Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Create a Content Marketing Strategy for Your Business

Create a Content Marketing Strategy for Your Business

Did you know that content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional marketing and costs 62% less? Content marketing is a powerful way to attract, engage, and delight your target audience and turn them into loyal customers. But how do you create a content marketing strategy that works for your business? In this blog post, we’ll show you the steps to follow and the tools to use to create a successful content marketing strategy.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and ultimately drive profitable customer action. Content marketing can include blog posts, ebooks, videos, podcasts, infographics, webinars, case studies, newsletters, social media posts, and more. The goal is to provide useful information to your audience that helps them solve their problems or achieve their goals.

Why Do You Need a Content Marketing Strategy?

A content marketing strategy is a plan that outlines your goals, your audience, your content topics, your content formats, your content channels, your content calendar, and your content metrics. A content marketing strategy helps you:
  • Define your purpose and value proposition. 
    • Why are you creating content and what value do you offer to your audience?
  • Identify and understand your target audience. 
    • Who are they, what are their needs and challenges, and what are their preferences and behaviors?
  • Create relevant and engaging content. 
    • What topics will you cover, what formats will you use, and what tone and style will you adopt?
  • Distribute and promote your content. 
    • Where will you publish and share your content, and how will you reach and attract your audience?
  • Measure and optimize your content. 
    • How will you track and analyze your content performance, what metrics will you use, and how will you improve your results?

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy in 5 Steps

Creating a content marketing strategy may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are five simple steps to follow:

1) Set Your Goals

The first step is to define what you want to achieve with your content marketing. Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). For example:
  • Increase website traffic by 50% in six months
  • Generate 100 new leads per month from ebooks
  • Boost email open rate by 10% in three months
  • Grow social media followers by 20% in one year
Your goals should also align with your overall business objectives and support your customer journey.

2) Know Your Audience

The second step is to identify and understand who you are creating content for. You need to know who they are, what they want, what they need, what they care about, what they struggle with, and how they consume content. You can use tools such as buyer personas and customer journey maps to create detailed profiles of your ideal customers and map out their stages of awareness, consideration, and decision.

3) Choose Your Content Topics

The third step is to decide what topics you will cover in your content. You need to choose topics that are relevant to your audience’s needs and interests, as well as to your business goals and value proposition. You can use tools such as keyword research, competitor analysis, social media listening, surveys, and analytics to find out what topics are popular, trending, or in demand among your audience.

4) Choose Your Content Format(s)

The fourth step is to determine what formats you will use for your content. You need to choose formats that suit your topics, your goals, and your audience’s preferences. You can use tools such as Google Analytics, social media insights, email reports, and feedback forms to find out what formats perform best for your content. Some of the most common formats are:
  • Blog posts: These are articles that provide information, tips, advice, opinions, or stories on a specific topic. They can help you drive traffic, generate leads, build authority, and educate your audience.
  • Ebooks: These are long-form documents that offer in-depth knowledge, guidance, or solutions on a specific topic. They can help you generate leads, nurture prospects, showcase expertise, and establish trust.
  • Videos: These are visual and audio recordings that demonstrate, explain, entertain, or inspire on a specific topic. They can help you increase engagement, boost awareness, build loyalty, and influence decisions.
  • Podcasts: These are audio recordings that discuss, interview, teach, or share a specific topic. They can help you reach new audiences, create relationships, grow followers, and enhance credibility.
  • Infographics: These are graphical representations that summarize, visualize, or compare data or information on a specific topic.


Jon Pienkowski
Pacific NW Computers
360.624.7379

Social Media Marketing: How To Get Started (Work In Progress)

Marketing/Social Media Marketing 101 (BASICS)

The goal of consistent social media postings is for potential customers to be able to find your content and thusly find the product/service that you are providing. Experimenting with hashtags, keywords, posting in social media groups, and a sub-Reddit, helps people find you when looking up related topics and interests!

Also, people like to see the behind-the-scenes of how stuff is made, produced, designed, and tested. Social media can give your customers (current and potential) a glimpse into what you're doing, how you make your product, and how your provided service is helping a customer. Social media can allow you to show people a more intimate and transparent look into what you do. That simple appreciation could turn into future business! If they see how dedicated you are, or they like your process and are impressed with how you do what you do, that all can generate business!

Plus it gives content for clients to be able to share with their friends! They see a post about something you've done, it reminds them of what you did for them, and they share that post with their friends/community!

FIRST THINGS FIRST: Have The Basics Covered

  • Have professional artwork and/or logos made, along with a professional headshot if needed.
  • Have a GOOD website. In this day in age, if your product doesn't have a good website, it can be the first impression a customer gets for your company. So you don't want "Just a website". Have a well-done website made for your product/service/company.
    • Have a good first-page landing page
    • Make sure to have an easy-to-find/get to About Us, Contact Form & Social Media links
  • Have marketing material, business cards, a .Dot business card, etc ready to go.
  • Try and have a few online payment methods set up so you can get paid no matter what:
    • Venmo
    • PayPal
    • CashApp
    • Square
    • Stripe

Figure Out Your Target Audience

Age, Economic Status, Geographic location, Interests, Hobbies, etc.
But don't just think about the general public! Also, think about businesses that may be interested as well. Coffee shops, wineries, government entities, corporate/commercial clients, etc.
You obviously want to try to sell to the general public, but maybe consider businesses-to-business opportunities, consider local/state/federal government agencies, big corporations, etc.

HAVE GOOD Contact Info on ALL SITES/PLATFORMS

  • Web Site Address
  • Phone Number(s)
  • Email Addresses
  • Messaging Services like Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.
  • A Linktr.ee Address
    • This is VERY handy! You can list ALL of your website links under one, easy to remember Linktr.ee address!

Social Media for Pictures and Information

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
Use the MOBILE apps of each platform for the best posting experience. You can't do everything you can on Instagram then you can on its mobile device. Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter are different. But Tiktok, Instagram, and Snapchat are designed for mobile users and simple web access.

By using Instagram you can actually also share your post directly to Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter at the same time! The Instagram app allows you to share posts to multiple platforms!

Social Media for Video

  • Tiktok
  • Snapchat
  • Youtube
  • Twitch
For quick video content, you can also take advantage of Instagram Reels, Facebook Stories, YouTube Stories as well as TikTok, and Snapchat. These "quick video" media outlets are VERY popular right now and another way to be found in certain trends, hashtags, etc. The same hashtag principles that work for general posts on social media, also work for video-based social media services.

Streaming can also be an effective way to find/gain new customers! If you are interested in live streaming what you do, what you sell, what you make/create, etc, Twitch, Youtube Live, Instagram Live, Facebook Live, and TikTok Live, are GREAT outlets for live streaming media.

Research Trends

  • Etsy
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest
This can be VERY helpful in your posts getting traction and popularity. If you see that Earth Day is trending? Do an Earth Day post. Is it "National Nurses Day"? Do a nursing-related post. 
This can work with Political topics, pop culture trends, etc. Knowing what's popular, and what people are following; that information can be priceless when strategizing what to post online!

Hashtags and Keywords

Search hashtags and certain keywords or interests/topics to see what hashtags and keywords are over-saturated, or topics that have little to no interactions. It is always worth a try to tag a post with a keyword with 17 million viewers, but your post will likely get lost in the sea of posts.
So try to find hashtags, keywords, groups, etc that have a good amount of followers but if you use a hashtag with 1 Billion followers, it could get "lost at sea".
Also by experimenting with different hashtags and keywords, etc you will also narrow down what works and what does not work.
When you find keywords, hashtags, etc that work for you, THEN you can use that information to start doing paid advertising

Research hashtags, keywords, interests, groups, subreddits, trending topics, etc to find your "Niche" markets to start your marking plan. This will evolve over time as you look for what works best for you and the posts you make.

Look up and try out different hashtags in your posts to see what kind of response you get from your posts. Don't go too crazy with the hashtags in your posts, however. I usually limit the number of hashtags that I use to 10 at MAX. I recommend using around 8.

Ideas On What To Post (Video, Text, or Picture):

  • ALWAYS USE RESEARCHED HASHTAGS; ON ANY/ALL POSTS!
  • Current world events
  • Trending pop culture topics
  • Behind the scenes of your product, service, etc.
  • Highlight a product or service that you provide
  • Your product or service in action!
  • Giving back to the community? Post about it!
  • Give free tips, give tutorials and how-to's, make product or service recommendations, etc. Anything that might be helpful but also related to your industry
  • Highlight other local businesses that you like/use; maybe even cross-promote!
  • Are you having a sale, running a special, or have an event coming up? Post about it!

Advertising/Paid Advertising

Once you have played around with keywords, hashtags, interests groups, etc you can take ALL of the information you have gained from your social media response on your posts, you can use that information to start doing targeted advertising.

Posting Tips:

  • Don't expect one single post to hit a home run! I usually use the psychology rule that if you see something 3 times (and even better, seeing something 3 times on 3 different platforms) will help people to be more likely to remember your post. But if they see the same thing on different platforms, it can give it more legitimacy and importance.
  • I always recommend posting specific hashtags for 3-4 weeks at a time to see what the ACTUAL response to your posts is from those hashtags.
  • When you post, try to post quality pictures! Don't go overboard with filters and edits, provide good contact information in ALL of your posts, make sure to use good grammar and punctuation, etc.
  • The Instagram mobile app can post to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr. You don't need to use all of those services, but at least get used to using posting to Instagram and Facebook, using the Instagram mobile app.
  • Facebook groups, Reddit subreddits, etc can be good communities to interact with the community and be able to passively advertise yourself. Don't just join a group and start blasting what you do/sell! Interact with posts and if asked, or if it's brought up, or the timing seems right, refer nonchalantly to your business!

Jon Pienkowski
Pacific NW Computers
360.624.7379

Thursday, August 11, 2022

Guerilla SEO


Guerilla SEO

Step 1:

Have a website made, or build a website for your company.
For its ease of use and simplicity, we use and recommend Weebly for easily building and maintaining a website inexpensively.

Step 2:

Get your business signed-up and set up with “the big guys”:

Step 3:

Create a business page, and/or account, with all of the major Social networks. Be sure to Include ALL of your important business information; including your logo, address, phone number, email, website, etc.

Step 4:

Once you have all of your social media accounts set up, go through the “Free Web Business Listings” list below and set up a business listing through EACH service. Include ALL of your important business information; including address, phone number, email, website, social media accounts, etc.

Step 5:

Create a free Linktr.ee webpage for ALL of the different web links you now have! You can list your main web page, blogs, social media accounts, payment services, etc.

*Extra:

If you would like to accept ANY form of payment from your customers (besides check, cash and credit cards) sign up with the following payment services as well:

Tips, Tricks, and Recommendations:

  1. Purchase your website domain for 2 years or more when signing up or renewing. Renewing your website for just 1 year can make your page appear “temporary” to search engine bots.
  2. If search engine bots come across your website information in different places across the internet, your website will start to rank higher in search results organically due to your site’s “perceived” importance.
  3. I recommend using Instagram as the main “Hub” for the bulk of your social media posts. With Instagram, you can connect your Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts to share whatever you post on Instagram, to those other social networking platforms as well! From there you can share that same post to other social media platforms by just copying and pasting the post.
  4. Use hashtags in your social media posts to have your posts listed in those associated hashtag categories.
  5. Go through your website page by page, and make sure that certain “keywords”, that you want to be found with, are used at least 4 times on the associated webpage.
  6. When posting to social media, use your main website address AS WELL as your Linktr.ee address.

Free Web Business Listings:

A website with a * indicates that either the website is having issues, or the website might be a "paid for" service and may not actually be free.

Jon Pienkowski
Pacific Northwest Computers
www.pnwcomputers.com
www.linktr.ee/pnwcomputers

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Get your Business Listed Online for FREE!



Want more people to be able to find your business online?
Use this list of websites to get your business listed for FREE!

By listing your company on the various websites listed below, you will help potential customers find you no matter the service or platform they are using! Additionally, having your company information and website information listed around the internet also makes your website look "more important" to search engine crawlers! Which in turn, could improve your web search rankings! Pacific Northwest Computers offers this as a service to our customers as well! So feel free to get in touch with Pacific Northwest Computers if you would like some help getting this all set up for you! 

Jon Pienkowski
Pacific Northwest Computers
360.624.7379