Content Marketing Examples

Oct 31 2018

21 SaaS Marketing Tactics – Part 2

As a SaaS company, you need to capture but and above all captivate your audience in order to get those must needed new clients in to scale your business faster.

Reading time to finish the post is: ~4-5 minute

If you read 21 Saas marketing tactics part one you will noticed that we focused more on active ways to go about it. If you haven’t read it yet, I would recommend to do so.

In this post we’ll be focusing on “Saas content marketing tactics” and how to best use them in active and passive ways. However, these passive ways take time and energy to set up.

You’ve probably heard or read that Content marketing has been successfully used across thousands of SaaS companies across the globe.

For example – Startups publish and use many types and forms of content to:
a) educate,
b) inform,
c) attract to increase leads, (hadn’t you noticed?) yes, that’s their ulterior motive.

We learnt that our own leads originated from several other places such as:

Email marketing, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora and Twitter. My favorites LQR.

These are all excellent channel platforms to attract and educate people.

Let’s assume you own a startup or a SaaS

You already have good partners that send and share your best content, sending you relative good traffic. But your newly acquired investors will expect to see your content marketing/comms plan producing a growing A.R.R.

What does it mean to you?

This means that you need a framework to show how you should go about it and perform as quickly as possible.

Why? Because you have little knowledge and time to spare and your partners are not willing to wait for too long.

You need a documented content marketing strategy including Saas selling tactics

Yes. That is the first thing to get your hands on. This document will show you the steps and the resources needed for that period, along with marketing phases, financial forecast and how fast you can grow.

In short, let’s find out more about our content marketing strategy . Because, let’s be honest, your business is unique and you need a content structure to survive.

To get there, you’ll need to create an vibrant and effective content showing processes, people and phases.

All the above will take some strategic thinking, energy, dedication and investment.

So we recommend to start with the following.

Tactic 4: Persona mapping to help your content

You must have the personas document setup. It should also include the following questions:

What are the main characteristics of each of your personas?
How will you segment them initially?
What does the prospect’s initial search path look like?
What is the visitor’s pain points? Needs?
What type of content do you first need to create to engage and serve them better than the competition?
Where does this content fit in your sales funnel?
etc

If you get this right it will set you apart from your main competitors and will help you convert more clients.

Tactic 5: Create awesome content

We’ve mapped out the personas. Now from each persona select one keyword.
Start market research (use Google trends) to see how many monthly searches you have for those keywords.

Use available filters (Country, city..).
That is the beginning of the on-page optimisation – one big moving part of the SEO strategy process. Which is so important, but we talk about this more in part three.

If your keyword topic has anything above 200 + monthly searches you must put in basket.

Let’s see another good tactic.

1. Start your search on Google:
type very specific keywords such as: [ Saas pricing models ] + use define: operator to get some more ideas on the topic (like [define: consulting examples]).

Write it down.

Hint: You can search without bracketts.

You could scroll down to the bottom Google results to get some more search ideas.

You’ll see “searches related to: “Saas model and pricing pages…” you could select or click the ones you think it would work better for you.

2) Now to expand your keywords: research further type ~ and *operators to include more results.

Example: Main topic from the bottom of Google results page.

Repeat the process four to five times.

3) Expand your chances and try platforms such as:

Twitter search, LinkedIn search as these will display recently discussed articles within your topic.

Well done! Here you’ve plenty more content topic ideas.

Warning: As a tech person, you’re probably thinking “on my front page, I will display my product’s best features, but also why I like it and you should too.”

Wrong. Don’t go down that path.

Your homepage should emphasise the product’s benefits not its features. You can later on link to a 7-10 feature product page and explain or show off what and why your product does well. Then try to convert people with subscription trail.

The challenges you’ll face if you’re in business already:

How do I find the type of content my audience is actually searching for?

Obvious solutions:
a) Check if those keywords appear in your Google analytics vs Google trends. If they match, it is a good sign.
b) A combination of data-driven research brainstorming plus competitor analysis.

Use SEO tools: Such as Semrush, Ahrefs or Moz to identify new terms or keywords that you are missing out but your competitors are not.

Straight after grab your thoughts and ask questions such as:

How and why is my solution better than the competition?
How do I guide them to try our product/service?
How and when will we lead our audience into the conversion funnel?
Use the questions above to generate content ideas.
This is still the best way to go about it. But also create content that will answers and solves problems.

Tip: Visit (often) your persona’ needs, as mentioned above.

Pick your type of content and commit to publish relevant material on a consistent basis. Whether this is via podcasts, blog posts, videos, etc.

The key is to find the format type you also enjoy producing. It must be relevant and provide value. Also get into the habit of creating in advance because everything else builds on that.

I actually plan out my post topics in advance, by logging them into a Content Google Calendar. But there is plenty of other ways you can do it.

Find your own system and keep it up.

Tactic 6: Create (seductive) visual content

I would recommend working with these two.

1) draw.io is great and free to use. A online diagram software that creates beautiful visual content in minutes.
Try it for all sorts of: flowcharts, process diagrams, org charts, UML, ER and network diagrams.

2) Install simple diagrams a desktop app for creating fast, clear and fun sketches. You are more likely to attract your readers by showing them how to solve a particular issue with a fun image.

Or simulate your client’s problems, demonstrate the processes they could use to improve their daily businesses, (workflows, sketches ideas…) in a fun way. Create value and emotions with simple but expressive sketches. There are plenty of nice features, and lots of shapes and images.

3) Create and display smart 1-2 minute videos in your content marketing to demonstrate your services or products. Initially you entice without going into deep details, just enough to get it viral and increase sales conversions.

Hint: The key is to be able to translate top complicated ideas into a very powerful and creative visual concept to make a huge impact.

Tactic 7: Guest blogger

This is a good content creation tactic. Show off your expertise, look for guest blogging opportunities. Perfect (smart ways) to help build natural links back to your site. It is also a great way to raise your profile within your industry.

Here is a good way to do this.

Search for: “write for us” or “Guest blog needed” and in seconds you will see a list of blogs or companies appear before your eyes.

Tip: This tactic is used by many to harness golden links. So use it carefully.

Then, just email these people with your most recent work. You should offer them 5-6 topic headers you think would work for them to accept. If you want to speed up the process (after doing some research) describe how you see the topics working.

You can also start a blog post straight away. But provide them with palatable content to read.

Also, if you have a small list of well-known people you can reference in your industry, use it. Email them and tell them you mentioned and give them credit .

Then promote it, promote it within your social media channels as long its industry related. The end goal here is to let your content attract and promote itself. That way, you’re showing expertise and building strong relationships/connections.

But remember this, you’re not “guest posting for the sake of getting links”. Very important. You are looking to add and show value, point of view on top of your expertise to every single website you write for.

Tactic 8: Answer how-to questions on (LQR) LinkedIn, Quora, Reddit

I love this one. Spot and select questions from people who own or manage Saas/Paas businesses. I am doing it and works very well (Quora and Reddit). But be honest and don’t do it for the traffic. You are in there to provide value to people first and foremost.

Because if you go there with the intention of getting traffic it won’t work, specially in reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/ category. You will be labelled with bad Karma and kicked off.

Not real ones, its the platform’ way of doing things – they rate people’s comments with positive or negative karma.

There is thousands of SaaS companies that aren’t using this tactic when building out their brand. Shame really as it works well.

I guess their main reason is down to (normally) lack of time or probably because the quick ROI is harder to get.
Though the traffic will come once you are known.

The main steps to take are:

a) answer questions that you know and are comfortable with
b) look for people who are starting a business and/or are in the initial research phase (awareness)
c) provide value for money (and your time)
d) take them down to the consideration stage and follow the steps of your sales funnel until the end.

I seriously hope you can put these to good use, be yourself (positive and happy) and profitable on the way.

Hope this helped you see what’s needed and if you like and think this post could be useful please share it around you.

Stay tuned as we may share another one or part three – I’ll be showing you how AI and cracking Content SEO hacks can catapult you very high.

Sep 29 2018

21 Saas Marketing Tactics – Part 1

Here you’ll find Saas marketing tactics for any Saas business size.

We’ve found that the Saas’s success rate is quite low in the U.K. market.

Why?

Because many Saas lose focus and forget to consult their customer mapping document, and/or marketing tactics, sales.

This is your chance (sometimes unique) to use and apply the bait to get more users. Then think how you could improve the product to keep your customers in.

We will split this into a three-part blog post and we’ll will first look at some free growth tactics.

We’ll then go on to talk in part three with different revenue streams a SaaS business should be looking to add.

Remember nothing in life is totally free and this is even more true in modern marketing.

Only the best Saas businesses that create innovative strategies/tactics will survive and thrive.

The key to succeed:

a) put in place a good marketing/content strategy

b) be customer focussed/centric

c) be agile (redesign your marketing funnel quicker than the competitor).

d) Innovate, test, test and repeat.

Provide value before asking for money. We see quite a few big Saas names betting on this tactic. We’ll see later on which ones are being successful.

So here we go.

Must offer free a 20 to 30 day trial period [Aka subscription model]

Tactic 1: The focus on value and free trials when launching a service/product – is a must. Study your audience inside-out. Then email or call them to suggest your services/product and if they want to try it for free.

This great technique works really well.

You can offer 20 days free trial period up to a full month.

Let me ask you this: What have you got to lose anyway? In my view nothing.

A free trial is your foot on the door, a small opening that will allow you to connect and build confidence and trust with new prospects. Let them play around during that period.

Step 1: Send a first email introduction explaining how it will work going forward.

Step 2: Few minutes later send them those magic video tutorials.

Step 3: Grab your best Faq page to clarify any questions/issues they may have – example: how to fix or get this code/app installed in no time.

Step 4: 4-5 days later offer to come in or setup Zoom call to explain how to maximise the product before they start paying you. If they’re not ready, extend the offer to another week or two.

This is a four fold tactic.

Firstly, you’ve got their attention, secondly you showed professionalism, have them hooked (if they like it), thirdly, a big opportunity to sign them and increase client base; and finally, if they are happy with the service provided they will be your best allies, fans and promoters/advocates.

Saas Customer Service /Support

Tactic 2: The very first thing you should do – write on your to-do list:

“improve customer satisfaction”.

Be clear/specific up front. From day one tell your clients that there is a business SLA in place with distinctive promise.

Example:

Software support response in under an hour.
App is 99% code error free.
Do not charge for extra usage.

Also, tell the client that updates and software speed are a priority and part of your business’s values.

This will increase your clients trust with the brand/product.

Create new tactical marketing channels

Tactic 3: it’s all about the numbers in business. The more users and/or visitors you get the better.

Get your small team to brainstorm and analyse the impact of a new marketing channel. This could be two to three channels. Keep one on standby ready to go once you are getting momentum.

Ensure you invest enough time in the new marketing channels. No need to invest lots of money in marketing to touch significant numbers. There are easy ways to go aboutthis, but we tackle those later on on part two and three.

Saas Marketing Growth hacking Tactic example:

Find and select your best ranking topics and repurpose or convert it into a fun animated video. Then post it on Youtube, Vimeo, etc.

You could also grab your best content and transform it into a colourful infographic.

By being present on these two platforms you could give your business a tremendous boost.

Note: Youtube is the world heavy-weight champion of search engines.

Have you try any of these? Not yet, the why are you waiting?

Go now and give it a try.

Ready for Saas marketing tactics part two?

Thanks for reading it and do share it with friends, coworkers etc.

Image by Gerd Altmann

Jul 31 2018

How Digital Strategy Can Save Businesses?

Have you created your digital strategy space in this (newly created) digital world yet?

If yes, congratulations! You’re safe.

However robust your digital strategy might be you must go back and revise it (preferably) every quarter. Is this needed for your business to survive in this highly competitive online marketplace? Again, the naswer is yes.

Remember that to transform and maximize your business’ effeorts and become successful in the digital arena it will take you more than just creating your own online space.

Keep reading to really understand what I am saying.

What’s digital strategy?

For the newbies, I’d say that “digital strategy is a combination of organised steps mixed with many moving blocks, all depending on processes that are designed to maximize business conversions“. These all geared and supported by data analysis.

Wikipedia describes “digital strategy” as: a form of strategic management and a business answer or response to a digital question, often best addressed as part of an overall business strategy.

Well, I think of it as a planned structure with optimised steps put together to inform and deliver better business results.

Why digital marketing strategy?

Let’s see it under a different angle. Nowadays, you and I are more likely to book an holiday via a web browser search than you would walk or drive to the local agency to book one, right? Hope you see what I mean. And this is why you should invest in digital marketing strategies going forward.

To make your digital strategy glow you’ll need fresh and historical data, that will be guiding your marketing, seo strategy steps. You’ll have to grab some other online tools, processes and tactical approaches. And maybe hire the best digital marketers and/or get the best marketing books if you can find.

The reason is obvious, right. I guess it answers the question, but let me say this – the process and the people count more than the tools used to show you the competitor’s data. You can get those results in a matter of minutes and even seconds – what is working and not, which channel engagement is performing better with your target audiences, etc. But if you can’t decide what to do next you’re in for long ride.

Are you into digital strategy already?

Whilst lots of business owners are still trapped in the old system of business executions, the new digital world does require new approaches to combat the highly-competitive market.

Whether you’re doing in-house or outsourcing it your business will be affected in some way. Trust me it will. And, don’t get me wrong trust no one as mistakes can happen. Some will say buy advertising, invest in building more links or new website for your business for the sake of a digital strategy.

A proper digital strategy should have the capability to transform your business in multiple ways to maximise profits.

For example, the use of:

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Marketing automation
Live chats
Mobile / video marketing
ABM/customer success
Content marketing
Social media marketing
SEO and more.

If you aren’t doing any of the three to four of these steps yet, yes you could as well be described as not having a business in the digital space.

Why is your online strategy struggling?

The digital marketplace has evolved so much that having an attractive/optimised website and great product is not enough.

Let me ask you this:

Are you struggling to keep up with the rapid change in the way consumers want to buy your products or services?

Are you in that situation? Keep reading if your business/company is struggling to find visitors.

Our research informed us that most businesses are having difficulties, or are unable to keep up with the fast and evolving consumer behavior.

There are multiple reasons why this happens. But our findings tell us that these are essentially due to:

a) poor leadership

b) no customer satisfaction strategy

c) lack of relevant SEO/content marketing.

Industry statistics

Stats showed that it will be almost impossible for a non digital business to survive in the next 3 – 5 years and try to reach out an audience. In other words, you’ll close doors as you would not be competitive enough.

That is a bit scary, I agree. But it will come sooner than later.

Another good survey released by Curata showing that only 30% of businesses have a documented strategy – and with an astonishing 70 percent of marketers saying they do not have a formal content strategy in place.

Read more stats at: Smartinsights digital marketing stats 2020

Many don’t have a documented content distribuition process either to feed their marketing channels or to guide them in their journey. They also lack a proper managed content creation/supply plan.

Despite all the above, we read all these stats telling us that content budgets continue to be allocated and been increased year after year.

So, this begs the question: Who should be (in charge) asking for the return on investment and find out why things aren’t working so well?

Enroll to our digital marketing mini course [Updated]

We all know that senior management are always looking to one thing and that is – improving sales revenue and reducing their costs. But often this is done without the approval of experienced managers and effective short-term strategy plans.

Cisco predicts (white-paper) that in 2020 78-80% of mobile traffic will be (just) about video marketing. To sum up, the global mobile data traffic will increase sevenfold by the end of 2021.

As the old saying goes ” You only get what you put in”. One of the many errors is that they keep adding pressure on marketing and sales teams without investing in them (courses, market research, surveys etc.).

The majority of companies may have many skilled people in place, but they often don’t have efficient processes, and supportive technology. It is only obvious, that at some point their teams lack interest or aren’t that motivated. If sales and marketing are mismanaged it will lead to poor execution and profit results.

How to create a digital marketing strategy to save your business?

The term ‘digital strategy’ should not strike fear into you. You simply need to collect your data (old and new), the usual suspects (team) to execute a solid digital plan.

I’d say, depending on the size of your business, your digital strategy should be based on vision, goals, data and short-term aspirations.

But also a successful digital strategy requires a cross-functional team with visions, managerial leadership, solid agile marketing and an information technology (IT) teams.

What is needed to start your digital strategy journey?

To ensure a consistent and howling digital customer experience, a powerful digital strategy is needed to help you break the gaps between all the departments actively involved in your business executions.
You also need:

Content marketing planning

Take note and integrate the following ones:

Vision
Mission statement
Customer plan
Data strategy plan
Content strategy plan
Social media plan
CRM email marketing /marketing automation plan
etc

It’s evident that you will also need:

Real-time data analytics
Customer journey
Content topic creation
SEO content & landing pages
Blogging user stories
Social media campaigns
Video and/or podcast (digital assets)

are the most effective digital content tactics as revealed by clients or prospects reviews. Of course, these are the major aspects of a digital strategy, which by no means will not alone help transform a more scalable business and/or create a large space for you in the digital marketplace with guaranteed results.

However, there’s one major challenge often encountered by digital strategy adopters.

The challenge is – figuring out which part of the strategy should be done in-house, outsourced from a digital strategy provider and/or which should be customised according to prospects and client’s demands in order to be more effective. This is why using a service provider is highly recommended.

Let’s recap.

I do recommend as a priority to update/revise your mission statement, truly understand your customers and revise your customer strategic plan.

Hint: Listen to what your audience needs, wants and try (hard) to create relevant content ( create awareness) for that particular problem/need that will help them solve it.

Which best performing digital channels?

It’s worth emphasizing that in recent years business marketing strategies have evolved around interactive webinars and video content marketing taking the lead including YouTube and Facebook videos. Today you can shedule and make an online demo and sell your product or service at the end of it (…well almost).

There is room for the new technology and savvy channels that are coming fast and furious, such as bots; AI apps; VR etc.

More digital marketing stats with hubspot

To be competitive and influence your market space you’ll need to innovate, collect internal and external data, analyse it to produce and engage with quality content, offer more (but not for less) whilst providing the best possible customer experience.

Your marketing and tactics must be thoroughly agile and revised/evolved every 6-10 months.

Digital innovations have thrown up more opportunities in the marketplace today than in the past five years.

There is good news, however, and the positive side is that there’s equal opportunities for all business owners in the digital realm in order to maximize business profits.

Saying that and I quote “it all depends on how they approach and engage their tactical sequence (digital) and strategic concepts“. This innovation is aimed at responding to customer demands to ensure a stronger customer value proposition.

The major questions here are:

What value could your customers gain from your product/service?
How does this value differ from the one provided by the competition?
Is your business creating compelling content marketing strategies to help your social media/SEO campaigns?
What are your best marketing channels/campaigns to include in an overall strategy?

How to listen and monitor your social media?

FollowerWonk – TweetReach – Likealyzer for FB – IFTTT and Mention.

If this ins’t enough or you aren’t sure what they’re looking for, then ask them directly or run through your industry blog’s comments to pick some ideas (one of my favorite).

Otherwise you can always crowdsource for ideas using your social media channels.

From there, prioritise your target audience to engage them ( promote it @ right times) with the relevant content you created. Remember to optimise your website/blog.

Then pick your content from your content calendar plan so you can create a consistent plan of action for the next coming months.

Explore marketing tools to serve them better, engage daily with video/Podcast marketing and implement/revise your processes and of course.. include good metrics.

Conclusion

Is your company or business ready for this type of change in business model? If you want to stay competitive and open for business, then change/adapt your online strategy now.

We understand that while a traditional technology strategy focuses and relies on 18 months roadmaps and budget forecasts that can take around two years. However, if you adapt a digital strategy focus and rely on short-term, actionable and objective-driven month-to-month roadmaps your business will prosper.

We can help you make that change and focus on where your company’s core and value are more vulnerable to interruptions.

If you or anyone you know is in need of digital marketing expertise in the South East of England or near London get in touch today – get a free assessment to improve the digital/content strategy across all platforms.

In addition to this, we can provide and deliver high quality SEO managed services, consulting advice, and strategies tailored to each clients’ unique goals and needs for maximum benefits.

That is it – you can now share this post, add a comment here if you fancy/thing this post was useful to you and/or if you like to add something else!

Thanks for reading.

Oct 02 2016

9 Plus Essential Plugins To Help Your Content Marketing

Which essential plugins to boost your content marketing strategy?

If you create and deliver content through a WP site you’ll need crucial WordPress plugins to customise your cms to perfection. I’d say as best as you can. With thousands of plugins to choose from, it quickly becomes impossible to find and select the great from the … not so great.

Keep reading and discover which plugins are essential for your WordPress site!

I did test and trial experiments with hundreds of different plugins, and I can now recommend which ones are helpful, safe, faster and secure. That’s all you need really. Forget the fancy ones, who will slow-down your website [content] and keep visitors away. You should always test it after uploading a new plugin – preferably test it off-line with a demo platform.

Before jumping into the best WordPress plugins to help you boost your content marketing, I’d like to tell a bit more about what WordPress is and isn’t all about.

For those of you who know WordPress, I’d suggest jumping to the of the essence WP plugins section. The rest of you should probably continue reading it.

WordPress is an open source content management system (CMS) coded in PHP. It was initially created in January 2003, by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little from the b2 codebase. They created a simple blog editing software. From December 2006 onwards WP became widely popular and surpassed Google Blogger, as people started to write more, they saw the simplicity of creating a blog and how quickly they could go live with their content.

As of 2009, WordPress has been the most popular blogging platform turned-CMS. I guess that the free and premium ready-to-install themes and plugins developed by 3rd party developers helped the wide-spread of WordPress.

As we speak, I am unable to say how many WordPress sites are live, but I guess over 80 million websites if not more. Among them there’s a significant number of corporate, SMBs and freelancers offering their product/services via the WordPress software. Its popularity is due to the easy integration, versatile use and affordable web hosting costs. As it has become more and more popular, WP designers/developers looked to offer businesses a plugin integration, that would:

Help define and optimise SEO
Structure and edit taxonomies
Tagging categories and systems
Metadata descriptions and much more

I believe that the main reason for this is, that not long ago it was costly to build and/or redesign a website from scratch, not to mention that people lacked coding and design skills. So, by offering to install (plug-and-play) plugins ready to accomplish these tasks without requiring any coding knowledge was a major promotional factor and the way to go forward.

Nowadays, we can find WordPress plugins for almost every single task. So, I thought I’d do a bit of leg work and put this list together and recommend the best or the must have plugins that can automatically add meta tags where is needed, generate internal links, recommend popular posts, secure your site and more.

Here, I’ll cover some of the essential plugins for your WordPress – this includes the most powerful and helpful plugins that will take your WordPress content marketing strategy to the next level.

Note: the plugins mentioned here are only available for self-hosted WordPress sites; therefore not available for WordPress.com websites.

We are going to share the top essential WordPress [ free and premium] plugins available to download.

Essential WordPress plugins to help your content marketing strategy

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is one of the best in this industry – also known as the pioneer among its SEO plugins peers. Yoast SEO allows you to quickly go through the essentials of your optimisation process, starting with title and meta tag description.

These are ultra important tasks – even more today, as its the first thing search engines bots will visit. I’d say, it is like grooming your pages/blog posts. You can even adds open graph code to your pages and posts.

Pros: Very easy to install, offering a simple navigational tab system. The Yoast plugin has over 20 million downloads – making it the most widely used SEO plugin ever.

Cons: The setup can be long if you don’t know what to pick within the settings. Until now the tutorials were incomplete, however, I checked [ 28 Jan.2018] and they’ve greatly updated the tutorials. There is a bit of a learning curve with Yoast SEO.

You can also upload Yoast SEO plugin free version from your WP Dashboard. Go to “plugins“- click “Add new” and type Yoast SEO.

Free and Premium subscription.

2. Thrive Content Builder

Thrive Content Builder is a 3-in-1 plugin that offers: professional landing, sales pages, opt-in forms and many other great useful templates to improve content conversions.
A big concern for many business people is how to create and deliver marketing communications topics that involve the creation of persuasive web content pages and/or how to effectively publish it. TCB plugin can help do just that. Yes, seems impossible but it is true.

Whether you want to create sales pages or just create content that will stand out – Content Builder is like having a developper and a designer at your side. Perfect plugin to help create landing and squeeze pages, sales pages and more – it’s versatile, fast and efficient.

Before, I never realised how much time I was spending building and waiting for page reloads – I used to get annoyed. With this essential plugin you can seriously create professional webinars, landing or sales pages in under 15 minutes. This plugin will save you huge amounts of time. See pic below.

Thrive landing pages templates

Pros: Easy to use, comes with over 120 landing pages; Light weight opt-in forms – Offers a drag and drop page builder system that gives you the ability to see exactly how your content will look like while you’re building it.
Cons: Can’t see any. You must create new content or you must edit the older content.

After seeing what this plugin does, I don’t think I could ever work without it. Year ago I didn’t even know it was possible to have this kind of a completely visual editor, but there it is (check the link below for a demo video).

You need to watch the video to see it’s capabilities and features.

Premium subscription – single site: $69 or £53

3. Google XML Sitemaps

A great simple free plugin – Google XML friendly Sitemaps for WordPress websites and blogs. Sitemap is a friendly file that lists all web pages and blog posts on your site, then will simply inform Google and (of course) other search engines about your website content. Works as a informer.

Note: I am sure about having two. If you have any doubts about this go to Yoast SEO > “XML Sitemaps” and unable it. The only thing that matters here is what you have inserted in Google Webmaster. You can also install XML sitemaps for mobile, videos etc. After testing it, Yoast has less granular control over the list of content. In my view Google XML Sitemaps does offer you more options.

Free version

4. Google Analytics

Google Analytics plugin enables you to track your website’s visitors/pages using the G.A tracking code allowing you to view essential key data. Here you can follow their tutorial How to connect your GA.

Pros: easy to install – doesn’t require long settings manipulation. Cons: N/A

Free subscription.

5. W3 Total Cache

Among all the plugins W3 Total Cache plugin is one of the kind you can’t afford to ignore either. It will optimise your WordPress cache by organising and taking the heavy traffic on your server away – by storing static HTML files for the pages on your website and only showing them when needed. In other words – W3 total Cache will help speed up the load time and put less pressure on your Web server. As you may know, Google has no mercy for websites that are slow at loading a page, so don’t allow search engines to penalise your site.

Note: I tried both WP Super Cache and W3 total Cache and the last one is better. Why? becasue its lighter than any other. Especially if you have a lot of different plugins running on your website, because each plugin initiates another script that must run each time your site loads, increasing the website load time. Also remember to disable W3 total Cache when making making design changes to your website, so you can see your design changes in real time, rather than seeing a cached version of your old pages.

Pros: Very effective plugin – integrates well with any other plugin.

Cons: Setting up W3 total is a little complex. However, you can google “How to best setting w3total” and you’ll find a post.

Free and Premium subscription.

6. Akismet or Disqus

This is a must-have plugin for your WordPress website or blog. Akismet is a spam protection plugin that checks your comments against the Akismet Web service to see if they look like spam or not. Akismet spam protection plugin has been downloaded over 18 million times – that’s amazing. Other excellent free option you should consider is Disqus.

Free for personal blogs – Paid version for businesses.

7. Click to Tweet

Click to Tweet plugin will enable you to create tweetable content phrases directly from the blog posts – by adding “Click to Tweet” within your post, you will increase engagement and drive potential traffic to your content marketing. All it takes is a single click to add a Click to Tweet box after a noteworthy quote, message or statistic.

Free subscription.

8. Pretty Link Lite

Pretty Link is the make-up artist when it comes to transform ugly links into clean ones. You can shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website! In addition to creating clean links, Pretty Link also tracks every single hit on your newly written URL and provides a detailed report of where the hit came from, IP and page.

This is a great plugin for those who want to clean up their affiliate links, track clicks from emails, or simply increase the traffic of their website by spreading these links on forums or comments on other blogs.

Free subscription.

Did you know that #cybersecurity plugins are #content marketing greatest ally? Click To Tweet

Cyber security plugins are content marketing greatest ally.

Cyber security consultants like to talk about how easy WordPress is to hack. Yes. This because they know that the WP platform does allow, in some plugin configurations, an unethical hacker to gain access to a website.

This post focus on WordPress websites only. So, I’ll concentrate on how to make it more content effective, user friendly and more secure. The only problem you may face is that WordPress’s security also depends on the way the user sets up the core files and plugins. Obviously, this makes it an easier target for hackers who know that WordPress are often prone to potential security issues.

Here is how to fix that.

9. Wordfence

I recommend Wordfence – among the best security plugins at this moment in time – offer great features and will keep your WordPress more secure.

It blocks brute-force attacks and offers you the option to add two authentication via an SMS. It also includes a firewall to block fake traffic, scanners and botnets. Offers a free (good enough) and premium version – the paid version adds multiple layers of protection.

Pros: Includes Firewall, malware scanner, and live traffic. They’ve improved major features, offering dozens of security settings – from scanning core files for suspicious changes, to blocking countries or individual IPs.
Cons: It will take you some time to master and/or get it set up correctly.

Free and Premium subscription.

Other strong candidates to consider: “All in One WP Security” & Firewall”, “Bulletproof”.

Note: You should take WordPress website security seriously by starting to take care of few basic things:

Preferably use/buy a Premium theme
Setting up secure FTP to upload files
Secure WordPress configuration
Choose a secure admin username (avoid things like – yourname1234)
Create long passwords (at least 12 characters) and change it every 4-6 months
Host your website in a secure managed web hosting server – ( avoid shared servers – to many open ports, but also if other sites don’t follow the same the basics secuirty steps you’ll be exposed.)
Create/configure a secure database prefix
Prevent Brute Force Attack by setting a Login limit to 5-6 attempts
And the most important of all…take daily backup’s

Malware scanning, exploit scanning and brute force protection are some of the features which you must have in your plugin.

Conclusion:

I’ve described the essential WordPress plugins everyone should have. I tested, know and trust all nine. When creating content marketing you’ll need ideas, processes, tools and resources. This is where the plugins described above will came handy to help you analyse, build and improve your content.

I hope you’ll also pick one of the great security plugins I mentioned – I know there is plenty more out there, but these are the ones I recommend. All will evolve based upon user recommendations, needs and adapt themselves to new hacking techniques. So, having security plugins is a must going forward, because they bring great protection to your precious content.

If you’re a small business I’d recommend to download all the plugins. Try more, but do not download unnecessary plugins – just the ones you need or fit your business. In the event you’re unhappy with your website loading pages – run a website speed performance, check which plugins are slowing site down and/or if the problem comes from your web hosting provider.

You will feel more confident and relaxed after having done these – but remember to check and update your plugins every 2-3 days. Plugins installed in your website that do not offer consistent updates, I’d suggest to deactivate and get rid off them.

Final thought, I am a firm believer going forward that “live protection” solutions are the way of the future.

Do share your comments and if possible the great plugins you’ve tried.

Thanks for reading my post

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Jul 31 2014

How Can Small Businesses Create Content and Faster?

Can small businesses find ways to create great content faster than usual? Yes, they can.

How?

The majority of content marketing ideas will come to you based on discussions, inspiration or ideas that you and/or your team generate during your work.

How Small Businesses Create Content?

Here, I’ll show a very effective way for small and medium businesses owners to overcome the content creation hurdle.

Read on and you’ll see how the idea to write this article came to me.

You’ve probably noticed that the web is populated with good websites, blogs full of tips, ideas and other resources. Take some inspiration from other people’s blogs. Analyse, try adding new angles and build from there.

Another example: any conversation with a colleague or client could end-up with a particular subject content line, rather like this article did.

I thought I’d help you accelerate the content creation process by putting this together in one place and save you time.

Why Brainstorm Content Can Give You (Ideas)Wings?

Brainstorming will help you produce faster and genuine content ideas, as it stimulates your creative (brain) thinking in a very short period of time.

This will also help you increase productivity (article volume), generate theme groups for your audience, organise subjects, headings, sub-headings, develop and further discuss your multiple selection for the next posts.

But it also has the massive advantage to help you identify new topics including types of keyword phrases that you normally would not think of and/or consider.

Another very important aspect to think about before planning a brainstorm, is to involve external people or colleagues who are not working on that particular project. They’ll bring a really fresh perspective to the table, you’ll see.

Why content marketing audit/Assessment?

Go and establish your business benchmarking. You should start by checking which content is performing better.

Your content marketing assessment will allow you to get: a realistic view/picture of where you stand in your current content marketing strategy.

The content areas of evaluation should include:

Content marketing knowledge
Identify your main objectives
Existing or best internal performig assets
Competitive insight
Resources available
Plan & Channel distribution
Internal process of documentation
Control and measurement

How to find and/or create content ideas for your persona groups?

Solution: You need to create a user mapping or visual representation of the specific content that you will be creating to each buyer persona based on their stage in the buying cycle.

As I’ve already touched upon, the reasons why every business owner should give brainstorming content material a go are endless.

Those who plan ahead will fill-up their editorial calendar more often and are more likely to take control of how, why and when to communicate with their customers. Also, everybody knows time can be your worst enemy, making very difficult to concentrate and write fast new content everyday.

So, keep these pointers in mind:

Create brainstorming sessions as often as you can
Define primary content creation phases

Map out/Collect materials or ideas beforehand in a notebook

Email colleagues, marketing, sales team your topic a week in advance, so they come prepared and relaxed for the brainstorming session – remember, not just people working on the project!

Six steps to create content faster

What are you going to write next? Whether it’s an article, sales campaign, event or new product coming up, here is how you can create content faster in just six steps:

1. Engage your brain: with issues or subjects that need quick resolutions. Remember and ask “Who is your reader?” then go create or check your customer persona doc, this must describe the various behavioral points/features of your users.

2. Choose attractive headlines: These are the bee’s nectar, a headline is so important as it delivers the tone and is the first thing that the human eye reads. This must be apowerful single line to help users understand the purpose, value of what you’re trying to achieve.

3. Create prime keyphrases: offer a unique value proposition, summarise it. Example: My App/service allows you to book this and this. Very important for the fluidity and continuity of your content material.

4. Content structure: Start with the problem in mind – Create a first basket of main title ideas and why not do the same for sub-titles and keywords. Then group it and sum-up pages explaining the topic and/or sub-topic in detail.

5. Format type: Whilst brainstorming you must select which format you’re looking to get for your content, so write it down. Also think what type of devices you want to show content.

6. Be specific: Why do you want to create a video? What is the final purpose? Who will do it… You must be realistic about your choice and processes. Is it because it offers a great visual value/impact, more than a podcast? When you’re ready to end your brainstorming session, ready it all and select the best option for your project.

Why am I giving away my personal content strategy tactics?

Recently, one of my clients asked if I had any ideas on how he could manage to create content more often. I said, yes I’ve got some. Then it occurred to me that I could also turn this into a useful article post.

Here I am, sharing tools, (not the Brian Adam’s song) ideas that work, and to be honest who doesn’t like cool tips or new ideas. I believe, we all can benefit from sharing good post and re-sharing it with friends and family. You can also use this technique and improve yours. Do you get the idea? I’ll explain this at a later date on another related topic.

One of my preferred sayings teaches us to be open minded – it says: ” how can you get something from someone if your hand is closed “.See the picture? What goes around comes around. Now, go try this tactic right away.

Click the image below to see the major challenges businesses are facing when it comes to create content. I’d add “creating content for your audience” to this list as it is the hardest one. We could say its already in “Producing a variety of Content”.

Image from : CMI -Content Marketing Institute

[Update for 2020 and beyond]

Most of us have noticed that the main priorities have shifted. We are better off updating existing content rather than producing new [quantity]. However, we will need to create content that is relevant and serves users. This can be translated onto E.A.T. – this stands for: Expertise, Authority and Trustworthy.

Hint: Read Google quality guidelines

A good rule of thumb is to explain, keep it simple and update it when it comes to deliver better content. But always ask yourself: “Does this help my readers/users?

These techniques are great if you’re a one man band or a very small team.

Lets’ start with these free tools. Yes, I mention free.

Content challenges and options – two options to choose from:

First option: create an account with Trello here. Its a free web-based project management tool that allows you to manage everything you want. From blog writing, small projects to team management… Its a great app, extremely easy to use. See Access Trello – It’s free.

Keep reading.

Second option: subscribe to our e-newsletter and I’ll email you my own content board and/or Quadrant-Channels-Keywords spreadsheet to quickly help you visualise what you’re writing. This will include keywords worksheet and – social media calender along with many other freebies .

Swiftly moving on..

I recently discovered this awesome piece of technology called Buzzsumo – I was so amazed that my first thought was, what kind of word can I check for existent titles or top content articles? Wow, I said, I was amazed as this saved me few hours of surfing the web. And not only that, it also offers you a bonus – it shows you the most shared content for any topic, plus you can download it .. and also check by location all that .. for free. Isn’t that great? Yes, I couldn’t believe myself.

So, access buzzsumo. Easy and quick to register – then get your list out (brainstorming) and be ready to get a fast a different approach.

This will streamline your work faster, allowing you to quickly find content that is working for your competitors and/or social media influencers. Did you notice I am writing in the present tense?

Here is why:

You can now quickly search for keyphrases and identify content that’s been read and shared around your particular topic.

You can see what your followers and influencers are sharing.

You can find other business people’s topics that will provide infographics/data to include within your article content.

You can easily delete irrelevant topics from the list, when you download it in .csv list; or simply by making a new or better one.

When you know which subject you want to write about, this tool will deliver great results in no time. After just a few minutes you’ll have spare material and lots to think about, I promise you.

Also in one click of a button you can filter format type – You can choose to extract all the relevant videos only, or get a particular infographic, interviews, guest posts. This is very useful when you run out of time and want to find a relevant url to add at the end of your article (use their advance search operators).

Job done.

Surprised?

Which one to choose from – influencers or brand followers?

Influencers: are individuals or brands that have huge amount of followers or social media presence. You may ask them if they’re willing to promote your brand or service to their large audience.

Brand followers: are satisfied customers or prospects that will follow you all the way.
You better off giving something to a brand or advocate follower as this might get your name circulating on social media for a couple of weeks and benefit is great.

How to create content.. faster – the extra bonus [formula]

Step 1: Understand what your audience’s needs are

Step 2: Start with a relevant subject/topic

Step 3: Write a captivating intro

Step 4: Follow a sequence and organise your content

Step 5: Write often and cut back irrelevant stuff

Step 6: Find a fun, educational or trending title

Step 7: Proofread your content/post

Step 8: Check: formating, bullet-points, call-to-action etc

Step 9: Ask a competent person to re-proofread

Step 10: Publish and share it

Let’s sum-up the content creation process:

you’ve performed a brainstorming session;
downloaded trello/ spreadsheet to log material;
used buzzsumo to find web articles, existent titles, that you need to compare or get inspiration from so what else do you need?
Maybe create sub-headings and keyphrases?
Followed the six steps
Follow the extra bonus checklist

This will lead us to the keyword optimisation process, those are the terms you logged during your brainstorming session. Grab those and copy them into your keyword list or software. Remember to formulate keyphrases that could lead people to your page.

Hint: There’s several fantastic tools to help all types and sized businesses. Try Wordtrack as they allow you to perform 5 free keyword searches. I tried them in the past, very useful as the tool charns out the top 10 keywords suggestions plus SERPs along with Amazon and Youtube preview . It’s really helpfull, try it as they offer seven days free trial.

Note: You should also try Google Adwords; Google Keyword Planner, but also give Ubersuggest a go as it would help you take your keywork research to the next level.

Many argue the fact that free tools such as Ubersuggest do not provide enough quality content – I dispute that, specially if you’re short of cash. Seriously give it a try, it has improved lots – now a cutting-edge tool whilst delivering fast results.

It is among the most useful in my opinion. It takes the same terms suggested by Google Suggest and displays it in an alphabetical order giving you a considerable amount of keywords and phrases ideas that you can copy and paste. But does it better.

By the way feel free to use these same phrases to build other topics, as they’ll be highly searched for.

If your main focus is to create content for mobile devices, here is the tool that will help you do the job and research your competitors best keywords – called Appmind. Don’t be shy, read and capture their descriptions, titles for more keyword ideas. Very helpful and a time saver too.

Conclusion:

The outcome of this exercise is quite simple really – if you follow these steps I guarantee that you’ll quickly find new keywords and will improve your content and/or topics. By following the above you’ll help yourself find new or related blogs, keywords, compare themes/topics, improve and/or create better content than your competitor. Not excluding the time you’ll save.

As we all know.. time is money, right.

I really hope this post will bring you some light, so go now and try it all.

Remember to build upon your list of suggestions, optimise and start creating smart great content. Now that you have the tools, the framework, you just need to find some time and organise yourself.

Tip and Action time: To improve content pages you need to analyse your data. Here is a great post explaining how to setup Google analytics: beginner’s guide to Google analytics.

Lets get started.

Ahh, yes, I’d appreciate if you could email us your new ideas, comments but and share it.

P.S: Post’s comments are now closed.

If you’re writing content yourself – you might want to grab our Editor Checklist sample to guide you through.

Good luck!

Updated on 30.05.2020

Content Marketing Examples

Let’s assume you own a startup or a SaaS

What does it mean to you?

You need a documented content marketing strategy including Saas selling tactics

Tactic 4: Persona mapping to help your content

Tactic 5: Create awesome content

The challenges you’ll face if you’re in business already:

Tactic 6: Create (seductive) visual content

Tactic 7: Guest blogger

Tactic 8: Answer how-to questions on (LQR) LinkedIn, Quora, Reddit

The main steps to take are:

Must offer free a 20 to 30 day trial period [Aka subscription model]

This is a four fold tactic.

Saas Customer Service /Support

Create new tactical marketing channels

Saas Marketing Growth hacking Tactic example:

Related Posts

What’s digital strategy?

Why digital marketing strategy?

Are you into digital strategy already?

Why is your online strategy struggling?

Industry statistics

How to create a digital marketing strategy to save your business?

What is needed to start your digital strategy journey?

Content marketing planning

Which best performing digital channels?

How to listen and monitor your social media?

Conclusion

Related Posts

Which essential plugins to boost your content marketing strategy?

Essential WordPress plugins to help your content marketing strategy

1. Yoast SEO

2. Thrive Content Builder

3. Google XML Sitemaps

4. Google Analytics

5. W3 Total Cache

6. Akismet or Disqus

7. Click to Tweet

8. Pretty Link Lite

Cyber security plugins are content marketing greatest ally.

9. Wordfence

Conclusion:

Creating and achieving SMART marketing goals in five steps. [Updated in 2019]

Why we all need content marketing?

Top reasons why World marketers include Content marketing in their strategy:

What are S.M.A.R.T Goals?

Specific

Two examples below – a generic one and a much specific goal:

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Timely

To sum up:

How Small Businesses Create Content?

Why Brainstorm Content Can Give You (Ideas)Wings?

Why content marketing audit/Assessment?

The content areas of evaluation should include:

Six steps to create content faster

Why am I giving away my personal content strategy tactics?

Content challenges and options – two options to choose from:

Which one to choose from – influencers or brand followers?

How to create content.. faster – the extra bonus [formula]

Let’s sum-up the content creation process:

Conclusion: