Content Marketing

How to Create a Content Calendar for Social Media Posts?

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Whether you are promoting your own blog or managing social media accounts for multiple clients, a social media content calendar can always help. It takes away the pain of juggling between different platforms, creating posts, and managing those online. All you need to do is learn how to create a content calendar and take your marketing hacks to the next level.

A thoughtfully designed content calendar can help stay consistent with your social media posts. And it is easy to master too.

Here is a complete guide to creating a content calendar and making the most of it. 

What is a Social Media Content Calendar?

A social media calendar consists of all the pre-planned social media posts that you want to publish in the coming days, weeks or even months. 

Based on your goals, you can keep the calendar as basic as possible or add detailed information to make it advanced and highly comprehensive. 

For instance, just add the date and time of posting the content on different platforms. Or include the posts, target audience, product, and service details along with the posting frequency. 

In other words, you can choose to be as strategic as you want with your content. In return, it will allow you to have complete control over consistency and relevance.

Thankfully, you do not need to do it all yourself. Apart from the traditional excel sheets to design calendars, you can also use various tools designed for this specific task. These help you store information such as:

  • Platform Chosen: You can opt between, or all the social media platforms supported 
  • Type of Content: Plain text, video etc
  • Posting Date and time: Schedule your post.
  • Post Topic: Decide the topics you want to utilize for each post
  • Post content: Write the posts in advance and schedule them to go live as intended
  • External Sources: Add any links or images you wish to add to your post

These are just a few handfuls of examples of what you can strategize beforehand. The list can go on and on, depending on the need.

Do You Need a Social Media Content Calendar?

“I would recommend trying it once and then deciding for yourself!”

Some things are better done than explained. With that said, if you think being spontaneous with the posts is the way to go, you need to try scheduling them first.

While it’s easy to learn how to create a content calendar, the perks seem more worthwhile. 

  • Stay ahead of your schedule and get rid of the last hour of brainstorming
  • Create a balance between the timed posts and those that are evergreen
  • Keep posts up to date with upcoming events in advance
  • Maintain consistency and a flow that your subscribers can relate to
  • Track performance of the posts with the help of metrics 
  • Carry A/B testing 
  • Compare the performance results and plan your next content design accordingly

How Does a Social Media Content Calendar Help?

Do you think posting content on social media platforms is all that’s needed to achieve bigger goals?

Sadly, it’s just the beginning. Following this comes analyzing the metrics, finding what’s working and what’s not, comparing results with competitors and your past performance and a lot of other tasks. 

A social media content calendar, with detailed information, can become a great aid in easing your overall tasks. Such as:

Keep You Consistent

Unlike computers, it is difficult to save every piece of memory inside your brain. Without a content calendar, it is not possible to remember every post and its details made on various platforms. 

A content calendar with upcoming posts, on the other hand, keeps track of everything. You can make sure you are not forgetting to post, regardless of how busy you get. Never miss the date and perfect timing for releasing your posts. 

Avoid Mistakes and Human Errors

By planning posts in advance, you get chances to review and rectify errors, if any, prior to the post date. Whether it’s silly spelling mistakes or incorrect redirections, you can ensure that everything is clean and perfect.

Take Leverage from Cross-Functional Visibility

Collaborating on social media posts needs great transparency between teams to stay in sync. Everyone posting on their own can never build a robust digital marketing strategy for a business. 

Hence, a content calendar provides the central source for all posts in one place. Providing every team member, a clear view of what others are planning.

Get started with social media analytics

There is no benefit to posting on social media accounts if you cannot analyze the performance. A content calendar enables you to check what’s working and what’s not. It ensures that you focus on the right content and correct social media platform. 

How to Create a Content Calendar?

Frankly speaking, you can complete your social media calendar using just a spreadsheet.

Analyse your Social Media Marketing Goals

“Success comes to those who plan it in advance.”

So, before getting right into calendar creation, you must plan your move. It is crucial to review your final goal and the ones that come in between. 

Discuss with your team and come up with the SMART goal objectives. Review the KPIs which will help measure the posts’ performance against the set goals. It could be about increasing awareness or getting conversions. 

Next comes the social media accounts where you will be posting your content. Hence, you must gather all the related information that might help plan your posts. 

  • Goals concerning each platform
  • Your target audience demographics
  • Details of prior campaigns and their performances
  • Loopholes in previous campaigns on these platforms
  • Choosing the right social media accounts

In addition, you must also plan the role of different team members taking care of these social media platforms.

Plan Your Consistency

A content planner will help you stay consistent. What’s even more interesting is that it’s you who gets to choose the frequency of that consistency. 

With a large team to take care of the different aspects of social media platform management, you can always choose to post multiple times every day. 

On the contrary, if you work alone, you can set a more realistic goal. Post once or twice a day and stay consistent with that plan. Thankfully, most of the popular platforms credit those who are consistent, even if there is just one post in a day.

Come Up with Content Topics

Breaking the social media posts into categories can help you stay vibrant with your posts whole touching the assorted likes of your target audience. 

And categorising can be done using two different approaches:

  • 80/20 Rule

As a marketer, you should never feel too pushy. Or else, your audience might consider you spam.

To avoid that, simply apply the 80/20 rule to categorize your posts. According to this rule, 80 per cent of your posts must try to engage and educate your audiences. While 20 per cent left can be utilized for promoting your business. 

  • The Rule of Thirds

Content with no variation starts becoming boring. Hence, applying the rule of thirds helps a lot.

It suggests posting one-third of promotional content, one-third of curated shared content, and the remaining consisting of the collage of personal interactions with subscribers and followers.

Create the Social Media Calendar

Once you have all the details in place, open the excel sheet to fill in the post details. Here, you must design a template that resonates with your goals. Define post categories, number of posts and other information to complete the calendar.

How to Create a Calendar in Google Sheets?

The job is much similar to what you will do with a Microsoft Excel sheet. All you need to do is, open a new Google Sheet. And plan the calendar as you would with a normal excel sheet.

Source credit: Medium

How to Create a Calendar in Canva?

Creating a content calendar in Canva is very simple. Just a few steps and you can design your first content calendar in no time.

Sign In with Your Canva Account

Open Canva and sign in with your account username and password. 

Choose the Template

Canva has hundreds of templates for designing social media content calendars. You can use keywords to narrow down the template choices. If you find what you are looking for, just click on it and choose. 

Enjoy the Great Features

Use Canva’s library with millions of stock images, photos, memes and more to create content. Format the posts using your selected colour scheme, font styles and more.

Keep Personalizing

You can mix and match template designs, upload photos, text and more to customize the content as per your need. 

Publish the Calendar

Make sure to save the calendar once done. You can also share the content calendar with your team members. The posts could be scheduled for publishing automatically. Hence, you can just relax and let Canva do the job.

The Conclusion

Now that you know how to create a content calendar for social media posts, it’s time to give it a try. And do not forget to leave comments if you find any problem creating your first calendar. 

Ways to Repurpose Content for Blogs, Social Media and YouTube

/ chandni / 2 Comments

Do you know there are many ways to repurpose content? Yes, you can actually use your old blogs, videos and every social media post with a twist to create fresh content. This not only saves time but lets you focus on other important things too. 

I understand! Content is the key to success for businesses. However, it’s just a small part of the many things you are responsible for. Such as planning strategies for scaling your company, upgrading your products and much more. 

Let alone, you do need time for yourself. Hence, why not repurpose content if the data and insights are relevant, although written in the past? 

With that in mind, let us figure out the ways to repurpose content for various media. I will also introduce a few applications and solutions that could really ease your task manifold. So, stay tuned!

What is Content Repurposing?

It goes by its name – content repurposing. Simply put, it’s the process of bringing new life out of the old written piece no one cares about anymore. 

If that’s dramatic, I haven’t even started yet! There are many benefits of this marketing strategy. And you can master this art without spending tons of money on an online course. 

Use the already existing content to create something fresh and catchy. For instance, if you have a blog post, why not extract some key pointers and list those in a tweet while also referring to the link to your blog. 

Or, get a screenshot of the pros and cons of the blog and post it on your social media account. It’s all about how creative you can get while not falling prey to plagiarism. 

Why is Content Repurposing in Such a Hype? – Perks Explained!

Content writers spend hours researching a topic. From outline creation to putting words together to finding high authority sources to link to. There isn’t just one job to write a blog. 

And all that effort has a lifespan of a few days or a week. That is unfair. Repurposing content is what can help extend the lifeline of the written content.

What’s fascinating is that the perks do not end here. You can do a lot more. The opportunities are endless if you dare to look through the usual trends. 

Content repurposing helps:

  • Reach more people than you connected with earlier
  • By changing the format, let’s say from a blog to a social media post, you can reach a wider audience base
  • Get more time to spend on your major business goals
  • Reduce the workload of your digital marketing expert and limit the team size to enhance ROI
  • Written once, the content can be repurposed for different channels

All these benefits come along with the leisure time you get to spend with your loved ones on a beach. 

But before you proceed to make new content formats out of old versions, ask yourself:

“Can I Repurpose Every Content Out There?”

Not sure, let’s find out!

What to Consider Before Repurposing Your Content?

First thing first, you must assess your goals for repurposing content. It is important to visualize which content is doing well and at which stage of a funnel.

  • Do you want to increase your brand awareness? 
  • Are you looking to attract more leads to your website?
  • Looking forward to more sales closures?

When you know what you want in terms of results, it becomes easy to pick the right content. 

There are a few things you must also look at before choosing a content to repurpose:

  • Is the content evergreen? – Repurposing a Black Friday sales post on a usual day might put you off track
  • Picking the right social media channel for the repurposed content – For instance, a B2B post will be more suitable for LinkedIn rather than Snapchat or Instagram.
  • Repurpose seasonal content during the apt times

If you already have everything in place, we can proceed to the ways to repurpose content. Trust me, there are quite a few wonderful tactics to use the same content over and over again, without sounding boring.

What Are the Ways to Repurpose Content for Different Content Styles?

As discussed, there are many ways to do it. And, for different formats of content, you can find different repurposing solutions.

How to Repurpose Content for Social Media?

Take Screenshots

A Tweet I repurposed for LinkedIn Post by converting it into a screenshot

What if I say you can turn your tweets into LinkedIn posts? That too, without changing it at all. 

You have heard it right! I am not asking you to copy and paste, but you still can do it.

If your tweet is getting huge traction, it is time to reach more audiences that might like it too.

Deciding to change the format or language might disrupt the beauty of your message. So, you can simply take a screenshot of your tweet and post it as an image on your LinkedIn account. 

Just make sure that the screenshots are high quality and the texts are visible. There are many amazing tools that can help you create wonderful screenshots.

And you can use this trick for different social media accounts. 

Tool Tip: Twinsta is one such tool that helps you turn your tweets into Instagram posts. It’s completely free and also lets you schedule the posts. 

Create Quotes

Social media posts attracting too many views or comments might help you get even more from them. 

If you can, repurpose the posts into quotes. Use media editing tools to perfect the design. There are many online tools that come in handy for beginners with no prior experience with Photoshop.

Tool Tip: Canva can help you create wonderful infographics. Create memes, quotes or images as you like. Apart from the paid membership, the application also has a free version that works just fine for such tuning. 

How to Repurpose Blog Content?

Join Quora

Quora is one of the most popular question-and-answer platforms out there. People post questions from almost every industry and field. 

This gives us the opportunity to use the pointers from our related blogs to answer the question. Plus, adding the link to our blog for further reading would get us more viewers. 

Agree? Let’s go further!

Mix and Match to Create eBook

Have you been writing on a particular topic for a while now? Do you think when combined together the content is worth something?

If the answer to these questions is a ‘YES’, you have found one of the best ways to repurpose content. And, it’s never going to get older.

You can use the eBook to get leads from your website. Ask users to download a free eBook for their contact details in return. Or, add a price tag for the eBook. 

Whatever works for you, it’s fine. As long as you are meeting your goals, you can continue what you like.

Make a Video

Canva Review – The Only Graphic Design Tool You Need? 

Sharing your blog links on social media platforms isn’t something new. A lot of people do it. But most of us do not do it right. 

We either just share links or let WordPress do that for us. Yes, WordPress does have a feature of automatic sharing on social media accounts while publishing the post. 

But these won’t unless you add a twist to the process. Recently I came across a short video creation tool (mentioned a little ahead). It helps turn a few lines of your blog posts into a short video.

How about you share the video on your social media accounts with the blog link for further information.

After all, images and videos are more powerful ways to attract the attention of viewers. So, why not put them to action when it’s easy as a breeze. 

Tool Tip: Lumen5 is an AI-powered video editing tool that helps convert blogs into short videos. They have free as well as paid versions.

Showcase Your Stats

Isn’t statistics content too? Well, let me put it in the other way. You must have seen people posting statistics on social media accounts. 

If that counts for content, why not your blog’s stats. Use the statistics from your popular blogs to post on social media accounts. Do not forget to add links to your blog.

Tool Tip: Google Analytics will help pull the records of the performance of the blog. You can use that stat to flaunt your authority and boost the traffic to your website.

How to Repurpose YouTube Videos?

Trim the Video

YouTube allow us to upload long-length videos. However, when creating an Instagram story or a Facebook story, the minutes are limited. 

Hence, you can trim your videos to fit the content with the requirements of other platforms. Use the watch more link to redirect users to your YouTube Video.

Get Snippets

If you have learnt it for the blogs, you can do it for the YouTube Videos as well. Get some points out of the long video and post it on social media accounts. There are many repurposing content examples that prove the worth of these small efforts. 

The Conclusion

Do not stop just here! These are just a few ways to repurpose content. If you can think of more ways, go ahead. The sky is the limit. For instance, use blog post content to create podcasts. Or, use how to guide blogs to create infographics for Twitter or LinkedIn. Just do it!

How to do Your Website SEO Analysis? 

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Websites’ organic reach strength among its audience depends on several factors. With Google constantly making changes to its SEO algorithm, companies often find it baffling to understand how to measure the performance of their website. That is where Website SEO Analysis becomes very crucial.

It helps locate the areas where businesses can improve their website SEO health for better reach. By making a few changes to your website, you can also find a place on the first page of Google. 

Tools such as Google Analytics, SEMrush and many others provide a deeper insight into the various aspects of your website SEO. Using those data, you can come up with a thoughtful plan to better your SEO strategy.

So, without any further ado, let’s roll! 

Businesswoman using a tablet to analysis graph company finance strategy statistics success concept and planning for future in office room.

What is an SEO Analysis?

SEO analysis provides you with all the information related to the various factors that help rank on the top page of search engines. By auditing your website, you can identify the gaps restricting you from becoming visible online. 

Thus, it becomes simpler to optimize the website to boost your ranking on Google searches. 

Is Website SEO Analysis Important?

You must have heard that consistency matters when it comes to SEO. However, what if you are trying harder but in a completely opposite direction. 

All the efforts will go in vain unless you identify the problems and optimize your plans to solve them. 

That’s exactly what a Website SEO Analysis helps you to achieve!

You gain helpful insights by performing the SEO analysis and get a direction on what improvements are needed. 

It could be the irrelevant site’s content or different technical aspects that might be stopping you from ranking on the top page. But without exactly knowing about the disease, how would you proceed with the treatment. 

In short, if you want to become visible on search engines and drive traffic to your website, you need to analyze SEO. 

How to Perform SEO Analysis for your Website?

The SEO analysis can be divided into three parts. And you must check all these aspects to optimize your website for search bots.

  • On-page SEO: These are the parameters that you can control on your website. For instance, the keyword selection, content (structure, quality and relevancy with your keywords), the HTML source code, meta-tags, media etc.
  • Off-page SEO: Quite different from the On-Page SEO, Off-page SEO relates to the actions you perform outside your website. It mostly refers to link building. The higher the number of articles linking to your website, the better is your website’s authority.  
  • Technical SEO: This is where you optimize the website for the crawlers to index your pages. Such as page speed, sitemap and more.

Analyze Your Website SEO Health in 8 Simple Steps

Among all the SEO parameters, there are 10 that you must always keep in check. 

#1 Website Visibility on Search Engines

It is important to find out where you stand in terms of your website position on Google. Check which all pages from your website are available on Google for users to click.

#2 Analyze URL along with the Site’s Meta Description

URL matters – and it matters a lot! When optimizing your URL, make sure to follow these guidelines:

  • Keep the URL Length to 4-5 words. 
  • URL must contain your focus keyword

If you see any difference from the above pointers, edit the URLs. This way, the search engine would find it easy to identify your pages based on your keywords. 

Likewise, when writing a meta description, ensure the following:

  • It’s not exceeding the word limit
  • The description is attractive enough to nudge users to click on them
  • Includes the focus keyword

#3 Work on Your Titles and Headings

When popping on the search result pages, the first thing that grabs attention is the page’s title. Hence, you must choose attractive titles. The same goes with the headings. These must be interesting. 

In addition, your headings and titles must have keywords. 

Note: Keywords with high search volume are the most complex to rank for. Therefore, you can try long-tail keywords for ranking on SERPs. 

#4 Check Your Website’s Backlinks

Inbound links are the links that are directed to your website from another website. With higher inbound links, the domain authority of the website increases. Search engines consider websites with higher inbound links as trustworthy sources. 

Thus, it helps improve your website rank on Google. However, you must stay wary of the spam links. If you are getting too many inbound links from the low authority sites, it will decrease the trust quotient of your website.

Hence, when evaluating your inbound links, delete the ones that are spammy.

#5 Check the Broken Links

Broken links aren’t just too irritating for visitors, but they attack the SEO health of your website. Therefore, you must tackle them sooner. 

Open the Google webmaster tools to locate your website’s broken links to optimise them. You can choose to correct those links. Or you can even go with 301 redirects to valid URLs. Or just take them away completely.

#6 Perfect Your Content

How can we ignore content? After all, content is what keeps your visitors glued to your pages. So, ensure these when you write your posts:

  • Never copy and paste your content. Always write unique content
  • Contents must be error-free and high-quality
  • Use only one H1 heading with a keyword included
  • At least one of the subheadings must include a keyword too
  • You must also include the keyword in the first and last paragraph

Note: You can use Yoast SEO to check the readability and SEO score of the posts.

#7 Check Your Media Files

Posts without images look dull and unattractive. However, when including images, you must make sure that these are high quality and do not appear pixelated. At the same time, images must be too heavy, or it would affect your page load speed. 

Never forget to optimize the alt text of your images with the focus keyword. If you follow these simple tips, your SEO score will get better. 

#8 Page Load Speed 

Pages that load faster are more likely to stay on the top results. That being said, visitors often neglect websites that take too much time to load. It results in a higher bounce rate. 

Simply put, even if you start ranking on top results for all the great SEO efforts, a slow page load speed will take you down as faster. 

Check your page speed insights on Google and optimize the website accordingly.

#9 (Additional Tip) – Do Competitor Website Analysis

It is very crucial to keep a check on what’s working for your competitors. Use free website audit tools to find out how your competitors are ranking well. Check their keywords usage, page speed and other factors and compare those with your website audit results.

By performing competitor website analysis, you can easily improve your website’s SEO health.

The Conclusion

Ranking on Google is not easy. There are many companies and businesses struggling to rank for the same keyword. However, with consistent efforts in the right direction, you can make it through. 

Hence, always perform your website SEO analysis from time to time to stay on top of results. 

Six Cognitive Biases – Help Influence Your Buyers’ Decisions 

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Many marketers ignore learning about human psychology, not knowing that the two fields are strongly intertwined. However, the fact is, by understanding how purchase decisions depend highly on human behaviour, marketers can turn their strategies to their advantage. Therefore, knowing about these six cognitive biases is very essential.

These biases are the cause of unpredictable human behaviour. When utilized correctly, these can help businesses succeed exponentially.

Please note that there are around 100 cognitive biases. However, using each one of these for fabricating your marketing strategies will only make things complex. Hence, we will stick with the major biases. 

What Are Cognitive Biases?

Cognitive biases are the reasoning mistakes that people do when making decisions. Instead of focusing on the real factors, people involve their past experiences, social boundaries, preconceptions, and other influences to conclude their decisions. 

The good news is, based on these top six cognitive biases, it becomes easy to manipulate your buyers’ buying priorities. 

All you must do is, find out what these biases are and use them to build the most effective marketing campaigns. 

Six Cognitive Biases – What Are These?

Driven by human A/B testing, scientists came up with some very strong cognitive biases to help marketers with their campaigns. 

I have curated the six cognitive biases that are highly active within consumers. 

1.     Availability cascade

“Repeat something multiple times and see it come true”

If you know about this phrase, you will easily understand what the Availability cascade means. Precisely, the more we hear about a belief and the more it keeps getting popular among people, it starts becoming more plausible. 

Hence, in marketing terms, when you keep repeating yourself, everyone starts thinking it as true, irrespective of the information authenticity.  

Let’s take a simple example. We have all heard stories of haunted houses when we were young. However, going to that same place now will still make you uncomfortable, isn’t it? 

It is because your brains are wired to that truth – the house is haunted!

Marketers can use this bias in remarketing campaigns. Showing the same ad multiple times does nudge the buyers to make a prompt decision.

2.     Confirmation Bias

This happens when someone goes to any length to confirm their belief by researching and interpreting information. 

For instance, when we support a candidate during elections, we often ignore their negative feedback while sticking to only positive ones. Even when the negative emotions overweigh the positive opinions, that does not change our views.

Marketers can use this bias to their advantage. The most suitable way to do this is by keeping consistency between your landing page and the ad that redirects to it. The bias is also useful for making remarketing strategies. 

3.     Herd Mentality

This bias stops people from using their independent analysis to make an informed decision. On the other hand, they follow what maximum people believe. 

To utilize this bias for your interest, use testimonials and reviews to back your product or service. 

4.     Loss Aversion

People do not like to lose things they already own. Even when you offer something of the same value or even greater in exchange. 

Marketers can cleverly use this bias by offering customers free samples. And losing on these products would feel like a huge loss afterwards. 

You can also offer discounts for a short period of time to influence buyers to make quick buying decisions.

5.     Framing Effect

The simpler and more straightforward the information is, the higher its probability of being accepted. 

Let’s look at these two examples:

A – The product worth INR 1000 is available at a discounted price of INR 850.

B – Buy a product for INR 1000 and get it at one-third of its price.

Among these two options, consumers will often click on offer A. This is because of the simplicity of its design. 

That said, you must now know how to use this bias for your campaign’s success.

6.     The IKEA Effect

According to this bias, people value products if they feel their involvement in them in any way possible. Even if the product does not entice them at first. 

As a marketer, you can help your customers feel a part of the product’s journey. You can ask for their feedback, and input when coming up with new features.

Or, asking them for their preferences during product creation. These steps can significantly help improve sales. 

The Conclusion

Marketers must find out which among these six cognitive biases will suit best their campaign goals. Hence, you must consider the objectives of your marketing strategies and the target audience before leveraging on these biases. 

Best Content Management Tools – Which One You Must Pick?

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Websites aren’t about just beautiful designs and simple navigation anymore. Users expect more from what they see online. And everything boils down to the content and its visualization. Therefore, picking up the best content management tools matter so much.

I am Chandni, a blogger who prefers nothing less than perfection when it comes to content generation. Writing for more than 7 years now, it aches when to see my write-ups suffer just because the tool is missing a common feature. 

Thankfully, there are several wonderful content management tools that pack amazing and valuable features. So, you are not left with a few handful functions that just nudge the surface a little.

In this article, I will list those popular solutions that stand out from the many choices available for users today. From a simple management interface to tons of amazing tools, these recommendations would certainly up your content creation game. 

How to Choose Best Content Management Tools?

You must know how crucial these applications are in affecting the success of marketers. That said, there is no way you can go wrong with the selection of these tools. 

Here are some of the things you must look for when choosing the right content management tool:

Platform’s Flexibility

Professionals always look for solutions that can ease their efforts and quickly complete the job at hand. From landing pages to testimonial pages, these must not take a lifetime to design. 

The editor must be flexible and easy to understand. Typically, a great editor will offer simple pick and drop tools, easy to choose templates options and similar features. 

Basically, what you see during the editing process is what you see once the content is online. 

If your content software can match that, you have got the right tool there!

Offers Collaboration

No wonder why we need it. We often work in a team. And even if not, who knows what the future entails. 

Therefore, it is imperative that the content management software meets this requirement – a platform for collaboration.

But the demand does not end there. Apart from collaboration, the platform must allow the admin to set permissions. This way, no user will be able to override one another work. At the same time, it will set the right expectations among the team members.

For instance, if I am the editor, I must possess the right to change the content of all the writers in the team. However, being a writer, I must not come in the way of other writers’ work.

Easy to Integrate

No software can offer everything. And there will be times when you want to integrate other tools to complete your work with perfection. Such as mailing or newsletters, forms, databases and more. 

Typically, you are looking for an open-source platform or one that provides an all-in-one solution. 

Test the Changes

What if you do not want to implement the changes, not just before testing it? And that’s pretty much an obvious demand to ask for. 

Therefore, the application must allow you to preview changes before you can allow them in real-time. 

List of Best Content Management Tools

Please note that these are some of the recommendations based on my personal experience. And the perceptions may differ for others. Also, the list is not based on priority. 

WordPress

Who does not know about WordPress? One of the most popular content management solutions, WordPress brings together a huge community of designers and developers. 

Although the tool is free, it charges for hosting though. And, if you choose to go with the paid template or plugins, it will add to the budget. 

With a simple interface and as easy as no-code design, anyone can become familiar with this platform in no time. However, if you are good at coding, you can build templates and pages from scratch. 

Joomla

Like WordPress, Joomla is also an open-source tool that allows users to collaborate and design webpages, eCommerce websites and more. 

However, unlike WordPress, it isn’t that simple to understand. That is why the platform is mostly preferred by developers. On the brighter side, the content management tool offers great flexibility and enjoys a huge community. 

HubSpot CMS Hub

A lot more than a content management tool, HubSpot Hub is a complete solution for marketers and entrepreneurs. 

Being created on top of HubSpot’s CRM, the solution brings with it an array of marketing automation features, operations tools, and more. 

If you are in the phase where your business growth comes before any other mission, you cannot miss trying CMS Hub. It features A/B testing, personalized and smart content management, integration with forms, databases, email lists and more.

The Conclusion

Content management is a very hectic job. You cannot expect to click a few buttons and make your content look impressive. It requires research, patience, and a lot of effort to get things right.

And the best content management tools would certainly ease your job. Therefore, you must pick the one that aligns with your needs. 

Improve Your Writing Style – Time Tested Tips and Tricks 

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Not just your unique tone, but usage and structure play a great part in shaping your writing. If you are still writing for some time now, you might want to find out if you are already there – making the most exceptional copies. Frankly speaking, like it or not, to improve your writing style you need to work daily. One trick won’t make it better overnight.

With years of experience creating blogs, academic papers, technical tutorials, website copies and more, I have realized that writing must come from within. A part of you must resonate with the subject to feel the pain or joy and mark it with ink. 

No wonder why writing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Well, it might look simpler but wait unless you give it a try. Thankfully, if you are interested in making your work better, I can help you with a few tips.

Trust me, these can help you a lot if you are looking to take up writing as your career!

The Different Kinds of Writing Styles

Improve Your Writing Style – Credit:Pexels.com

The writing style refers to the tone of the writer. Whether it is to narrate a story or to explain an idea, every job requires a unique style of writing. 

When it comes to the individual style of writers, it’s more than just words that matter. A lot of things affect the style of writing. For instance, the depth of personalization, sentence structure, along their complete approach to conclude the subject.

And someone who is good at writing never forgets to utilize different writing styles based on the objective. 

Simply put, using a formal tone for blogging might discourage the readers to follow through. On the other hand, using a more casual tone for business writing will make it difficult to attract the target audience. 

While there could be plenty of different purposes for writing, there are five major categorizations you must know about.

Narrative Writing

Easy to guess, narrative writing is about storytelling. Does not matter if you are narrating a long epic tale or a smaller piece of anecdote, the more you get into the character, the better it comes out.

Plus, you can always utilize tint of plotting, emotions, settings and more to make it interesting. 

Here are a few examples where narrative style is evident. 

  • Essays
  • Speeches
  • Novels
  • Short Stories

Persuasive Writing

Persuasive writing comes into play when you want to make your point stand out. If you are trying to share your take on something in a more thoughtful way, you are already using persuasive writing. 

In other words, we use this kind of writing to convince our readers about a certain idea or suggestion. 

Hence, when you want to make your stance sound strong on a specific issue or wish to motivate others to take a particular action, you can take help from persuasive writing. 

Here are a few examples of Persuasive writing:

  • Sales copies
  • Social media ads
  • Cover letters
  • Statement of purpose
  • Essays

Descriptive Writing

As it sounds, descriptive writing covers the detailed aspect of the subject, either a person, place, product, solution or more. 

Consider this a way to help readers envision the description through your writing. To better get it right, writers must use the different vivid descriptions as perceived by their five senses. 

This is not it. A good descriptive writing style also manages to copy emotions and pick the right metaphor to evoke feelings. Trust me, doing so can bring more levels to your descriptive writing. 

A work that connects with readers’ feelings more deeply. 

Some examples of descriptive writing are:

  • Fiction stories
  • Copywriting
  • Product descriptions
  • Poems

Creative Writing

When using creative writing, it is impossible to abide by set rules. As a matter of fact, it’s about going beyond the usual and doing something unique. 

Feel free to come up with a style that stays outside the boundaries of common writing styles or combines two or more styles. In short, creative writing seeks to plan out new methods and ways to tell tales that can surprise readers while offering pleasure. 

Here are some examples of creative writing:

  • Satire
  • Poem
  • Journalism

Expository Writing

Rather than stressing storytelling like narrative writing, an expository style uses facts to convey the details. In other words, the writing style aims at teaching readers about actual information.

You can use this style to answer the concerns of the readers about a topic with direct solutions. What you should not use is the use of jargon, highly technical words etc. Instead, you must stick with clear writing avoiding any possible content that creates confusion.

Look at some of the examples of expository writing style:

  • Guides
  • Training books
  • Textbooks

How to Improve Your Writing Style?

If you know even a little about writing styles, you might be able to pick my suggestions when and where it’s suitable the most.

So, let’s get started!

Be Clear and Concise

No one has time for skimming their way through filler words! So, be clear and avoid unnecessary phrases. Get to the point directly without beating around the bush. 

Unlike the common ideologies, it might be better to have less covered space with texts than to put useless information.

Think Wisely Before You Pen Down

Think twice, are you writing to simplify the subject for readers or trying to boost your huge database of complex vocabulary?

You will get your answer right there! So, choose common words that are simple to apprehend. 

Keep it Short

Whether it’s your sentences or paragraphs, always try to keep it short and simple.

Readers always love to go through sentences or paragraphs that are easier to understand. Packing excess information in one line or using too many sentences in one paragraph turns off the readers right away.

Active Voice is Better – That’ What SEO Says Too! 

Use active voice preferably. When you use the active voice, you highlight your subject and not the object. It feels more direct and exciting.

On the other hand, using passive voice end up in complex sentences. This may be correct grammatically but creates logical confusion. 

Use Your Personal Touch

Meaning, you must be conversational. Use your comfort zone to bring the best from your writing. 

Simply put, create content as you talk. Bring your native thought to life and make your personal tone stand out. 

Always Review

Proofreading isn’t just an option but a must process in perfecting your drafts. It helps you take care of errors and misspelt words. But more than that, it helps you streamline your writing flow. 

The Conclusion

Writing often is an innate blessing. Not everyone can get it right. However, there are always ways to improve your writing style. Just have to know what it takes to become a successful writer and implement those tips to seal the deal.

What is Content Marketing? – Simply Explained

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If you are creating content for blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos etc., you are already into content marketing anyway. However, the strategy involves much more than just writing a few words. So, what is content marketing? And how does it help businesses scale?

In simple terms, the approach enables businesses to establish their expertise in their field of interest. This, in turn, increases the company’s brand awareness among the target audiences. And there are plenty of perks of being in the good books of your customers, isn’t it?

However, to reap the benefit of content marketing, you must understand the basics of this strategy. From getting to know your customers to preparing content that talks about the solution to their pain, the approach takes a lot of effort. 

In this article, I have covered almost everything you require to get started with content marketing. So, without any further ado, let’s get going.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing entails the creation and release of relevant as well as useful content using various writing styles. That said whether, in the form of blogs, white papers, newsletters, or emails, content must connect with your audience. 

When done precisely, this approach could instil you as the thoughtful leader within your niche that values customers. And as you expect, customers usually prefer companies that think about their problems.  

In other words, consistently distributing meaningful content helps nurture your relationship with prospective as well as existing customers. 

Is Content Marketing Worth a Try?

If you are still sceptical about investing time and money in content marketing, here are some data to help you make the right decision.

By now, you must have made up your mind to try content marketing. The question is: ‘HOW’? Well, the answer is in the content marketing funnel that you must be using to attract customers and clients. 

What is a Content Marketing Funnel?

The ideology behind creating content is to motivate readers to take some action. Almost all the content that we consume online is written with a purpose. Either it asks users to buy something or sign up for a newsletter or service or learn more about offerings. 

The task of the content marketing funnel is to analyze the route taken by the users when making a purchase. This essentially is the most crucial part of the entire content marketing strategy.

Therefore, it is imperative to understand the content marketing funnel. A funnel will take you through the various stages of this marketing strategy. Finally, you will be able to fabricate content for different stages of the funnel, from discovery to purchase of products and services. 

Awareness 

This is where you target the major concerns of your target audience. Hence, you must look for your customers’ challenges, and probable questions to start engaging them with your brand. 

In short, your content must be educational and full of valuable advice. The various content types used in this stage are blogs, e-books, infographics, podcasts and social media posts. You can use a mix of a few choices to see which one works best for your business model. 

Utilize various metrics to find out the successful engagement your content is generating. Do not forget to sync up your content with Google Analytics to get a detailed overview. 

Evaluation

Once the customers know that you understand their problems, they would like to consider your business based on your expertise. 

Simply put, customers will try to dig deeper to find out reasons to trust your business. Hence, you must create content to demonstrate your expertise and why you are the best choice. 

For this stage, you can fabricate case studies, emails, webinars, and whitepapers. If your content is apt, your prospects will move to the next stage. Depending on how many responses you create here will determine the success of your Evaluation stage. 

Closure

Before purchasing, the prospects would once again like to know the reason for selecting you over others. You have already built trust and proved your expertise. Now it is time to help them finalize their buying decision.

Frankly speaking, here you must talk about the service your customers would receive by becoming a part of your organization. Hence, you can attract them by writing buyer’s guide, creating products’ videos and how-to articles. 

Delight

Natively, this stage isn’t a part of the basic funnel. However, companies have been able to increase their sales by including this stage to delight customers. 

The idea is to build an audience and keep them with your brand for as long as possible. Hence, the efforts do not end after the closure stage.  

You can use content to keep your existing customers always connected. Such as emails notifications about offers and new products or asking them for feedback.

The Takeaway

Did I get you the answer for: What is content marketing? Well, the strategy is more about experiencing it yourself. Whatever knowledge you gather about the topic, you can never master the approach unless you try using it. Hence, if you have got a gist of what content marketing can uncover for you, it’s time to frame yours.     

Create Amazing Whitepapers – Use These Simple Tips

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Some find it really difficult to create amazing whitepapers. Well, it is true that drafting a whitepaper is a complex task. However, it could turn into an amazing way to define yourself as an expert in your niche. 

Although these papers are mostly technical with lots of statistics backing your claims, creating these is more of an art. From picking the right topic to getting into details, you need to plan everything out. 

To break it into simple terms, I have come up with some tips that will definitely help you create wonderful content for your whitepapers. But before that, let’s check out its definition and reasons for writing one.

What is a Whitepaper?

Typically, a whitepaper offers guidelines or in-depth detail about particular topics of your interest. It covers the possible problems surrounding the topic as well as the solutions. 

In short, a whitepaper educates its readers while providing solutions to resolve the issue at hand.

In terms of digital marketing, the need for whitepapers has been evolving. Written as long-form content, the format of these resembles that of an eBook. However, apart from the design, the two differ in content specifics. 

Whitepapers are highly technical and consist of in-depth knowledge of the topic. Usually, one must ensure to back the claims made through these papers with statistics and research. These could be tables, graphs and various other visual data.

Using an authoritative tone completely justifies white papers because of the detailed research one covers to put the content in place. Hence, these could become great aids for those looking to promote themselves as a thought leader.

Reasons to Write a Whitepaper

From the marketing perspective, whitepapers play a great role in showcasing your business as the top choice. Here are some of the perks businesses can reap if they know how to create amazing whitepapers.

Build Trust

White papers are proof of your expertise and knowledge in your niche. Therefore, it helps create trust among your users. Hence, you can stand out as one of the most reliable and experienced service providers or product companies in a specific domain. 

Often potential customers understand the worth of the valuable suggestions. If your whitepaper can help with the solution your audiences are searching for, it could really create trust in your organization. And they might soon look up to you for future needs as well.

Boost Your Business Sales

Creating your authority as a thought leader gives you an upper hand to boost sales for your products and services. Customers or clients do check whitepapers if you have one before they make their final decision to buy from you. 

Simply put, if you want to buy a Television, which brand would you trust. The one expert in the industry or the newcomers. That explains everything, isn’t it?

Generate Leads

Last but not the least, lead generation. You might find websites offering whitepapers in exchange for their personal information. All you need to do is input your details to access the content of the whitepaper.

According to a report, over three-fourths of those who participated in a survey wanted to exchange their personal details to access the whitepaper. And, the stats were higher than the infographics, podcasts, e-books and other marketing media.

Tips to Create Amazing Whitepapers

You must be feeling all excited to start your first whitepaper. However, wait a little more. Now that you know its benefits, you must also know how to create amazing whitepapers that are worth the effort. 

I have listed a few tips that will come in handy when writing your whitepaper. Here is what you can do:

Find the Right Topic

You might rush into wrapping the paper. But who are you writing for and whom do you want to impress? Knowing the answer to these questions will help you find the right topic. After all, you will invest time and effort in completing the paper. It must not go waste.

Tip: Choose a common problem that most of your audience face. 

Elaborate Clearly and Be Professional

Have you been reading blogs or other forms of content for most of your life? Well, whitepapers wouldn’t be similar at all. You cannot go wrong with the writing tone and style when drafting them. It must sound professional and authoritative. Plus, it must be descriptive.

Tip: Whitepapers aren’t blogs with one page. It can range from tens to hundreds of pages, depending on your problem and solution detail. 

Never Flop When Writing the Introduction

The start is always the most important part of the content. And, the same is true for whitepapers. Therefore, keep your introduction as captivating as possible. 

It must offer a glimpse of what problems you will be covering in your whitepaper with the list of solutions to entice readers into going into details.

Tips: A captivating introduction can get your readers stuck thinking about what the other part of the document contains.

Start With a Draft

Never go head first. In other words, do not haste. Prepare a draft to come up with the most relevant outline.

Tips: Ending up with a useless document can cost you leads. So, think and draft an outline of the whitepaper before filling in the information.

Always Proofread

Don’t you think proofreading is the best way to better your drafts? I think it too. You can also involve other people and ask for their suggestions and opinions. 

Tip: It’s never too late to better your whitepaper before you finish it.

Sell at the End

If you want to market your product or service, never do it in between the content while you are addressing a problem. Instead, mention it at the end. Also, include the sales pitch naturally at the end of the document while summarizing the details. 

Tip: Never try hard-sell techniques. Mention your product or service at the end of the document.

The Takeaway

Create amazing whitepapers by simply understanding what major challenges your audience are facing. Doing so will help you define the solutions pertaining to those problems. And, enable you to come up with topics that matter. Plus, do not forget to use the tips to perfect your content. Otherwise, you might fail to get the most from your efforts.

Impressive Content Marketing Examples You Must Learn From

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Are you using content marketing campaigns to attract more customers and audiences? A lot of businesses do and there are many who still feel that there is no need for it. Which category do you fall in? Regardless of what you have to say, you must check out some of the most impressive content marketing examples. 

I understand, there are a lot of myths surrounding digital campaigns. What’s scary is the fact that many of these campaigns are not successful. This isn’t because these strategies do not work the same way for everyone. However, it is because businesses often fail to create meaningful campaigns.

To better understand what am I talking about, let’s get straight to the examples already!

List of Some Impressive Content Marketing Examples

Well, there are many ways to put yourself out there and scream for higher conversions. Either you choose to look at what your customers want and create something or you create a need for your products. 

Thankfully, both of these things are possible. With the right marketing strategies, you can get what you want. Given that your products and services complement your campaigns.

Here are some of the impressive content marketing examples that prove the worth of these strategies. And, how companies can utilize these references to learn from them.

‘Share a Coke’ – A Content Marketing Campaign from Coke

Every marketer knows the importance of personalization. Sadly, not everyone uses it.

Coke used it to its advantage. Doing what no other beverage company was doing, Coke came up with its ‘Share a Coke’ campaign. You must be knowing about it. The stunt went viral. 

Through its “Share A Coke” campaign, Coke allowed everyone to personalize their drinks. 

The campaign started in Australia and became popular in many other countries thereafter. 

So, what made the small gesture from the company allowing consumers to pick their names for the bottle so successful? Well, it was the personal touch of the brand. It was the power of personalization.

And, what could be most important to someone, if not their names? This is how Coke played its cards to become the talk of the town.

Lesson Learned – Personalization

SkinKraft Personalized Shampoo

These days, the cosmetics industries are trending, those who know how to pull the right strings. One such example is SkinKraft Laboratories. 

What do they do differently? They are also offering hair cleaning products to their customers. They sell online and they have a wonderful website with detailed information on their products. Like many other brands. 

So, what is the key to their recent growing success among consumers? Once again, PERSONALIZATION.

The company makes every customer of its go through a small questionnaire. Asking customers about their hair type, struggles they face, problems and what results are they looking for, SkinKraft showcases concern. 

Depending on the answers from users, they create personalized hair products, with the name of the customer on the bottle. Fascinating, isn’t it? Again hitting the personalization crux hard.

Lesson Learned – Personalization

Buffer – Social Media Tracking App

Have you heard of Buffer? If you are a social media specialist, you must have. The company offers a social media-tracking app. The app helps users schedule posts as well as track and analyse the growth of their social media account.

You might find a few apps doing the same job. But Buffer still resonates with the users more than any other similar business. 

Well, I am not talking about its product, but the way they are marketing its brand, hence the product. 

They have their own Open Blog. Here, the company posts about the tips that have helped them become successful. 

In other words, they offer transparency and seek to build trust among audiences. Not just telling you ‘what they do’, but they go steps beyond to tell you ‘how they do it’.

And, they do it with pure dedication. You can learn a lot from their posts.

Lesson Learned – Transparency and Trust

McDonald’s Using ‘The Question Time’

Who does not love McDonald’s? The cool logo of this brand is recognizable from long distances. 

Even with all the waiting customers’ queues, the company keeps coming up with content marketing ideas that leave everyone astonished. 

source: Tubular Insights

McDonald’s Canada came up with its new strategy for building relationships with its customers. They did it by taking up the challenge to answer all the questions of customers. So, if you want to know where they put their buns, go ask. 

Unsurprisingly, customers not just enjoyed being entertained for learning facts, but loved it. 

Lesson Learned – Honesty Goes a Long Way – Build Relationships based on Trust

Key Insights from the Impressive Content Marketing Examples

Those were just a handful of examples of what content marketing can accomplish. And, how to put these strategies to work for achieving expected results. 

Bluntly, the examples above explain how focusing on a few things can help companies create unrivalled marketing campaigns. 

All you have to do is, get these right:

  • Personalization
  • Transparency
  • Trust
  • Relationship Building with clients and customers

These are some of the basic things that you might hate ignoring. Even the big brands love to play around with these emotions, every now and then. 

So, why not you? These impressive content marketing examples would certainly lead your way!

SMART Marketing Strategy Framework – Build What Converts!

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Juggling around with lots of fancy objectives and tools and yet not finding yourself there? Well, digital marketing can get really overwhelming with so much to synchronize together. Therefore, one must learn about the SMART marketing strategy framework that allows businesses to focus on what’s important. 

Rather than investing time copying what’s working for everyone out there, marketers must look for specific answers. Can you fit in a 30-size pair of jeans when your waist measures 34? Well, you know what I mean. Your particular needs would help you define what marketing strategy will work best for you. 

And, as the name suggests, the SMART framework does what it says. Build smarter strategies that go a long way in complementing your products and services and gaining new customers, every now and then. 

What is the SMART Marketing Strategy Framework?

The SMART framework measures the efficiency of your business goal. By assessing your objectives against this framework, you can minimize the chances of getting stuck with strategies that don’t work at all. 

In other words, the SMART framework is a very crucial step that goes hand in hand while creating an effective digital marketing plan. 

But before we go into much detail, here is what S.M.A.R.T Stands for:

Without any further ado, here is what each of these alphabets means when put together in the SMART marketing strategy framework.

S From SMART

S = Specific

As mentioned, it is very important to be specific. This brings us to our first pillar of robust marketing strategy elaborated using the SMART framework.

S means to be very specific about your marketing goals. How about an example to make things clearer as glass? 

Think of a company wanting to base its quarterly marketing strategy based on the following objectives:

  • Increase sales
  • Attract more customers
  • Leave competitors behind

When you look at those goals, what’s that one thing that seems missing: the numbers. Now, let’s imagine, the same company comes up with its revised goals:

  • Increase the sales of X product by 20 per cent for local customers and 5 per cent for global users through offers and promotional copy
  • Engage more through social media platforms to bring new customers on board and drive conversions 
  • We will initiate festival offers a week early from our competitors to get the perks of the early birds

While both the objectives are the same, the latter one is more specific. It allows experts to naturally define the foundation for their marketing strategy with ease. 

M From SMART

M = Measurable

Now that you have laid the foundation, how about measuring the effectiveness of those objectives? The measurement from SMART marketing strategy frameworks assesses the success of the defined goals. You can find out if the goals are met or if not, how far you have made the progress. 

Traditionally, marketers measured goals success through the cumulative sales done, gross revenue made, marketing overheads for each sale made, new customers acquired.

However, moving to digital platforms, these metrics have changed. At present, we look for social media engagements, website clicks, email reach rate, keyword rankings along with the conversions made through websites. 

To carry this tracking, one does not need an accounting tool, rather an analytics application.  By linking the software with all the digital platforms, it is possible to monitor SEO ranking as well as the success of social media strategies. 

A From SMART

A = Attainable

male at the bottom, female at the top

The word pretty much speaks for itself! I am not against dreaming big, but goals should always be realistic, especially when it is time-bound. 

When planning a marketing plan, timelines matter the most. We always define goals parallel to the expected duration it will take to accomplish those. 

So, can you plan to lose 10 kgs in a month? Is it impossible? Not exactly. 

The answer will depend on a lot of parameters:

  • How often can you take out time for exercising?
  • Do you have time to prepare nutritious meals for the entire month, without ordering cooked meals from restaurants?
  • Do you have money to pay for the specific exercise and meal plans?
  • Can you hire a personal trainer?

For some, these questions may turn to a ‘YES’. However, for many, ticking all the boxes right might seem unrealistic.

This is why ‘Attainable’ from the SMART framework is a crucial step towards formulating an efficient marketing plan. It helps you understand what is possible and how much can you do.

You must consider the following things before calling your goals accessible:

  • Total Budget
  • Skills and resources, if not, can you pay to hire people and tools to get things done
  • Your competition 
  • The complexity of tasks required to reach the goals

In addition, never run towards the vision in haste. Rather, apply short term approach to slowly stepping towards the final objective – Your Vision.

For instance, “I want to add 10,000 more followers to my business page on Twitter” is a more attainable goal than “I want to gain the highest number of followers on Twitter against my competition”.

R From SMART

R = Relevant

Enough about the ways to set goals. Shouldn’t we also ensure that the goals we set are even relevant? As a digital strategist, I feel businesses must set goals that flow alongside the brand’s market positioning.

In other words, objectives should never clash with the business’ offering and must align with the business relationship with its customers. The more relevant your marketing plan is, the higher is its usefulness. 

However, sometimes the game-changing plans, not aligning with the business persona can also achieve unimaginable milestones. It has its own place within marketing goals too. 

T From SMART

T = Time-Limited

Time is what makes your goals urgent. Isn’t it?

What if I message you in the morning, “Let’s meet sometime!”

Would you find it necessary to schedule an appointment the same day? Or will you sleep over it? In most cases, people ignore these messages. If ever they come across the text while scrolling through old data, they might go ahead and fix an appointment.

However, what if, I message you in the morning saying, “Meet at 2:00 PM in my office.”

Even if you are busy for the day, you will take out time to ask the purpose of the meeting or if you could reschedule it, based on the priority.

This is what timelines do to us. It bounds us to complete things at related timestamps. The same goes for business objectives. While setting the time, you must care highly about the attainable from the SMART framework. It goes hand in hand. 

The Takeaway

Are you over-occupied with your business marketing plans? Do you think it takes a lifetime to perfect your goals and you need iterations often to finalize what’s best for your company’s success?

You are not alone? A lot of businesses plan in the air. Without analyzing what they actually want and how short terms goals can help, people roughly sketch what they will be doing for the day, week, month and even a year. 

This only leads to one more year of worthless tries. But you can save yourself from those negative approaches, trying to limit your success one step further every day. Build plans based on the SMART marketing strategy framework and create realistic goals that compound with time.