keywords or links to articles.

Not only that but taking existing content and repurposing it for a new podcast, webinar, or blog post can be an efficient way to keep your website relevant in search engines.

Digital marketing Croydon

As a digital marketing agency in Croydon, we’re well placed to offer local businesses digital marketing services and online marketing advice relating to local SEO services and content marketing to help increase presence in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Get in touch to chat about your business goals for the year ahead.