Rules are for robots. This is the basic logic behind Mike Volpe’s explaination of “Why a Social Media Policy is Stupid” in his HubSpot post. He questions why companies feel the need to make specific policies for social media practices when they have never had explicit rules for any other types of person-to-person communication. I think his point is worth considering. What kind of attitude do you want to form around your business’s use of social media? If it starts to become regarded as programmed and robotic,  you risk missing the whole point of social media marketing in the first place – utilizing connections between people.

No one is stopping you. According to Seth Godin, “Validation is Overrated.” It’s always nice to have some positive reinforcement now and again, but I think this encouragement is especially helpful in the realm of blogging and social media. Online forums have bestowed us with a new ability to speak directly and instantly to people who want to hear us, so why not fully utilize this freedom?

Get to the point. Time and time again I’ll start excitedly telling a story, really getting into it – word-for-word dialogue, hand motions – and then I’ll look up to take a breath and realize that no one is listening to me anymore. It is always so tempting to give as many details as possible when talking about something that really excites us. But this is not how to keep listeners. In his article “Simplify and Package the Sale,” Chris Brogan gives some useful tips on how engage your customers with simple, to-the-point information so that they stay as excited as you are about your product.

The cover matters. The old “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” adage doesn’t cut it when it comes to marketing content, especially online marketing content. Mary White reminds us that it doesn’t matter how good your content is if people don’t stick around long enough to read it, and she outlines some useful strategies for how to “Enhance Website Content with Visual Appeal.”

From the experts: “6 Challenges to Managing a Brand on the Social Web.” Mashable consulted six experts in the field of web marketing to put together this list of the biggest challenges you can face in trying to manage an online marketing campaign today. While it’s important to stay up-to-date with the constant feed of new ways you can utilize social media, it’s also important to stop for a minute and think about the roadblocks you may encounter once you dive in – and how you should best deal with them.

Marcella Vieraitis is a new summer intern at ideaLaunch. She loves writing and editing, and is soaking up all there is to learn about the world of blogging, social media, and content marketing.

Have you ever wondered what makes sites like Amazon and Wikipedia so addictive? When you visit these sites, you can’t stop clicking; one link leads to another, and each page is more intriguing than the last. This is accomplished using a simple technique that you can mimic on your own website or blog: an effective internal linking strategy.

Think about it; in Wikipedia, practically every significant word or phrase in every article is linked to another article that deals exclusively with that subject. You might intend to read up on World War II and end up following a trail of links to an article about pirates or Romanian folklore. As far as website content tips go, leading your visitors deeper and deeper into your site—treating them to one wonder after another, like Alice as she tumbled down the rabbit hole—is at the top of the list.

Amazon takes this gem of content marketing even further; it recommends products to you based on those you have already looked at, lets you know what other people have ordered after viewing  those products, and provides you with lists of similar products—lists created not by Amazon itself as a marketing tool, but for fun and by customers like you. This strategy is based on a solid hypothesis: that if you happen to like one gothic romance, Marvel comic book, or young-adult urban-fantasy novel, you will like more of the same.

If you want to improve conversion, there is no better strategy than linking every page of your website to half a dozen other pages that tackle similar material from a fresh angle. Updates to one part of your site should be advertised on every other part, and it doesn’t hurt to have an interactive section where your customers can share their favorite products or services with visitors who are still on the fence.

Remember, interesting links keep your visitors clicking, and the more time they spend on your site, the more likely they are to find something they are willing to pay for. Internal links are also an integral part of search-engine optimization. If you want the best possible results, you can hire a marketing agency to help improve your internal linking strategy.

*Image from http://www.thecampussocialite.com/blog/images/alice-falling-down-rabbit-hole.jpg

Emily Robinson is a fiction writer and an editorial intern at ideaLaunch. After her final semester of college, she intends to become a copyeditor and/or a starving novelist.

Content needs to address the concerns of the prospect and answer the questions they have and the questions they haven’t even thought of yet. The best marketing content will illustrate the competitive advantage of the product or service and establish confidence in the eyes of the consumer.

Building Authority with Marketing Content

The more competition in a given industry, the more difficult it is to build authority. Building a position of authority is not accomplished overnight and requires diligence and a concerted effort to give the campaign enough time to show results. Unlike direct sales advertising based on an immediate consumer need, building authority shows a commitment to your customers’ intellectual needs.

Building Trust with Marketing Content

The more information marketing content provides to the prospect, the more likely the prospect is to trust the company. Marketing content works to build trust by providing prospects with the right information they need to make the best buying decision for their situation. Once seen as an authority in the industry trust is built by providing reliable information that the customer needs to use the product or service to its greatest potential.

Jennifer Gniadecki loves to write. You can find her on any given day writing lists, blog posts, articles, assignments, outlines or fleshing out story ideas on her laptop.

Image from masternewmedia.org

Are you looking for a new, fun way to drive traffic to your website? Would you like to offer a special perk to new or loyal customers? Do you need an easy way to build your email list through unique marketing content? Why not offer a free eBook on your website?

Here are some ways you can give away a free eBook.

• Provide it free with purchase.
• Provide it free for anyone who shares their email address with you. A content marketing agency can help you set up an email list program that will manage your list and use it for future promotions, newsletters and special mailings.
• Provide it free to existing mailing list members who share information about your company with their friends.

Now that you know how to distribute it, let’s think about what an eBook can do for your business. An eBook can:

• Put your brand back in your customers’ minds long after they’ve left your site.
• Draw traffic to your site when you market your free eBook through Twitter, Facebook, your blog, and other forms of social media.
• Establish you as an expert and a published author, making you a desirable interview subject for media within and outside your industry.
• Educate and inform your customers, subtly steering them toward buying decisions that benefit your business. 

Dawn Allcot is a full-time freelance writer and blogger. She frequently writes about technology, business, parenting and paintball.

Image from uiwp.uiuc.edu

For many copywriters the overall concepts of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are like a foreign language. So asking a writer who is unfamiliar with SEO to understand the nitty-gritty specifics may mean you need a PhD in SEO in order to train your writer, and that’s going to take more time than you have to give.

But if you understand a few misconceptions, you can make sure your copywriter doesn’t do more harm than good when they beef up your copy via SEO through content creation.

More is Not Better
The first misconception is that more is better. Just because the search engines say their search spiders will read up to 30 keywords per page does not mean that every page should have 30 different keywords stuffed into the website copy. Search engines look at keyword relevance - not just how many times a particular keyword is used or how many similar keywords are used on a particular page.

Match Your Tags
The second misconception is how the search engines use meta data and tags. Search engines each use different meta data such as the title, keyword, and description tags in different ways. Each of these engines is trying to use this data to improve the user’s experience and provide better search results. SEO writers need to make sure the copy they write promotes the same keywords and content in these tags.

Not Just for Search Engines
The third misconception in SEO copywriting is that the SEO copywriting is being done exclusively for the search engines. SEO writers need to stay aware of the user’s experience and how their SEO content will improve the visitors ability to use the site, find the information they are looking for, and trust the company’s expertise.

Many marketing companies also make sure they have writers skilled in SEO writing. These writers already know how to write good SEO copy without overdoing it. Sometimes it’s easier to give the job to someone that knows how to do it rather than learn it all yourself in order to teach it to someone.

Jennifer Gniadecki loves to write. You can find her on any given day writing lists, blog posts, articles, assignments, outlines or fleshing out story ideas on her laptop.

Trying to decide on a marketing agency for your content marketing strategy can be scary. But don’t just rely on great writing and a recommendation from your cousin who’s never owned a business to keep your content marketing strategy afloat.

Look for the brains behind the good looking copy, and you’ll see that a great marketing agency can provide services that integrate the tactics of several approaches to ensure the effectiveness of the content marketing strategy. Through content creation, optimization and testing a marketing agency provides a solution to content marketing that improves the bottom line of the company.

Content Creation Services
A marketing agency should provide content creation services that meet the needs of your audience and speak the language of your customer. A marketing agency should base content marketing on the goals and strategy already present on the site and in offline marketing.

Content Optimization
A marketing agency optimizes the marketing content to increase the overall effectiveness of a site and company’s marketing. By optimizing marketing content to tactically support the overall strategy of the company’s marketing the content marketing strategy will augment the overall strategy of the company’s marketing as well as improve the rankings of the company’s site in the search engines.

Content Testing
Content marketing strategies should be a process, not a one-time push. A marketing agency will provide continued monitoring of the content marketing strategy to make sure that the most optimal strategy is being employed to increase conversion of prospects into customers.

Jennifer Gniadecki loves to write. You can find her on any given day writing lists, blog posts, articles, assignments, outlines or fleshing out story ideas on her laptop.

For example, if you tell your article writer to emphasize keywords such as “Lake Tahoe” and “Lake Tahoe vacations” based on the number of people who have found your site using those keywords, you may also need to add a new, popular keyword to your articles and other SEO content—keywords related to “Lake Tahoe.”

If only 10,000 people searched for “Lake Tahoe” last month, but 100,000 searched for “Lake Tahoe canoe,” it is time to add that phrase to your SEO content. This strategy works best when your website has a direct tie-in with the new keyword. If your site has nothing to do at all with canoes or water recreation, you’ll do better to find an equally popular keyword that does tie in—nothing is worse than being led to a site based on artificial keyword results. A user who thinks they could get information on “Lake Tahoe canoe” but finds your site empty of any relevant information won’t be coming back.

Joe Wallace has been a writer/editor since 1992 and is always open to fun new ways to market online businesses. In addition to running Freelance-Zone.com, he blogs about music at Turntabling.net and runs a small press specializing in snarky t-shirts.

There are two basic types of SEO content you can build campaign ideas for. One is for SEO optimized tips—small, bite-sized content that is quickly readable and provides useful advice or information for your readers. Web content tips should be optimized as SEO content—created for people to read and enjoy but written using tactics designed to make the tips more discoverable by search engines. SEO optimized articles are basically the same, but longer. The articles need to be written for an Internet audience in mind as well as the search engines. Articles should be longer than tips, but shouldn’t be too long, lest you lose the attention of your audience. 

Why hire SEO writers to create both tips and articles? Simple—the shorter tips are value-added for your website visitors. They provide just enough information for those looking for a quick fix, and they offer search engines something to refer to. Due to their size you don’t want just a few tips, but a whole collection of them. The longer articles are a big advantage because search engines have more to discover in each article. Your SEO keywords get more repetition in the body of the longer pieces. They also satisfy readers looking for more in-depth coverage of the topics mentioned in your tips section. When you hire SEO writers to create a collection of tips and articles, you’re getting more value because each type of content fulfills a different customer need while attracting more attention from Google and other search engines.

 Joe Wallace has been a writer/editor since 1992 and is always open to fun new ways to market online businesses. In addition to running Freelance-Zone.com, he blogs about music at Turntabling.net and runs a small press specializing in snarky t-shirts.

I love getting content creation ideas from things that seem to have nothing to do with the topic I’m writing about. Getting away from industry news, expert analysis and the technical jargon of one specific topic can really help me think creatively and I tend to produce a more interesting finished product.

One of my favorite out-of-left field sources for content ideas is pop culture. The beauty of using pop culture as an inspirational starting point is that it often makes your content more relatable and accessible. Readers get the feeling that you’re sharing an inside joke together when they get your seemingly obscure reference.

Of course, the trick is to not be too obscure or most people won’t get it. But pulling in other things you have in common with your audience beside your product, service or information niche can make for a richer feeling of connection.

3 Places To Find Pop Culture Content Ideas

Song Lyrics – I’ve read blogs that use a song lyric for every single title. That might be overkill, but using the trick once in a while can add some variety to your web content. Plus, music is famous for evoking powerful emotions. The next time you find yourself with a song stuck in your head, write it down on your running list of campaign ideas. (You have one of those, right?)

Movies - You can draw topic ideas from movie plots, titles or specific quotes. But be careful. Stick with well known classics or current phenomenons. It’s important that your reader will know what you’re talking about even if they haven’t seen the movie. For example, even if you don’t have Team Edward tattooed on your chest, chances are you’d pick up on a general Twilight reference.

TV – The same rules for movies apply to TV. Don’t be obscure. But don’t be afraid to use an idea drawn from TV if you can easily explain the premise that makes your content make sense. For example, I wrote an article about working moms using characters from AMC’s Mad Men. Even if you have never seen or heard of the series, I described the two characters I was contrasting enough to make the article accessible.

The next time you’re struggling to come up with fresh campaign ideas for your content, take a break. Relax, listen to music, or watch TV, and you might just find the inspiration you’ve been looking for.

Britt Reints is a freelance writer living in Orlando.  She’s using this article as an excuse the next time she gets caught watching TV in the middle of the work day.

Image from iwatchstuff.com