There are plenty of 2015 predictions circulating around the Internet this time of year. Not my forte. So I’ll toss aside the crystal ball and my trusty 8-ball and share with you what I believe are some good practices to start or continue in 2015.
Content Marketing Plans Must Be Integrated In Your Overall Marketing Plan
I heartily agree with Mike Sweeney of Right Source Marketing, who emphasizes the importance of having a content marketing plan. Although Sweeney is talking about B2Bs, this advice is just as important to public-facing B2Cs.
Your content marketing plan must include goals and objectives that are in line with your overall marketing plan. Identify your target audience and major segments for more focused marketing efforts like email marketing. Do the research to identify their concerns and where they get information, which you might be able to provide.
Sweeney recommends structuring your brainstorms—the “fun” part of marketing—into three areas.
- Ideas/campaigns/programs which put a creative spin on the marketing plan’s goals and objectives.
- Messaging and story development to provide a backbone for the content marketing plan
- Specific themes for each customer segment
Your inbound marketing plan, then should include social media to disseminate all this information, engage your customers, and attract new ones.
Here are two content management tips for 2015.
Watch SEO Trends and Adjust Content as Needed
2014 was a year when Google really went after black hat SEO purveyors and your general attempt to undermine its algorithms.
The biggest change for those who were generally doing the right thing was to emphasize their local roots as mobile search continued to rise, giving local businesses an opening to capture more opportunities to be found in searches. In fact, a recent Momentology post showcasing experts’ forecasts for SEO trends in 2015 mentions the growth and maturation of the mobile market.
My advice is to emphasize your location where it’s appropriate, such as the About Us page and in your search engine optimized titles.
We never know for sure, but there’s no reason to expect Google to backtrack on its focus on who’s doing the searching. So your content must, above all, be relevant to the people you want and expect to read it while being relevant to what it is you do.
When You Write, Do It Like It’s 1999
I did a little digging about what the Internet and more specifically, blogging was like during the year everyone was worrying about Y2K and trying to meet Prince’s partying standards. It turns out 1999 was the year blogging actually took off. It was when a programmer shorted the word “weblog” into “blog” and the birth of Google’s Blogger platform.
Although texting certainly expedited it, I have to say I can’t help suspecting blogs also started an alarming practice of sloppy writing that’s become the norm on too many websites. Not everyone was on the web yet, and those who were stuck with dial-up connections were often kicked out without warning. So maybe people didn't have the chance to review their work before they could finally get it published, but there is no excuse for this today.
Do yourself a favor. Get someone to proofread your work or take a day or so between you last draft and publishing so you can eyeball it yourself. Misspelled words, poor grammar, and messed-up spacing make you look bad. And while Google doesn't explicitly ding you for these mistakes, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team says the algorithms tend to see them as evidence of spam. People do notice this and it can impact your efforts to establish your authority on the topic you’re writing about. Few of our true though leaders fail to proofread what they write before posting it for the world to see and search for.
So, write like you did in 1999. Look up words you aren't sure you spelled correctly even if MS Word says it’s okay. Review proper use for apostrophes and commas, and be sure you haven’t been confused by homonyms. Here are two useful resources:
- Jennie Sherwin’s blog on grammar tips for “indie writers”
- Copyblogger’s grammar goofs and infographic
Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.
If writing is a chore for you, or you just don’t have time, hire and pay good writers to do the work for you. Then, all you have to do is the proofreading before posting. Remember, if it goes on your website, it reflects on you whether you wrote it yourself or not.
Do you have something to add to this post? Please share it in the comments.
