Category Archives for Marketing

How to Use Content To Build Your Brand

Content can take you and your brand from an unknown nobody to a credible expert, that people trust and buy from to better themselves or their business. So it’s important that you correctly use your content to shine the best light on you and your business. Your content can truly make you or break you and your business.

Content is how you share your experience and knowledge with the world.

So, how exactly do you use content to build your brand?

There are various methods, techniques, and strategies for using content to build your brand. These can be simplified into three steps: creating, distributing, and tracking your content.

Using these three steps properly will help your content to build your brand for you.

Step One: Create

There’s an enormous variety of content that you can create. The goal with this step is to determine which type you want to create, the purpose for creating it, and who is going to receive it. It’s essential here to understand who your ideal customer is.

What content are they looking for?

In what format do they want that content?

Types of content you can create include:

• How-to – This is most often a systematic process that you share with your audience, giving instructions on how to do something.
• Q & A – Use this type of content if you have a list of questions commonly asked by your audience. Answer the questions once and share with everyone.
• Case Study – Share how you or your team, products or services have helped a client. Use anecdotes and statistics.
• Testimonial – Let you clients tell your potential clients how you have helped them.
• Company News – Share information from behind the scenes to show how you operate. Prove that you are not just in it for the quick money.
• Why – Let your audience know why you believe a certain way, or why they should choose you and your business to help their needs.

The Purpose

Your purpose will help you determine which type of content you want to create. It will also help you determine how you want to deliver the content. Ask yourself, “What action do I want my audience to take afterward?”

Who is your Audience?

Depending on your audience, you may decide a specific type of content is better suited. If they are beginners, a step-by-step process may be best. If they have purchased from you before, letting them know why the next product may help them go even further and how it may benefit them.

Step Two: Distribute

Once you know what type of content you are creating, how are you going to distribute that content? The answer to this question will determine which type of media you use and again, who your audience is.

Types of Distribution Media include:

• Video – Choose between live-streaming or pre-recorded video platforms and devices.
• Audio – This is great for podcasts or sharing information with your audience through a teleconference.
• White paper – If you are sharing technical information, this is a perfect format.
• Blog – Share general information with the public. This is the ideal platform to use to share content in various formats.
• Newsletter – Hard copy or email.
• Article – This can be used in many forms, from advertising to detailed blog posts.
• Infographic – This is a great way to show statistics in a highly visual format.
• Guides – Dive into detail about a topic that your audience wants to know more about.
• Worksheets – Use these if your clients need something they can use for their own clients or as fill-in-the-blanks for learning.
• Checklists – Great for easy to follow systematic directions for a desired outcome.
• Templates – Combines information for creating worksheets, guides, and checklists to walk your clients through a process that works.
• Posters – This classic media form allows your client to have something tangible.

The type of distribution media you use requires that you know your audience well and that you are clear about what you want to share with them.

You may even decide that you can share the same thing three or more ways to connect with even more potential clients.

As a generalisation, if your content is directed towards millennials, you may want to use more videos and audios. However, if you are targeting the baby boomers, a whitepaper delivered in the mail often works well. Although this is something you may want to test as it can vary greatly from one market to the next.

Step Three: Tracking

In this example, the goal of using content is to build your brand – this means that you need to know how your business is growing.

Whether you like to crunch numbers or not, you will need some form of tracking to see how effective each type of content and distribution method is for you.

It will take time to generate useful data, but don’t let that dissuade you from trying something new.

There are many free analytic tools available to you. (Google Analytics is a good place to start). You can also hire someone to do the tracking for you. Whichever route you take, you need to know your end goal. You will need to determine what it is that you want your audience to know or do once they consume your information.

At first, the idea of creating, distributing and tracking content may seem overwhelming, so much so that it doesn’t get done. But once you get started – in even the most simplest way possible – you’ll soon start to get a better understand of what your audience is looking for and how to give this to them, without your content marketing taking up all your time and money.

The Power Of Joint Venture Partnerships To Grow Your Business

This week I had the sheer pleasure of interviewing two lovely ladies – Jane Hagarty and Deb Youngs – who are achieving amazing results through Joint Venture partnerships. I’ve known these ladies for some years now and have always been impressed by the care and guidance they consistently give to their customers. Actually, not just their customers. They show that same care to pretty much everyone they meet!

Because of the success they’ve been having within their own business and within their clients’ businesses, I was keen to interview them to find out more about what they’re doing. Perhaps more importantly… how they might be able to help you to grow your business.

So please set aside some time a.s.a.p. to listen to the interview below

Be warned though…

…you’ll want to listen to it all. It goes for 42 minutes but is worth investing that time. Grab a cuppa or a cold drink and have your notepad and pen ready so you can take notes.

There’s valuable gems shared throughout this interview, all the way to the end. Then Jane and Deb invite you to join them for some more detailed FREE training if you’d like to learn more.

Click the “play” arrow on the audio player below to listen to this interview now:

Want to find out more about how to run successful Joint Venture partnerships?

Click Here to register for the free Joint Venture webinar now:

www.Donna-MarieCoggins.com/jv

Having The Right Business Management Tools Can Make All The Difference

Without a doubt, there’s a lot of jobs for business owners to keep on top of, regardless of the type of business you have. However, using the right business management tools can simplify tasks no end.

This concept is generally easily understood for physical things, such as a tradie having the correct building tools or a baker having the best baking tools. But there’s many other tools that are often overlooked, that can help simplify your business management no end.

Just a little time spent sourcing and setting up the right business management tools will usually save you much more time in the long run. Plus, you’ll often appear (rightly so!) more professional and may improve the service you’re giving to your customers.

Right Business Management Tools For Productivity:

There’s a huge range of software, too and apps to help improve your business’ – and personal – productivity. The best one(s) for you will depend on the type of business you run but also on your own personal preferences. There’s some programs that some of my friends and colleagues rave about that just confuse and bore me. I find trying to use them takes up more time than managing the tasks manually.

So based on my personal experiences, what I suggest is that you look for tools that others are recommending and give them a try, but don’t waste hours trying to figure it out. Either find someone who loves that tool and is using it successfully and ask them to show you the basics, or see if the product’s support team have some tutorials that can help you.

If you find it’s not simplifying things for you or making your business more efficient, it may not be the right tool for you.

This 9 Vital Productivity Tools article on Inc.com gives a good overview of some good productivity apps to look at.

Additionally, have a look at the following sites:

• Asana
• Zapier
• EverNote

Appointment Setting Programs:

Do your customers need to make appointments with you or your business? Do you have regular appointments with others, be that clients, team members or colleagues?

If so, you may find an online appointment booking program or app helpful. This is a particularly helpful way of avoiding back and forth to figure out what times suit you best. You can simply send relevant people a link to your booking calendar and they can see your available times then book themselves in.

There’s various ways you can add to the automation process of this task, adding the bookings to your calendar and following up with emails and or SMS messages.

You may be pleasantly surprised how much time an appointment booking program saves you!

I previously wrote more about this topic and some of the top appointment setting services (click here for more on this).

Bookkeeping Productivity:

Bookkeeping and records management can be a pain for many business owners, but an absolute necessity too. Even if you outsource this – which I strongly suggest you do – there’s still things you and other business team members will need to do. For example, making sure that appropriate receipts are received and stored as required and in making sure your bookkeeper and/or accountant have all the necessary information.

This is much easier than ever to manage now however. Xero bookkeeping software in particular has a lot of apps and tools that can be used to help simplify your account management. So make sure you discuss this with your bookkeeper and accountant to see what tools might be available for your business, appropriate to whatever bookkeeping, invoicing or account management software you use.

Content Management Tools:

There’s numerous tools that can make it easier for you to manage your content marketing too, from coming up with ideas for new content to actually creating it.

For more details on the tools I use and recommend, make sure you download my Top 11 Tools For Content Marketers report at the end of this article.

Without a doubt, technology can be used in many ways to simplify our business management, so please be sure to spend just a little time in trying some of the many available tools to find what works for you. Better yet, outsource this task! Many VAs (Virtual Assistants) will be familiar with a lot of these tools and will be able to offer their recommendations.