Content Marketing & Thought Leaders Part 8

Posted on April 26, 2016 by ianotr

Thought Leaders & Content Marketing

Consumers are gravitating toward Thought Leaders

Bloggers are the stars of the online world in terms of being viewed as influencers by search engines if they are popular and authoritative enough. Blogging is part of what makes content marketing valuable since effective blogs can create online followings. The reason blogs have become important in SEO is that they represent a chance to bring keywords to life in a unique story.

Blogs vs Articles

Many people have used the terms “blogs” and “articles” interchangeably, but the two are very different. Articles are written in a more traditional style, almost like a newspaper story, whereas blogs are more conversational and creative while delivering information that can be hard to find elsewhere. Another big difference is that blogs are written from the perspective of an expert, whereas articles are written by objective observers who can be anybody.

When you think about it, if you’re not getting information from an expert, why should you trust the information? Search engines favor experts because they are better sources than non-experts. The internet is flooded with articles by non-experts who are mostly duplicating information that already exists. Bloggers, on the other hand, offer new information and original perspectives, which are two components of content marketing that search engines reward.

How Blogs Become Big

Big media helps put the spotlight on popular bloggers, but it’s also possible to develop a blog that grows in popularity organically. The main strategy for building an organic online following is the combination of SEO and unique content that can be categorized many different ways. Your blog can be planned out many months in advance based on all the different angles you see in an industry.

When you think of all the different types of people who are attracted to your industry and start writing blogs about the different reasons people use certain products, you can gain acceptance as a leading observer in that field. Once you’ve written about a hundred quality blogs about your industry, it’s likely that your name or brand will be referenced in many different ways associated with the industry in search engines. The more unique blogs you write, the more chances search engines will consider you to be an authoritative expert.

Maximizing Blogs

Not all blogs are successful partly because not everyone is a good storyteller. Certain industries work well with blogging if they are already very detail-oriented. Sharing food recipes, for example, can create endless excitement for cooking fans since there are infinite ways to prepare food. But sharing information on how to operate machinery used in redundant situations is not the best approach to blogging if it doesn’t spawn many different ideas.

Ideally, you want to create blogs that other people share on social networks. One of the ways to make a blog attractive is to start with a colorful photograph, design or infographic. A blog that accompanies a picture and video has extra advantages. The reason you want to make sure the blog has a nice picture is because people see hundreds of stories and pictures as they scroll through their social network newsfeeds, but only so many catch their attention.

A blogger who interviews experts, especially on video, can gain even more credibility. By taking the role of a multimedia curator who explores an industry deeply, you can gain the reputation of a Thought Leader. When your blog becomes what people turn to with high expectation of gaining new information, you have become a Thought Leader, a monumental goal of bloggers. Take the lead in content marketing by reviewing new products and helping other bloggers create a buzz about them.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web, a web development company creating market ready websites since 2000, with locations in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

The Value of Information

Posted on June 29, 2015 by Bob Niles

The Value of Information

The rain pelted across the old Volkswagen windshield as if it had been sprayed on by a garden hose. The tired wipers complained with a stuttered uh-uh-uh as they tried to keep ahead of the horizontal liquid barrage of all things blurry through every window.
To say it was dark would be an understatement. Because this dark suffered from black ink that blew sideways trying to knock the little car off the dirt road. Headlights?…Bill remembered he had them before the rain started but was now unable to confirm their existence.
Bill and Tammy were taking,….well,..Buddy home. They didn’t know the poor guys name. They were doing a Good Samaritan / Designated Driver thing. They had found him slumped between two cars in the parking lot at the pub they had visited after the hockey game.
Bill had tried to get him back on his feet, but as soon as he had righted him, Buddy folded himself back up like a city map. His folds and creases just didn’t look right.
“We’ve got to take him home Bill.” Tammy insisted while Bill was trying to stop the bleeding. Seems Buddy had kissed the side view mirror in his effort to regain his original horizontal format.
It was after two more attempts at verbally insisting and physically attempting to vertically right Buddy that Bill gave in. Buddy was getting pretty beat up by they car they kept trying to stand him beside. A bleeding lip, a bloody nose, and a serious looking scratch which made him look a little like Al Pachino in the movie Scarface.
He gave no name but seemed happy with the temporary title of Buddy. And in his extreme state of inebriation in public Bill could relate as to why he might want to keep his name in question.
“Can you tell us where you live Buddy? Do you know where your house is? Is there someone we can phone? Are you here alone? We’ll drive you…..”
“45,..3? No 454,..5 Spp pruucee Lane.” He sprayed, as he interrupted Tammy. Each number four he pronounced had about fifteen ‘Fs’ in it and probably about as many ‘Fs’ again in the fives. At least he cut back on the ‘Ps’ Tammy thankfully noted.
The rain now started to accompany the already annoying wind as Bill folded Buddy into the back of his space challenger. That is to say his vintage Volkswagen was limited in seating area.
Tammy, now wishing she hadn’t worn a short tight skirt, crawled in the back with Buddy, holding a now bloody compress against his nose. Bill started the car checked his gas and smiled at Tammy in in rear view mirror as they started into the night.
Bill checked his watch as he turned left on to Spruce Lane. Chinese dentist time he smiled remembering his grandpa had always called 2:30 Chinese dentist time.
Slowly he followed the address to 4541, 4543 and 4545, destination achieved. Bill stopped the car on the road and pulled up on the hand brake. Tammy woke up Buddy with a cheery, almost excited “We’re here! We got you home Buddy. Let’s get you out.”
Bill leaned the drivers seat forward as Tammy poured more than pushed Buddy out of the back seat. Bill wrapped Buddy’s right arm around his shoulder and with Tammy manning the left side they made their way through a gate, along a walk, up a ramp and to the front door. Tammy pressed the door bell which started a dog barking in the back of the house, and with each bark it seemed another light turned on. Both Bill and Tammy sensing their job was done, and Buddy was home safe to face the music, turned to leave before the door could open. Buddy, seeming to admit defeat to a vertical lifestyle again folded himself back down to his city map style just as the door opened.
Both Tammy and,…? Mrs Buddy, let out a little scream which deadened the sound of Buddy’s head connecting with the door. Buddy, now much more awake began using and slurring words his former Sunday School Teacher would not have approved of.
Buddy ran out into the front yard. Peed on three trees and back into the house. Apparently Buddy was the dogs name as well. “Good boy Buddy!” Mrs. Buddy said.
No introductions were made as Bill and Tammy were now wet and wind blown and wanted nothing more than to get in the car and head home. Mrs. Buddy stopped them with a heartfelt thank you and wished there were more people like them. She then asked if he had been beat up and robbed. Both looked at each other and feigned ignorance as to his condition and assured her that he probably hadn’t been.
“Well thank you again for bringing him home.” Mrs. Buddy yelled over the wind as she cradled his head. “He sometimes gets like this when,…? Ya have to love them right? For better our worse.”
She stood up gave them both a hug as they turned to go. Bill had just opened the gate for Tammy when Mrs. Buddy yelled through the weather “Do you happen to have his wheelchair?”

Information has been and always will be a valuable tool. Using search engines and inbound marketing with original, factual information satisfies a big active audience searching to buy. And to become successful at inbound marketing the knowledgeable public demand valuable information about your product.
Make your mom proud of your success! Take the lead in inbound marketing by offering free information that helps others gain economic advantages and make your site more valuable than sites with perhaps less information.
And by helping other gain economic advantages not only is mom happy but you’re also being a Good Samaritan. And a Good Samaritan with valuable information is highly valued. Don’t be a Bill and Tammy who the only information they knew about Buddy was that he peed on trees in the front yard and was highly praised for doing so.
We’re still looking for Bill Jensen’s wheelchair.

Bob Niles

Read more articles from Bob’s personal life experiences on his Blogspot site. Superiordribble.blogspot.com

Image Problems – Contact Marketing vs Interruptive Marketing

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Bob Niles

Image Problems

Contact Marketing vs Interruptive Marketing

Young Tom Booker was the trouble maker at Arrow Flats. If something was stolen, broken, painted over with graffiti or shot at it was usually Tom who received the first call from the sheriff. So it should of been no surprise to Tom when Sheriff Gibson questioned him about the number of fish he’d been bragging about down at Mel’s.

Mel’s was the coffee shop in town where all the locals shared breakfast, news and gossip over Mel’s weak bitter coffee. Seems Tom was shooting his mouth off to anyone who would listen about the number of fish he had caught in just half an hour. Sheriff Gibson, armed with this gossip and the complaint phone calls about explosions down at the lake had him very suspicious of young Tom.

“Now Tom,” Sheriff Gibson questioned through the hay stalk he held in one side of his mouth. “Am I to understanding that you caught six rainbow trout and two perch in less than half an hour? At Lake Peed? Yesterday afternoon? Just you,…by yourself?” “Why yes-sir-ee-sir I sure did! And if-in you like Sheriff Gibson you could come with me today and we can catch us some more.”

“Now Tom, people think you’re using dynamite to do yer fishin. And we can’t have that round these parts. Understand Tom?” Sheriff Gibson pressed as the brim of his hat touched Toms face. “Oh no sir, yes sir Officer Gibson.” Tom gulped. “You go home and get yer poles and nets and bait and maybe yer fly rod with yer famous flys you tie that I’ve herd so much about and meet me down at the wharf?”

“Meet me in half an hour Tom.” said Sheriff Gibson as he walked to his car.
It was the sheriffs third trip from the car to the wharf with all his fishing gear before he even saw young Tom. He was whistling coming down the dock with what looked like a kids lunch box. “Where’s yer fishin gear Tom?” Hollered the Sheriff. To which Tom raised the box in his left hand and pointed to it with his right. “If-in yer using dynamite, like I think you are, to catch fish you’ll wind up in the county jail so fast it’ll make” … “Sheriff,” Tom interrupted, “I promise to you that ‘I’ am not using dynamite today to catch fish. Besides look at all that there equipment you got fer catching fish.”

They both hopped in the boat, Tom pulled on the motor, and they both set off to Toms secret fishing spot. A cool breeze lightly rippled the top of Peed Lake as Sheriff Gibson was switching from casting to fly fishing. He certainly had all the gear but it just wasn’t working today. He had just tied on his lucky fly to his line when he looked up to see Young Tom holding a lit stick of dynamite. “I knew it Tom! You can’t fool an old fisherman like me! I know how many fish are in here and how to catch them the tried and true way and YOU” … just then Young Tom threw the dynamite stick with the quickly shrinking lit fuse to Sheriff Gibson. The sheriff now holding the dynamite started doing some boat capsizing jig when Tom questioned his intentions. “Well sheriff are you gonna just dance around talking or are you gonna go fishin?”

Now just as young Tom exaggerated and tricked Sheriff Gibson into buying his method of fishing so do advertisers in their product lines. Audiences have learned to see through advertisers claims and it now has become a challenge to win the trust of customers. With contact marketing it’s more about communicating with the target market. And in doing so makes sense to try and gain as much respect as possible by telling the truth than to exaggerate the facts just to trick people into sales. Image problems occur when people realize they’ve been fooled by advertising. It can and does damage association with your brand.

Just ask young Tom whose spending time in the same place for the next 30 days.

Bob Niles

Read more articles from Bob’s personal life experiences on his Blogspot site. Superiordribble.blogspot.com

Inbound Marketing Consumers Empowerment Part 7

Posted on April 22, 2015 by ianotr

Inbound Marketing Consumers Empowered

Economic factors encourage customers to be researchers

The internet has represented consumer empowerment since the 1990’s because it operates like a high speed phone book. It takes you wherever you want to go, including to websites of competitors you just visited. Due to last century’s marketing that promised more than it delivered, consumers have become skeptical of unfamiliar brands, but are able to quickly learn about brands as a result of inbound marketing.

Marketing Affordability

One of the reasons many people use the internet is to learn how to save money. When budgets tighten, people intensify searches as “affordable” becomes an important keyword to attract bargain hunters. At the same time, many consumers are looking for the best quality at the lowest price. The internet is competitive because it gives you a lot of different choices quickly.

At physical stores consumers deal with extra problematic variables such as shelf space and number of units in stock. If a product sells out it can create inconveniences for customers. Online markets have eliminated the problem of store hours and inventories. Since many store costs have been reduced, online marketers can afford to sell products at lower prices than retail.

Accelerated Research

What consumers are really latching onto when they begin to have favorite blogs is a feeling of comfort that they have learned something from someone online. Surfing the net can take up a lot of time and sometimes there’s nothing to show for it. But engaging through social media and online discussions can generate a useful dialogue that builds loyalty and interest while saving time. For many people saving time is just as valuable as saving money.

Search engines have been such helpful time saving devices that they can instantly bring you in touch with any market imaginable through keywords. Searching for something online is not the same type of passive activity as sitting through TV commercials. In many ways TV advertising chases away customers while inbound marketing invites customers to participate with the product.

Lower Marketing Costs

One of the main keys to inbound marketing is that it helps make your brand a star in several categories instead of just one. The marketing of several different products under one brand name has become an incredibly powerful way to maximize marketing at lower costs.The more variety in products and services you can offer, the more visibility you will generate online and the more chances for customers to find you.

Imagine if you had a different brand name for every different product you sold. If you sold hundreds of different products it could cost a lot of money just to design each logo. But one brand that can be marketed hundreds of different ways is a much more economically efficient venture. In many cases brands are becoming about values related to visions of the world. People now value brands that share similar visions, such as going green.

The Value of Information

Thanks to search engines and inbound marketing, original information has become valuable. At one time marketing costs were high in order to have access to a big passive audience that wasn’t necessarily in the mood to buy. Now marketing costs are low to reach a big active audience that is already searching to buy. All it takes is effort on the part of the marketer to put these pieces together and connect with followers.

The road to becoming successful at inbound marketing involves placing value in stories about your products. Take the lead in inbound marketing by offering free information that helps others gain economic advantages and makes your site more valuable than sites with less information.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web, a web development company creating market ready websites since 2000, with locations in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Content Marketing vs Interruptive Marketing Part 4

Posted on March 4, 2015 by ianotr

Content Marketing vs Interruptive Marketing

Interruptive marketing annoys more than it helps

Interruptive marketing still exists online for those who can afford it. Since most people do not go online to click ads, online advertising should only be done when it makes sense and you have an idea how many people you will be reaching. It’s possible to create a successful campaign with interruptive advertising, usually after learning from failed campaigns.

Why Ads are Annoying

A big reason why interruptive ads continue to be annoying is that people have become more conscious of how time can get wasted, especially people who spend a lot of time watching television. Interruptive advertising on websites is forcing many users to move on to the next website faster, especially when it comes to trying to watch videos. Getting hit with an ad has become a two minute slowdown. Many times it’s easier to exit a website than wait for an ad to finish.

Since ads represent clutter, they are usually bothersome. Only once in awhile do ads communicate the way they were designed. Interruptive ads are starting to become hard to justify except in narrowly targeted situations. The problem with constantly interrupting people who don’t want to be interrupted is that it gets old. The person can also form a negative image of the brand if it is over-marketed.

Image Problems

We are moving into an era in which brands are considered phony if they don’t live up to their claims. It’s now easy to look up customer feedback for almost any brand, now that sites like Amazon keep track of consumer comments. Consumers are now conscious of giving such feedback sites weight compared with advertising. The rising popularity of content marketing is causing businesses to understand the negative impact of interruptive advertising.

Now that audiences have learned to see through advertiser claims, it’s becoming a challenge for businesses to win the trust of customers. Since content marketing is more about communicating with the target market, it makes sense to try to gain as much respect as possible by telling the truth than to exaggerate the facts just to trick people into sales. When people realize they’ve been fooled by advertising, it can damage association with the brand.

Less Like Radio

The irony about radio advertising is that it does the opposite of what it’s supposed to do. Instead of delivering a message to a mass audience, it’s delivering a message to people who have switched stations during commercials.In order to meet the standards of content marketing, it’s important to think of the opposite of how radio commercials have been made. Many commercials have used phony voices to try to give the spot more energy. Today’s marketing is closer to being conversational without theatrical characters.

Traditional radio commercials usually told you a limited amount of information to fit the format of a 30 or 60 second spot, whereas content marketing does not limit its message to the constraints of a third party. Radio commercials always get clustered with other commercials in “stopsets,” which is exactly when many people tune out of the radio. Clearly, most people do not listen to radio commercials no matter what the message is.

Another problem with radio commercials is due to the time constraint, many times the announcer will speed up his or her voice and speak too fast to be understood. If you watch business videos designed to raise brand awareness through content marketing, you will likely come across more relaxed than hyper presentations. Interruptive ads have become more annoying over time now that people have learned to use the internet as a quick gateway to many free activities.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000, with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web – Delivers What You Need With Style.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Content Marketing vs Mass Marketing Part 3

Posted on February 18, 2015 by ianotr

Content Marketing vs Mass Marketing

People Have Learned To Tune Out Mass Marketing

Content marketing of the 21st century is quickly turning into something much different than the marketing of the previous century. In the 20th century not much attention was paid to how many people you offended through marketing. All that mattered was sales conversions. In the new century, consumers are looked at more as individuals rather than statistics, so this shift has created a set of new marketing standards.

Consumer Behavior

It’s difficult to predict consumer behavior, regardless of the type of marketing. One thing clear about the internet revolution is that consumers are no longer quiet about bad purchases. Social media, forums and blog activity have steered a growing number of self-educated consumers toward using the internet for research before making a purchase. Customer reviews on sites like Amazon have become part of research.

Throughout the growth of the internet, users have been bombarded with thousands of ads that had zero effect. People have now seen so much advertising since the 1990s on a daily basis that it has a nullifying effect on most advertising. People learn to not worry about the stack of coupons kept in a drawer or in their email. Since people witness so much marketing in any given day, it’s easy to conclude that most of this marketing doesn’t work for any given individual, as most advertising represents clutter.

Years of Advertising

People have figured out that advertising does not always present the best messages about products. Many times products are over-hyped by ads. Consumers are no longer easily fooled by emotional appeal used by advertisers. The internet has taught many consumers how to articulate what they like or dislike about a product. Ultimately, as people sharpen their brand awareness skills, advertising is becoming more informational than persuasive, at least with content marketing.

One of the important lessons that stands out about advertising is that consumers have become aware of sales pressure, which can lead to high credit card bills. The internet has erased the barrier of location, which gives consumers more choices. Sales pressure is not embraced in content marketing, which favors guiding users through a sales funnel with interesting facts that eventually lead to a product.

Authenticity in Demand

Now that it’s easy for anyone to start their own web business, there is a growing need to separate helpful websites from sites that waste time. Mass marketers can be found everywhere online, which has contributed to an overall consumer skepticism about advertising. Like all advertising arenas, the number of people who respond to ads even on popular social networks is a small percentage.

The reason authenticity is becoming part of the new marketing paradigm is that original content rather than duplicate content is favored by search engines. The more your website follows Google’s guidelines, the less you have to worry about it. The main objective of content marketing is to provide plenty of valuable content that is of interest to an online community.

Why Content Marketing Works

Content marketing is a completely different world than interruptive marketing. Instead of interrupting someone’s day, your articles and blogs are found in search engines by people who care. Instead of annoying users with advertisements, you provide them with stories that promote products. These stories are presented in a unique way, which helps search rankings.

A main strength to content marketing is that it helps establish the relationship between the business and the customer. Interactivity through social networks or email helps achieve goals for both parties. While traditional marketing relied on wordplay and image, today’s content marketing is more about developing trust through sharing accurate and helpful information.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Inbound Marketing & Big Media Advertising Part 2

Posted on February 11, 2015 by ianotr

Inbound Marketing & Big Media Advertising

Big media advertising is expensive and high risk

One of the traps that many start-ups have fallen into has been to set aside a budget for traditional media advertising. This budget can be drained quickly because it involves a fun element, which is creating commercials. But once the spots are run, pressure builds to see a return on investment. Television and radio spots are seen and heard by thousands of people, but most viewers and listeners still consider commercials to be an interruption.

Inbound Marketing vs. Traditional Media

Traditional media such as television, radio and newspapers still reach a huge audience. It’s still a way to deliver a message to the masses and hope that the numbers game will produce a return on investment. The cost of a radio spot depends on how big the station’s market is, but in major markets a sixty second spot can cost hundreds of dollars per minute. Even though television advertising is much more expensive than radio advertising, they both equate to seeing thousands of dollars spent quickly.Inbound marketing usually does not reach as many people as television or radio audiences, but connects more with the target market. While traditional media marketing relies on reaching as many people as possible to produce a single digit percentage of respondents, inbound marketing aims at building a more loyal following, instead of a general following. Reaching followers through blogs and social media has a more personalized feel than traditional media.

Commercial Risks

In the late 1990s one of the reasons there was a “dotcom bust” was that many new internet companies thought they could create markets for their brands through buying radio and television time. Many of these companies attracted funding that helped pay for the advertising, but they eventually collapsed due to having poor business models that did not have clear revenue streams.

The lesson of the dotcom implosion helped steer internet companies toward more concrete business models. The collapse of hundreds of companies served as a reminder that markets cannot be created so quickly just by spending a lot of money on exposure. Part of marketing that remains true is that you cannot build a brand overnight regardless of the medium.

Print Advantages

In recent decades the number of newspapers and magazines have dwindled, but advertising rates have remained high. Ask yourself if advertising in a newspaper helps your cause in any way, knowing that most of your market gets its news online. Big ads – the expensive kind – work best in print, but the best deal when it comes to print is printing your own flyer and mass distributing it through various channels.

You can combine print with inbound marketing by offering printed materials to people who request them through your website. A big part of inbound marketing is offering free items that give people a chance to engage with your brand. You can use print to promote your website locally at stores that reflect your industry. Working with a printer is also helpful in getting your logo on various marketing items.

Avoiding Expensive Advertising

There’s a tendency for some business owners to blame sales declines on lack of advertising. But a business is much more than the product it advertises, which is why advertising does not always work. Mass advertising works when many factors have come together. Loyalty, brand awareness and reputation are just as important as the message being advertised.

It’s better to conserve resources and develop a business slowly than to try to jump start a business with expensive media advertising. By building a market with inbound marketing, a company can focus on developing a long term organic following.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Content Marketing & Small Business Part 1

Posted on February 4, 2015 by ianotr

Content Marketing & Small Business

Small businesses are shut out of big media

How did content marketing become such a big deal in the 21st century? It can all be traced back to how last century’s outbound marketing invaded people’s lives too much and didn’t do enough for small business. Outbound marketing is usually interruptive in the form of visual or audio advertising. The main problem with outbound marketing was that you had to do a lot of it to make any kind of impact.

Budget Constraints

Small businesses simply do not have the budgets to gamble with expensive advertising that may not work. Television, radio and newspaper advertising each require repetition to be effective. But to gain visibility and brand awareness through this type of mass media, it can take several months of advertising to see results, which may not be the best return on investment. Big companies can afford saturating their markets with continuous advertising that can run several thousand dollars per month, but small companies cannot afford constant advertising.

Limited Message

Another problem with traditional media marketing was that it only gave you small snippets of information about the product. It was impossible to learn much about a product just from a newspaper ad or radio commercial. Part of the problem was that the advertiser was only given so much time or space to deliver a message. Last century’s marketing messages encompassed vague slogans designed to be one size fits all solutions.

One of the biggest weaknesses of traditional media advertising was that the target market was not always clear. You could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on reaching big markets, but there was no guarantee that the advertising would generate sales. The broadcast industries blurred the picture further by using questionable ratings research as evidence that people pay attention to commercials. The fact is that media advertising can work, but does not always work.

Internet Expansion

The internet opened doors for marketers who were trying to get away from last century’s marketing approach that was expensive and invasive. In many cases, advertising was full of exaggeration. A more consumer-friendly approach has developed on the internet that allows marketers and consumers to connect when it’s right for both of them.

Instead of interrupting content with commercials, content marketing provides the information people are already searching for, presented in a digestible way.By designing a series of online messages through blogs and articles, you can educate customers about products much faster than in the past. You can even get some customers to speed up their purchases.

Content marketing avoids hard sell language and concentrates on giving readers the most important product information and then funnels toward web pages devoted to deeper details. By creating thorough web pages about products, pages are indexed by search engines, which can potentially equate to vast amounts of free advertising.

Alternatives to Mainstream Media

The rise of content marketing may not have happened if small business had not been shut out of mainstream media. Expensive advertising led to big business having a heavy presence on local television, newspapers and radio as small companies were overshadowed. Thanks to Google’s AdWords pay per click program small businesses finally found low cost ways to reach their target markets.Google and other search engines have also contributed to customers finding the businesses they are looking for faster.

Take the lead in content marketing by building a website full of content that people are searching for. If you build a small business site full of unique information that cannot be found elsewhere, it’s possible for search engines to create your core market and for content marketing to nurture your market.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000, with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Repurposing Content

Posted on January 28, 2015 by ianotr

Repurposing Content for Various Media Formats

Multimedia has been a concept developing for decades to empower creative minds by presenting a message through different forms of communication. Computers and the internet have become the vehicles for accomplishing many multimedia dreams. The amazing power of the computer is that it can now combine video, radio, music, books, slide shows and many other types of media into one platform.

Deciding on Formats

Your computer has become your media center for producing content that can be experienced through several different formats such as video files, audio files, news feeds, text files, image files, HTML and many other things. You don’t really need to know the technical side of multimedia other than how to copy and paste a code into web pages. Understanding basic HTML is a good idea even if you never plan to write code. Then again, if all your web-based solutions will be through easy to use cloud platforms, then all you really need to know is how to click a button that says “upload.”

No longer do you need to worry about the technical headaches and bandwidth issues of hosting your own videos, since you can just upload your videos to YouTube and link to them on your site. Images as well as videos are hosted on Flickr. You can create slideshows with SlideShare. Ebooks can be constructed through cloud platforms such as CreateSpace, Lulu or Libiro. Audio can be recorded and stored on SoundCloud. You can also upload original music to ReverbNation. Each of these platforms allows you to build a digital library for multimedia presentations. Let your imagination guide you on the appropriate forms of media to reach your audience.

Hard Copy Formats

The physical world and digital world can work together in an efficient streamlined manner. While digital publishing is more cost efficient and eco-friendly than print, there are certain times when it’s reasonable to use print to expand your market. It’s also true that CDs and DVDs are wise to manufacture if you know there’s a demand for them. It becomes unwise to manufacture thousands of physical discs if you have no way of marketing or distributing them. You may want to create different versions of your content for each type of media format so that it’s not considered duplicate content by search engines.

The best of both worlds is accomplished when you use an on demand philosophy. If you have 100 requests for your ebook in hard copy form, then it makes sense to print 100 books. You can do the same thing with selling videos as downloads or DVDs or music as downloads or CDs. By interacting with followers on social networks, you will be able to learn the formats in which people want to consume your content. You may want to manufacture a limited number of DVDs and CDs simply to give out free at street fairs and trade shows. Printed flyers are still one of the best ways to get the word out about your business.

Advanced Multimedia

Remember that standing out is always more important than blending in when it comes to content marketing. If your competition isn’t doing anything too amazing with content, then almost any multimedia ideas you come up with will be better. But if your competition presents a lot of videos, photos, audio and ebooks, you might trying taking multimedia to the next level. Creative cutting edge media such as video games, highly attractive colorful infographics and heat maps, animation and interactive technology. Take the lead in content marketing by investing in equipment and software that helps you produce sophisticated, artistic multimedia productions.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.