Tag Archives: Brand Awareness

June 3, 2016 · 2:05 pm

What are You Trying to Accomplish with Your Content Marketing?

Hand Drawing Content Flow Chart

Suppose someone were to ask you: What are your goals for your company’s content marketing campaign? What is it that you’re trying to accomplish?

You may wonder whether there’s a right answer to this question—but the truth is, there isn’t, except to say that it varies. Different businesses bring different initiatives to content marketing. They look to do different things. And that’s okay. There is room enough in content marketing to accommodate a wide range of strategies and goals.

What we recommend here at Grammar Chic is simply this: Think about what’s most important to you. Think about what you might accomplish through content marketing, and set your priorities. Then align both your execution and your reporting to reflect these goals. If you’re not sure about how to do any of this, you can always call us for a consultation.

Before setting your goals, though, it’s good to have a sense of what all content marketing can do. You might actually be surprised by this.  There are plenty of good and worthy achievements you can reach through your content marketing efforts, and knowing some of the options can help you to set lofty yet attainable goals.

Let us show you what we mean.

Content Marketing Goals to Consider

Here are just a few of the things you might set out to do with your content marketing efforts.

Brand awareness. People aren’t going to do business with you if they don’t know what you stand for, or are unaware that you even exist. Good, original content can address this problem. The idea is that a consumer might stumble upon your company blog post and like it so much they ask, Who wrote this?

Website traffic. A more conventional and easy-to-track metric, one thing content can do is send people to your site. Intrinsic to this is having a site that is ready to capture and convert leads—meaning good content on the site itself, forms and e-mail list to grab hold of people, etc.

Educated clients. Something else you can strive for: Preparing your clients to do business with you. Use content to inform them about your industry and products; to make them aware of problems and solutions. This can smooth your sales and customer services processes.

Retention and upsells. Good content can help you get customers, but it can also help you maintain them. Content marketing can be a form of ongoing product support or client involvement—keeping them tuned in to what your company does and letting them know of new products or services that they can use.

Trust. Content speaks to authority; when done right, it shows that you know what you’re doing. In an age of e-commerce, where many consumers are still just a little wary of doing business online, this is an important way to reassure potential clients and customers that you’re trustworthy.

We’ll ask again, then: What are you trying to accomplish with your content marketing? Let us help you though some of the possibilities, and figure out a way to turn your goals into realities. Contact Grammar Chic to learn more: www.grammarchic.net or 803-831-7444.

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Filed under Blog Writing, Business Writing, Content Marketing, Content Writing

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September 21, 2015 · 12:40 pm

5 Ways to Bring Humanity to Your Brand

Brand rubber stamp. Part of a series of business concepts.

People like doing business with other people—not with faceless, personality-deficient corporate brands.

So if you’re looking to build real connections, and to convince your customers to trust you, it’s important that you present your brand with some humanity—a hard thing to quantify or to achieve, but essential nonetheless.

But how can you make your company come across as more approachable, more humane—without compromising your polish or your professionalism?

Consider these strategies:

  1. Use your actual team members in your marketing. If you want to put a human face on your business—well, why not actually use human faces? Involve the different people and personalities who work for your company. Put employee bios and photos on your website. Share behind-the-scenes employee photos on social media. And don’t resort to the use of stock photos; there’s no need, when you’ve got plenty of talented humans right under your roof!
  2. Encourage your employees to be brand ambassadors. You probably don’t want to force anyone to share branded content on their personal social media channels, but you can at the very least encourage them to post or tweet company blogs and status updates. Create a culture in which employees are eager to showcase the brand on social media; ensure that there is plenty of positive and entertaining content for them to share.
  3. Get your users involved. Encourage your social media followers to post pictures of your products being used, or to send in their stories and experiences related to your brand. Create a hashtag for them to use, and share some of the best submissions you get.
  4. Personalize your automated messages. Do you have automated e-mails that go out when people buy your products or sign up for your newsletter? Write a brief but creative message to use in these e-mails—something to lend your brand a little extra pizzazz.
  5. Write like a human. This one is the toughest, but perhaps also the most essential. In writing company content, avoid using jargon or needless technical terms. Instead, write naturally, conversationally, perhaps even humorously. Don’t write as The Company; write as a person. That’s what readers will connect to.

And that’s what this is all about: Creating marketing materials that will facilitate real relationships. That’s something you can only accomplish when you show some humanity.

Get help with your content marketing today: Contact Grammar Chic at 803-831-7444, or www.grammarchic.net.

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April 23, 2014 · 9:08 am

The Top 5 Benefits of Content Creation

Hand Drawing Content Flow Chart

Here at the Grammar Chic blog, we talk frequently and passionately about the need for small businesses to invest in custom content creation—and okay, we’ll admit it: It may seem like a bit much.

We understand that business owners and entrepreneurs have plenty on their plates as it is; devoting time and resources to content creation may seem, initially, like a needless overcomplication of your daily business operation.

Thus, with this post, we’d like to simply remind you of why all of this matters—to refresh your memory regarding some of the major benefits of content creation.

There are five, in particular, that we’ll herald as being reason enough to invest in content development!

  1. First, there is brand awareness—which may seem a little too soft and unquantifiable at first, but in reality is essential for any business. Simply put, you’re not going to grow your company if nobody is aware that you exist. You’ve got to establish your brand’s voice in the marketplace, to get your name out there where customers and clients are, and to ensure that your brand is associated with positive values. The best way to do that—the only way to do that, we would argue—is to craft content and distribute it on blogs, social platforms, websites, and press releases.
  2. Content creation also helps with lead nurturing. When you make content creation a priority, it means that, at every step of the sales process, your leads are being educated about the how and the why of your products—ultimately, about the benefits those products can offer. Good content can also help guide leads through the sales process, steering them toward an email sign-up or a landing page.
  3. Customer retention is another big one. Say that a customer does business with you, and is sufficiently pleased with the experience that he or she likes your company on Facebook, or starts following your blog. Regular content updates ensure that you’re keeping your name in front of that customer, and regularly reminding him or her of the value you offer—making repeat business and ongoing customer loyalty far more likely.
  4. Content creation can also be a form of customer service. Ongoing customer education, in the form of FAQs, product demos, and how-tos, can make the entire customer experience far richer and more satisfactory.
  5. Finally: Good content proves value. Educational content shows that you know what you’re talking about—that you not only have mastery over your field, but also that you’re prepared to share that mastery with customers, in a way that benefits them.

Is content creation a big commitment? Absolutely—but it’s also a worthy investment. It’s important to either work on content creation on your own terms, or else to outsource it to the pros—and as far as that goes, the Grammar Chic team stands ready to assist! Contact us today at 803-831-7444, or check out grammarchic.net for more information.

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