The time, effort, and money you put into optimizing your content is all for nothing if your target audience doesn’t read it. Writing for the right audience is as important as focusing on the content itself. Producing content for the best audience for your brand is the only way to boost sales and increase conversions – reaching the people you need to reach the most. Target Your Audience If you don’t know who you want reading your blog, you can’t possibly know what to write. The first step in writing for the right audience is defining who that audience is. Are you targeting Millennials? Stay-at-home moms? Business executives? Identifying the ideal audience for your content is the only way to reach the consumers you want to convert, by tailoring your tone and information for the right crowd.…Read entire entry »

Last year, 2016, was a tumultuous one in many aspects, chief among them a rollercoaster of an election cycle that cast a glaring eye at the media for several reasons. Marketing is a constantly evolving game between marketing professionals and their target customers. Marketers are always looking for new ways to get their brands to resonate with the people who will benefit most from them, but they don’t always hit the mark. Marketing in the modern world relies heavily on popular culture and understanding the social conversations happening on any given day. In 2016, we’ve seen some content marketing campaigns fall absolutely flat – even entering the realm of downright tasteless in some cases – and others have captured audiences’ attention and delighted them in several ways. We’ve created a list of some the biggest wins and hardest fails in the content marketing world for 2016. …Read entire entry »

The time, effort, and money you put into optimizing your content is all for nothing if your target audience doesn’t read it. Writing for the right audience is as important as focusing on the content itself. Producing content for the best audience for your brand is the only way to boost sales and increase conversions – reaching the people you need to reach the most. Target Your Audience If you don’t know who you want reading your blog, you can’t possibly know what to write. The first step in writing for the right audience is defining who that audience is. Are you targeting Millennials? Stay-at-home moms? Business executives? Identifying the ideal audience for your content is the only way to reach the consumers you want to convert, by tailoring your tone and information for the right crowd. …Read entire entry »

How well do you really know your target audience? Do you know them or do you just think you do? Most of us, marketers included, can be guilty at times of trusting our instincts a little too much, and while instincts can be great, sometimes they can be misleading. So how do you test your instincts when it comes to knowing your target audience? Today’s Tool Tip Tuesday will show you how to do just that! Discover what questions and queries your target audience is asking Google with an insightful tool called AnswerThePublic.com. You probably already have personas that you built using market research, consumer surveys, social listening, and more, but imagine a tool that can essentially spit out what your audience is asking Google right now. I’m sure you’re already familiar with Google and Bing’s auto suggest function, which is great for coming up with content ideas. Just start typing and see what pops up: …Read entire entry »

It’s 2016, and content is still at the forefront of virtually every marketing technique, digital and traditional. Whether it’s video, photo, or content, marketers need to know how to stay on top of content and get the most for their efforts. Content has been a buzzword for more than a decade, yet many business owners still don’t know how to maximize theirs to get more of an impact. Here are a few quick tips to show you how to leverage your content the right way. #1: Form a Plan According to the Content Marketing Institute, the majority (53%) of the top most-effective B2B content marketers have a documented strategy. Documentation can be simple – just a few page…Read entire entry »

When I read stuff about “going viral” or “successful outreach” I typically see content that makes people happy or laugh. It’s not a bad thing. Who doesn’t like to be happy or get a chuckle out of an article? However, where are the rest of the emotions? You may not want to make readers angry or sad, but does that mean sites should shy away from topics that might cause that reaction? It’s not like we’re creating a circle of joy for that content to stay within. [caption id="attachment_8833" align="aligncenter" width="638"] Then again being Batman would be pretty cool.[/caption] However, you are not Batman and you have readers to think about. If you’re going to create content that won’t generate a smile or laughter, you might want to take a look at some angry and…Read entire entry »

Content marketing is effective, but it requires a considerable time commitment. Content development takes time, and marketers must publish and maintain content over time. From blog posts to Vine videos, content can easily overwhelm a small marketing team. Content marketing tools won’t do all the work, but they can simplify many processes. Whether you need to post social media lists every day or perfectly time an emailed newsletter, these content marketing tools will help you get the job done: Note: There are several different tools in each category, and this list is only a representational cross section of the tools available in each field. Once you d…Read entire entry »

*Melanie Deziel is Vizion's featured guest this month and we are excited to feature her post below written exclusively for you! Many small businesses are starting to see the power of content marketing and are looking to build out their own content practice, whether it’s through larger media partnerships, a consistent blog or just an amped-up social presence with custom content for each network. But when they turn to the web for tips, examples, and insights from large brands in their same niche, they find that the most widely publicized native advertising campaigns seem too out of reach to provide any actionable insights for them: the budgets are too big, the production values too high, and the media partners too inaccessible. But there are lessons in the…Read entire entry »

If you want to grow your online presence but aren’t using analytics, it’s time to start. Analytics packages, such as Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics, can work wonders for marketing strategies. They can show who has been at your site, when they were there, how they got there, and where they were located. This information is excellent for the marketing department; it helps them develop a target audience. But how can it help with the content of the site? Content is a huge factor when it comes to a marketing strategy; in other words, content and marketing strategies are interrelated. The content should promote the marketing and vice-…Read entire entry »

2/3 of every professionals on the planet are on LinkedIn. They are there to be inspired, to learn and grow in their careers. LinkedIn’s content pages receive 7x the views that the career pages do. If you aren’t posting on LinkedIn you are missing out! Punk rock killed disco in the 80’s, that’s what content marketing is doing in marketing today. “Don’t hate the media, become the media.” – Jello Biafra You don’t need to become a content farm, Google has killed off the content farms. You need more relevant/focused content. Irrelevant promotions enrage people, don’t piss off your customers. Give them what they want to read when you email them. You have their data in analytics and there are tools out there that can …Read entire entry »