Tag: content marketing

Recession: 3 ways to tweak your marketing message in a poor economy

Considering that the economy moves in cycles, a recession is likely to hit your business at some point. You have to consider how to tweak your marketing message when you find yourself in a difficult economy.

Notice that we’re talking about adjusting your messaging and not cutting your ad spend from your marketing budget. Of course, you’ll likely have to evaluate your overall expenses, but businesses that want to succeed in the long run would not cut their entire advertising budget. Be smart with your spending during a recession.

Companies that continued to advertise during a two-year recession in the 1980s saw 256 percent higher sales than their counterparts post-recession.

Beyond smart spending, your marketing message is critical during uncertain times. The following are three ways you should tweak your marketing message in a difficult economy.

Be human as a brand (and funny)

In a recession, stress is higher than ever for your consumers. It’s easier than ever to alienate your target audience with an out-of-touch message.

Stay human by finding ways of conveying that purchasing your products or services will not break the bank. You can even cite current economic conditions to underscore that you understand what your customers are going through.

And, of course, whenever you can lighten the mood with a bit of humor, all the better. Just make sure that your humor is both appropriate and actually funny.

Embrace a purpose beyond just selling

A difficult economy shifts a lot of consumers’ focus to seeking meaning beyond just buying more stuff.

In fact, about 42 percent of Gen Z consumers are more loyal to brands that address social inequalities. 

Of course, purpose-driven content appeals to economically stressed consumers of any age.

During the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a rise in mission-based and cause-related marketing, 42 percent and 41 percent respectively.

As a brand, what do you stand for? Is there a cause you can start to embrace and support now? Success in mission-based messaging requires authenticity and consistency.

Leverage social listening during a recession

Tuning into the concerns of your target audience and addressing them in your recession marketing message can help you be far more engaging.

In other words, lean on your social listening tactics. Social listening is essentially audience research. You monitor your brand’s social media channels for any customer feedback, mentions of your brand and discussions surrounding specific keywords, topics, competitors or industries that are relevant to your brand.

Social listening is a two-part process. You have the monitoring on the front end, but then you dive deeper with analysis and actionable responses. There’s an engagement there, but also the goal to implement long-term strategy changes based on what you’re learning. 

When navigating a difficult economy, social listening is that much more important. The behaviors and concerns of your target audience are constantly evolving, but even more so during a recession. Your job then is to understand that and address that with your content.

How is the economic downturn affecting your customers’ families, jobs and personal lives? How can your brand help?

Check out nine of the best social listening tools for brand marketing.

In conclusion

Remember that during an economic recession, it’s easy to panic. But instead of slashing all your marketing spending, be bold with your content and spend in a smart way to reach your audience. Keep in mind that content can be much more affordable and effective than billboards and TV commercials.

Content marketing works during a strong economy, but it especially works during a struggling economy.

Check out our seven tips to level up your content marketing.

As you explore how to better connect with your audience during a recession, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, such as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

Evergreen: What is it and how important is it?

If you’re a marketer, you know the importance of content through your marketing strategy.

Content can be used to bring new website visitors and convert them into paying customers. The better your content, the better their results.

Evergreen content is a type of website content you create for your digital marketing that remains interesting and relevant over time. People will be interested in this type of content for many years to come. This helps you take advantage of content and use it to continuously attract new website visitors.

Anyone running a content marketing campaign should plan content that will always generate interest from their target audience. In most cases, evergreen content refers to blog content. However, it can be used throughout your marketing strategy to attract more customers. 

What is evergreen content?

evergreen-content
Evergreen content discusses topics that are always interesting to the audience.

Evergreen content is any content, whether a blog, infographic, or video, that retains its relevancy over time. This type of content discusses topics that are always interesting to the audience.

For example, anyone who wants to learn how to build a website might read evergreen content in 2022 or 2025 since the same tips will still apply.

The same is true for many different topics, including pet care, child care, and other topics that allow you to create informational and valuable content for readers to digest. Evergreen content stays fresh no matter the year or season. It can help readers answer a question or learn about a topic.

Evergreen content does not discuss seasonal topics tied to a time of year or trendy events in the news. For example, an article about consumer trends in 2022 is not evergreen content because it discusses a particular year, and consumer trends are subject to change over time.

Importance of evergreen content

Evergreen content stays relevant long after it’s created, and because it’s not tied to a specific time period or trends, it continues to attract traffic to your business website. A few benefits of evergreen content include:

  • Future-proofing your website and blog: Evergreen content is always interesting to your audience, allowing your blog to stay relevant no matter what’s going on in the world. This can have a growing impact over time, continuing to attract new visitors. 
  • SEO Improvements: Evergreen topics are searched for more often than seasonal or trendy topics. With other types of content, the search volume for keywords and clicks on articles typically dies down after a few months or when the topic is no longer trendy. However, evergreen topics can help you improve your SEO efforts to rank higher on search engines and promote growing traffic to your site. 
  • Increases website traffic: We’ve already mentioned this a few times, but one of the main reasons you produce content is to increase your website traffic. Evergreen content is better at increasing traffic than other types of content because it’s always reluctant. 
  • Provides value: Evergreen content is always valuable and addresses a common question your visitors have. You can position yourself as a trusted resource and thought leader in your industry by providing customers with continuously valuable content. 
  • Generating leads: Evergreen content can improve your lead generation efforts by helping you demonstrate your expertise and build customer trust. The more you educate and provide valuable content, the more your audience will trust you, encouraging them to take action on your site and convert into leads.
  • Easier promotion: Evergreen content can be promoted over and over again on social media and through other digital channels. With minimal changes to the original content, you can continue to push content every so often to generate more interest. This can be especially beneficial after updating old content. 

What types of content can be evergreen?

Any content can be evergreen; remember, it’s not the type of content that matters. Instead, you should focus on the content topic to ensure that it’ll stay relevant over time. The best types of evergreen content include:

  • How-to guides: Guides are a great way to generate leads because it allows you to offer something in exchange for potential customers’ personal information. E-guides and how-to guides can always be relevant depending on the topic. For example, you can write a guide for feeding your pet, and new pet parents will continue to read it. However, if you write a how-to article for something that’s seasonal or trendy, you won’t get regular visitors or leads from it. For example, a guide on how to make Christmas ornaments will likely only get visits during the holiday season. 
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): The FAQ section of a website or web page is essential if you want to improve user experience (UX). However, it can also be used as evergreen content. Asking the most asked questions about your brand, business, or industry can make for good evergreen content, especially if you can help customers easily answer common questions without leaving your website. 
  • Videos: Videos can also be evergreen, depending on the topic. Of course, you should have a good mix of different types of content on your website to attract all types of visitors. Video topics can include everything from how to use your product to general topics about your industry. 

Start creating evergreen content

Evergreen content relies on your topic’s ability to stay relevant over time. So, you should always start by brainstorming different topics.

Think about your audience and niche to determine what types of topics they might be most interested in learning about. You can also consult search engines and look at the People Also Ask (PAA) section for similar topics. For example, if you’re a pet company, someone might be interested in how often they should walk their dogs. In this case, you could write an article about how often to walk a dog based on several factors. You can even use experts to help you create more valuable and trustworthy content.

Of course, remember to check the performance of your content regularly. You can use various tools to learn more about top-performing content. This will help you determine which topics your audience is most interested in.

Level up your overall content marketing with our seven tips.

While you’re evaluating your evergreen content marketing strategy, consider leveling up your digital marketing strategy. DailyStory specializes in automation, email marketing, audience segmentation and more. Level up your process, and schedule a free demo with us today.

8+ content marketing metrics you should track

Content marketing plays a key role in many digital marketing strategies, but what metrics should you be following to ensure that what you’re doing is working?

Content marketing is essentially described as the creation and publication of content in order to build an audience and generate sales leads. In other words, you’re leveraging content that you’re creating to create brand awareness and educate audiences.

While 80 percent of content marketers use metrics to measure performance, only 65 percent have KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure performance, and only 43 percent measure their content marketing ROI (return on investment).

So, while many brands may be using content marketing, plenty are still figuring out how to measure success.

Of course, your metrics matter. Content production, strategy, distribution, promotion and any related software all cost time and resources. Are you getting your money’s worth from your content? 

If you’re new to Google Analytics, check out our nine tips to get the most out of the analytics platform. 

The following are eight-plus content marketing metrics you should track to ensure that the content you’re sharing is working the way you want it to.

Website referral traffic

A common content marketing metric is website traffic, but go beyond just the total numbers of visitors. Take a look at how these visitors are finding your content. 

To see where your traffic is coming from in Google Analytics, use the Channel report. You’ll be able to see how users are finding your content, whether that’s organically or through social media, search engines, etc.

This will give you insight into whether your social media promotion is working, if your SEO needs a boost or if a popular email newsletter is linking to you. 

In other words, website referral traffic can help inform your content marketing strategy overall.

User behavior

User behavior is actually a collection of metrics that can give you insight into reader engagement and content performance, especially when paired with other metrics, such as website traffic. 

You can find the following user behavior metrics in Google Analytics:

  • Time On Page
  • Bounce Rate
  • Pages/Session
  • New/Returning Visitors

The power of user behavior metrics does come from the pairing up with other larger metrics, but they can help you better understand the performance of your content.

For example, you have a blog post that is receiving a lot of traffic from search engines, and visitors are spending significant time on the web page. From that you can infer that your post is matching the search intent of these users, which is a win.

Shares and backlinks

When it comes to any brand awareness goals, it’s important to understand how far your content is reaching (beyond traffic on your website). You can get an understanding of this by tracking social media shares and backlinks (which are hyperlinks that point from one website to another). 

These metrics show whether users are willing to share your content with their personal audiences and networks.

You can measure social media shares on such tools as BuzzSumo, and you can measure backlinks on such tools as SEMRush, BuzzSumo and more.

Check out our seven tips to grow quality backlinks and boost your SEO.

Google Search impressions and click-through rate

In Google Search Console, you can (and should) track impressions and click-through-rates of your content in organic searches.

These metrics can help you understand whether the keywords your content is ranking for actually lead to how many users saw your search result and how many clicks resulted from that. 

You can find these metrics in Google Search Console by filtering by a specific landing page and then looking through the queries linked to that page. Click on Performance, then Search Results and then Queries.

Check out our four tips to boost your click-through rate in Google Search.

Keyword rankings

Speaking of keyword rankings, this is another content marketing metric you should be tracking. You’ll want to monitor your core keywords and their rankings at least monthly.

Ranking improvements can reflect positively on your content marketing performance. You can use Google Search Console to find this metric. 

If you’re not sure what keywords should be on your priority list, start with keyword research. Check out these 11 free SEO keyword research tools you should consider.

Lead generation

Lead generation is all about your content bringing in new sales leads to your business. In other words, it is the process of getting people interested in your business and gradually nuturing them into becoming paying customers. 

To measure lead generation in Google Analytics, you’ll want to set up your goals in the platform. This allows you to follow such things as demo requests, Contact Us submissions and more. This can then be used to help determine how many conversions come through a blog or other piece of content.

Premium content is not only a key part of any content marketing strategy, but it can directly increase lead generation. Learn more about what it is and how you can leverage premium content in your marketing.

Customer retention

New visitors are great, but don’t forget about your loyal, returning visitors. These are the consumers whom you’re building a relationship with that can lead to purchases in the future.

These are warm leads that you can’t ignore. What content is appealing to them? To find out in Google Analytics, click on Audience, then Behavior, and then New vs Returning.

Speaking of returning visitors, check out our six tips to create brand loyalty for your business.

Email opt-in rates

Email subscriptions might not be the first content marketing metric you’d think of, but it matters because your subscriber number reflects how many consumers found enough value in your content to want more of it delivered to them directly.

DailyStory is just one email marketing tool that can help you track your subscribers, their engagement with your emails and more.

In conclusion

Remember that the power of your content marketing metrics is only as strong as the goals you’re setting around your content.

Don’t have specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound goals? Check out our seven expert tips to set achievable marketing goals for your small business.

As you’re getting serious about tracking your content marketing metrics, think about your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

11 fitness content ideas you can use today

If you’re responsible for marketing a fitness brand in any way, it might be challenging at times to think of creative fitness content that not only tells your brand story but also attracts and retains clients.

The goal is to produce high-quality fitness content that’s consistent.

The COVID-19 pandemic reduced the fitness industry’s market size by about 16 percent, so it’s more important than ever to invest at least more time and effort into the effectiveness of your fitness content.

Of course, you’re always going to want to keep your target audience in mind with all content that you produce and publish.

Keep in mind that about 81 percent of Millennials exercise or would like to, compared with only 61 percent of Boomers. So, if you’re not considering Millennials as a group you should target with your fitness content, think again.

The following are 11 fitness content ideas that you can start using today to engage with your audience and grow your fitness business.

Offer tips and advice

You are an expert in your field, so what bits of advice can you highlight in your fitness content? For example, three ways to get more steps in per day or explaining when to stretch (before or after a workout).

You can easily brainstorm ideas by starting with the topics that you get asked most about. 

Then, it’s all about considering where you want specific pieces of content to go. For example, you can dive into a topic with a blog article, but a vibrant infographic would do well on Instagram and so on. 

Share your story

Whether you’re representing an entire gym or acting as an individual fitness trainer, it’s important to share who you are and what drives you.

Perhaps you have a fitness journey to share, or maybe it’s more about you as a gym owner. You could create a video interview diving into your story as a whole and/or post little snippets on different platforms. 

The key is that clients and potential clients have an opportunity to relate to you and form a bond with you.

Of course, if you’re more than a team of one, you’ll want to share the stories of your gym employees as well.

Share client stories

Client testimonials are a powerful form of social proof. Essentially, you’re highlighting different people who are happy with your brand for whatever reason (their results, your customer service, etc.) so that others can see the value of your fitness brand firsthand. 

A simple way to go about this is sharing a photo of the client with a quote, either on the image or in the caption (or both). This could even include before-and-after photo collages. But you could also expand this into short video clips across platforms. 

Check out these five reasons why your business should be creating more videos.

Create workout videos

Now, we’re not referring to a full-on Jane Fonda-style workout video. But you have the built-in opportunity to create and share video clips from before, during or after a workout that be used to inspire viewers and show them a tiny piece of what your fitness brand is about. 

There can be a lot of apprehension for a newcomer when arriving at a gym for the first time. Giving them a peek at what they can expect can be helpful and reassuring. 

You also can focus on breaking down a single exercise and talking through good form and modification options. This also adds to your credibility as a brand.

Offer healthy recipes

Nutrition is a big piece of anyone’s fitness journey, and there is no shortage of healthy recipes that you can highlight and share with your target audience.

Consider making the recipe a graphic image on social media platforms. You can even take it a step further and do a cooking video on YouTube.

Share fitness articles

All content does not have to come directly and uniquely from you. Lean on curated content and share relevant fitness and industry-related articles that you think your audience would appreciate.

The fitness industry is full of evolving trends and research that can be very engaging fitness content. Leveraging it also shows you to be an industry leader.

Just make sure that whatever articles you’re sharing are from a credible source.

Check out our four tips for finding curated content to share on social media.

Show your personality

Consumers don’t just want to connect to a business. They want to connect with the human behind the business. While you want to ensure that your branding offers its own sense of personality, you shouldn’t be afraid to share your own as well.

Clients want to trust you. They’re putting very important personal goals in your hands, so your authenticity is important. 

But a “great personality” can be subjective. Focus on being you, and check out these seven traits of online fitness personalities.

Dive deeper with our five steps to determine your brand personality.

Post inspiring quotes

When thinking about creating engaging fitness content, was inspiring quotes your first thought?

It’s a popular go-to because it really can work. Just make sure that you are:

  • Picking relevant quotes for your audience.
  • Designing the quotes in a graphic illustration so that they’re shareable on social media.
  • Not over-posting quotes. Mix them in but don’t let a majority of your fitness content ride on quotes. Your engagement can trail off without a good mix of content.

Lead a Q&A

Q&As are popular with many audiences, and they give you the opportunity to be the expert in an engaging way.

There are a number of different ways to structure your Q&A based on the platform you decide to use, but just keep in mind that you want to promote your Q&A in advance, accept questions in advance (to fill any gaps or holes during the Q&A itself) and set an engaging topic that drills into what many of your target clients must deal with or face.

In case you’re interested, check out these seven tips for marketing on Quora and other Q&A websites.

Explore promotions

First things first, you should aim to have a majority of your fitness content be organic and non-promotional. But promotions are key to moving the needle toward your goals, especially when done in an engaging way.

Promotions include:

  • Discounts and coupons
  • Contests and giveaways
  • Freebies (otherwise known as premium content), such as workout guide, healthy eating plans and more

Check out our tips for keeping your giveaways legal.

Collaborate with other brands or influencers

Brand or influencer collaboration is a great way to not only reach a new audience but to develop creative content inspired by your partnership.

Of course, you don’t want to dive in with just any brand or influencer. It’s important to do your research on their:

  • Company mission (if it’s a brand)
  • Branding
  • Audience

Then, you can decide if everything that they are and have to offer meshes with your fitness brand. From there, you decide what your partnership will look like and commit to a plan.

Check out our seven tips to know before starting your first influencer marketing campaign.

In conclusion

Ideally, you’re planning regular brainstorms to generate as many fitness content ideas as possible that you can pull from along the way. To stay organized and ensure a great content mix, consider using a content calendar.

While you’re working on creating and sharing the most engaging fitness content, consider DailyStory. Our digital marketing platform integrates with MindBody and Rhinofit to better serve fitness studios and gyms and offers such features as SMS text message marketing, email marketing, automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

10 tips for creating engaging content

While anyone can create content, the key is creating engaging content that helps your brand achieve your goals on social media and beyond.

Engaging content is all about getting results, such as:

  • Click-throughs to your website
  • Overall increase in website traffic
  • Social media mentions, likes, comments and/or shares
  • Opt-ins
  • Conversions
  • Sales

Ask yourself what you want your target audience to do when they consume your content. The extra effort to put out great (rather than just good) content is worth it.

About 69 percent of Twitter users have bought something because of a tweet, but about 65 percent of marketers find it difficult to produce engaging content.

The following are 10 tips for creating engaging content that will drive results for your brand.

Strive for originality

Easier said than done, right? Keep in mind that even though someone else could be talking about the same thing or using a similar image, but it’s all about your unique voice and spin.

Consider leveraging your personal experiences or even customer experiences, depending on what makes sense for your brand. Those are truly unique to you and your brand.

And lean on what makes your brand itself original. Not sure what that is? Check out our nine tips that can be considered a branding walk-through.

Think actionable

When engaging content translates into results, what action do you want your audience to take? 

Consider your goals.

For example, let’s say that you want to promote a new product you’re launching. A salesy blog about the product probably won’t do the trick. Instead, think about creating an “unboxing” video, formatted differently for each social media platform, that can generate interest with a call to action directing consumers to your website to find out more (or offering a discount code to save on purchasing) is a more engaging way to go. 

Of course, there is not a one-size-fits-all single piece of content (no matter how engaging) that will work. Think of every piece of content as simply a drop in the bucket that you can keep adding to in different ways with different angles.

But always keep the point of your content in mind. Draw their attention in and show them the next step that you want them to take. Just keep it simple.

Use (accurate) data

Numbers and statistics can be incredibly engaging in your content. An interesting fact (whether stataed or visually displayed) can catch internet users’ attention. But make sure that whatever data you’re using is accurate and up to date.

Anyone can post anything on the internet essentially. So, double check that you’re pulling your data from a trustworthy source.

Then, use relevant statistics wherever it makes sense to do so. What you use can easily inspire an infographic or a topic for a Facebook or Instagram Live conversation.

Explore storytelling opportunities

While numbers are great, stories are even more compelling.

Storytelling can help you connect with your target audience and boost your authority on a topic, depending.

Be sure to speak or write in a way that’s relatable to your audience, maintaining a conversational tone. Depending on the nature of the story, you want to spur emotions, such as joy or sadness.

Consider a fitness blog. Would you as a consumer want to know the fitness trainer’s list of certifications, or the backstory that inspired that person to get certified in the first place? The two are not exclusive. It’s just about the angle that the content creator takes to engage you. The list of certifications is not going to engage you, but that story might (and you can still see the list, too).

Think about real-time engaging content

The more you know and understand your target audience, the easier it is to identify their interests and plan your content accordingly. Consider asking:

  • What events are they interested in?
  • Which television shows or movies are they watching?
  • What holidays are significant?
  • Are there any special times of year for them (such as summer vacations, tax season or school exam periods)?

Creating content around and related to these real-time events and interests will be that much more engaging for your audience.

Provoke thought

Simply put, you want to make your audience think. Many topics that are related to your industry and brand might fall into a gray zone, where opinions reighn supreme. The idea is to ask the right open-ended questions in your engaging content to spark discussion.

For example, a baby supplies brand could ask its audience what the top tip is that every new mom should know. This can be presented a simple graphically designed image post on a social media platform with the goal of a robust comment thread.

Explore humor

Humor is an excellent way to engage with your audience. Making people laugh forms a stronger bond with your brand.

This can involve sharing a meme, celebrating an unusual holiday or just asking silly questions. Just make sure that what you think is funny is actually funny and not inappropriate, confusing or even offensive.

Humor can definitely go wrong, so tread carefully and stay true to your brand. Check out whether humor is right for your digital marketing.

Involve your followers

About 85 percent of consumers think that visual user-generated content (UGC) is more persuasive than branded photos or videos.

UGC is unpaid or unsponsored social media posts that consumers share about a product or service. Essentially, it’s content created by your audience that you then are resharing with that audience. Not only is it engaging, but it takes some of the burden off of you to create every piece of content from scratch.

Check out our 10 tips to encourage more user-generated content.

Visuals are a must

In this era of digital marketing, your visuals are everything. Images and especially videos are the most engaging types of content online.

Half of social media users prefer video over other types of content, and users share video content with others twice as much as any other type of content.

Take and use original photos as much as you can, and embrace video. Just keep in mind that a vast majority of videos (particularly on Facebook) are watched without sound.

Consider the 10 types of videos you can use in your digital marketing, and check out these 18 video-editing apps that you should know about.

And when photos or videos aren’t an option, consider infographics and other graphic images that you can use. We found these 11 free graphic design tools for the non-designer.

Plus, the right visuals can even increase your email conversions.

Mix up your content

Hold yourself accountable for keeping a fresh mix of content publishing from your brand. The same thing over and over is going to lose your audience’s interest and lose engagement.

Mix in videos with blog shares, polls with photo galleries, whatever makes sense for your brand.

A content calendar can help you stay organized with all your planning and ensure that you’re not overlooking the overall mix of your content. Check out our eight tips to create an effective content calendar.

In conclusion

Creating engaging content takes work, but that work is worth it. Remember your goals every time you plan and execute a new piece of content. Make sure that you’re not just sticking with “good” content but that you’re striving for “great” content.

See our seven tips to level up your content marketing.

As you create more and more engaging content, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, such as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

10 of the most profitable blog niches

Creating a blog not only supports your content marketing efforts. It can help you make money, too.

But to nail your profitable blog niche isn’t easy. Blogs are very popular. About 70 million posts are published each month just by WordPress users. In order to succeed, you must stand out.

Fortunately, you have numerous profitable blog niches to explore so that you can find the topic that best suits your expertise, your brand and (truly) your passion. That way, you’re crossing what makes sense for you with what can make you money.

The following (in no particular order) are 10 of the most profitable blog niches to consider before you even begin to plan your first post.

Digital marketing

Digital marketing’s importance for small businesses is only increasing. But at the same time, it can be an overwhelming topic for many business owners.

The topic of digital marketing covers a range of online strategies that market one’s business to its intended target audience. This includes (but is not limited to):

  • Email marketing campaigns
  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • SMS text message marketing
  • Pay-per-click advertising
  • Social media marketing
  • Online branding
  • Influencer marketing
  • Affiliate marketing
  • Content marketing

Successful digital marketing efforts can lead to increased conversions and sales for businesses. So, whether you’re social media savvy in general or have a degree and many years of experience in the digital marketing field, an increasing number of businesses are seeking understanding and tips from people just like you.

Of course, you can narrow down your focus to a more specific segment of digital marketing and really leverage your blog as a valuable resource that internet users will want to return to and even subscribe to for the latest updates. Affiliate marketing could be a great way to generate an income through this topic. But the simplest approach is selling digital advertising space on your your blog website.

Do-It-Yourself

Search engines are constantly being used by people trying to figure out how to do a project themselves. Are you an avid DIYer? Maybe you have life hacks when it comes to one-off repairs in older homes. Or, you’re a contractor who rebuilt your entire home from the ground up. The sky’s the limit.

Clearly, this is one type of profitable blog niches that cries out for tutorials and how-to articles. But YouTube can be a great pairing with your blog here as well. 

Build a big enough audience on YouTube, and you could be paid directly for your content.

Health and fitness

The total market size of the global fitness club industry alone is more than $87 billion. And the COVID-19 pandemic has only underscored the importance of living a healthy lifestyle.

Of course, the overall topic of health and fitness is about as diverse as you can imagine. Whether you’re a health professional leveraging your expertise about macronutrient nutrition (for example) or an amatear transparently sharing your personal fitness journey (and everything in between), you have the opportunity to connect with others through your blog.

As far as making money, one way in the health and fitness industry to do so would also be affiliate marketing, but you also could offer an online-only health program or sell a subscription to your video content (whether they’re workouts or cooking tutorials, and so on).

Check out our four tips to become a fitness affiliate marketer, as well as 18 of the best fitness affiliate programs to boost your income.

Recipes and food

Not necessarily tied to the health and fitness industry since food can definitely be “not healthy” but just as engaging, recipes and food in general is big business online.

Food itself is an evergreen topic, good anytime for a long time. This makes it particularly profitable as a blog niche.

Whether you specialize in quick-and-easy weeknight meal recipes or anything and everything with cheese in it, determine where you can specialize since this niche is so saturated. You’ll also want to include plenty of eye-catching visuals. Consider pairing your blog with an Instagram, Pinterest or Facebook presence.

To drive income through the food and recipe blog niche, you could partner with brands to create recipes using their products, sell a printable cookbook and more.

Parenting

The audience for parenting advice is so large that if you’re a parent, this is one type of profitable blog niches worth considering. Think mommy bloggers.

But beyond just being a parent, what specifically can you focus on? Maybe it’s a stage of parenting (like raising toddlers), a type of parent (like older parents) or even your status (single father). You’ll want to outline your blog’s brand so that you can stay on topic to help build your audience. 

Of course, to make money, product partnerships, sponsored ads and more can all help turn a profit.

Personal finance and investing

Who doesn’t want money advice? People always are looking for ways to more effectively manage their money and improve their investing outcomes. Google searches about financial planning are only increasing.

Personal finance blogging is a great opportunity. If you’re a financial advisor, you can offer a wealth of tips to be more money wise. You also could be an avid couponer who has tips to share on how to save the most money when shopping.

Whatever your angle, the best way to make this niche profitable is to think through what you can offer that will help readers make more money in the long run. That could be an online course or paid webinars.

Fashion

Fashion is an immensely popular and diverse blog niche. Whether you’re a designer, love modeling new looks, intensely follow the industry and its news, or something else entirely, fashion blogging could be for you.

Just like food, visuals are key, and a pairing with Instagram or another visual social media platform would be helpful.

To make money, you could leverage Instagram Shop to directly sell your products, sell advertising space on your website or explore affiliate marketing.

Technology and gaming

It makes sense to use the online medium of blogging to connect with others who are interested in technology or gaming. In 2020, the gaming industry alone generated about $155 billion in revenue.

You could share in-depth product (hardware or software) reviews, post tutorials to help people use a specific piece of software or even break industry news if you’re an insider.

To make money, there is a great opportunity to use affiliate links to products or software that you’re writing about.

Travel

If you’re dream retirement is to live the life of a travel blogger, we don’t blame you. But you also don’t have to wait. Travel is a very popular and one of the most profitable blog niches if done right.

Many begin by blogging about their own travels, but you’ll want to focus your content a little bit more than that. Remember, you want to stand out. Maybe you’re a particular type of traveler (like a family or a solo female). Perhaps you’re focusing on a particular area or continent. Whatever it is, you want to have a theme or brand that’s clear to your readers. Having this makes it easier to monetize your content.

Profit can be driven through affiliate links to hotels or other travel accommodations and products.

Self-care

A popular trend in recent years is self-care. About 73 percent of Americans were more conscious of needing self-care in 2020 (with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic), while about 69 percent planned to do more self-care in 2021 than they did in the previous year.

But self-care is as popular as it is diverse. From stress management to journaling, a trained psychologist, wellness coach or counselor can really add to the self-care conversation.

To make money within the self-care blog niche, consider promoting products in paid partnerships that can help your audience achieve their goals, offering life-coaching sessions, developing a podcast where you can sell ad space with a big enough audience or even directly selling your own digital products, such as a robust journal template. 

In conclusion

When creating your blog and choosing a profitable blog niche that works for you, remember that you have something to contribute to the already existing and ongoing conversation. Make sure you identify what helps you stand out and leverage that every chance you get in order to connect with your own target audience.

Of course, many of the methods mentioned to drive an income from your blogging efforts are only the tip of the iceberg. There are many ways bloggers are profiting from their content. But either way, profit depends on growing and maintaining a significant amount of website traffic and engagement. 

Check out our 19 tips to drive traffic to your new blog.

As you gain traction with your new blog, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, such as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

19 tips to drive traffic to your new blog

Blogs can be a large part of your content marketing efforts.

Each month, about 409 million people view more than 20 billion blog pages.

If you haven’t already been maintaining blog content for your brand, you might be deciding that now is the time to get started.

Great! But once you launch your new blog, how do you begin to drive traffic to it? Clearly, a blog with no page views is like a tree falling in the forest without anyone hearing it. In other words, you’re not going to hit any of your marketing or revenue goals with a low-performing blog.

The following are 19 tips to help your new blog get attention.

Determine your target audience

This is a common requirement for any sort of successful content marketing tactic. While many small businesses would love to target everyone all the time (because who wouldn’t want your product or service?), you have to get real.

First, everyone has a budget. And yours is going to go much further when you are targeting a more specific group of people than if you’re trying to reach everyone.

Second, you’ll be that much more effective by targeting a niche of consumers who are most likely to purchase. That’s right. Aiming “small” (but targeted) will lead to a better ROI (return on investment).

Of course, your target audience is more than a handful of demographic characteristics. See our seven tips to help you determine the best target audience for your brand.

Plan engaging blog content ideas

It might sound obvious, but there’s not a huge reason to push for more blog traffic if your content is lackluster. You’ll simply lose the readers you do get and definitely won’t be able to build a relationship with them.

Content that’s clear, engaging and even solves a problem that your target audience might be dealing with will not only attract visitors but also leave your audience wanting more. Both are good things!

Consider as your brainstorming blog topics:

  • Your expertise. What relevant knowledge can you share?
  • The interests of your readers. What are they wanting or needing to know?
  • Trending topics. What can you contribute to the conversation?

Once you have a list of topic ideas, get organized. Check out our eight tips to create an effective content calendar.

Develop attention-grabbing blog headlines

Headlines can greatly impact how well your blog posts perform. They are on the frontlines representing your content and impacting whether an internet user will click through on your link or not.

In a nutshell, you want to be clear, catchy and detailed while also not being too long. 

See our 19 tips to write effective, engaging headlines.

Optimize for SEO

Keep in mind the phrases and keywords that your target audience will most likely use in search engines, like Google or Bing. You’ll want to naturally incorporate these throughout your content.

You can try any of these 11 free keyword research tools to get an idea of the proper keywords you should use.

This effort can help search engines find you and recommend your specific piece of content to the potential searching audience, which can then lead to free website traffic.

See our 12 SEO marketing tips for beginners to dive deeper.

Consistency is critical

You’ll want to publish new blog posts consistently. Of course, consistency does not mean posting daily at the same time each day. It just means that you must decide on a posting schedule and then stick to it.

This serves your visitors, so they know when to expect new content, but this also can help your ranking for search engines, which trust websites with consistent new content versus those with an erratic posting schedule.

When deciding how often to post, consider your time and resources first. You don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver as soon as you start. Remember that you can always build up your posting schedule over time as it makes sense to do so.

Go long with your content

This isn’t permission to go long just for the sake of going long. There needs to be substance behind it, of course.

Long-form content offers readers deeper, more concise information. But that’s not the only benefit.

Sharing rates typically increase along with the content length of your blog on all the major social media platforms, especially Twitter and Facebook. In addition, the top ten results for any given search tend to go to content with at least 2,000 words, and the rankings tend to decrease along with the word count.

Just make sure that you break up your longer content with subheadings, images and so on.

Never go out of style with evergreen content

Evergreen content remains relevant over a long period of time. It’s not time-sensitive in any way, but it could be seasonal, where the content can continue to come back every year and be just as relevant. This sustainability will help feed continued traffic to your blog.

To get the ball rolling on evergreen content, think about the questions you’re frequently asked by customers.

Use visuals

We as humans are more visual by nature. Our eyes are drawn to images before text.

About 80 percent of people remember what they see, compared to 10 percent of what they hear and 20 percent of what they read.

Leverage this by incorporating images, GIFs, videos and graphics into your new blog. Plus, you have the ability to properly tag your images so that search engines can understand the types of assets you’re offering to visitors within your text content.

Confirm your website loading speed

About 57 percent of online shoppers will leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds for a page to load. And search engines are paying attention to your loading speed as well, which will lower your search ranking if you’re slower than you should be.

Not sure what your website’s loading speed is? Start with Google’s Page Speed Insights. You’ll not only find out the loading speed of your pages on mobile but also get some diagnostic advice on how to fix any of the slower pages.

Website loading speed is critically important to mobile marketing in general. Check out our 14 tips to help you optimize for mobile consumption in additional ways.

Embrace internal linking

Internal linking is all about linking to your other content that’s relevant in the current blog that visitors are reading.

This benefits your SEO efforts, and it can help keep visitors on your website longer by visiting that related content in addition to your original content that attracted them in the first place.

Just make sure that you’re only using links that are relevant and valuable. Keep an eye out for opportunities to link to other content as you’re working on new content.

Build up quality backlinks

Backlinks are hyperlinks that point from one website to another (as opposed to internal links that are linking within your website). About 91 percent of all web pages never get any organic traffic from Google, and that’s mostly due to the fact that they don’t have backlinks. 

Don’t be one of those pages.

We all want to improve the search engine ranking of our website, but when it comes to getting others to link to you, it’s easy to feel lost. Plus, you don’t want just any backlink for your site. Quality (meaning that the backlink is coming from a trusted website) is important as well.

See our seven tips to help grow quality backlinks to your content.

Consider guest blogging

By featuring other writers on your blog, you’re not only adding to the value you have with different perspectives, you’re also potentially reaching a new audience.

When you’re working with potential guest bloggers, make sure you agree in advance on how the partnership will work.

  • Will they share the content on their own social media channels? If so, how often? What does that look like?
  • Does anything need to be linked back to for them? What links? How many?

Of course, this can also be flipped where you’re guest blogging on another website.

Partnerships can truly be a win-win for everyone involved if planned and talked through in advance.

Social media promotion is key

Maintaining an active social media presence goes a long way toward driving traffic to your new blog. You can directly share your content with the context that should encourage users to click through to your blog.

You’ll want to consider every social media platform different and unique. What works on Twitter is not the same as what can work on Instagram.

Consider your audience and the platform when posting. You might even want to consider creating a YouTube channel to work in tandem with your blog.

In addition, having social media sharing buttons that are alongside your content will make it easy for your visitors to share your content organically on their own social accounts as well.

Learn about what you should know about social media.

Leverage email marketing

Email marketing is a great way to build personal relationships with your subscribers, and you can use snippets of your blog content within your emails that can link back to your full content.

In 2022, the number of email users worldwide is estimated to be about 4.3 billion. This is expected to grow to about 4.6 billion in 2025, making up more than half of the estimated world population. 

See these 48 statistics that show the value of email marketing.

Even in a world of social media prevalence, more consumers use email than any social media platform, and more than half of consumers check their email before they check their social media in the morning.

Check out our 16 email marketing best practices so that you can put your best foot forward.

Host a contest or giveaway

You can create opportunities for your audience to win prizes by subscribing to, liking, commenting on or sharing your blog content, which can all further the reach of your blog.

Prizes could be a product you sell or a service you offer to keep it simple.

Make sure you plan ahead so that any giveaway works efficiently for you and for the participants. Plus, you’ll want to keep it all legal with thorough Terms and Conditions tied to your giveaway.

Encourage comments and discussions on your blog

Google naturally improves the search ranking of a blog that’s receiving a lot of comments because it indicates that the content is engaging.

Of course, what can help these discussions is your thoughtful responses to any comments left by readers. It creates a trusting relationship and encourages them to continue commenting.

You can always try to get the comments going by ending your blog post with an open-ended question that readers can answer in the comment section.

Participate in various Q&A websites

Question-and-answer websites are definitely one of the biggest online communities in the digital world.

By answering questions on such platforms as Quora, TripAdvisor and others, your answer will be live for a long time and could potentially drive traffic to your blog.

That being said, you want to avoid any link dumping on these sites. Instead, focus on giving as detailed an answer as possible and only include a link if it makes sense to do so.

Experiment with influencer marketing

In the simplest sense, an influencer is anyone with a digital following (or audience) on a social media platform or elsewhere whom you’d like to attract to your own brand.

The purpose of influencer marketing involves increasing brand awareness, targeting new and niche audiences and increasing impressions and reach.

By identifying and partnering with an influencer, you can reach that new audience and drive up traffic to your new blog.

But before you dive in headfirst with your first influencer marketing campaign, check out our seven tips.

Spread social proof across every platform possible

Social proof refers to potential customers assuming that what others are doing is correct based on how often they see those actions. In other words, social proof is about looking to others to figure out the right way to interact in any given situation.

You can use social proof to promote your blog on your website and across your social media channels.

Here are a handful of ideas to get started:

  • Use a feedback form to collect user feedback about your blog that you can then share.
  • Ask users to rate your blog articles.
  • Share your social media following number, email subscribers or any other numbers.

Learn more about what social proof is and nine ways to use it, as well as 17 of the best social proof tools that you can try.

In conclusion

The biggest thing to keep in mind when launching a new blog is to have patience. Growing your website traffic organically can take time. 

Focus on offering quality content that resonates and getting creative with your promotion beyond even these tips. 

Check out our seven tips to level up your content marketing, as well as our Digital Marketing 101 Guide for Beginners.

As you gain traction with your new blog, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, such as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

7 tips to write an author bio that gets noticed

Author biographies are an opportunity to personally connect with your blog readers.

There are more than 500 million blogs out of 1.7 billion websites, and about 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages each month.

Your goal as a blogger is to stand out. An author bio can help.

An author bio is roughly a paragraph about you, your credentials, your hobbies and/or any other information you wish to share with readers.

A compelling author bio will not only help build a relationship with readers, but if you are guest blogging, it can actually drive traffic to your own website or social accounts (whatever you’re linking to).

The following are seven tips to write an author bio that gets noticed.

Consider your personal brand

An author bio is essentially an extension and reflection of your personal brand. How do you want to be perceived in relationship to your blog article?

Check out our 10 tips to build your personal brand if you need a little help.

Understand your audience

Especially when you’re guest blogging, you can engage with many different types of audiences.

Whom you’re speaking to can (and should) impact your author bio.

Just like you should understand your target audience when you’re creating a piece of content, whether it’s a blog or something else, you should extend that same effort for your bio.

Depending on the audience, the details you include might vary.

Keep it short and sweet

It’s tempting to outline your full resume of professional experience and accomplishments in your author bio. 

But resist the urge.

Listing every detail simply to list it (or to establish your authority on your blog) will lose your audience. 

Narrow it down to what you would include in an “elevator pitch.” What are the top three things you would say about yourself? Remember that you want to include the most attention-grabbing points about yourself (just not too many).

Speak in third-person

Regardless of what voice your blog article is written as, you want to write your author bio in third-person voice only.

It’s simply more professional.

List any achievements sparingly

Again, too much is obviously too much. And a long list of degrees or awards (or both) will make the eyes of your readers glaze over. 

In addition, it could come across as more boastful than impressive.

If you want to include something, consider your biggest or most recent achievement.

Feel empowered to get personal

Blogs are not as formal as other mediums of communication, so you have the opportunity to add a few compelling, personal details about yourself.

This is especially the case if your blog article focuses on a more personal or first-person topic.

You’ll want to be selective with these details as well. What makes the most sense to include? What might connect with readers?

Include a professional photo

There is a big difference between a selfie (no matter how flattering) and a professional photo.

Characteristics of a professional photo include a background that is not distracting and good lighting. They’re typically shot straight-on, featuring a clear image of the face. Headshots traditionally refer to professional photos that show the face and at least some of the upper body.

Of course, you can certainly show your personality in a professional photo. See some examples for inspiration.

As you’re creating your author bio, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory and our 21-day free trial. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

10 tips to encourage more user-generated content

User-generated content should be part of your overall digital marketing strategy.

Why? About 85 percent of consumers think that visual user-generated content (UGC) is more persuasive than branded photos or videos.

UGC is unpaid or unsponsored social media posts that consumers share about a product or service.

Of course, the amount of user-generated content out there is almost limitless. Smartphone owners take an average of 150 new photos per month (or about five photos per day).

Because social media thrives on authenticity, UGC is a great way to connect with your audience and build brand loyalty.

The following are 10 tips to help you encourage more user-generated content related to your own brand.

See what’s already out there

Whether you have an official UGC strategy or not, it’s entirely possible that user content about your brand (or showing your product) is already being posted on various social networks. 

You can search by location, hashtag and/or keyword depending on the social media platform. 

Doing so can help shed light on what’s already out there and what you can start with as you shape your UGC strategy and related campaigns.

Understand current consumer trends

This is somewhat related to seeing what UGC already exists for your brand but on a larger scale. The key is to focus on the habits and behaviors of your target audience. 

See our seven tips for determining your target audience.

Ask yourself:

  • What types of photos and videos are my target audience posting?
  • Is there a particular style or product dominating the conversation?
  • When is your target audience typically posting?
  • Are they geotagging their photos and videos?

Once you have a better understanding of how your target audience shares content on social media, you can use that to help develop your own UGC-related campaigns.

Adopt a selfless, community-driven hashtag

Even if you already have a branded hashtag that you use on your branded content (and some customers might or might not also use), it’s a good idea to create and adopt a customer-focused hashtag that’s about them, not so much about you.

One example is Urban Outfitters promoting #UOonyou that’s related to apparel and beauty posts from their customers and #UOaroundyou that’s related to their music and apartment departments. These are actionable hashtags that put the focus on your fans and customers.

Remember, user-generated content might be related to you, but it’s not about you. The more you can put the spotlight on your online community, the better.

Include call-to-actions across your online presence

Just because you create a community-driven hashtag doesn’t mean that it will go viral (or even be used) immediately.

Beyond regular promotional posts talking about your community hashtag and how to share content, be sure to include wherever you can across platforms, whether that’s in your bio, cover image, website or elsewhere.

The more it appears across channels in different ways, the more fans you’ll reach. Just be specific about what the hashtag means and what type of content you’re looking for.

Display signage in your physical locations

While an analog method, displaying signage in your physical location(s) can be very effective.

Think about where you interact with your customers. Displaying signage about how they can share on social media and be part of your online community of fans can be very effective at checkout, for example.

Be clear about the type of content that’s relevant to your community hashtag and even which social media platform you prefer (if applicable).

Host an event

By hosting an event, you can create your own buzz for your fans and customers to post about.

Of course, the type of event you host depends on your brand. But in general, your event enables you to control the environment, the lighting, the availability of your products (perhaps in a goodie bag, for example) and more that can make a splash online. 

No matter the event, promote your hashtag to attendees so that they can all see each other’s posts.

Embrace influencers

Working with influencers can help spread awareness about your brand across social media and the internet at large (depending on the influencer, course).

In a nutshell, an influencer is viewed as a leader among his or her networks, with large and engaged followings.

Obviously, working with an influencer can lead to a great kickstart to any user-generated content campaign.

But influencer marketing can take many different forms, depending on your goal and who you choose to work with.

See our seven tips before diving into influencer marketing. We also break down how to determine which social media platform is best for your brand’s influencer marketing.

Plan a giveaway tied to user-generated content

UGC is organic and authentic, but one way to spur more of it is through a giveaway where entries are tied to posting user-generated content.

Granted, no brand should just launch a giveaway without a confirmed plan of execution and legal considerations. But in general, by asking your following to submit images to be entered into your giveaway, you’re offering an incentive to share more great content.

Just be sure the theme of your giveaway aligns with what your fans already enjoy doing and that your prize encourages enough engagement to be worthwhile.

Consider alternative incentives for user-generated content

Beyond hosting an official giveaway, some brands have experimented with giving other types of incentives for UGC, such as discounts, free samples and so on.

Of course, you’ll want to plan accordingly, but anything you can incentivize for your following to share will naturally help them do so.

Feature user content elsewhere online

A popular choice here is your website. The idea that a fan’s photo could appear on your brand’s website or re-shared on other branded social accounts could be enough to keep sharing.

While this acts as a free type of incentive, it’s also just a great way to celebrate your fans and share your growing online community with others.

Many brands have a hashtag feed that populates on their website to show the latest related UGC being published.

In conclusion

Ultimately, your goals around user-generated content will naturally direct your path with this digital marketing tactic. Take the time to determine what it is that you want to accomplish, whether that’s increasing engagement, saving time on creating your own branded content or something else entirely.

Also, keep in mind that it’s always important to not only engage with the users sharing content about your brand but to ask permission if you plan on using his or her content in any way beyond an in-platform share.

Check out our seven tips to help improve your overall content marketing.

While you’re evaluating how to increase UGC around your brand, consider leveling up your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

12 expert tips to host your first webinar

Webinars are only growing in popularity.

About 60 percent of marketers use webinars as a content marketing tool. They help increase the understanding of your products and services by about 74 percent.

And as a form of premium content, webinars can help you generate and nurture leads for your business. By sharing your expertise in an engaging presentation format, you’re building stronger, more trusting relationships with your customers and potential customers.

The following are 12 tips to help you host a successful webinar.

Choose the right webinar platform

There are a number of webinar-hosting platforms available, so it’s important to review the features of any platform you’re considering so that you ultimately use the best platform for your needs.

Consider the fact that attendees might watch your webinar across devices, whether it’s a computer or a smartphone. And while some platforms might be free or low-cost, that advantage could result in limits on time length, a set maximum on the number of attendees or even the display of distracting ads for you and your attendees.

Ideally, you’ll want a platform that doesn’t just host a quality webinar but can help manage registration and send out reminders to attendees as well. A handful of webinar-hosting platforms you can look into include:

Select the right day and time

You’ll want to schedule your webinar at a time (and day) that allows for the most possible attendees to participate.

Of course, the ideal day and time can depend on your target audience. While an “after-dinner” time might seem odd, it could perform better than an afternoon time when your audience is in the middle of their work day.

You can review your website traffic to see what days and times are most popular for visitors to be on your site. Be sure to factor in relevant time zones into your scheduling.

In general, though, webinar scheduling is recommended in the middle of the week (Tuesday through Thursday) around 11 a.m. But don’t be afraid to experiment with different days and times to see what ultimately works best for your audience.

Use the right equipment

While relying on the built-in microphones and speakers on your computer can work in many instances, there is a risk of low-quality audio that can turn off your attendees.

Consider a headset (even if it’s plugged into your computer). You also should have a backup computer and any additional batteries as needed or spare additional equipment so that you can easily troubleshoot any technical difficulties. 

You’ll also want to print out a copy of your slides so that you can keep going if there is a glitch there as well.

Opt for the right topic

It’s important that you brainstorm a number of potential webinar topics before settling on one. And if you can brainstorm with a colleague (or several members of your team), all the better.

The perfect topic is where your expertise intersects with the interests and needs of your audience. As you’re narrowing down your ideas, keep asking yourself: “Will my target audience care?” 

If you choose a topic that doesn’t generate a lot of interest and excitement, you’re setting yourself up for an uphill battle with your webinar in general.

Also make sure that your topic is neither too broad. A broad topic gets about as far as broad audience targeting, which isn’t very far at all. Don’t be afraid to deep dive into the finer details of a particular topic. That’s where the value comes from, and it’s all about providing value.

Go as visual as possible

In addition, you’ll want to make your webinar as visual as possible. The more visual the topic you’ve chosen, the easier it will be to create a presentation that’s engaging for your attendees.

Of course, visuals can be more than just photos. You can use videos, infographics and/or GIFs as well.

Practice makes perfect

You should definitely practice your webinar in advance to ensure a smooth experience when you go live.

Not only will this help you work out any hiccups in your script and your over pace, but you’ll also likely identify any technical issues that you can fix well before the time of your webinar.

Practice truly makes perfect, so do so as many times as you like.

Promote your webinar across channels

This might sound obvious, but you must promote your webinar to boost attendance. Beyond the obvious, though, make sure your promotion spans across channels.

So, you’re posting across your social media accounts, encouraging colleagues and partners to do the same, including a pop-up ad on your website, publishing a blog about what attendees can learn and so on. We also suggest a “countdown” campaign that teases some tips or statistics to really generate anticipation for your webinar. You can even create and use a specific hashtag during your promotion that can then be used during your webinar as it’s happening, and include any speaker’s social media handles in your promotion as well.

The sky’s the limit. Just don’t assume that one post or blog will do the trick. Be consistent in frequency and quality.

See our seven tips to level up your content marketing.

Engage with your attendees

While we definitely recommend that you have a script planned for your webinar presentation, you don’t want to miss any opportunities to engage with your attendees.

A good rule of thumb is to build engagement opportunities (such as questions) into your presentation, roughly about every four to five slides. In addition, plan to leave time at the end of your webinar for questions from your attendees. 

Depending on the webinar-hosting platform you’re using, there can be engagement features (such as polls) available to use as well.

Invite guests to speak or host

If you’re concerned about being monotone in your presentation or are simply looking for ways to mix it up, consider inviting a guest host. This expert can present for part or all of your webinar.

The key is to project energy while presenting, but the simple tag team of two presenters can make your webinar more interesting by default.

Guests can be industry thought leaders, experts or influencers who have larger followings than your brand. Just make sure to coordinate your plan, slide deck and scripts. 

Assets can be created for attendees

You can provide additional assets to promote engagement and/or value. 

Whether it’s a link to an ebook that will offer even more information after the webinar or a downloadable worksheet for attendees to use during the presentation, anything you offer will help make your webinar both more memorable and more successful.

Of course, the assets you offer will naturally compliment your topic and the goals of your presentation (like even offering the slide deck to be available for download).

Follow up with attendees after your webinar

Don’t forget to send a follow-up email to your attendees within 24 hours (or less) of your webinar ending.

You’ll, of course, want to thank them for attending, but you also have an opportunity to request feedback so that you can continue to improve.

For anyone who was registered but didn’t attend your webinar, make sure to send a recording. (This can be done for those who attended as well.)

If you have freebies, webinar highlights or a future webinar to promote, include all these in your follow-up message as well.

Measure your success

Use all available in-platform metrics to analyze your webinar registration and performance. It’s important to understand any insights available to you.

Was there a drop-off in participation at a particular point during the webinar? Did everyone stay engaged all the way through to the end?

Take everything you learn and apply it to future webinars that can continue to improve and grow.

While you’re planning a successful webinar, consider leveling up your digital marketing process. DailyStory features automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

Premium content: What it is and how you can leverage it in your marketing

If content is king, then what would premium content be?

Content marketing itself is increasingly important for businesses to embrace in a digital world. Think of your website (or even your social media accounts) as a planet. Your content being the gravitational pull that generates traffic and engagement. 

Then, of course, we leverage that traffic and engagement to fuel conversions, which equates to sales and boosting our bottom line.

The most common types of content include:

  • Blog articles
  • Graphic illustrations
  • Videos
  • GIFs

What is premium content?

Premium content then is original information that is valuable enough for website visitors (or social media users) to provide their contact information to get it. 

To be more specific, premium content:

  • Answers common questions you encounter in your industry
  • Dives deeper into a topic to deliver knowledge
  • Offers tips and advice that can be acted on
  • Addresses challenges that your customers and potential customers face
  • Is relevant to the needs and wants of your customers and potential customers

How you package your premium content can vary. Some common types include:

  • Webinar, which is a video web presentation typically hosted by an expert in the industry sharing a presentation slide deck. It can be presented live and/or recorded and available long after the webinar is over.
  • eBook, which is a PDF that’s usually about a few dozen pages long. It’s very visual with professionally designed pages (including a cover). It’s ideal to include your pitch and contact information at the end of an ebook.
  • White paper, which is an in-depth evaluation of a topic in PDF format that includes expert research and is usually six to 12 pages in length.
  • Template, which gives customers or potential customers frameworks for creating something (like a content calendar, for example). This is usually offered in PDF format.
  • Interactive tools, which help measure or assess something (like a special calculator, for example). You might need to do some programming for this type of premium content.

Of course, to access premium content, visitors should fill out a web form with their name and email address at the very least. But it’s up to you if you’d like to collect more information up front, such as company name, profession, phone number, zip code, etc.

Just keep in mind that the more information you require, the lower the conversion rate of your premium content (no matter how appealing it might be).

After submitting the web form, users should immediately receive the premium content through a link or email.

5 ways to leverage premium content in your marketing

Beyond the tips below that are specific to marketing your premium content, check out our seven tips to level up your content marketing as well.

On your website

The homepage of your website is prime real estate to promote your premium content and is often the most trafficked page of many websites.

You also can use pop-up or slide-in ads on your website. The advantage of these is that they can appear on any of your web pages after a set amount of time.

Plus, very simple in-line links within other content can also be helpful. You can highlight and feature selected portions of your premium content in blogs, for example.

No matter how you promote on your website, make sure that your call-to-action button is bold and attention-grabbing.

Email promotion

Depending on your goals, email promotion may or may not make sense. If lead generation is the goal, then you would be promoting your premium content to contacts you already have.

But if it makes sense to do so, you can share teasers of your premium content in your regular email newsletter and other marketing emails.

Social media

Organic social media posts are a great way to promote your content to potential leads you’ve never come into contact with before. You can even encourage your staff to share the premium content link on their social media channels. And paid social media campaigns can help you target your ads even further to those who are most likely to engage with you.

Google

You can use Google AdWords to target the promotion of your content to internet users based on their search intent. 

In addition, you can try Google Display Ads, which allow you to target websites, apps and videos that are part of the Google Display Network. 

Print advertising

It may sound archaic, but there might be some print advertising opportunities to explore, depending on your target audience.

We recommend including a QR code in your print ad so that those interested can easily give you their contact information and download your content. 

While you’re exploring how to best promote your premium content, consider leveling up your digital marketing process. DailyStory features automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

8 tips to create an effective content calendar

Content marketing has many moving parts.

From what to write to where to post, how to post and what else can be brought back (and when), you then have to ensure that everything you’re doing is engaging and relevant.

Organization is critical.

A content calendar can help you plan and maintain your content marketing strategy across platforms. Specifically, a content calendar is a written schedule of when and where you plan to publish your upcoming content. It can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be, with the option to include:

  • Upcoming content pieces
  • Status updates
  • Planned promotions
  • Partnerships
  • Updates to your existing content

About 40 percent of marketers say content marketing is a very important part of their overall marketing strategy. And effective content marketing comes down to great planning.

The following are eight tips to create an effective content calendar that works for your business and your content marketing goals.

Determine your goals

Your goals typically revolve around what you hope to achieve with your content marketing in general.

Are you hoping to generate new leads? Grow your social media following? Increase your website traffic?

Your goals impact not only who you’re targeting but also where and how often you should publish content, which then will guide what needs you have for your content calendar.

Check out our seven tips to level up your content marketing (which includes more than just goal-setting).

Create your content calendar template

A simple search will yield many content calendar templates that you can use. Whether you’re looking to adopt a new software application, download a pre-made template or create your own, remember that again, this can be as simple or complex as you want it to be.

Truly, a basic spreadsheet would do the trick.

Just make sure that it’s easy to update and share with other team members.

Some information that would be helpful to include:

  • Topic of the content
  • Type of content
  • Date and time for publishing
  • Channels (social media and otherwise) where the content will be published and/or shared
  • Point person for the content
  • Link to the published content
  • Confirmation that the content has, in fact, published according to the schedule
  • Any relevant notes

Look ahead to the calendar year

To start the planning process, it’s helpful to lay out the year ahead and make note of all the important events that your content can reflect and/or promote.

This can include:

  • Holidays
  • Product releases
  • Anniversaries
  • Seminars
  • Seasonal promotions

Doing so will not ensure that you can seize these opportunities with your content marketing.

Choose your publishing frequency

The frequency of your new content as well as the sharing of existing content is typically a balance between what’s ideal for your audience and what you have the resources (including time) to do.

It’s important to not overcommit yourself or your team. Success is more tied to quality than quantity. If you’re stretching yourself so thin just to publish something new, it’s not going to be as engaging or relevant as it could be otherwise.

On the flip side, overstuffing your content calendar just because you can also is not recommended.

Visualizing your frequency on a content calendar can help you find the best balance for your brand and your team. It can help you anticipate traditionally busier times and how your content can expand and contract accordingly.

Of course, keep in mind that your content calendar does not have to be set in stone. The beauty of planning your content further out in advance is that you can easily adjust well before you even begin working on impacted campaigns or content pieces.

Approach your content calendar with that flexibility in mind. You want to hold yourself accountable, of course, but you also want to adapt to whatever might pop up.

As far as sharing your content on social media platforms, consider these seven opportunities for social media automation that can save you time.

Consider your content workflow

If you’re a team of one, this is simple. However, as soon as you have more than just you involved in the content planning, you must consider:

  • Who needs to approve content and/or posts
  • How approval is communicated
  • The process for brainstorming new content
  • How to assign roles and what that should look like

Streamlining a workflow that works for your team will only benefit the overall effectiveness of your content calendar.

Evergreen content is just as important as new content

When developing a content calendar, the tendency is to populate it with content ideas that are new.

But don’t shortchange your existing, evergreen content, which is the content that (while it might seem old to you) is continually relevant and fresh for users.

Whether you’re updating, bringing back “as is” or repurposing your evergreen content entirely, this is a treasure trove of content opportunities that you can’t ignore. Be sure to make a point to sprinkle this existing content throughout your content calendar.

See our 13 tips to repurpose your content like a marketing rockstar.

Consistently update and review your content calendar

A content calendar, no matter how much information is on it, is only as good as how active you are using it.

Commit to checking in on your calendar regularly. Schedule at least monthly brainstorming planning sessions where you flush out the next month’s content calendar in greater detail and sketch out ideas for months further in advance that can be revisited as needed.

Struggling with marketing writer’s block? See our seven tips to beat it.

Ideally, you’ll want the flow of your brand’s content to stay uninterrupted no matter what the frequency is.

Monitor the performance of your content

The upside of content marketing is that everything is measurable. Take advantage.

Be sure to track how your content is performing across platforms.

What’s working, and what’s not?

Take those insights and apply them to future planning in your content calendar. It is through those performance insights that you can continually improve your content strategy.

While you’re embracing a new content calendar, consider leveling up your digital marketing strategy. DailyStory specializes in automation, email marketing, audience segmentation and more. Level up your process, and schedule a free demo with us today.

7 tips to level up your content marketing

You likely know by now that content is king.

But when it comes to content marketing, it’s almost too easy to find yourself spinning your wheels.

Creating content to simply create content, without a direction, plan or strategy can end up being a waste of resources. This is your opportunity to not only grow your audience reach but also show people what your brand is about and why they should both like and trust you (at least over time).

Of course, that type of traction ultimately contributes to your bottom line and boosts your ROI (return on investment).

Content marketing is essentially described as the creation and publication of content in order to build an audience and generate sales leads.

About 63 percent of businesses do not have a documented content marketing strategy.

Don’t be one of them. You’ve got to determine your strategy. The following are seven tips to help you level up your content marketing.

Define your target audience

Before you get to strategizing your content marketing, it’s imperative to identify the ideal customer you would like to target.

You may already know the demographics, interests and habits of who you most likely would sell your products or services to, but if not, a quick audit of your customer database should help.

Think about:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Income
  • Profession
  • Hobbies
  • Interests
  • Challenges or needs

See our seven tips to determine your target audience.

Once you’re set on the characteristics of your ideal customer, you can approach your overall content marketing plan with that persona in mind. Truly, the “who” you’re writing for should have a huge impact on not only the content itself but the type of content you create and where/how you publish it.

Familiarize yourself with the sales funnel

Essentially, the simplest way to understand a sales funnel is to see it as the series of steps a consumer takes to become your customer.

There truly are many things that must happen between a prospect becoming aware of your business to the moment they take action and purchase from you.

However, keeping the idea of a sales funnel in mind will help keep your content marketing strategy (and even overall digital marketing strategy) on track. In addition, that focus can help prevent missed opportunities for customer conversion.

Think of it like this: Your potential customer has a problem, and you’re creating content to help them solve that problem, which brings awareness to your brand and kicks off a relationship of trust that you can nurture consistently through the conversion of a sale and beyond.

The four stages of a sales funnel are:

  • Awareness
  • Interest
  • Decision
  • Action

Learn more about the four stages of a sales funnel.

Map out your content marketing strategy

A great strategy begins with you placing yourself in your target audience’s shoes, so to speak. (Remember that every piece of content you create should be intended to help address that person’s needs.)

As you begin to outline your content marketing strategy, ask yourself:

  • Who are you trying to reach and engage?
  • What does your target audience need?
  • What type of content does your target audience prefer (blog article, video, ebook, etc.)?
  • Can any user-generated content be incorporated?
  • What do you want to achieve with your content in the next three months, six months and 12 months? How will you measure that success?
  • What is your budget?
  • How does your content marketing strategy fit into your overall business plan?

If you or your company has already been creating content (with or without a strategy), now is a good time to perform a content audit. Evaluate what has performed well and what hasn’t. Take note of what might have contributed to those successes and failures. These takeaways will help inform your new content marketing strategy.

In your plan, you’ll want to identify and map out:

  • Your content marketing goals
  • Any branding guidelines required to maintain a consistent voice across content and content promotion
  • A content plan (what types of content you’ll be creating)
  • At least a rough editorial calendar
  • A promotion checklist (where you’ll be consistently sharing your content)

Use a content calendar

As you get further and further into your content marketing plan, using a content calendar is a great way to keep yourself organized and focus, without getting overwhelmed.

We recommend including the following information in whatever content calendar you end up using:

  • Project timelines
  • Due dates
  • Names of the team member(s) in charge of production
  • Content details, such as keywords
  • Any other information that applies to your content

Online tools, such as Asana and Trello, can help you set up an accessible calendar for your entire team.

This organization will help you publish content consistently.

See our eight tips to create an effective content calendar.

Promote your content across channels

For successful content marketing, more is needed than simply hitting the publish button on your website’s blog. You must get your content to your intended target audience.

There are three types of distribution channels:

  • Owned: Channels that your company owns, such as your website, social media platforms and email list(s).
  • Earned: Third-party channels that you don’t have to pay for but have “earned” promotion through, such as social media shares and guest blogging.
  • Paid: Paying to promote your content on other channels, such as pay-per-click ads on Google or social media ads.

Just as you would have noted in your content marketing strategy plan, you should have a checklist of everywhere you plan on promoting your content.

Be sure that you’re not missing any platforms or channels that could potentially reach your audience.

Set up a system to evaluate and repurpose existing content

Never assume that you have to constantly publish new content in order to be successful in your content marketing.

In fact, any existing content can be repurposed into different, new pieces, which will not only further engage your target audience but also save you time.

The key is that you set a regular system and/or schedule for evaluating and identifying potential past content to repurpose.

Check out our tips for effectively repurposing your content.

Measure the performance of your content

About 65 percent of B2B marketers don’t measure the ROI of their content marketing.

Don’t be one of them (whether your business is B2B or B2C).

It’s imperative that you regularly measure the performance of all content and content promotion so that you have a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not with the goal of understanding the “why” behind those metrics.

That understanding will help you continue to improve your content marketing over time as you see what your target audience engages with and what they don’t.

Keep an eye on:

  • Page views
  • Time spent on page
  • Bounce rate
  • Social media engagement actions and rates

Trends should become apparent after the first few months.

As you level up your content marketing, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, such as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

Get heard: 9 tips for starting your first podcast

To diversify your audience reach, starting a podcast could be the right move for your brand.

About 75 percent of Americans are familiar with the term “podcasting” (up from 70 percent in 2019), while about 50 percent of all American homes are podcast fans, according to compiled statistics by Podcast Insights.

Perhaps you already have an idea and are ready to jump in, but beware: It’s estimated that there are at least 1.75 million shows already (and they’re definitely not all delivering on invested time and resources). 

To help your new podcast get heard (and not get lost in the noise), here are nine tips to help you get started.

Set your purpose and goals

It’s imperative that you get specific here. Not only do you want to nail down exactly what your show is about, but you want to formalize your goals for the podcast as well.

Typically, the best way to define your niche topic is to think about the cross section of your expertise and your target audience’s interests. 

Who are you trying to reach? Resist the temptation to say “everyone.” Any piece of content that fails to target a specific group fails to reach most. This includes podcasts.

When thinking about your target audience, consider:

  • Gender
  • Age range
  • Employment status
  • Hobbies and interests
  • Social lifestyle
  • Hopes and dreams
  • Challenges and pain points

In other words, don’t be afraid to get as specific as possible when deciding what your show is about, but ideally, you want the topic to have enough potential content angles to explore as you get going.

When setting your goals, think S.M.A.R.T.:

  • Specific
  • Measureable 
  • Actionable
  • Realistic 
  • Time-bound

Think through it: Why do you want to create this podcast? Understanding what ROI (return on investment) you’re aiming for will help you not only launch it but make decisions about its path along the way.

Dive deeper into how to create achievable marketing goals.

Start thinking about a name and logo

Just like tweets, the shorter you can make the name of your podcast, the better.

If it can be just one word, that’s even better. Many of the top podcasts today are just one-word names:

  • Griefcast
  • WTF
  • Serial
  • Spooked
  • Sawbones
  • 1619
  • Radiolab

And truly, if you glance through names of top podcasts as a whole, you’ll see very few that are more than two or three words.

Brainstorm your options and present those ideas to friends and colleagues. Get feedback. Take your time settling on the best podcast name.

When it comes to designing your logo, simple and bold are approaches to keep in mind. Remember that many podcast listeners are scanning or discovering new podcasts on their mobile devices, which means: small display. 

Your logo is an opportunity to visually communicate the idea of your podcast, and it also needs to make sense at a tiny size.

A short but sweet description also will be needed to inform listeners of what your podcast is about. Be clear and concise because this is how you can snag new listeners.

Decide on your format

Your podcast has a variety of options when it comes to its format, including:

  • Conversational
  • Educational
  • Storytelling (fiction or nonfiction)
  • Interviews

Formats largely can be categorized as structured (with a number of segments potentially strung together) or unstructured (such as a panel conversation or interview that lasts the duration of the podcast).

Interviews can definitely make or break a podcast. Your interviewees could be big audience draws and add leverage to your episodic marketing, but they also could need to reschedule or cancel entirely. The more you can “bank” interview recordings before you even launch, the better. It also is in your best interest to compile a long interview “wish list.” Don’t hold back from who you would love to interview. You never know when someone might say yes.

To find more interview leads, consider joining HARO as a journalist. It’s a largely untapped source of potential experts you can interview.

In regard to hosting, there can be one host or any number of hosts on your podcast.

When deciding on your number of hosts, know that while you can have more control with a single host (possibly you), all the work can then likely fall on your shoulders. Multiple hosts can share the workload, but that does mean less control and the potential of at least one host losing interest after a while.

This is also the time to determine the frequency of your podcast. Commonly done are:

  • Weekly
  • Every other week
  • Monthly

You’ll also want to decide whether this is a serial (set number of episodes) or a recurring podcast (ongoing).

There’s no particular benefit to any of these timed formats other than what suits your resources and overall podcast format.

Frame your podcast with intros and outros

Intros and outros are 15 to 30 seconds at the beginning and end of each episode. They are an opportunity to set the tone of your podcast for your listeners.

Typically, an intro will mention the name of the show as well as who the host is. You can use the same intro for every episode or change it up by season or even by episode. Just make sure that there is some consistency so that you’re maintaining the tone of your podcast.

The outro is the wrap-up segment of each episode. You can add a call-to-action where you mention your podcast’s social media handles or a website where listeners can learn more about your brand.

 

Background music is commonly used in intros and outros, but you’ll want to ensure that you’re using copyright-free music. Doing so will help you avoid any lawsuits or other issues.

Brainstorm episode subjects

Like any other content calendar you would create for a blog or social media posts, your podcast deserves the same amount of planning.

Start by writing down any and all episode ideas related to your podcast. If your format is interview-based, you’ll want to start documenting all possible interviewees. 

For inspiration, browse through related blogs and books. Even the table of contents of books can be a great seed for brainstorming.

Planning-wise, don’t stop until you can sketch out at least three months of episodes. Then, plan to revisit the brainstorming process monthly after that. This will help your consistency and organization.

Select the right equipment and software

Sound quality is everything in podcasting. There is an expectation of clear, no-background audio. Because the competition in podcasting is high, you can’t settle for anything less.

So, while you don’t necessarily need super expensive equipment to record your podcast, you’ll definitely want more than the built-in mic on your smartphone or computer.

At the bare minimum, you’ll get better audio recordings with a quality microphone and headphone set with your computer.

In addition, you can consider using a:

Be sure to find a quiet space. Consider all outdoor noise that could be picked up even through a closed window and even indoor noise that could be created by such things as an HVAC unit.

Editing your audio recordings is an obvious key component to making your podcast high-quality. Audio editing software options include (but are not limited to):

You’ll want to explore options for your podcast hosting as well. Podcast hosts are places to store and distribute your podcast’s audio files. Some top podcast hosts include (but are not limited to): 

Often, your podcasting host will help you connect to podcast distributors, such as iTunes, Google Play and others.

Repurpose your transcripts

Creating and publishing the transcripts of your podcast episodes to your website or other platform will not only help your search engine optimization (SEO), it gives you additional content to use and promote.

Check out our 13 tips for repurposing content like a rockstar marketer.

Practice makes perfect

Your first episode does not need to be your first recording.

This means that you can practice as much as you want, recording, editing audio and so on. You can record in different spaces to determine the least amount of background. You can even practice how close you’ll want your microphone while speaking. 

All of this helps ensure quality recordings the first time around when you are recording “for real.”

Your podcast marketing matters

Just like you would plan out your podcast episodes, you also want to plan out the marketing surrounding each episode.

This includes thinking through posts across all existing social media channels, as well as mentions or features within your regular email marketing.

If you have guests on your podcast, consider asking them to promote the episodes that they’re featured in on their channels.

You’ll also want to plan out a campaign announcing the launch of your podcast. This should be geared toward your target audience and can include social media ads (like on Facebook) to get the word out even further.

The question of whether you should create a separate social media presence specifically for your podcast depends on you and your brand. If you already have a well-established, branded presence where it makes sense to promote your podcast, then creating all-new accounts shouldn’t be necessary. If you don’t have any established presence that can be tied to your podcast, then you might consider creating one.

Check out our seven tips to level up your content marketing.

In conclusion

When launching a new podcast, take your time. Podcasting is a marathon sport, not a sprint.

The key is planning, consistency, quality audio and topics that truly engage your target audience. You might launch with a small audience and no advertisers, but the more consistent you are, the more you can build that follower base, and the rest will lead to your achieving your podcasting goals.

As you’re considering promoting your new podcast, let DailyStory help you level up your digital marketing process. Our platform features email automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

13 tips to repurpose content like a rockstar marketer

We can all agree that “content is king,” but not all of us have the time to constantly create increasingly more content.

This is where repurposing your existing content can come into play.

Repurposed content involves adding to or heavily revising your existing content to add more value. It gives you the option of potentially targeting a different audience than originally intended as well. However, repurposed content could also simply be a way of reaching whomever you missed the first time around.

Repurposing your original content:

  • Saves you time
  • Improves your search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Helps you reach a larger audience
  • Boosts your authority on the topic
  • Makes the most of your past effort

The following are 13 tips to repurpose content like a rockstar marketer.

Identify your best content

Ideally, you’re starting with quality, evergreen content (typically blog articles), looking for the timeless gems that have multiple angles that can be broken up and repurposed in different ways.

Take some time to review your website analytics. Depending on how far your data goes back, look at your top content by month for both page views and time spent on page.

The key is that you identify all your best pieces of content and compile them in an easy-to-manage format where you can spin-off and repurpose content easily.

To stay organized, consider these eight tips for creating an effective content calendar.

Create new blog posts based on what you’ve already done

Without grasping at straws for what to publish next, remember that great content can spinoff more great content.

For example, you can break up a past listicle into individual pieces of content. On the flip side, you can take a group of similar posts and compile them into more of a summary post.

Refresh and republish out-of-date content

Similar to spinning off your original content, you also can update and republish any out-of-date content you already have.

The hard work is already done for you in the core of the blog article, but things can change after a few years or even a few months, depending on the topic.

Depending on your blog article publisher, you might want to either update the existing article and include a note up top. Or, you can publish an all-new article and simply reference and/or link back to the original article.

Convert into a presentation slide deck

Any blog article with statistics, quotes and advice can easily be converted into slides, which can offer a more visual way to engage audiences with your original content.

There are a number of tools that can help with the slide deck creation, including Canva, PowerPoint and Google Slides. Once created, you could share on websites like SlideShare.

Summarize key points in an infographic

Infographics are essentially a visual outline summarizing some or all of your content.

If your content typically includes a lot of data, infographics are a great way to go. They can make that data much easier to understand and fill in as visual posts on your social media channels to capture the attention of your followers.

Of course, infographics aren’t just great with specific data points. Truly, you can represent any summary or key points of your content visually in an infographic.

When designing, keep your branding in mind (colors, fonts, so on) and maintain a consistent look throughout as much as possible. That will only strengthen your branding.

Some tools that make creating infographics a breeze include Piktochart and Visually.

Teach through an instructographic

Similar to infographics, instructographics are graphics that represent how-to content. In essence, you’re using the visual format to show your audience how to do something.

These are a great option to convert your content into, especially if you have a lot of how-to articles.

Instructographics are particularly popular on Pinterest, but don’t stress if you don’t have a business profile on Pinterest. These visuals can be engaging almost anywhere.

Don’t be afraid to repost on social media

There are a couple of facts about social media that many brands can forget:

  • Not everyone sees everything you post.
  • Even people who have seen something in the past likely won’t remember now.

This leaves your social media publishing efforts ripe for the resharing of your best (i.e. timeless) evergreen content.

For example, a tire shop could easily repost its winter driving tips before every major storm in its region. 

However, you can always mix things up by changing up your chatter on the post and/or the visuals used.

At a loss? Consider leveling up your social media skills with any of these 17 free online courses.

Develop an email series for new subscribers

A well-developed blog article can easily be converted into an automated email series. 

For example, you could leverage a tips article into one tip per email. Be sure to flush out each email with additional visuals to make it more engaging. Then, you can offer this email series to new subscribers. The pace can be up to you (daily, every three days, etc.), but be sure to communicate this in your initial email so that email recipients know what to expect from you.

This not only repurposes your existing content but acts as a lead generation tool for new email subscribers.

Not sure how to make an automated email series happen? You’ll want to check out DailyStory.

In other words, you’ll want to dive deeper into these 14 best practices for email drip campaigns.

Create an ebook

Often referred to as premium content, many ebooks actually began as blog posts once upon a time.

Identifying a blog article where you can dig a little deeper is perfect for developing an ebook. Guides are a common approach for many ebooks out there: “The Complete Guide to…” Another popular approach is compiling a series of interviews with industry thought leaders into an expert advice ebook.

But it all just depends on what you’re an expert in and what you believe your target audience will most value.

Remember that you’ll likely want to include an introduction, table of contents and conclusion, which is a bit different than the typical blog format you might be used to. High-quality visuals also are imperative. 

You’ll also want to keep your branding present on every page in some consistent way.

Canva or Papyrus are great options for designing an ebook, even if you don’t have a lot of design skills.

This too can be used as a lead generation opportunity on your website. (Consider checking out our 12 strategies to capture leads without annoying everyone.)

Learn more about premium content and how you can leverage it in your marketing.

Consider a presence on Quora

Quora is essentially a question-and-answer platform that can be an easy opportunity to repost your existing content.

You can either use it in your replies to questions or as posts to existing user blogs.

If you’re not familiar with the free platform, create an account and start following “spaces” that are related to your brand and expertise.

(Of course, Quora is also a great place to see what people are asking about that can help you brainstorm new content topics for yourself.)

Speaking of Quora, check out our 18 low-cost marketing ideas for small businesses.

Consider guest blogging

At first, guest blogging might sound like a requirement to develop a lot of new material. This doesn’t have to be the case.

You can easily break out an angle of an existing blog article you already have for your guest blog, for example, and then link back to your bigger piece of content for anyone intrigued to find out more.

See our 10 tips to build up your personal brand and grow your business for more.

Think multimedia

Videos or podcasts are a great way to repurpose content. Not everyone has the time or wants to read.

Adapting some of your written content pieces into a video or podcast series is a great way to reach new audiences. You can use this existing content as a jumping off point for larger conversations that make sense in a podcast format.

Of course, we have more reasons why businesses should be creating more videos as part of their marketing strategy. But you don’t have to be a video-editing whiz to get started. Check out these 18 video-editing apps.

And if you’re stumped about where to go with your videos (even when basing them on existing content you already have), check out these 10 types of marketing videos to inspire you.

Host a webinar

This is a bit of a combination of our presentation and video suggestions, but webinars can be a very effective way to engage your audience on a topic that matters to them that you’re an expert in.

You’ll likely want to make your first one or few free to test the waters, practice before going live (even if it’s on a platform like Zoom that you’re familiar with) and plan a promotion campaign around each webinar.

However, it’s important to know that it’s okay if no one shows up. Why? Because you can still record it and then reuse that recording in different ways moving forward, such as a video tutorial on YouTube.

Check out our 12 expert tips for hosting your first webinar.

In conclusion

Your effort to repurpose content should be a regular part of your normal publishing process. Sometimes, we get so locked into creating new content, we forget the value of what we’ve already done.

If you can commit to reviewing past content for new repurposing opportunities, you’ll benefit from the saved time and the new audiences you can reach.

Want to save even more time with your digital marketing process? DailyStory specializes in automation, email marketing, audience segmentation and more. Level up your process, and schedule a free demo with us today.

Where to begin? 7 tips to start your first marketing campaign

Congratulations! You’ve decided to take the leap and invest in the first marketing campaign for your company.

And while marketing itself is definitely nothing new, being a first-timer isn’t as unique as it sounds. With so many new companies starting, this is an incredibly common scenario.

In fact, there were about 266,000 new businesses began during the fourth quarter of 2019 alone. 

And if you’re a team of one, planning your first campaign can feel especially overwhelming.

So, where should you begin?

Keep in mind that a marketing campaign has a budget, a specific desired outcome and starts/ends on a specified date. For example, a Facebook ad is a type of social media marketing campaign, while simply have a published website is a marketing activity but not an official campaign.

The following are seven tips for you to think through before taking the official dive into your first marketing campaign.

Outline your goals

This is the first step no matter what type of marketing campaign you want to run. 

If you don’t know what you want to achieve or how it will be measured, how will you know if you’re successful?

Think S.M.A.R.T. goals! These are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. You can base your goals on sales, customer satisfaction or even profit.

For example, you might want to gain 10 new members a week, sell 10 more products per week than average, increase profit by 10 percent in the first quarter of the year.

The bonus of setting a S.M.A.R.T. goal is that it not only holds your campaign accountable, but it can also influence what type of campaign that should be run.

See our seven expert tips to set achievable marketing goals for your small business.

Identify your target audience

A typical mistake of most first-time marketing campaigns is that the target audience is too broad.

Sure, we all want everyone to want to buy what we’re selling.

However, when our message and strategy is too broad, you risk engaging almost no one.

Think of it like casting a net. The more general the message, the larger the net, as well as the netting itself, and you really don’t capture any fish. The more specific and targeted the message, the smaller the net and the netting itself. This means that while the net is smaller, it will catch more fish.

It can be a tough concept to accept at first. Simply think of yourself as a marketing sniper. You want to be purposeful about who you’re talking to, how you’re talking to them and where you’re talking to them.

The key component of this part of the planning is deciding who you want to reach.

There are a few ways to go about this. 

If you’re a new startup, you likely have a target audience already decided in your business plan. It’s about reaching out to the ideal customer, based on market research you’ve already done. 

If you’re an existing business, you have an added benefit of auditing your own customer database. Who is your typical customer? Is it who you would expect? Are you looking to expand into a different demographic? These are key questions you should ask yourself.

Depending on the demographic you’re targeting, this can determine the methodology of your first marketing campaign (such as where you should be investing). For example, print advertising is better for reaching an older, more community-invested audience. Certain social media platforms, like Instagram, on the other hand, are better for a younger audience.

Think about the gender, age range, education level, salary, location and even the pain points that you can solve with your service or product.

Dive deeper with our seven tips to help you determine your target audience.

Conduct research

The term “research” is being left intentionally vague because it really includes both market research and a competitive analysis.

Market research is about understanding consumers’ needs and preferences. This can be discovered through a number of different methods, including surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc.

A competitive analysis looks at your competition, what they offer, what they’re doing well and even what they’re not doing.

Learn more about what a competitive analysis is and how you can start your first one, as well as 16 tools that can make the research easier.

Set your budget

The earlier you can determine your budget, the better. This helps you make the best decisions for your campaign without spending more than you can afford.

Of course, your budget can be more complicated than simply an amount you can afford next month.

A thoughtful marketing budget factors in the lifetime value of each of your customers (on average). In other words, how much revenue would you typically generate from each customer over a set period of time?

Your budget should balance your company’s earning potential with the investment necessary to help it grow.

Startup companies in particular might be starting with a small budget, and that’s okay! You can easily start with something small, like a targeted Facebook ad and scale up over time.

Of course, as you scale up, you can start diversifying your budget, thinking about what portion should be dedicated to any or all of the following:

  • Your website
  • Social media management and ads
  • Email marketing
  • Online advertising
  • Event marketing
  • Print advertising
  • Direct mail campaigns
  • TV and/or radio advertising
  • Public relations

Again, your overall strategy and budget should always come back to your S.M.A.R.T. goals.

Check out our six tips to maximize your social media advertising budget.

Determine your marketing channel(s)

Once you have your goals, your target audience and your prospective budget set, it’s time to use that information to decide on the method of your first marketing campaign.

Typically, if you’re just starting to dip your toe into the marketing world, it’s best to try only one method at first. 

But as you get more comfortable, you can expand out to more of a mix of options that all complement one another. 

For example, a simple email marketing campaign to your existing database could be later expanded into a Facebook ad targeting people who have not interacted with you in any meaningful way.

Building on that, you can launch a display-ad campaign to drive more users to your website, as well as a lead-generation pop-up ad on your site to capture your visitors’ contact information to include them into your email campaign, and so on.

The more pieces you incorporate, the more you should track each piece on a marketing plan calendar to keep the big picture (and strategy) in mind.

But again, start simply. This will keep you focused on the execution and goals at hand and make the measurement of the campaign’s success easier to understand.

See our Digital Marketing 101 Guide for Beginners to better understand all the options that are available.

Create your message, content

It’s important that no matter how simply you might start your first marketing campaign, you must include a message that engages your target audience packaged in a way that catches their attention.

This can be an offer, such as a discount or coupon, or an enticing reason to subscribe to your email newsletter. The sky is the limit.

Once you know your message, you can start creating your content. There are a number of tools (including Canva) that can help even the biggest non-designers among us create something professional-looking. Check out these 11 free graphic design tools for the non-designer.

Just remember to stay in line with your own brand and that the sizing of your content should be optimized for the platform you’re making it for. 

An email header image, for example, is a different shape and size than the ideal Instagram post or even Instagram Story slide.

Learn more about how to level up your content marketing.

Measure your success

What you’re measuring ultimately depends on your marketing campaign and the goals you’re trying to achieve.

There are a number of different KPIs (key performance indicators) you can analyze, depending on the type of marketing campaign, including but not limited to:

  • Website pageviews
  • Time spent on your website or page
  • Click-throughs and referrals from paid digital ads
  • Email opens, click-throughs and CTOR (click-to-open rate)
  • Event leads
  • Engagement actions on social media (reactions, shares and comments)
  • Reach on social media

The reason why you want to measure is so that you know whether the money you’re spending is successful or not. No one wants to spend money on efforts that are not working.

As part of your planning process, decide what metrics matter most and make sure you know how to measure them.

See our guides to better understand your analytics on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

In the end, take everything one step at a time when launching your first marketing campaign. The most important aspect is planning. Remember, a great marketing campaign is 80 percent planning and 20 percent execution.

As you begin to launch your first marketing campaign, consider optimizing your entire digital marketing process, such as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

Curated content: 4 tips on finding what to share on social media

Curated content is like the “get out of jail free” card that helps you grow and engage your social media audience.

Unlike the constant hamster wheel of creating organic content, curated content saves you time while also positioning you as an expert and serving your audience what they want.

It’s a win-win.

Curated content is “content gathered from trusted sources relevant to your industry,” according to Hootsuite.

See our five reasons why you should include curated content in your social media strategy.

But how is (good, relevant) curated content found? 

Here are four tips to help you find the best curated content for your social media publishing.

Determine your ratio

Before anything else, it’s important to decide exactly how much curated content you want to mix in with your organic, unique content. How much is created by you, and how much is created by someone else?

A good mix to start with, according to Hootsuite, is 40 percent organic and 60 percent curated content. 

Of course, always keep an eye on the performance of your posts and adjust as necessary. But this mix is a good place to start.

Consider the topics you want to cover

This depends on your brand. Do you want to be hyper-focused on the topics you’ll share with your audience, or should you be broader?

A custom closet company, for example, could focus on closet organization as a topic. Or, it can expand into the broader topic of interior design.

Take a moment to brainstorm the topics that are relevant to both your brand and your audience. What helps make you appear to be an expert in your industry?

Identify your sources of curated content

It’s time to make a list! The key to finding great curated content is to have your go-to trusted sources.

This can be as simple as taking your list of topics and begin Googling.

But you should feel confident that your selected sources are both trustworthy and in sync with your brand.

When you find a source, look through the entire website to see if the totality of the content produced is in line with your company’s goals and purpose. Also, examine the About section of the website to confirm the mission behind that publisher. 

Remember that while content can be shared to your social media directly from a website, you can also share from another brand’s account on any social media platform. 

So, while you want to compile a list of trusted websites, be sure to perform similar searches on the social media platforms you plan on sharing curated content. Your main list from Google might differ from who you find specifically on Twitter or Facebook, for example.

Consider yourself in a constant state of discovery

Now that you have your list of topics and sources, it’s time to commit to monitoring your channels so that you can find and share the specific pieces of curated content for your audience. 

While curated content is a time-saver, you cannot slack on discovering what would work best. However, you can set a scheduled amount of time daily or weekly to stay on top of it.

Curated content is an excellent way to diversify your social media offerings, and it will naturally evolve over time. Keep an eye on how what you’re sharing is performing and pivot accordingly.

Need help finding the best tool to make curated content discovery easier? Check out our list.

And if improving your digital marketing process is on your mind, consider DailyStory, which features automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.