Content Marketing

Yes, content is king, but it must be relevant, timely, and well written. Any blog will suffer from a lack of well-written content; however, the effect on marketing related blogs is most problematic, since they rely so heavily on traffic generation to be successful.

Having a vested interest in your blog, you feel the pressure to produce content, but this will not make generating that content any easier.

Keyword research

Knowing what people are searching for, and exactly how they are searching for it, will allow you to optimize your efforts at content generation.

Not all search terms are equal and, in fact, many make little sense. For example, did you know that the more specific your keyword phrases the more likely the search engines are to find you?

Search Engine Optimization

All that work generating content and finding the best keywords and keyword phrases is wasted if the search engines don’t identify you. Using keywords properly to help generate traffic to your website or blog is something of an art, as well as a science. Simply writing good copy is not enough. The techniques for proper keyword placement are a learned skill, and not every writer has it.

FREE “Tweets” and FREE “Shares” included with every article

The number of tweets we include with each article will depend upon the length of the piece, but we’re thinking somewhere between three and ten tweets per article. The up-side of this for you is, you can tweet it right from your new content. Simply copy and paste the excerpt we send you…toss in your URL, and send it to Twitter.

That’s it!

SEO Writer Pro has been designed to help meet the needs of the fledgling or floundering blogger or online marketer. We have the knowledge, skills, and talent to produce copy for you which will boost your search engine rankings, generate traffic to your site, and help you build your brand identity.

Generating content, keyword research, and search engine optimization (SEO) are the keys to promoting a blog – and to creating a successful online marketing campaign. If you’re having trouble banging out content for your blog, we will generate fresh, well-written content for you. If you’re having problems figuring out how to properly use keywords and keyword phrases in your text to optimize your search results and improve your search engine ranking, we have just the tools and experience you need.

We will also include, at no extra charge, a series of excerpts from your new copy to be used as Tweets and Facebook Page posts with every article we create for you.

RConte

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Payment-in-full is due at time of order for this Special Offer
and you must supply the keywords and keyword phrases you wish us to use.

Mention Andrea Kalli

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pssst…don’t forget to share this great deal with your social networks!
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Article by Andrea Kalli

Take a stroll over to my Facebook Page and become part of my community. I invite you to become a fan and participate in the conversation.
Certified Internet and Social Marketing Assistant

If you struggle with the post/page editor in WordPress and you find yourself missing the comfort of your desktop document software, then desktop blog publishing tools may just be the answer to all your dreams.  (okay, maybe not ALL your dreams)

One such tool for Windows is Windows Live Writer 2011. I’ve been hearing about this tool for several years and, until just today, I’ve not explored using it. A quick and simple free download from http://explore.live.com/windows-live-writer and I was set up. Easy to connect to my blog with the url and login credentials and I was on my way to a life of familiarity and comfortable content creating.

It’s not just for creating and publishing blog posts either. You can create and publish pages, too. You can also edit existing posts and pages. Interesting. This is ideal when using WordPress for both your website and your blog. Pages = website pages, Posts = blog posts.

Simpler table creation

One of the things I find most annoying is utilizing tables in WordPress efficiently. Even with WordPress plugins, like TinyMCE Advanced, I find the lack of ease of use and functionality slightly aggravating.  The beauty of desktop blog publishing tools is that it blends the ease of use that you’ve become accustomed to, with the ability to post content to your online location painlessly. Being able to create your content while offline is ever-so-convenient. Adding categories, tags, setting a publishing date are all at your fingertips in the menu ribbon (now very familiar to Microsoft Office users). Once completed, publishing it live, or as a draft, online is as easy as pressing a toolbar button.

Creating a table for your WordPress blog post using Windows Live Writer 2011 is a breeze. However, while you can easily align an image on your page, I couldn’t find page alignment settings for the table. What? Oh wait, I just selected everything in the table and used the paragraph alignment toolbar button. OK. I guess that works.

this is text in my table cell 1	this is text in my table cell 2
added picture from my computer	added picture from my computer

Even better table options with a plugin

After posting this post the first time as a draft, I noticed the table layout still lacking what I wanted. Quick research revealed a free table plugin for Windows Live Writer to provide better tools and options for my tables. Here is another table after I installed this plugin.

The new plugin insert window. You actually have to click on the Table Plugin in the plugin window to get the right insert window to display:

The new table:

text in my table cell 1	text in my table cell 2

Breezy image tools

Adding screenshots is as simple as using your PrintScreen keyboard key to capture the image and using your Ctrl+V keyboard shortcut to paste it into your post in Windows Live Writer. It’s just like doing this in a Microsoft Word document. When you publish it to your blog, the images get uploaded automatically to your blog’s image folder location. Yay! I’m happy.

Double-clicking on the image opens the Picture Tools Editing toolbar in Windows Live Writer 2011, which allows you to easily crop, resize, stylize, align, set hyperlinks, set alt text, and edit the image on the spot.

Posting videos within your blog post is also a snap.

Choices are: from the web, from the computer, from a video service.

And here is the YouTube video embedded into the post.

Need a little reminder about setting your categories and tags? No problem.

There is a setting in the Windows Live Writer options to remind you about such important things when you go to publish your content. I like that.

Watch the publishing magic happen…

Plugins for those extras.

There are even plugins for Windows Live Writer for added features and functionality, located at http://plugins.live.com/writer/browse?orderby=featured&page=1.

While I’m thrilled with the various built-in options that come with this free tool, there are some features lacking. I wanted to be able to draw an arrow on my image and circle something on it, but there’s no way to do this. At least I can’t find a way.  If you know how, I would love to hear from you. Not sure if any of the available plugins can do this. Guess I’ll need to try some of them out. Ahem. Another day perhaps.

All in all, I believe I’ll be using Windows Live Writer from now on to create and publish my blog posts and pages on my various WordPress blogs.  I know many clients that might enjoy the extra ease of use and familarity.

Kind of a bummer…

It’s kind of a drag that you don’t have any control where the drafts are stored on your computer. However, I did find an article that talks about a registry change. Here’s hoping this is something that is available in the next version, don’t you agree?

http://www.lehsys.com/2011/04/how-to-change-the-drafts-and-recent-posts-folder-in-windows-live-writer-2011/

They are currently located under your My Documents folder in a subfolder called My Weblog Posts.

Features:

Get blogging with easy setup

Set up multiple blogs in Writer. Writer works with many popular blog services such as WordPress, Blogger, and more.

Add photos and videos to tell your story

Make your story come to life by adding photos and videos to your blog posts.

Create stunning blog posts in minutes

Create stunning blog posts in just a few moments using the ribbon to format text, photos, videos, and more.

Add a Bing Map

Insert a Bing Map in your blog post to display a location.

Article by Andrea Kalli

Take a stroll over to my Facebook Page and become part of my community. I invite you to become a fan and participate in the conversation.
Certified Internet and Social Marketing Assistant

As September quietly finishes and the end of the year creeps closer, my thoughts go to an obvious content marketing strategy that every internet marketer is starting to think about: utilizing the upcoming new year as an event for inspiration in content. The beauty of a new year is that it offers us an opportunity for a series of content, and not just a single item.

Depending on the amount of content you can come up with, your series could look something like this:

• “365 Daily Tips For….”
• “52 Brilliant Ideas For…”
• “12 Awesome Strategies For…“

That way if you can only come up with 12 ideas to write about for your series, you can deliver one every month. If your head is exploding with hundreds of little tips for your series, you might be able to deliver 365 days of cool info for your audience. Personally, I like the idea of delivering 52 weekly snippets of wisdom. The number is not too overwhelming for me, plus it provides weekly content, which is more in line with my current content delivery schedule anyway.

Even better if there’s an anniversary of some sort next year. 5 years in business, 10 years in business, 1 year in business, a new product launch, a new decade. You could say something like, “In celebration of our 5^th year in business, we’re offering a series of fabulous ideas each week to help you in your business”. Not that you need an excuse to offer up a series of content, it’s just something you can tap into if available and if it makes sense.

Think about the ways you can deliver the content, too. Could you do some audios? If you’re doing a How-To series, what about utilizing video to deliver your content? Of course, you’ll want to make sure you have text of your content so the search engines have something to spider. Don’t forget about images. They make quite a visual impact, even in the skimpiest of posts. That’s really one of the beauties of having a blog. You can mix text with images, audio and video in each post very, very easily. Blogs are the perfect delivery system for your content, no matter how you’re serving it up.

No need to create a novel for each item either. Keeping each one short and sweet will make the project much easier to manage, too. There’s nothing wrong with a small paragraph with a single brilliant tip, or a 2 minute video or audio.

When it comes to figuring out what your series will be about, some of you will have no problem at all, but some of you will be struggling. Something I recently read about the relevance of content should help. It stated, “If it’s relevant to your customer base, it’s relevant to you”. Brilliant! So simple really. An example would be – if you’re in the carpet and flooring business, think about your typical audience. What types of topics would they be interested in? If they’re looking to get new carpet, then wouldn’t it make sense that they are also interested in home improvement? Do-It-Yourself projects? Landscaping ideas? Using recycled materials in the home? Carpet cleaning tips? Repair techniques? Where to find local resources for home improvement projects? Design ideas with the various flooring materials? Reviews on cleaning products? Color matching? Kitchen and bath remodeling ideas? Discussions on the different tile materials available?  If you sit and think about it, there are many paths you can take your content on and still be relevant to your business or industry.

While these are all great ideas for you and your own content strategy, if you happen to be a virtual assistant this is a great opportunity to contact your clients and discuss implementing it for them as well. This time of year is perfect for you to start setting up their content editorial calendar for the upcoming year. What better way to begin the conversation than “Let’s talk about putting together a series for next year”. Come to the table with a few ideas already and your clients will be overjoyed that you’ve taken the initial steps in moving this project forward for them. Depending on the number of clients that give the thumbs up for this project and the amount of content that needs to be completed, this is just the type of project that could keep your virtual assistant business quite busy for the next several months.

Article by Andrea Kalli

Take a stroll over to my Facebook Page and become part of my community. I invite you to become a fan and participate in the conversation.
Certified Internet and Social Marketing Assistant

Relationships matter. This is especially true if you are operating a business within a local market. Word-of-mouth can be the best – or worst – advertising you’ll ever have. Even if you don’t work within local markets, with today’s communication the way it is, relationship building is vital.

If you regularly, or occasionally, listen to a radio program or podcast, you’ll find yourself left with the feeling that you know the host of the show. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never met them or spoken to them, you’ve still gained an idea about what kind of person they are. If you like them, you’ll continue to listen to the show. Since you’ve been given the opportunity feel like you know and trust them, chances are, you’ll even value their opinion on any products or services they choose to endorse,.

Imagine that this radio host decided to sell a product or service and that in order to get it, you had to call and order it from the host’s company. Assume that you could also purchase the same product for the same price from a business that you knew very little about, let alone what kind of people own and operate it. Who would you prefer buy it from?

There are many different ways to go about building relationships with your clientèle or potential customers, and video marketing can make a very strong impact. Your goal shouldn’t be just to make a commercial. Let your customer base or demographic get to know you better, even if it’s just a simple video blog, giving an update on your latest projects or a new product you’re going to offer.

Consider this: how many times have you been faced with the necessity to call your cable or insurance company and found yourself dreading the process? It’s natural to feel some amount of discomfort knowing that you’ll soon be navigating automated menus in the hopes of reaching a real human being who may or may not be able to help or understand you for whatever reason you’re calling. The great thing about owning a small business is the amount of attention and care you can provide to your customers so that they won’t be forced to deal with yet another faceless corporation. With video marketing, you can make the process even better.

You don’t have to become a famous radio show host to demonstrate to your customers that your company is inviting and friendly. Use your videos as a tool to tell them about your small business and your products in a professional yet conversational manner. Don’t be afraid to use humor – after all, friends laugh together all the time. Let your viewers know that if they decide to work with your company they will feel comfortable and confident. Once you show them that, it’s only a matter of time and some efforts to nurture the relationship before they become paying customers.

Article by Andrea Kalli

Take a stroll over to my Facebook Page and become part of my community. I invite you to become a fan and participate in the conversation.
Certified Internet and Social Marketing Assistant

But there is one part of internet success that can’t be automated: great content. From marketing articles to on-site web content, great writing is truly the engine behind the internet’s massive success. The calling card of great marketers, star educators, and internet celebrities, it is content that separates the good from the great, and content that distances the wealthy and successful from the wannabes.

So what should you do when you have got access to great product-related content but no way to monetize or use it? These six ideas are perfect for online marketers looking to turn their text information into cash, whether through direct sales, readers’ attention, or on-page advertising methods. If you have got a content-filled website that is struggling to make it big, apply these tips and get ready to turn that content into cash.

1) Create niche micro-blogs and sell advertising.

Even a small blog can gain enough views to generate hundreds of dollars per month. While that may not seem like a lot, when spread across tens, sometimes even hundreds of websites, it can be more than enough to generate a very healthy online income. Whenever your writing is failing to earn for you in one format, experiment with others to get it money-friendly.

Need help creating your blog? We can come to the rescue!

2) Take the low maintenance route and use Google Adsense.

When it comes to low maintenance online income, few programs are as simple as Google’s Adsense on-page advertising network. As a publisher, you will gain income every time a user clicks on one of your on-page advertisements. If you have got free content sitting around just waiting to be used, put it on a blog or personal website and monetize with Adsense.

3) Sell content-driven products.

Sometimes a simple eBook or online guide is enough to earn thousands of dollars per month in sales and commissions. If you are knowledgeable in a certain field, particularly one that appeals to other people, put your knowledge into an informational content-driven product and market it to other internet users.

4) Auction your writing to other marketers.

Sometimes, you will have a piece or article sitting around that you just can’t find a use for. Adsense has failed on your related pieces, few websites that you own are fit for the content, and you just can’t think of any way to turn it into cash. However, that is not to say that there aren’t other marketers out there looking for great content. For some quick income, auction your articles to other marketers and let them use them as marketing tools.

5) Post your writing to article directories and marketing pages.

Got an affiliate product to sell? Instead of writing endless copy for your own SEO-unfriendly websites, put one of your articles on a major directory and let other users read it, click it, and buy from it. With a well-targeted and intelligently written article, you could sell hundreds of affiliate products every week.

6) Host your content on-site and gain SEO power.

Need to gain some SEO juice and on-site keyword power? Sometimes a single article is enough to push your website from page 19 all the way up to page 1. Invest in some on-page optimization and add your content, then sit back and watch your page gradually rise through the ranks.

Article by Andrea Kalli

Take a stroll over to my Facebook Page and become part of my community. I invite you to become a fan and participate in the conversation.
Certified Internet and Social Marketing Assistant