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Facebook Advertising and Engagement for Small Businesses

Facebook Advertising and Engagement for Small Businesses written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch About Facebook Advertising

Facebook advertising for small business is a hot topic, and it’s gotten even hotter since Facebook’s been in the news lately talking about limiting people’s organic reach.

This is something that’s been going on for a couple of years, and I think that this whole political storm that kind of crept up made them take it a little more serious and bring it front-and-center.

In my view, the bottom line is that it’s going to sell more advertising, it’s going to make you more reliant on advertising. It’s not going to be an awful thing for Facebook; in fact, I tell people — half kidding, half serious — that you should buy some Facebook stock because of this, because if Facebook’s going to stick around, it’s going to because we have become so dependent upon it.

So, as a business, it’s still a great, viable place to advertise.

But I want to talk about that word a minute, because it’s not just a strict advertising vehicle, it’s a social media and content amplification play as well. It’s a great place to get very low-cost awareness of your business, promotions, and content.

If you’re going to be using social media, you need to produce content that creates awareness and drives engagement, particularly blog posts, and post it and promote it on Facebook.

I’m going to break this down, and it may be basic for a lot of people, but I think some people need to still understand the moving parts of Facebook for a small-business owner.

Getting started on Facebook

Business Manager

First and foremost, the ticket to play on Facebook is to have a personal profile. Personal profiles can create pages, ad accounts, and groups. Every personal profile comes with a Messenger, which is a direct inside-of-Facebook messaging component, and every personal profile can also create something called a Business Manager account.

For a long time, agencies, people like myself, have had Business Manager accounts, but I believe it’s the tool that every business on Facebook should have.

Pages

Pages are another component, and for the most part, every business should have a page. A page can also be an advertiser, and it can also have its own Messenger account.

Ad accounts

Ad accounts are a separate component. Profiles and Business Manager accounts can create ad accounts, and pages can be advertisers.

Groups

Anybody with a profile can create a group that can be private or public. Typically, a group is created around specific topics. They are great for community building. Groups are one of the best places to go to plug in and get information, ask questions, and engage folks to help you.

Messenger

Facebook Messenger is becoming more significant because that’s the tool that Facebook is going to use to reach out to the web. In other words, you can use Messenger today as a service or chat. You can install Messenger on your website now.

I think a lot of folks will put that on their website because if somebody asks a question, and if they’re logged in to Facebook already, you’ll know who they are, and you can respond.

In fact, you can create auto-responders that say, “Hi, John, how can we help you today?” because they’re logged in to Facebook. I think you’re going to see growth in that area. (Check out one of the bot tools like ManyChat for this.)

Setting up your Business Manager

But let’s get into the advertising component of Facebook for small business. First and foremost, you want to have a Business Manager account.  Once you have your profile, go to business.facebook.com.

With a Business Manager account, you can more securely manage your pages and ad accounts, and today, a lot of people have multiple ad accounts.

If you’re managing advertising efforts on behalf of a client, you have to do it inside of the Business Manager. It makes it easier to add employees and agencies and remove them, to give different levels of permissions.

You can get by without it, but I think it’s a tool that will make your life better.

Once your Business Manager account is created:

  1. Enter the name of your business
  2. Select the primary page that you want to associate with that
  3. Enter your name and work email address
  4. Move through the rest of the onboarding flow by entering the rest of the required fields
  5. Manage with Business Manager

What I typically am recommending that people do, if you have a page and ad account set up already, is assign those now because that way, you’ll be able to use all the functionality of Business Manager.

Once everything is set up, you’ll see a different interface than you’re used to, but it’ll show you the ad accounts and pages that you’ve assigned to it. It also then gives you a great deal of access to building audiences and finding your pixel, as well as using either the Ads Manager or a tool called Power Editor to manage.

From there, you can create page post, boost posts, and do a lot of things on this one platform, once you get used to the various components of it.

Ads Manager

Understanding the Facebook Pixel

When everything is set up, the first thing I like to do is to go into the ad account, and go into the Assets component, and find something called the Facebook Pixel.

Trust me; you’re going to want to go through the process, take the steps, and get the code. You’re going to get a bunch of code that you’re going to have to install on your website. If you’re using WordPress, a lot of themes have a place to install code that will put it on every page, and what that’s going to allow you to do is start using some of the functionality to build audiences based on behavior.

In other words, you’ll be able to track somebody visiting your website or visiting a landing page that you created, and you’ll be able to send them different ads based on their behavior.

To ensure the pixel is installed correctly, use a Chrome plugin called the Facebook Pixel Helper. You’ll be able to surf to your site and see if the pixel is firing, based on using that tool.

Defining your audiences

There are a couple of standard audiences that I like to create once the pixel is set up.

Go back to your ad account, and to the Audiences tab. You’ll want to define an audience that is in a certain city, zip code, and has certain demographics. Save that audience because you’ll have the ability to then promote pretty much anything you want to this targeted group – this is called a Saved Audience.

When you go to create an ad or boost a post, you’ll be able to say, “Yes, use that audience,” and so it’ll already be defined and saved.

There are a couple of audiences I’m going to suggest that you build as well, and the first one is a custom audience of your customers. If you have, say, 1,400 names of customers, you can upload those to Facebook and create a custom audience of your customers. There are a couple of reasons you might want to do this:

  1. If you’ve got existing customers, you might just want to run campaigns to them, so you are promoting to somebody who already is a customer and who is theoretically familiar with your business. If they’re a customer, it allows you to stay top-of-mind.
  2. Another thing you might want to do with that audience is exclude them from your ads. If you’re running a new-customer special, the last thing you want to do is flaunt that in the face of your existing customers, so you might want to build an audience or a campaign, and say, “Okay, promote to these people, but exclude my customers, don’t show this ad to my customers.” It’s a great way to avoid wasting ad dollars.

Facebook audiences

The other thing you can do with your existing customers is you can create something that Facebook calls a lookalike audience. With this, you can upload your customer list and tell Facebook that you would like them to go out and find people that are like your customer list and share the same demographics. (Note that sometimes it takes a few days for uploaded audiences to be ready.)

One word of warning in building these lookalike audiences is that you can say, “Hey, I want a big one, I want a big audience,” and there’s a lot of appeal to that, as, “Hey, I want to have more people that I can market to.” But keep in mind, the bigger your audience gets, the less focused it becomes.

I tell people that if they have a customer list and want to build a lookalike, pick the smallest amount to start and test with. (1% perhaps)

On top of the custom audience, saved audience, and people that you’re trying to attract, you’ll want to create an audience of people who have visited your site (this is where the pixel is especially useful).

For this list, assign any page on your website, and give it a time frame. Keep in mind, the bigger the time frame, the more removed they are from visiting your website. A lot of people will start with a 30-day visit window because those are the hottest folks.

Let’s say you start driving traffic to your site, or just boosting content, and having people come and visit your site. With this list, Facebook is going to say, “Okay, I recognize that person,” and now you can start running ads specifically to people who have visited your site.

If somebody visited your site, read a blog post, looked at an offer, but they didn’t do anything, you can follow them around for a while with an ad set that is only going to be shown to them. This is often referred to as “remarketing.”

The theory behind that is that they were interested enough to go and read, or interested enough to go and check out an offer, and so you want to stay in their face a little bit and nurture the relationship because they may have just gotten distracted.

There are many audiences you could build but I wanted to discuss the standard audiences that we try to build for almost anyone we work with because I think they’re important.

The role of content in Facebook advertising

When it comes to your overall content breakdown, I recommend the following on Facebook (areas I use in advertising efforts are noted below):

  • 35% towards your ongoing content – with advertising support
  • 20% curated from other sources
  • 25% supports business goals (lead generation, product launch, sale) – advertising
  • 20% about people and culture

Content plays a huge role in the effectiveness of Facebook advertising.

You can log in to your Business Manager account, create an ad that says, “Here, buy this stuff,” and blast it out to the world, but we all know that most products and services are not going to be successful if we’re marketing in that format.

We have to warm people up and earn their trust for them to get their wallet out. Most often, this is done by creating awareness, understanding that they have an interest, and staying on their radar to the point where they decide that they’re going to buy.

At the very least, if you’re on Facebook today, and you’ve got:

  • Everything that I’ve discussed set up
  • You want to get something going
  • You’ve got a great piece of content
  • You’ve defined a target audience

You can benefit at a very low cost by throwing $20 at boosting that post. Again, don’t throw $20 at “Buy my stuff”; throw $20 at “Come check out this relevant, really useful piece of content.”

If that content is a great blog post that maybe has a checklist associated with it, and you can capture the name and email address of somebody who wants that checklist, that’s a legitimate way to use Facebook.

Spend a hundred bucks a month, and with every blog post that you write, promote it for $20 to your saved audience. You’re building awareness and driving traffic that will ultimately turn into some benefit for you.

Facebook audience

The funnel approach

You could stop there, but eventually, content posting and boosting are only going to take you so far. You have to take the funnel approach to using Facebook. The idea behind that is that people move through a funnel from:

  • Awareness – They’ve heard of you and may want to get to know and like you
  • Consideration – They’re developing trust with you and may be interested in testing the waters
  • Conversion – The point at which a person converts on the desired action

Facebook Funnel Approach

You have to think about how you’re going to layer this. The typical approach for this is:

  • You have a message of great content and education that you think a certain target market is interested in
  • You’ll buy awareness ads so that they become aware of your content

There are many ways to do this. They may become aware of your content because they go to your website to read it, or they may consume it right on Facebook, but what you’re essentially doing is saying for anybody who takes that action, you are going to take that audience and say, “Okay, those people are interested in our content, so we’re going to up the game now” (you know this because of the Facebook pixel.)

These people will then see an ad that gives them a free trial, or an evaluation, for example.

You’re making a determination that because those people watched your first video, clicked on your ad, or went to get your ebook, that they are going to be interested in an even more aggressive offer.

At this point, you can start saying things to them like, “If you like the ebook, why don’t you get the $29 course?” which allows you to move them up into something that engages, educates, and allows them to move along the path and the journey.

Ultimately, you’re going to go after people who take that action and send them messaging to see how you can sell them your products or services.

As you can see, the funnel approach is your typical customer journey. The conversion component may end up being a one-on-one strategy meeting that you’re offering, or some low-cost audit.

You’re taking people that have raised their hand and said, “I want to know more,” and you’re moving them along the journey with this approach.

The funnel approach is audience-building. It’s a series of ads that are triggered by the fact that somebody took action, and it can be a low-cost way to funnel people to the point at which they want to buy.

If you skip these steps, and you just run “Hey, buy my stuff” ads, you’re probably not going to be that successful, and I see a lot of people wasting a lot of money that way because it’s easy to do.

The funnel approach takes a little time to set all the assets up, but it’s the kind of thing that you could run and repeat over and over again once you find a formula that works.

There you have it! Those are my best tips for getting started the right way with Facebook advertising. I’ve also included some of my favorite types of ads, tools, and further education below that I highly encourage you to check out.

Types of Ads

There are numerous types of ads on Facebook, but the examples below are what I find most helpful.

Facebook Ad Types

Facebook Tools

Further learning

Content Marketing is About Customers, Not Keywords

Content Marketing is About Customers, Not Keywords written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch About Content Marketing for Small Business

I’ve had content marketing for small business on the brain recently so I thought I’d write about it today. “Boy, there is a topic that hasn’t been covered recently,” said nobody in a long time.

Here’s the thing though, I think it’s one of those topics that is misunderstood and certainly evolving. Content creation has fallen squarely into strategy as far as I’m concerned. In fact I often call content marketing the voice of strategy.

Looking at your website, website’s structure, your SEO plan, and content or editorial plan, overlap significantly in the category of strategy, and while you have to address them in an integrated way, you also have to start thinking differently about content and how you’re going to use it to meet some of your business objectives.

Ever since the major algorithm changes that everybody talks about, the hummingbirds and the pandas, where low-quality content and dubious backlinks really got slapped, a lot of SEO people are really starting to come to realize that content is everything that drives that entire industry.

Then Google comes up with something called RankBrain. This is their artificial intelligence engine that learns not only about what people are searching for, but what they do when they find it, how they engage, how they dwell, and how they share.

In fact, one of the most important metrics or ranking factors in the future is going to be engagement. So creating your content around getting engagement is not only a good thing from an awareness and trust-building standpoint, it’s also a very crucial ingredient in how content is going to be ranked.

Towards the end of 2017 I created a guide for local marketing, because I wanted to create content that was specific to the challenges of getting a local business to rank or to get customers. By local I mean that they are in a community and most, if not all, of their customers, are in that community and interact by coming into their store, or their place of business, or that they go out and have a sales call with that person.

There’s a lot of content on local marketing. It’s a really hot topic right now, and with that guide, I was able to rank number one in Google for various search terms around local marketing in about two week’s time.

I have a lot of pages that are on page one, about 1700 last time I looked. So obviously I’ve got a tremendous amount of momentum, and so I’m not going to suggest that just anybody can do this.

There are a lot of terms I don’t rank for in this approach. Identifying a term, a problem and a challenge that a prospective client has, and then putting all of my energy into getting that content to rank, is what took me from, maybe page two or three to the actual number-one spot, and this now is generating significant traffic,links, and opportunities.

Understanding intent

The key to anything we talk about with regard to content strategy is intent. What problems, questions, or goals does your client have?

Keep in mind that they’ll probably change along the way when they’re trying to find a product or a service like yours. To discover your customer’s intent, look at emails that you’ve sent. Talk to your sales or service reps. What questions are they answering?

It’s important to do keyword research, and SEO folks will still tell you that that’s step number one. I’ve certainly done a lot of education around this idea of how to do keyword research, and it’s important, but it’s a starting point only. If you stop there, you’re only going to get one piece. You’re going to optimize your content for keywords.

People aren’t keywords and their problems aren’t necessarily keywords. People may express problems in ways that turn into key phrases, but the content today has to be customer-focused. Go out and talk to your customers. Look at reviews. Look at your competitors. What are people saying?

Those are oftentimes some of the best markers, or clues, to find the real problems that people want to be solved. Many times what we find isn’t the stuff that we want to put on our website. It’s the little things.

Do you show up on time? Do you return my calls? Do you clean up the job site? Those are things that are real problems that you or your competitors are actually solving for their customers because they are turning up and voluntarily writing those words as though they are talking to another prospective client.

It’s some of the best content you can get, but don’t forget to talk to your customers and ask them a lot of questions as well.

Helpful tools for content marketing efforts

There are a couple of tools out there that we use all the time. Answer The Public is a relatively new tool where you can put in a search term and you’ll get all kinds of variations, ideas, and questions that people ask.

Questions are so great and so valuable because there’s a lot of intent. If somebody just types in a couple of words, “referral marketing,” for example, it’s not often easy to tell what their intent is, but if somebody types in “how to set up a referral marketing program,” it gives you a pretty good idea of what they’re looking to do.

We also use BuzzSumo which is another great tool that shows the most shared content related to your phrases. A lot of times the fact that people are sharing content means that it hit the nail on the head. It addressed a problem or answered a question.

I wish I could tell you that you’ll magically get five themes that will just be the perfect thing that you need to write about, but it’s not that simple. There’s a bit of art in this. I can’t always tell clients exactly what I’m going to find, but I always find it.

Choosing content

The last piece of this is that a lot of times people make the mistake of saying, “Well, we’re this kind of company, but the most popular content people want is X, Y, and Z.”

There are a couple problems with just choosing content that you think will be popular. It’s very hard to be customer-focused.

If you’re a business that serves a certain type of customer, but you’re choosing content because it’s popular but you aren’t an expert on the topic, or you don’t have a unique point of view about that content, you’re probably not going to produce something that is customer-focused.

After you do keyword research and talk to your customers, you’ve got to take your unique twist, approach, and expertise, and bring those to it so that it will be completely relevant for your customers.

Once you’ve done your keyword research, the next step is to create themes for your content. To come up with your themes, you must think in terms of a body of work, almost like chapters in a book, that you’re going to put your emphasis on, maybe for an entire month, and create content that will allow you to outrank competitors for key search terms.

You must stay very focused to do this.

Creating content packages

The best way to rank for any search terms is to know your customer better than anyone else and create, what I call, a content package to address your known client problems and challenges.

So what’s a content package? I’m going to go back to the local marketing guide example. I create a page, like The Ultimate Guide to Local Marketing, that becomes an actual core page on my site (not a blog post). I turn that page into a table of contents of sorts that includes all the major elements of local marketing.

From there, I create numerous posts that point directly back to that page, and I link them all together with categories, anchor text, and a little bit of theme magic in WordPress that allows me to display related content.

All of these pages, along with some useful curated content from some very high-domain authority sites, really create this depth of content that allows you to then rank for, in this case, key local marketing problems.

It’s like I’ve built this little wing on my website where the major jumping-off point is almost like a table of contents. You go to that page and there’s audio, video, and a whole list of links to other content that is related to a sub-category.

I’ve taken local marketing, I’ve broken it up into five sub-categories, and then those sub-categories blast out to all kinds of other content on my site.

The beauty of this is that I’ve now got a lot of content that I’d written in the past that I was able to bring to this, but going forward, I’ve got a lot of content that I will continue to write into the future, and I will link it to this page, so this page will continue to get updated and freshened up. If I do a webinar, maybe on local marketing, I’ll go ahead and put the archived video on the page.

While I targeted the key phrase “local marketing guide,” it is starting to rank for dozens of related terms because of the depth of that content. As a bonus, one of the posts for using Ad Words for local business, which is one of the categories, has also jumped to the number-one spot for related search terms.

The power of interlinking and building a table of contents or chapters-in-a-book approach is the most potent way to rank for content today as far as I’m concerned.

Now this may feel like a lot of work and that’s because it is, but the bar’s been raised, and those that jump high enough are rewarded.

These pages are generating significant traffic, links, and opportunities. When people come to the main page, there’s a lot to consume, so they stay on the page. Bounce rate is almost nothing because they click and dwell on those links, and they visit more links because it’s all woven together, so Google sees high engagement in this form of content.

In addition, these pages become tools for all of our advertising and lead generation efforts.

So what next? Simply choose more themes and repeat the process every month. After a few months, you’ve created a massive content machine that is focused on your ideal customers, expertise, and unique point of view, not keywords, which will assist in driving business and leads, not just spammy clicks.

How to Use Content to Create Customers

How to Use Content to Create Customers written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

I know this isn’t the first time you’ve been told that you need to develop content to be competitive in the marketing world today, but the fact of the matter is, it’s so important that it’s worth repeating over and over again. The use of high quality, education-based content has become an essential ingredient in creating awareness, building trust, converting leads, and creating customers (hopefully leading to referrals and repeat business as well).

With that being said, content doesn’t need to be nearly as overwhelming as it once was. Gone are the days where you have to pump out content consistently in order to gain traction online. The name of the game today is quality, not quantity, and Google is getting really good at recognizing that.

I’ve developed a system for turning content into leads. Once the leads are in your hand, it’s up to you to close the deal and turn them into customers.

1. Decide what content you should create

For a while now, I’ve been promoting something I call the Total Content SystemTM, which is an approach that allows you to plan, delegate, curate, create, collaborate, repurpose and get far more out of every piece of content you produce.

Through your knowledge and by using keyword tools, you can develop a list of core content topics and assign one to each month for the next six months. Each theme should be a substantial topic related to your business or industry and represent an important keyword search term.

2. Invest time in content upgrades

Marketers today have tapped the insatiable hunger for useful, actionable, educational content and are employing highly targeted “content upgrades” to convert traffic to lead funnels.

Knowing that you’ll be creating less, but more valuable, content, be sure to marry this content with content upgrades. Since the reader is already engaged with your content, providing value with these upgrades will increase the odds of a conversion because they will already be a warm lead.

An important factor to the content upgrade is that it helps you segment visitor interest. People are very interested in how to do that one specific thing they searched for. If they land on your article, you have the ability to know what they are looking for and which content upgrade to provide when they need it.

One of the quickest ways to identify candidates for immediate content upgrade opportunities is to look through your analytics and find your most popular content and consider ways to personalize a content upgrade for those posts.

You can also use a tool like BuzzSumo to identify some of the most shared content online based on the keyword phrases related to your ideal client.

You don’t have to overthink the package for a content upgrade. In many cases what you’re looking to do is simplify information not make it more complex.

Providing these upgrades will increase your number of leads, and in turn, customers.

3. Ensure your audience sees your content

Keep in mind that no matter how good your content is, nobody will see it if you don’t promote it. You must ensure you promote it to relevant social channels, email lists, and so on to ensure it targeting the right people. Also, be sure to employ on-page SEO best practices within your content to help you get found by your audience organically.

Matching your content to the customer journey

To take your content creation even further, you must ensure that it is incorporated into every stage of the customer journey in order to solidify the close. I believe the customer journey consists of seven stages (what I refer to as the Marketing Hourglass): Know, Like, Trust, Try, Buy, Repeat, and Refer.

As a person moves through the customer journey, you must hit them with content throughout the process to keep them engaged with your business, and the best way to do this is to match the content you’d like to develop with the various phases of the Marketing Hourglass.

You must be aware of what your customer’s journey looks like in order to develop content for each stage of it. To help you do so, I’ve described the stages below to help you brainstorm what content would work best for you.

Know

The Know stage is the phase where people first become aware of your business, and it’s your job to put a piece of content out there that get’s their attention.

Like

At this stage, give your prospects reasons to keep wanting more and move towards gaining permission to continue the conversation.

Trust

I believe this is the most important step but arguably the most tedious and time-consuming. The more a person trusts you and your company, the more likely they’ll be to buy from you. Create content that helps build that trust.

Try

I think this the easiest phase to move people to the purchase. The content here needs to represent a sample of the end result. Demonstrate how much better your product or service is than the competition, to differentiate your business.

Buy

The focus here is to maintain a good experience for the prospect. In order to continue to deliver a remarkable customer experience, you’ve got to continue to educate through content.

Repeat

In the Repeat phase, you need to consider adding a results review process as well as additional upsell and cross-sell touchpoints.

Refer

Build processes and content campaigns that make it easy for your brand champions to refer your business.

Content marketing is here to stay. Put time and energy into creating quality content with associated content upgrades throughout each stage of the customer journey, and you’ll be sure to increase your number of customers moving forward.

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9 Tips to Improve Your Content

9 Tips to Improve Your Content written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Allow me to let you in on a little secret. You don’t have to be the best writer in the world to produce effective content, but you do need to create that content if you want to be a successful marketer, so it’s important you do what you can to improve your content writing. The best part is, it get’s easier over time, I promise (and your writing will get better as well).

Here are some tips that have helped me along the way.

1. Know your audience

Here’s the thing, you’re typically not writing content just for yourself to consume, you creating it for others, so it’s imperative that you understand the ins and outs of who you’re writing for. Knowing your audience isn’t just a writing best practice, this is a business and marketing must as well.

Understanding your audience will help you focus in on your message and create your voice, which over time, will make the writing process easier for you, and the content better for those you are creating it for.

2. Stay organized

I, along with many other marketers, use a content calendar to organize the content I’ll be developing in the near future. It helps to develop monthly themes that I can write about to help me stay on track as well as ensure I’m not writing about the same material too much. For more information on how I put this together, I highly recommend that you check out my post titled, How to Systematically Create an Annual Editorial Calendar.

Along the lines of being organized, when it comes to the piece of content itself, I suggest you create an outline prior to diving in. I may be taking you back to your high school days with this one, but developing an outline can work wonders. Having a clear path for your content will help you write faster and more clearly.

3. Read

Reading has helped me find my own style and voice more than any other way. I find the more I read, the better I write. Whether it’s a book related to your field or a fictional novel, it doesn’t matter. You’ll start to notice things that resonate with you along with things you’d like to incorporate in your own writing.

When you read, bookmark messages or highlights that grab your attention to save for a rainy day for inspiration.

4. Find your voice

Knowing your audience will help with this, but it’s important to really develop an understanding of the tone you’d like to use throughout your writing. I find it helpful to write like I talk and keep it conversational. Remember that it’s also OK to be opinionated; I actually think it’s important in many cases.

Trust me when I say it’s easier to write in your own voice and use your own personality that it is to try to mimic another.

5. Time your writing

Writer’s block is real. We’ve all experienced it and in the times when it’s the hardest, I’ve found the best way to refocus is to step away for a bit and when you get back, set small increments of time to put your head down and focus. Some people use techniques like the Pomodoro Technique to get this done, where others do it there own way. I know one of the gals on my staff will charge her computer to 100%, unplug it, and force herself to finish the content before her computer dies…hey, whatever floats your boat.

Knowing you have a finite timeline to finish something will help you focus. Start small, even if it’s just 15 minutes of concentrated time before you reward yourself with a break. You can build up from there.

6. Write without interruption

During your focus time, don’t pause to edit. If you have a thought process, just go with it. You may go back and read it and realize it doesn’t make any sense later on, but just get your ideas down on paper and work with what you have from there.

7. Writing the content

Use a compelling headline

Whether it’s the subject line of an email or the title of a blog post, you must create a compelling headline, because more often than not, people really do judge a book by its cover in the literal sense. You must create a headline attractive enough to make your reader want to know more. A/B testing is a great way to nail down what resonates with your audience. There may be some trial and error with this at first, but it’s important you lock it down if you want people to consume your content.

Make it easy for your audience to follow

If you’re writing a blog post, for example, create a post that is easy on the eyes and easy for your reader to consume. I’d recommend:

  • Avoiding long paragraphs
  • Using bullet points
  • Using images to break up the text
  • Using headers to break up various section of the post

8. Edit, edit, and edit

Your content is a representation of you and your brand, so don’t be sloppy. Once I finish a post, I step away from it for a few hours and then come back to look it over with a fresh pair of eyes. If you’re not great at editing, have another person give it a second review.

9. Use tools

There are many tools out there that can help you with your writing so do your research and decide which is better for you. Here at Duct Tape Marketing, we’ve dabbled with a few and here are a couple to kick off your exploration:

  • Grammarly will help you instantly eliminate grammatical errors and will help to enhance your writing.
  • Hemingway analyzes your writing and helps to identify ways for it to be clearer and easier to read.
  • Focus blocks distracting websites, like Facebook and Reddit, when you’re trying to get things done.

There you have it! Those are just a few of my quick tips, but I know there are tons out there. What are some of yours?

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Build Your Brand and Acquire Links Through Podcast Guesting

Build Your Brand and Acquire Links Through Podcast Guesting written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

I want to talk to you about podcasting, but in a way that may be different than what you typically hear about the topic. I’m not going to discuss production logistics or anything like that. Instead, I want to discuss how to use them to build your brand and acquire links.

There’s no denying that interest in podcasting has increased over time, especially within the last 5-6 years. I think this is for a couple of reasons:

  • Content has become the air that drives so many channels
  • It’s portable and allows for multi-tasking nature of it

The combination of the two has allowed the popularity of this medium to skyrocket, both from listening and production standpoints.

While I think producing a podcast is a great idea and can provide many benefits for your business, there are also a plethora of opportunities that are there in podcasting for any business owner, namely through being a guest on another person’s podcast. Let’s dive in.

Guest interviews

Putting yourself out there as a guest on podcasts (as opposed to traditional PR with radio and TV) is one of the best things you can do for your business these days, but let me be clear, in order to be successful with it,  you must put yourself out there and pitch yourself on an ongoing basis, and truly build this as a channel for your marketing efforts.

A podcast interview is not only content, it’s great quality content. It’s a tremendous way for you to build expertise, authority, and branding for you and your business. When people hear your voice, it adds a deeper level to building trust, and the more a person trusts you, the more likely they’ll be to buy from you.

SEO and the benefits of podcasting

My friend, Phil Singleton, is one of the most knowledgeable people on SEO that I know, and he recently stated (over this past weekend, in fact) that of all the time he has spent on SEO, podcasting may be the best SEO tactic to give you the biggest bang for your buck. Being a podcast guest provides the following benefits:

  • Gives you access to an engaged audience
  • The host does the majority of the work
  • You have virtually no preparation (especially in comparison to guest blog posts)
  • High production value will make the content more shareable
  • There will likely be show notes that will drive links back to your website
  • Reviews can help build authority and credibility
  • There is a ton of repurposing potential with the content

At the end of the day, SEO really comes down to three main things:

  • Keywords – You must know what keywords your ideal client is searching for
  • Content – You must build those keywords into your content on a consistent basis
  • Links – That content must be seen and shared by other people by acquiring links from other sites to link to that content. From that, Google surmises that it’s good content.

If you focus on those few things over time, you will show up, and likely rank highly, in search engine rankings. What this means, is that a guest appearance on a podcast is your content on steroids. You get high-quality content and awareness to the podcaster’s audience (podcasts get shared more than blog posts).

Guest blog posts are a lot of work and time-consuming. Even if a podcast doesn’t have a huge following, it will likely still have more engagement than blog posts and have the ability to get more shares than regular blog posts and you will get links back to whatever it is that you’re promoting.

To make this even better, a lot of podcasters, including myself, are also creating transcripts along with their podcast episodes to have the written word content go along with the spoken content. In many cases, if you appear on a podcast, and they don’t transcribe it, many podcasters will let you transcribe it and repurpose it for additional content on your site; again, which will help to boost your SEO.

How to get on shows

Remember, this is a consistent process, not just something you do every once in a while, so it’s important that you allocate time and attention to this. Below are a few ways you can approach getting on podcasts.

Google search

Google is great at showing podcasts. Start by searching with an industry you’re interested in and google “[industry] podcast” and see what appears. Simple enough, right?

iTunes

iTunes not only categorizes podcasts, they include related searches like Google as well.

Amazon

If you click on an author link, Amazon will show related authors, which can help expand your search.

From your research, build a spreadsheet of hosts you want to reach out to. Most podcasts have some form of contact information or a form asking people to pitch themselves as a guest.

Once your spreadsheet is filled out, one of the things I’d spend time on is to think of your objective for being on a show. Make the podcast host understand the value they’ll get by interviewing you.

From a content and link objective perspective, don’t worry about how big the show is or the size of the audience. Focus on the links and content and make sure they align with your objective.

In almost all cases, you need to go out and pitch people. I can’t emphasize this enough, if you listen and subscribe to their show and know the host’s listeners, what they talk about, and how they deliver value, you’ll do a much better job of showing how you’ll benefit their listeners in your pitch.

These days, podcasters are looking for guests to have one-sheets that include your bio, why you’re a good fit, what you have to offer, places you’ve appeared, what others have said about you, and so on. If a podcaster is trying to decide between you and another guest, the one-pager can go a long way. The more professional you’ll look, the better your odds are of getting chosen for the show.

How to be a great guest

Your work isn’t done once you book the podcast. In order to be a great guest and get the most value out of this exposure, you really need to prep for it.

Subscribe and listen

If you want to be on a show, subscribe to it, or at least listen to it and really educate yourself on the host’s style and type of questions he/she may ask.

Don’t sell

The purpose of the interview is to educate or entertain the host’s audience. You may have the opportunity at the end of the episode to say where people can find you and so on, but nothing will turn an interview sour faster than selling.

Answer questions succinctly

A minute to 90 seconds is often too long for a response. Prepping will help you be clear and concise in your delivery.

Sound quality

Nothing is more frustrating than listening to a podcast with poor sound quality. Before you hop on the interview, confirm you have a solid internet connection or cell reception, and take the call in a quiet space to try to eliminate any extra background noise.

Show appreciation for the opportunity

Once you’re on the call, remember to thank the host for having you on the show and express your appreciation. Once the show is complete, be sure to leave a review for the podcast on iTunes.

How to promote your interview

After the show, most podcast hosts will send you a link to promote the show, and may even send you proposed copy for social media posts. Sharing and promoting your appearance makes a lot of sense. It helps spread the word and it’s good content that people may want to share. Look for multiple ways to promote it to your network.

After everything is said and done, ask your host for a review and use it in your marketing to boost your authority. If you own a local business, have them do the review through Google. Think of this as an opportunity to produce content and get amazing links and put your SEO on steroids.

Introducing a new podcast booking service called – Podcast Bookers

Want to streamline your efforts to get booked on podcasts? I’ve started a new service just for that. Podcast Bookers will help you create your one sheet, will show you how to pitch yourself, and will help book you as a guest on podcasts. For more information, click here.

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10 Reasons Podcast Guesting is the #1 Killer Content Marketing Tactic of All Time

10 Reasons Podcast Guesting is the #1 Killer Content Marketing Tactic of All Time written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Whoa. This is a bold statement, but hear me out.

I have been earning a living from search engine optimization for over 12 years and I’ve tried every tactic at one time or another.

Ever since Google started dropping algorithmic bombs around 2011 (think Panda, Penguin, and so on), SEO industry behavior has changed. Most SEO services have moved back onshore and “real” SEO is now an integrated part of holistic marketing.

That means legit SEO companies have become web designers, social media strategists, reputation managers and yes, content marketers.

In order to succeed, we as marketers and business owners must build our own audiences, strive for niche authority and become influencers. As such, I just recently started getting booked on podcasts and have been stunned by the benefits.

So Much Value in So Little Time

Pound-for-pound, I have never seen a tactic that has produced so many wins, with so little effort:

  1. Unbelievable access to a highly engaged audience. In one 20 to 40-minute interview, with little preparation, you can access hundreds to thousands of highly targeted listeners. If this top ten list stopped here at #1, this by itself is all the reason you need to consider a podcast guesting campaign.
  2. Easier than guest blogging. Guest blog posting is one of the most popular forms of content marketing. But it’s a grind because it takes a lot of time to write really good educational content (like I am doing right now on a Saturday morning), and there is a lot of spam and outreach noise that website owners have to deal with. Sure there are a lot of professional blog outreach services you can outsource to, but they can be pricey.   The beauty of podcast guesting is that you get to be published on the host’s blog with valuable organic links via a show notes page (example).
  3. Real personal connections. One of the big surprises to me was the feeling of friendship that develops during an interview. The fact that two people (the guest and the host) have each other’s undivided attention for an involved discussion creates a bond that can turn into collaboration. For example, in my own experience, hosts have offered to make personal introductions to other influential podcast hosts. Huge. Huge. Benefit.
  4. High content production value. Most established podcasts, and even newer ones, put a lot of effort into production, including professional sound, editing, creating custom web graphics, and writing a custom show notes page that includes guest bio information, key takeaways, and resource and contact links.
  5. Cross-amplification on steroids. When a podcast goes lives, there’s this cool feeling of a mini-launch that results in a highly shareable piece of content. Hosts are happy to have interesting guests, and guests are excited to be interviewed. The nature of the way podcasts are produced and distributed (audio, web page and often video) makes them much more shareable than typical blog posts – resulting in more likes, shares, tweets, backlinks and traffic.
  6. Free long-form blog posts. I have found that some podcasts hosts will provide full interview transcripts on their show notes pages, but most don’t. When they don’t plan to publish the transcripts, I have asked hosts if I can transcribe the show at my own expense and post on my own site as a blog post. No one has ever said no! This is a great way to get really good, unique content on your site with no effort (and very little expense if you use a transcription service).
  7. Increased dwell time. Dwell time has been a hot SEO topic for the last year or so. While Google does not directly acknowledge website dwell time as a ranking factor, most SEO experts believe there is a direct correlation between a page’s rankings and the amount of time users spend on the page. Podcasts, when embedded on a website, are unique because listeners are much more likely to listen for longer periods. A two-minute video seems really long because it commands all of your senses. But a podcast of 20 minutes goes by really fast because you can be doing other things while listening. Thus, embedding a podcast audio file on your site (as part of #6 above) may help your SEO efforts.
  8. New trust badges and bragging rights. As you are interviewed on more podcasts, your reach in terms of the caliber of shows begins to snowball. In the 30 or so I have done this year, each one is better than the last. For example, next month I will be on John Lee Dumas’ highly popular podcast Entrepreneur on Fire – and plan to use this as an “as seen on” eye candy for my websites.
  9. Online reviews. One of the things I’ve done, that most guests don’t, is send a request for review feedback right after the show. This allows me to not only get reviews on important review sites, but I also repurpose these into testimonials for my websites. Again, just the review equity from this alone make podcast guesting worth it.
  10. Oh yeah, Sales! You can get lots of leads by being a guest on podcasts, but you can’t sell during the interview – this is a big no-no. Your job as a guest expert is to share your story and educate. If listeners like and learn from what you say, you will get leads by nature of being an informative guest. I have probably had at least $100,000 in new business (annualized) for my agency in a few short months, and it has definitely boosted book sales.

Putting My Money Where My Podcasting Mouth Is

Podcast guesting is so valuable, in fact, that I partnered with John Jantsch to create a podcast booking service called Podcast Bookers. We did this for a couple reasons:

  • John’s been podcasting since 2005 and gets pitched daily by folks that want to be on his popular podcast. He knows what makes for a compelling pitch to hosts and where the gaps are with respect to podcast booking service providers.
  • After interviewing podcast booking services and using a few of them, I saw how the service is executed in a one-dimensional way. Yet, I see so many more SEO benefits to podcast booking that no one is taking advantage of, so I just had to start my own service with a brand new approach.

Whether you use our specialized service, another podcasting booking service, or even your own direct outreach, I promise that if you are prepared, have an angle and a story to tell, you and your clients can use podcast guesting to skyrocket your influence and authority.

About the Author

phil singleton

Phil Singleton is a Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant and co-author of the Amazon best-seller SEO for Growth: The Ultimate Guide for Marketers, Web Designers & Entrepreneurs.  He owns and operates a boutique web design firm, Kansas City Web Design, and markets and sells Internet marketing services under the brand Kansas City SEO.

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The Ins and Outs of Getting The Most Out of Video

The Ins and Outs of Getting The Most Out of Video written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

If you’re looking for advice on how to shoot or edit video, this is not the post for you (well, it could be, but not for that reason). If, however, you want to know why you should use video and the various ways you can use it, you’ve come to the right place.

Video today should absolutely be a part of your marketing mix and in some cases, it should be a core part of it.

Let’s dive in.

Guiding a journey

Marketing today is about guiding a journey. People are going out and conducting their own research and deciding whether or not they want to buy from companies. In many cases, companies aren’t even aware that these people are looking at them. Content can help to guide the stages of the customer journey, while also providing insight for the companies themselves. Video can be a great tool for this.

Websites today can no longer just serve as digital brochures. They must serve many roles for your business and should help you:

  • Get found online
  • Educate and inform visitors
  • Nurture visitors to a conversion

On top of all that, your website needs to build trust with your audience, and in my experience, this is where video shines. Short of a live, in-person presentation, I’m going to say video is the most important tool to do just that.

Why video?

Video is not only effective, it’s practical. Video is:

  • Portable (thank you technology)
  • Chunkable – For example, you can take a 30-minute presentation and repurpose it into numerous impactful videos.
  • Emotional – This is key for getting the attention of your audience.
  • Flexible in terms of where you can put it and the various mediums you can publish it on

What I don’t hear people talk about enough though, are the benefits of repurposing video into other forms of content rather than the other way around. You can actually get a ton of leverage out of video that will help your content generation skyrocket.

For example, what if you shot a video and then stripped the audio from it and turn it into a podcast episode? From there, you could get the transcript from it and with very little editing, turn that into a blog post or multiple posts. See how that works? If you come from a video-first standpoint, you’ll find it’s easier to create more content overall.

Benefits of using video

It’s undeniable that videos provide many benefits, but did you know that 80% of online visitors will watch a video? In fact, website visitors are 64% more likely to buy a product on an online retail site after watching a video. A few of the reason behind this include:

  • Video is engaging and easy to consume
  • It can be highly effective at influencing buying decisions
  • It’s easier to grab your audience’s attention with video than a text-based message

Where to use video

Now that I’ve mentioned some of the many benefits, let’s dive into where you can use this form of content, starting with the optimal areas of your website.

  • Homepage – An overview video is great for an introduction and helps to keep your audience on your website.
  • Product pages/How-tos – Placing videos on these pages provide full transparency for your audience and allows them to better understand what it is that you’re selling.
  • Demos – Once you get near the purchase, walking potential prospects through demos via video can really help to build their trust with you.
  • Testimonials – You want people to see positive reviews others give you, and using video testimonials is a great way to do it.
  • Contact Us page – Placing a video here is great for increasing conversions at a critical point in the customer journey.
  • FAQs – Rather than responding to questions with text, use a video!
  • Blog posts – Mix up your written posts with video posts to mix up the format and keep your audience engaged.

The value of video in social media

Perhaps the place that we see video the most these days is social media, and this is because:

  • It’s visually impactful – Videos stand out much more than a text-based post in your newsfeed
  • It’s engaging – People want to watch videos
  • It’s low-cost – Video ads are one of the most cost-effective ways to advertise

What’s great about video is that you can use them across the board. You don’t have to create new videos for social. You can repurpose the ones on your site and promote it across various platforms.

Using live video

Something I’m seeing more and more of is the use of live video (especially with Facebook Live), which is great if you use it correctly. Don’t use live video to just take footage of the sky or of you making pancakes. Use it with a purpose to make it valuable. Some of the ways I find it helpful include:

  • Training – Live video is great for internal purposes, especially for recordings if people miss the class
  • Events – Live video allows people to witness an event even if they can’t make it in person
  • Announce – Live video is great for announcements and to generate buzz

YouTube video ads

It’s nearly impossible for people to watch YouTube videos without an ad being played. When it comes to these types of ads, it’s easy to come off as annoying rather than engaging. People just want to watch their videos! But if you are engaging in this space, the rewards can be infinite. It’s a great tool for targeting and expanding your reach. To give you the best chance for success, be engaging and entertaining, and get your point across within the first 3-5 seconds of the video.

Equipment for creating videos

A decade ago, video was kind of hard to come by. Today that is not the case and it doesn’t need to be expensive. You really don’t need a lot to get something off the ground.

Basic setup

  • iPhone
  • Lav mic – Plugin to the iPhone jack
  • Tripod – For stability and more professional looking shows
  • Hosting
    • YouTube – Great for immediate uploads and search potential
    • Wistia – Good player that is:
      • Flexible
      • Easy to edit
      • Provides control of who sees it

Advanced equipment

As you can see, it doesn’t take a whole lot to get up and running to create great video content.

Editing videos

Once the footage is shot, you need to be able to edit it to what you want. Consider using the following tools to get this done:

  • iMovie (Mac) – Comes with Macs
  • Final Cut Pro (PC)
  • YouTube
  • Animoto

Final tips

Last but not least, consider these recommendations to get an ideal final product:

  • Pay attention to the sound. If the quality is poor, you’ll risk losing your audience.
  • Keep videos short to stay in line with the average consumer’s attention span.
  • Get to the main point early on in the video in case your audience drops off further in.

The most important point I want to drive home is at the core of every great video is a strategy. Before you do anything, identify the objective of the video and the action you’d like your audience to take by watching it. Knowing the “why” is invaluable.

So there you have it! What tips would you add to this post?

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