This is a guest post that reminds us once again of a serious deficiency in WordPress. If we grant contributor status, guest bloggers can not add images and have other limitations.
But if we give someone author access we have to trust them to remember to save posts as drafts or have unedited posts go live as happened here. My apologies to my readers; errors have been corrected.
Many people have valuable insights to share who may not know a run-in sentence from a complete one. That is why major publishers – and even blogs like this one – need editors. Some readers take great offense at minor errors, so you do need to proofread and edit your content.
Businesses and bloggers can benefit from using this resource: Common Blogging Mistakes: Editorial Guidelines for Bloggers. The reason I do not publish more guest posts is they frequently take hours to edit.
Writers who will apply the information in that post and who can provide publish-ready content are encouraged to contact me. If your posts do not need hours to edit I have multiple established blogs where they can be published.
BRANDING
It’s a competitive market today. That much is obvious. Brands are using every strategy they can to impact and of course, one of the main arenas in which this battle is being fought is the internet.
With almost an entire third of the world’s population online, companies are trying to get their chunk of business. Internet marketing can take many forms, all of which it would be impossible to delve into here. Instead, here are a few ways to improve existing marketing techniques.
Engagement
You’ve most likely heard this a million times. If you want people to buy from you, then you need to show them you are more than a faceless entity. But it really does work. Actively engaging with your target demographic in a personable and personal way is a proven method of increasing sales and traffic. Creating a community around your brand enhances the ‘trust’ factor.
This online retailer regularly engages with its community. And they sell white goods – which many people might find to be uninteresting. But through social media, video channels, blogs and competitions, they sell without selling. There’s no sales pitch. No attempt to trick the audience. They create trust.
One clever tip to recommend, which this retailer does, is to add Facebook to the top of their webpages. This allows a visitor to see who of their friends or family has used the retailer. Any reviews made are visible and this really promotes trust.
And the results are there to see. On Facebook alone, this retailer has well over half a million ‘likes’ and over 60,000 people talking about them.
Value Marketing
Go to any online marketing agency and they will tell you that Google wants unique content that adds value.
If you want to make your marketing more successful, then the work has to be put in. This means the creation of content that people will want to read, to listen to or to look at, and to share: articles, blog posts, infographics, videos and images. All this combined will enhance your profile and make your brand the one that gets found.
It’s no good focusing purely on one aspect; the full range has to be considered if you want your marketing campaign to prevail.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the best ways to do this. By giving people something they will want to use and share, then you are marketing yourself as a viable source of great content. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as a video such as this.
Of course, there’s more to it than this, but these are great starts that are easy to implement in your marketing.