Is that a FAQ? Use question and answer blogs to grow traffic and earn customers’ trust

May 8, 2023 by Tonya Parker

Answering prospects’ and customers’ questions on your blog demonstrates your authority, reduces friction on their path to purchase and can improve your content’s chances of appearing in search results. Share your knowledge and expertise in Q&A blogs and other resources that deliver the information people are searching for.

Here’s how.

Gaining traffic and growing authority with informational content that attracts searchers’ interest

Across the internet every day, billions of people enter search queries into their web browsers. Those queries help them locate addresses, gather information, identify new products and services, be entertained, learn new skills, and make decisions.

Many web searches produce zero-click results, or results that present all the information the searcher needs directly on the web browser’s results page.

However, out of the 8.5 billion searches conducted by Google users each day, 45% of searches performed on desktop computers and 43% of those taking place on mobile devices result in an organic click-through to a website.

The businesses that serve the content searchers are hoping to gain traffic for their websites and attention for their brands.

But to earn organic traffic, your content has to be a match for search intent.

Knowing intent is how search engines identify useful results and meeting intent is how you satisfy the people who click-through organic results and land on your website.

What is search intent and why does it matter?

In the digital marketing and search engine optimization industries, search intent refers to the purpose behind a particular search query. Why is someone entering a specific set of words or phrases into the search bar?

Search professionals have identified several broad categories of search intent based on what people want to accomplish when using a search tool. You might think of these categories as identifying the purpose of a search by its job to be done. People enter their search queries in furtherance of some other goal. Identifying that goal helps to understand the searcher’s intent.

Here’s a list of these purpose-related search intent categories from the Semrush blog:

🧭 Informational intent searches represent queries where someone is seeking an answer to a question or wants to learn about a topic. Informational searches may surface results such as a knowledge panel or take the searcher to a website that answers their question.

🧭 Commercial intent searches may also seek information but the searchers ultimate intent is to evaluate or make a purchase. These may include searches for review, recommendation, or “versus” type articles.

🧭 Navigational intent searches occur when a person enters a specific brand, company or domain name or address to reach a specific website. These searches take place when someone hasn’t bookmarked a site they visit frequently, or know a company’s name or product brand but not its URL.

🧭 Transactional intent searches take place when someone is ready to make a purchase. The searcher may enter a general query such as “buy flowers near me” or use the shopping tab to narrow their results.

Did you spot where answering customers’ questions fits in this set?

Yup!

Blog articles that answer people’s questions help them achieve their information-gathering goals. These informational answers may address broad questions about your industry or specific issues related to your products or services.

Identifying a user’s search by one of these main categories is just the beginning of the search intent discovery process. The next step is to understand the context of the individual user’s search. Achieving this understanding is still a work in progress for search engine designers and content makers alike.

Take advantage of search engines’ improved ability to understand search intent with hyper-targeted answers

Search engines like Google Search use their sophisticated algorithms to identify the search intent of a query someone enters in the search bar so that the tool can surface better, more relevant results.

Many search tools already use contextual clues to help them deliver better results for users. For instance, someone searching for seafood restaurants in the US Midwest will see different results than someone performing the same search in a European city. That is, if they have allowed their web browser to collect and gather information about them such as their geo-location.

For hyper-local businesses, their position in the search results may vary depending on where someone is within a city when conducting that search. But that’s a whole other topic.

Some search engines use someone’s browser history to tailor their results while giving their users the option to disable this feature. Still other search tools leverage AI to improve the personalization of their results. Nonetheless, identifying the intent of a specific query isn’t always easy.

That’s why you sometimes get results for a search query that don’t match what you expected.

For example, as the image below illustrates, if I search for the word “content,” using Google search, the results are limited.

An Answer Box at the top of the search results presents a dictionary entry that includes several definitions of the term. A People Also Ask feature and links to additional dictionary websites round out the results.

If I want to learn about the emotional state of content or about the types of content produced by creators such as writers or filmmakers, I have to add a few more words to my search query to inform the algorithm about my intent.

If I use content plus the word “marketing,” I’ll see results related to content marketing. The phrase, “How to be content?” will produce personal well-being advice. If I add a food product’s name along with the word content, I’ll get something completely different.

The ability of search engines to understand user intent is improving daily and search providers are experimenting with new ways to deliver better, more personalized results for users. You can learn more about these tools and their implications in the article, Google Launches Project ‘Magi’ to Build AI-Powered Search Engine on the Analytics Vidhya blog.

What this means for publishers is that you have an opportunity to gain high-value traffic by creating articles that target your ideal customer at each stage in your buyer’s journey. Identify the points at which your prospects and customers have questions and the questions they ask, then create articles that satisfy their needs.

Create great answers to win SERP features and raise your business’s profile among searchers

Even if your answers don’t gain website traffic, creating great ones can get your business’s name in front of a wider audience. Appearing in a zero-click result such as an Answer Box, Featured Snippet or “People also ask entry,” increases your business’s name recognition and authority.

What’s the difference between an Answer Box and a Featured Snippet? Both are Google Search features. The main difference is that Answer Boxes report “just the facts” while a Featured Snippet extracts objective and subjective information from the featured content, Ann Smarty explains in SEO: Answer Boxes vs. Featured Snippets, on the Practical Ecommerce blog.

Also, an Answer Box doesn’t always include a link to the source of the information (like in the top result for the “content” query I mentioned earlier.)

Check out the example below, showing the Google Search results for the query, “What is a brand activation agency?”

On the first page of the search results, Google presents a Featured Snippet and a People Also Ask feature following the paid or sponsored results.

The Featured Snippet is particularly valuable for building name recognition because the result quotes the linked article and prominently displays the publisher’s logo and name.

The People Also Ask feature also highlights individual publisher’s content similar to how the information is displayed in a Featured Snippet. However, the display isn’t revealed unless a searcher first clicks on the question. So your business might win an “also asked” position, but that doesn’t guarantee that every searcher will see your results.

Use Q&A articles to support and fill gaps in your growth funnel

Adding Q&A content to your company blog improves your search performance, elevates your audiences’ brand experiences, and supports an end-to-end growth marketing strategy by establishing your business’s credibility and nurturing customer relationships.

At the awareness stage of your buyer’s journey, answering the questions your prospects or customers have on their minds (or haven’t thought of yet) is a great way to demonstrate your knowledge, build trust and meet the expectations of modern business and consumer shoppers.

During the discovery stage and activation stages, your informative articles deliver the self-service research resources today’s shoppers want with relevant, discoverable content. Creating answer blogs to anticipate and answer questions is one way for you to deliver.

Finally, during the revenue and advocacy phases, articles that answer frequently asked questions and provide actionable troubleshooting advice gives your customers the self-service support they want.

Can’t purchasers just call customer service or visit your FAQ page? 🤷

Maybe. But to provide complete, prompt post-purchase service to your customers, your business must be present in search.

Today’s shoppers want choice and control before and after they become a customer.

Deliver the self-service resources modern consumers want through answer articles

Generations of digital natives want to find the information they need in the format they want when they want it.

According to customer experience platform NICE, consumers’ top channels for seeking support are chat (52%) and email (47%). One-third of consumers want to find answers on their own via a company’s website, and 81% of consumers want more self-service options..

Despite these figures, 46% of consumers told NICE they always use Google Search first when seeking customer service, and 85% said they start with Google at least half the time.

There are other benefits to delivering on these demands for self-service for your business, too.

First, your website is a 24/7 storefront, providing answers to questions about your business and its products and services to searchers at their moment of need.

Second, FAQ pages and knowledge hubs can be difficult to navigate. They either contain too much information or not enough. This can leave searchers overwhelmed when trying to find answers or coming up short. An article that answers a single question or related group of questions provides searchers with quick results.

Answer articles enable discovery phase shoppers to self-qualify and speed up the path to purchase with just-in-time answers, too.

Plus, you can reduce the volume of customer service calls and support tickets your team has to manage by writing blog articles to address common onboarding and troubleshooting questions, providing walk-throughs and offering customers links to additional resources.

Finally, developing a robust set of answers to common questions about your business and its products or services positions your brand for the future of search. Search engines, virtual assistants, AI-driven chat bots, voice activated tools and other devices are searching for answers on behalf of businesses and consumers.

Publishing clear, bite-sized answers on your blog makes your solutions easy for these non-human seekers to find and process.

How to decide what questions your business should answer in a blog article

Okay, so I’ve given you lots of reasons you should be answering questions on your blog. Now let me share some ways to pick which questions to answer to maximize the benefits your business gains from this tactic.

1️⃣ Start by making a list of your business and marketing objectives. What are the gaps in your pipeline, the leaks in your funnel, the obstacles in your buyers’ journeys?

2️⃣ Then use your customer profiles and personas, journey maps and historical data to identify the search intent of your highest value prospects and customers.

3️⃣ After you’ve collected a list of relevant questions, prioritize answering the questions that will smooth the path to purchase, reduce churn and increase loyalty.

Where will you find those questions?

Tap into internal and external sources like the following to come up with a list of frequently asked questions, questions no one thought to ask, and questions that have the potential to expand your reach.

Where to find ideas for Q&A blogs inside your organization

The people who communicate with your prospects and customers and the data they collect are a rich source of content ideas for your questions and answers articles. Talk to members of your product, sales, marketing, and customer support teams to find out which inquiries they receive over and over again.

Data mine your customer service logs, texts and emails and other two-way communication channels to uncover the issues that your audience cares about. Don’t forget to review feedback from your in-person events or questions entered in the chat section of your webinars!

Look at your existing knowledge hub or FAQs. The questions these resources answer can be refreshed and regrouped for blog articles. And if your research uncovers questions that aren’t answered in your FAQ, consider giving it an update too!

Where to find ideas for articles to answer customer questions outside your organization

I previously mentioned that a lot of people go to Google to find answers about businesses. They also go on social media, third-party review sites, and visit other digital platforms in search of answers. You can go to these same places to find out what types of questions people are asking.

A few easy sources to find people asking questions related to your business are Google’s People Also Asked feature and the suggestion feature of Google Search and other search tools.

Enter a few industry-related terms or phrases related to your product or service and the buying stage you want to target and view the People Also Asked results.

Sometimes, you can locate questions in an individual result entry, too.

In the image below, the arrows point to Google Search features that reveal frequently asked questions.

Also, as you’re entering your search phrase in your browser of choice, pay attention to the suggestions your tool makes. (You may need to use a different browser or clear your history to make this latter method work.)

Other tools you can use to see what types of questions people are asking about your targeted subjects include:

Keywords Everywhere
Semrush, Ahrefs and other SEO tools
Answer the Public
Also Asked
BuzzSumo
Yahoo Answers

Third-party websites with structured and unstructured question-and-answer content are also excellent places to find out what’s on people’s minds. Look at related products or services on review and shopping websites such as G2, Capterra, eBay and Amazon.

Or check out the questions and answers displayed on your or competitors’ Google My Business page. (Mine competitors’ webinars and webpage comments for relevant questions, too.)

Seek mentions of your business or competitors on Reddit, Quora, Nextdoor, Alignable and social media sites. Use site specific searches to look for mentions of your products or services, or topics related to your industry to narrow your scope to one site at a time. (e.g., “inbound marketing” site:Reddit.com.)

Keep an eye out for inspiration in trade publications and niche- or industry-specific forums as well.

Two more ways to find questions you can answer on your business’s blog

These last two methods of coming up with content ideas for your answers blogs involve asking more questions.

👀 First, don’t forget that your prospects, customers and clients are the best sources to tell you what’s on their minds.

Ask your favorite customers to share the questions and answers that they found useful when making their buying decisions. Also ask people who haven’t become customers, including the ones that got away, what questions they would have liked to have found answers to.

👀 Second, ask yourself what your prospective buyers and customers learning to use products or services most need to know. What values is it critical that your business communicate to its audience? What are some misconceptions about your business or its offerings that you can correct using your blog? What are some negative truths about your business that you should address head-on?

Want more ideas? Andy Crestodina created an amazing list of 23 questions to inspire your content for the Orbit Media Studios blog.

What else can you do with the answers to customer questions you create for your blog? Repurpose and distribute them!

Once you’ve identified, prioritized and answered your audience’s pressing questions, don’t leave the fruits of your labor to sit idle.

Use these tactics to get the most out of your hard work:

Create a central data set to store your questions and their answers. Keep this source up to date and accessible to teams across your organization. Use this central knowledge hub as the foundation for all your question-answering content projects.
Publish your answers on your blog either as single questions and answers or in collections. Accompany these blog answers with explanations, examples, commentary and images to add extra value.
Select the most asked questions to add to your FAQ page. It’s okay to repeat the same questions and answers in your blog and your FAQs. Keep your FAQs short and to the point. Place internal links in or after each FAQ directing visitors to your relevant blog entries to encourage them to learn more (and spend more time on your website).
Add relevant questions and answers to specific product or service pages. Make sure your customers can navigate to shipping and return answers easily from your checkout page.
Use the answers you’ve written to script video guides to accompany your blog answers, appear on product pages or third-party video sites. Use your answer videos on social media and repurpose this content into static images or animated GIFs you can include in your emails.
Speaking of emails, add answers to FAQs to your welcome and onboarding emails and feature related questions and answers in your email newsletters. Email marketing platform Ongage explains how in the article 40+ Email Newsletter Best Practices and Tips for 2023.
Create in-app or on-site tool tips and pointers that summarize key answers.
Use your Q&A content to create social media posts.
Host Q&A podcast.
Continue to review, revise and update your questions and answers in response to new research and audience feedback.

Are you ready to answer some questions?

Be a source of information and inspiration for your prospects, customers and clients by anticipating the questions that are on their minds and answering them. Engaging in this exercise will improve your business’s credibility and understanding of your audience.

Need some help to create your knowledge pipeline? Get in touch. I’ll help you find the right questions and prepare engaging, optimized answers for your blog.

What is inbound marketing? How businesses use inbound marketing strategies to fuel long-term growth

April 18, 2023 by Tonya Parker

You’ve set up your website, researched SEO and growth marketing agencies, read about using a blog to gain inbound leads. Now it’s decision time. Where will you spend your marketing dollars to help your business grow? Is inbound marketing the right choice?

Wait. What is inbound marketing?

Here’s the quick answer ⤵

Characteristics and origins of inbound marketing: How do you know it’s inbound?

Inbound marketing has its roots in the pre-internet strategies of relationship and attraction marketing. This specific methodology rose from the adoption of these and other marketing practices for a digital world.

Inbound marketing

- Uses digital marketing channels
- Distributes content through owned or earned media
- Gives value freely
- Is permission-based and non-disruptive
- Aims to attract, engage, and delight
- Minimizes sales language and direct asks
- Targets audiences and individuals with tailored content
- Is a customer-first, growth focused approach to marketing

Where did the term inbound marketing originate?

The term, “inbound marketing” first arrived on the scene along with the brand responsible for its origination, HubSpot, in 2006. The business founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah provided support for small businesses to harness the power of the internet to attract and convert leads.

HubSpot’s core offering was internet marketing support using inbound marketing software that enabled businesses “get found” online.

How?

HubSpot’s inbound methodology promotes engagement by producing attractive content that answered people’s questions and invited them to begin a conversation with the brand. Instead of going out in search of leads, inbound methods bring a flow of prospect to the business’s home base–its website.

Of course, lots of marketing strategies use attraction or pull tactics to acquire customers and increase revenue. From physical stores’ window displays to branded digital games, businesses engage in “know, like, trust” marketing to raise awareness and build loyalty.

These tactics aim to build relationships as a precursor to getting the sale, and various strategies go by different names depending on their format and channel.

Inbound marketing’s particular collection of attraction marketing techniques is limited to the digital realm because the term was created to differentiate those methods from what came before.

Inbound marketing strategy and implementation fundamentals

The inbound marketing methodology, as envisioned by HubSpot and employed today, involves more than just building websites and hoping they will come. Creating and publishing content is a core component of an inbound strategy.

But this content must be strategically selected and distributed. Otherwise, its potential is wasted.

Successful inbound content must be valuable, relevant, timely and discoverable.

What does this mean?

You may have heard this concept referred to as, “Right audience, right message, right time.” Add to this, “right channels” as modern consumers expect brands to meet consumers in their desired environments.

When businesses use outbound advertising tactics, they choose their audience, message, timing and channel by setting the parameters of the ad. If the ad is well-aimed, it should appear in front of the desired audience at or near the right moment.

When you use inbound marketing, your audience decides when and where to look for your content and whether they’ll respond to your enticements.

To succeed in attracting and engaging prospects, inbound marketers must identify what information is valuable to their ideal prospect or customers.

Answering people’s questions, explaining and offering solutions to their problems, entertaining them or providing something that deserves their attention is what makes content valuable.

Of course, there are times when content is attractive without connecting to your brand or its products or services. A funny meme or a thoughtful greeting can get someone to stop what they are doing and pay attention to your business momentarily. Ideally, your inbound content should be both attention-getting and relevant.

Why spend money on name recognition alone when you can gain name recognition and move your prospects further along their path to purchase? 💁‍♀️

Delivering content that meets people’s needs at each stage of their journey is how brands achieve relevance and timeliness.

Someone who doesn’t know they want your product or service yet will not respond to the same content or appeal as someone who is ready to make an immediate purchase.

Getting the content in front of your audience at the moment it is most valuable is the point of timeliness and building content for each stage of the buyer’s journey. Then, it’s just a matter of ensuring that this content is distributed across the channels your audience uses to find answers and optimizing it for discoverability.

Finally, discoverability 🔎 is essential because one of the challenges and benefits of an inbound marketing strategy is that no two buyer’s journeys are the same.

A person who is thinking about buying a new refrigerator might start their journey by searching for refrigerator prices to find out if they can afford a new refrigerator or by looking for buying guides that explain what features are available.

Your business can create inbound content that serves each of these buyers and presents information in a variety of formats. Then prospects will find your website when they search for the solutions that your business provides.

What are the stages of the modern buyer’s journey where inbound marketing can support strategy?

Marketers use a lot of different terms to describe the modern path to purchase and the methods used to convert strangers into customers, and, eventually, brand advocates.

HubSpot refers to this process as a “flywheel.” Strangers are attracted to a business. Then, as prospects they engage with and learn about the business and its products or services. If this learning is compelling, the prospect then becomes a customer.

After conversion to a customer, further engagement or “delight” transforms them into satisfied, loyal customers who will act as promoters of your brand.

A simple illustration of the HubSpot flywheel framework for inbound marketing. Jewel tones represent three segments of a circle with divisions between each segment carved to create the appearance of arrows--indicating forward and circular momentum. On the flywheel segments, the copy reads: Attract, engage, delight. The three fundamentals of an inbound marketing strategy to fuel growth

HubSpot’s flywheel model illustrates how satisfied customers fuel continuing revenue and new customer acquisitions.

In the AARRR customer lifecycle, activation is the point at which someone becomes a user–though not always a paying customer. Retention refers to the point at which someone has committed to using the technology, and revenue may come either following activation or later in the users’ journey.

The AARRR framework employs multiple channels and tactics to attract, convert, and retain customers and turn them into brand advocates.

Although often represented as a traditional marketing or sales funnel, these modern marketing approaches pursue revenue and sustainable growth by going beyond the traditional top, middle and bottom of funnel categories. The result is closer to an infinity loop with multiple points of entry and exit, as today’s buyer’s journeys are seldom linear.

Why use inbound marketing?

Implementing customer-focused inbound methodologies across the customer lifecycle from awareness to advocacy lowers customer acquisition costs, reduces churn, increases customer lifetime values and improves ROI.

Inbound marketing methods appeal to modern purchasers and are well-suited for how today’s businesses and individuals shop. In the days before the internet (yes, there was a time before), the seller controlled most of the information available to someone researching a product or service. If a buyer wanted to know the details about a product or its price, often, they would have to go to a store or “hop on a call” with a sale representative.

In many situations, sales professionals could control the narrative and decide what information to share with a prospect and at what stage in their journey. ⛔

Today, a growing number of businesses and consumers want self-service choices for researching and making purchases. If you don’t provide your prospects with the information they want when they want it, someone else will. Plus, unless you’ve built a successful moat, your prospective customers can find other sellers offering comparable products or services.

Consumers no longer need to choose from a few available options. Nor do they need to follow a prescribed path in their discovery process.

A global marketplace puts greater pressure on businesses to differentiate themselves through distinctive branding. Buyers are looking for more than just a good deal, they are looking for businesses that they respect and feel respected by.

In many cases, your unique value proposition has become a unique values proposition. While buyers remain sensitive to price, other factors such as sustainability, social issues, convenience and brand personality are important to their decision-making.

Inbound marketing contributes to a growth strategy by supporting reach and conversions at every stage in the customer lifecycle.

💲Inbound marketing also represents a better long-term investment than paid promotions. When you pay to place an ad, you gain traffic and conversions from that ad only for as long as you continue to pay for its placement.

💲When you create valuable content, you create an owned asset. The bulk of your costs occur on the front end. Once the content is published, it goes to work and keeps working for you with nearly no additional expense.

💲Your costs to returns ratio improves as you repurpose your content and or gained earned media with it. A single content idea can be produced in various formats and styles, updated and distributed on different channels to maximize its returns.

⌛Finally, because your inbound marketing content is prepared in advance and optimized for your ideal audience and their journey stage, it is always on and working for you. Your digital storefront never closes and this virtual arm of your sales team is ever-present to answer incoming questions.

Can inbound marketing go it alone to reach today’s audiences?

Inbound marketing is a powerful method for businesses to grow audiences, gain leads and make sales. But inbound marketing seldom works alone. High-performance businesses use outbound, inbound and other marketing methods to improve their chances of being discovered and stay top-of-mind with potential customers.

Their marketing strategies are integrated, comprehensive and cross-channel. These businesses employ online, offline and combined or “phygital” tactics to meet consumers where they are with engaging, valuable experiences that deliver solutions.

Modern marketing crosses channels and combines methods to assign the right tactic at the right moment to attract, engage, convert and retain your most profitable customers.

When and why do businesses use outbound methods with or instead of inbound marketing tactics?

Outbound or traditional marketing methods take your message to your target audience with varying degrees of aggressiveness. The ads displayed on billboards, commercials aired during television programs and streaming videos, and paid content appearing on your social media feeds or the websites you visit are all outbound efforts.

Outbound marketing can get an unknown brand in front of new audiences quickly, for a price. Also, paid placement is sometimes the only method to get in front of audiences on a specific channel.

Outbound marketing can also help your business catch people’s attention at the moments they are most likely to take action. That’s why restaurants advertise on the radio during rush hour.

Outbound methods can support your brand’s inbound strategy, too.

When you see a paid ad on LinkedIn inviting you to register for a free webinar or download a whitepaper, you’ve witnessed outbound and inbound tactics working together. Similarly, businesses use paid advertising to promote their attraction marketing events such as brand sponsorships, pop-up activations or other in-person and digital events.

Inbound marketing’s primary types of content and delivery channels

How do businesses execute their inbound strategy and deliver the content that draws customers to them?

Inbound marketing employs a mix of content formats and delivery channels to be present where (and when) their audiences are seeking answers.

🖥 The first pillar of an effective inbound marketing strategy is your business’s website. Your home page, product or service pages, about page and other pages that house static or semi-static information.

📰 Once you complete and optimize your website, you can expand your inbound efforts to include a blog where you can add new content to attract and inform prospects and customers. Then expand your reach using other digital marketing methods on your website and through other online channels.

📥 Offer downloadable content such as ebooks or video content including webinars or how-to guides to website visitors, through your social media profiles and third-party publishing platforms.

🧮 Free tools such as calculators or templates that are useful to your ideal customer or related to your products or services are a distinctive way to draw more traffic to your website and earn customers’ trust and loyalty. Offering free tools can also earn your business valuable backlinks and shares that build your domain authority and reach.

💬Communicate with prospects and share useful or entertaining information on your social media profiles and use these channels to direct people to your website.

📧 Also, even though it may not seem like an “inbound” method, email marketing presents an opportunity for you to communicate with and deliver engaging content to your most engaged audience. Email sent to subscribers who have opted-in to receive your messages is considered inbound marketing because you’re only sending content to people who have indicated they want to receive.

Like social media, email marketing opens the door for you to have two-way conversations with your audience. Unlike social media, you have more control over who sees each message and under what circumstances. Plus, although email inbox providers have a lot of control over your messages’ deliverability, email is an owned channel. This also distinguishes it from social media’s walled gardens.

Who can you look to for help in developing your inbound marketing strategy?

If you’ve looked for marketing support for your business, you probably know that there are many different types of agencies and individual consultants whom you can call on for help. Some providers are specialists. For instance, I’m a content writer. I create blogs, articles that my clients post on other websites or in third-party publications, social media posts and email copy. I’m familiar with search engine optimization (SEO) practices related to content writing. But I don’t offer technical SEO services.

In contrast, an SEO agency will provide technical SEO advice such as how to set up your website to maximize the chances of it being discovered when consumers search for something using their web browser. Many SEO agencies offer content writing services as well.

Some content writers, by the way, specialize in web site and landing page content and leave the blogging to someone like me. There are also marketing professionals who are experts at not only creating the copy for emails but setting up your email marketing program.

If you are starting from scratch, a growth marketing agency is a good choice. These agencies can help you develop your brand identity and messaging, develop your website and provide you with content or connect you with a writer. I enjoy working with agencies because they handle the parts that I don’t. This allows me to focus my attention and intellectual firepower on creating unique, discoverable content to grow my clients’ audiences.

I have an extensive network on LinkedIn filled with marketers of all kinds. Wherever you are in your marketing journey, I would be happy to help you find the partners you need to take the next step. And, of course, if you’re ready to build your content machine, I’d love to chat.

Let’s put your business in growth mode!

Newsletters to promote your business and remain top of mind with your clients

September 4, 2020 by Tonya Parker

Have you been thinking about adding a newsletter to your content marketing mix? The newsletter format has become increasingly popular in recent years as design apps and email distribution services have lowered their costs of production. But, it still takes time and effort to consistently produce newsletter content. So, is it worth the effort for your business?

Why a newsletter?

Newsletters are a way to promote your business without imposing on your audience.

Unlike advertisements that focus on asking someone to make a purchase or take some other action, newsletters are a softer, gentler approach to marketing. They include content that informs or entertains your audience while keeping the self-promotion to a minimum. Sure, your newsletter may contain promotional content or a call to action, but that shouldn’t be its primary focus. The give-instead-of-take nature of newsletters helps you keep in touch with your customers and grow your business.

The benefits of publishing a newsletter for your business include the following:

Overcoming the “out of sight, out of mind” challenge. Modern consumers are busy, distracted and overloaded with information. Amid all that hustle and bustle, your business can easily be forgotten. Each time you send a newsletter to the people on your mailing list, you are giving their memories a little nudge.
Controlling your message’s environment. When you publish information on social media or pay for online ad placements, you give up control over the environment in which your message is seen. But, because you own the medium, when someone reads your newsletter, they see only what you want them to see. You control the context.
Engaging authentically with your audience. Newsletters enable you to reveal your business’s expertise, values and personality to your customers through the content you publish in them. Your business’s newsletter may include practical tips and advice, opinion pieces about industry or community news, entertaining anecdotes or even memes–it’s up to you. This kind of authentic communication strengthens your relationships with your audience and fosters customer loyalty.

Are you ready to add a newsletter to your marketing mix? Here’s a look at what you’ll need to get started and how you can make the most of your investment.

The basic components of a newsletter

The exact format and content of your newsletter will depend on your budget, goals and audience needs. But, in most instances, your newsletter will include two or more of the following components:

Branded Boilerplate. Each newsletter should include your name and contact information. This is an important element of your newsletter as it keeps you top of mind and makes it easy for readers to contact you when they are ready to do business.
Feature article(s). Depending on the length of your newsletter and the interests of your audience, you’ll have one to three feature pieces per newsletter. These pieces will each be 300 to 700 words in length and deliver value-adding information to your reader. Your feature articles can cover a single theme (e.g., three articles about tax matters) or be about separate topics (e.g., one article about taxes and a separate article about investing).
Short snippet(s). These are shorter segments that can convey short pieces of information such as important dates or events, facts or statistics, trending news or other relevant data (e.g., a definition, an upcoming event date or a fun fact related to your industry). Snippets are usually 100 words or less. You can vary your snippets for each newsletter or use the same categories in each newsletter
Promotional copy. Subscribers expect a newsletter to add value by informing or entertaining them. But, you can still include an ask now and then. Use promotional copy to announce an upcoming sale or share a discount code. Sometimes, newsletters are sponsored by third-parties and their promotional texts or links would appear in this section of your newsletter.

Email, print or both: Choosing your newsletter format

Many of today’s newsletters are sent via email. This format is inexpensive to produce and distribute. However, the low cost of entry for this format also makes email newsletters very commonplace. The result is that people’s emails are overloaded with newsletters and they are often deleted without being read. Cost aside, email is an attractive choice because performance metrics for email newsletters are readily trackable. For each email newsletter, you’ll be able to track not only the open rate of the emails but also the click-through rates for any included links. And, as a digital product, you can easily include video, audio or links to additional content in your email newsletter.

A set of blocks representing the difference in layout between a print newsletter vs and email one. (Primary differences are two-column print and inclusion of links in email.)

Print newsletters are more expensive to produce and send than their digital counterparts, but they have the potential to linger longer in your reader’s possession. One major downside of printed newsletters is that it is difficult (nearly impossible) to determine if they have been received and read. You have no direct means to determine if your print newsletters are being opened or discarded as “junk” after they’ve been delivered. Unique coupon codes in each newsletter or intake surveys that ask where your clients or prospects learned about your business can help you keep better track of your printed newsletters’ open rates.

Extend your newsletter’s reach with multiple formats and repurposing

Once you’ve created value-adding content, use it to the max. Reformat and repurpose each piece to reach different audiences at different times. For example, you might send a print newsletter to some of your audience and an email version to others. Later, publish the newsletter on your website and share the link on social media. Try out different formats for different recipients. Your email newsletter doesn’t have to be identical to your print newsletter. To keep your emails shorter, publish the feature articles on your blog, then direct readers to them with an introduction and link in your email.

Get extra mileage from your newsletter content through repurposing it as well. In addition to publishing the feature articles on your blog, syndicate the articles on other sites such as LinkedIn or industry-related publishers. The snippets from your newsletter can be repurposed as social media posts.

A chart showing how a single article can be split into several assets including social media posts, syndicated articles and repurposed as infographics or brochures. Ultimately, a single piece of content becomes ~17 assets.

Finally, think about other types of content that you can create using the information you’ve shared in your newsletter.

Did your feature article include a set of statistics that you can convert into an infographic? Maybe you defined a set of industry-related terms that you could reshare in an audio recording or explainer video. Did you create a themed newsletter that could also serve as an evergreen brochure?

Publishing your content in multiple formats and locations maximizes its reach and your brand awareness.

Working with me to create a newsletter for your business

I create newsletter content for businesses. When I do the writing for you, you save time and get copy that is written to inform and engage your ideal audience. How does it work? In brief, you make some decisions, we discuss some ideas and then I write.

Here’s the longer version.

Covering the basics

First, you’ll choose the format for your newsletter, how long you want it to be and which components you’d like to include. You’ll also need to decide how often you want to send your newsletter.

Next, we’ll start working on a content calendar. For this step, I like to create a list of topics and ideas from which we can draw inspiration. We’ll develop this list together in a shared document so that you can add or delete topics, note your preferences and share resources with me. This is not a static document. You can continue to add ideas or new information. That’s the “content” part of the content calendar.

Then, we’ll schedule the various topics for each planned newsletter. That’s the “calendar” part. This step allows you to make sure you present your audience with an interesting mix of topics over the course of the year and that seasonal topics get covered at the relevant times.

Creating the content

This part is as easy (for you) as you want it to be. Once we’ve chosen a topic, I’ll do the research and write a draft article for you to review. Or, if you prefer, you can provide me with a foundation to start the article. You could give me a bulleted list of talking points, a written outline, a voice or video recording with your thoughts on the topic or write out a complete draft. I’ll work with you to bring your message to life.

Once the feature article or articles are ready to go, I’ll add any additional snippets or other content to your newsletter and make sure it is formatted for either print or email. (You’ll be responsible for uploading the content to your email service provider for email distribution and will need to send a test copy to review the formatting.)

How much does all this cost?

The cost for me to create a newsletter with at least one feature article begins at $1000. Your total cost will depend on the length of your newsletter, its format and the types of content you choose to include. We’ll discuss each of these factors in advance and lock in a price before I begin work. Once I create your newsletter content, it becomes an asset that you can reuse and repurpose across marketing channels.

of course, I’m not the only person who knows how to create a newsletter. If you are ready to give newsletters a try, choose a writer who fits your budget and give it a try. Opportunity awaits!

Which type of writer should you hire for your business?

April 12, 2020 by Tonya

You need a writer for your business. But which type of writer do you need?

Digital marketing has changed the way businesses use writing, and it has also changed the way many writers identify themselves. This can make it difficult for businesses to find the right writer for their content projects. To help, I assembled this quick list, which describes different categories of writers and the types of writing they do.

But first, some advice.

When seeking a writer, regardless of their title, be sure to evaluate whether they can produce the content you need for the purpose you want it to serve. This is because different writers produce different types of content. A writer may choose to specialize in creating just a few types of content, such as emails, webpage copy, or ebooks, or they may have several areas of expertise.

Each writer will have a different combination of strengths and weaknesses as well. For instance, the writer who excels at creating white papers may be average when it comes to producing social media posts. A microcopy expert may choose to avoid projects that require long-form writing.

Copywriters

Do you need copy that is intended to drive newsletter signups, purchases, or registrations for a demo? That’s the type of writing traditionally performed by copywriters like the legendary Joseph Sugarman. You would look for a copywriter if you wanted to create a high-converting landing page or email drip campaign. Good copywriting takes special skill as it should draw readers in and move them closer to “yes” with every line.

Your readers should be so compelled to read your copy that they cannot stop reading until they read all of it as if sliding down a slippery slope.
-Joseph Sugarman, The Adweek Copywriting Handbook

As you search for a writer for your project, don’t be surprised if you see the term copywriter used to identify nearly any type of writer who creates marketing- or sales-related content. In recent years, the term “copywriter” has become a bit of a catchall phrase, and even people in the industry can’t agree on its proper use.

Content writers

Like copywriting, content writing is a broad and not rigidly defined category of writing. In general, content writers are professionals who create content that is intended to support a business’s content marketing efforts. “Content marketing,” by the way, is another term the industry hasn’t quite finished defining.

Content marketing is crucial to build awareness about and interest in your brand, and to prove its trustworthiness and value to your audience. Someone has to write that magical content.
-Pam Berg, Content Writer vs. Copywriter: What’s the Difference?

In general, content marketing makes use of videos, podcasts, texts, and any other type of “content” to inform, educate, or entertain an audience with the goal of moving them along the buyer’s journey. A content writer creates blogs, articles for online and offline publications, case studies, white papers, video or audio scripts, and other knowledge-sharing content to raise brand awareness, establish credibility, and communicate your business’s values and benefits.

While the terms are often used interchangeably, content writers and copywriters have different objectives for their writing. The copywriter’s objective is to prompt an immediate conversion while the content writer’s objective is to set the stage for future conversions.

SEO writers

Search engine optimization or SEO writers create content that is very similar to the type that content writers produce. Their writing may veer into copywriting territory as well. The distinguishing characteristic of an SEO writer is that they create content designed to communicate with humans and search engines.

To write for SEO, “create compelling, engaging, informative and well-structured content and website architectures in the same way you would write, and build sites, for humans.”
-Dawn Anderson, A deep dive into BERT: How BERT launched a rocket into natural language understanding

SEO writers must artfully incorporate targeted words or phrases (keywords) into their content to show search engines that the content is a good match for people using online search tools. Otherwise, the content on your website may not appear in organic search results.

SEO writing hasn’t always had the best reputation because some SEO writers focus on stuffing their content with keywords rather than producing useful content for searchers. However, a skilled SEO writer will use keywords while also producing meaningful content. This can help your blog and other ungated online content get noticed.

Website writers

What about your non-blog website copy? Who writes that part? Writers who exclusively create text for web pages may call themselves web writers or website writers. But they may also be identified as copywriters, content writers, or SEO writers. This is because creating good web copy requires skills associated with each of these specializations, plus a few more.

The writer or writers you select for your website will depend on its purpose. For a conversion-focused landing page, you may want a copywriter. If your business has a longer sales cycle, a content writer may be right for you. And, you’ll want someone with user experience (UX) writing skills to ensure that site visitors find it easy to navigate.

Business and technical writers

Not all business writing is intended to support marketing or sales efforts. Written communication is also essential for sharing information with internal and external stakeholders. Your business may decide to hire a freelance writer to help create press releases, employee newsletters, scripts for instructional videos, non-marketing emails, reports, and other business communications. In which case, you are likely to categorize them as business or technical writers even though they create content that may look similar to what a content writer or copywriter would create.

Many, many others

There are many other types of writers and other content creators who can help your business communicate with both internal and external audiences. To focus your search for the right person for your project, I recommend making a list of your goals and the possible deliverables. Then, start a conversation with someone whose writing you admire. Tell them what you need and let them tell you how their skills fit. We creatives tend to flock together. So even if the person you speak to can’t meet all your needs, they can probably help you find someone who can. Most of us maintain a network of trusted peers we can call on for assistance.

Where do I fit in this list?

I fit into the content, SEO, and business writing categories. I specialize in writing content that informs and educates, whether that content is an employee newsletter or a lead generation ebook. I also create social media posts for some of my clients and help them extend their reach by answering questions on Quora. I create video scripts and podcast summaries as well as guest posts and blog series.

My skillset combines the marketing and creative writing knowledge I gained as an undergrad with the critical reasoning and research disciplines I developed while in law school. I like gathering information from diverse sources and then distilling the best bits into value-adding content. And, I particularly enjoy helping brands develop their domain authority and engage their audience.

Over the next several months, I’m going to continue to share the knowledge I’ve since I became a freelance writer. I hope you’ll visit my blog again to learn more about content marketing and how it can help you reach your audience.