Use your website to showcase the credibility of your business

Online it’s all about building trust and credibility. Show that your business is the logical and credible one to do business with online. You can build your business story directly into your owned online media such as your website and blog to differentiate your business and brand from your competition.

One easy way to do this that you can start immediately is by educating your readers on what exactly you are doing and to let them know that you are the leader in your niche. This is called education based marketing where you educate your visitors and targeted audience. How do you get started? Find below a couple of tips to help you with this.

Education based marketing

Message: Position your business as the leader and expert in your niche that protects your visitors from all the hidden dangers in your industry. You can educate them on all the problems and hidden trends in making purchased regarding your niche. What are the problems associated with your products and services? Offer them a solution that they cannot refuse.

Home page: Use the home page of your website to explain all the advantages of using your organization instead of your competition for business. Build a company story to explain all the differences with your business and how you can help them.

Business story: You can also use your business story in the about page of your website. How is your approach innovative, different, and helping your clients navigate all the hidden dangers that others ignore?

Incentives: Provide your visitors with incentives such as a free report that can be used with a list building campaign. This report should be interesting and attention grabbing.

Email marketing: With your email marketing campaign, if you get a new subscriber, follow up with a couple of emails related to “educational marketing” together with auto responders. Depending on your campaign, this could be every week.

Video marketing: Create a couple of short videos that educate and inform your website visitors. When presented by a key employee within your organization, it can put a friendly face on your business. People like to do business with people that they trust and like. Video is a great way to achieve this.

Measuring the success of your website

How are you going to measure the success of your website? This is a very common question I get asked often by my customers and the answer is always YES! How do you measure this? If it really can be measured, how do you measure it? This is really a very common question that gets asked often by people that want to know if their website is actually making their business grow.

Find below a couple of tips that can help you get started with measuring the success of your website.

Measure success with your website

Defining your goals: What do you want to accomplish with your website? This is one of the most important steps of this process and it cannot be ignored. By defining your website business goals is a key purpose of attracting new customers, showcase what you have achieved, and to provide information to your existing client base.

Install website analytics: Having analytics on your website is very essential as it helps providing valuable information regarding your website visitors. The easiest to get this started is by installing Google Analytics for free on your website. When installed, you will be able to view how many visitors you are getting and how they came to your website.

Unique visitors: Unique visitors are the people that visit your website once, but they can return many times. If they return for another time they will then be labelled as a returning visitor. Ideally, your unique visitors rate should be more than returning visitors.

Bounce rate: This is the percentage of visits when people leave your website after only viewing a single page. If you have a high bounce rate, this is viewed as negative.

Time on site: Evaluating the time on site with Google Analytics is a very good indicator of how long your visitors are staying on your website.

Analyzing your goals: You can use your analytics to determine whether you are actually reaching your targets and goals or not at all. If your main goal is to get more visitors on your website then you can make sure that all the steps are taken to estimate how you are going to calculate this.

Conversions: The conversions are calculated as a percentage of your website visitors that physically converts into product enquiries, sales, and newsletter signups to name but a few. This is a very important metric to measure as it is an indication of customer involvement and satisfaction.

6 Ways to Use Reddit to Grow Your Business

Have you used Reddit?

The popular website Reddit goes by the slogan, “The front page to the Internet.”

It has earned this name by creating a platform that allows users with similar interests to discuss and curate the best content on the web.

Brands are starting to discover the value of creating, facilitating and leveraging Reddit communities to better connect and engage customers.

Reddit is a popular social news platform where users submit and comment on content.

What Is Reddit?

Reddit is a social news platform that allows users to discuss and vote on content that other users have submitted. To help police the site and prevent spammers from bombarding readers, Reddit came up with “karma” points.

Users get karma by their comments and links being up-voted by others in the community. If you spam post your unrelated content to Reddit, you are sure to get down-voted consistently by other users. This in turn means Reddit begins to limit how often you are able to submit content to the site.

The great thing about Reddit is there are small communities called sub-Reddits that bring people and their interests together. These sub-Reddits range in topics from how to teach English to juggling.

The following is a list of strategies used by popular brands on Reddit to help build customer advocates and manage relationships with their fans.

#1: Encourage User Submissions

Reddit is not a platform to shout your message at your fans, but rather a place to interact with them.

Along with calling their followers “petrol heads,” the popular car show Top Gear drives engagement with their Reddit followers by encouraging them to submit their favorite car pictures.

Each week, Top Gear selects the best picture and features it along with the name of the person who submitted it in the sidebar of their sub-Reddit.

Allowing users to submit content to a brand on a topic that they are passionate about will give followers a sense of ownership in the community. Giving followers this voice increases the interaction in the community and is more likely to create brand advocates.

The Top Gear sub-Reddit showing how to encourage user engagement by having customers submit photos.

#2: Customer Service

When you have a popular brand or product, you are going to have lots of customers who need help.

Microsoft has done a great job with their Xbox 360 page, providing a place for people to discuss the popular product. Microsoft already developed other channels to resolve customer problems, so they use their sub-Reddit to funnel customers with questions into the right channels to get resolved.

By redirecting users with product issues to the proper channels, Xbox increases its customer service and allows its Redditors to discuss and share photos, videos and experiences they had with the Xbox product.

Microsoft uses its sub-Reddit for customer service by doing the following:

• Clearly identify the purpose of the sub-Reddit.
• Create sections of helpful links.
• Outline directions on the best ways to get fast customer service.

It costs less to maintain a customer than to acquire one through other marketing channels. A big benefit of improving customer service is that it helps keep customers happy and wanting to stay with your brand.

Increasing the lifetime value of your customers can greatly contribute to the bottom line of a brand. Even if your company has other channels to handle customer service like Microsoft does, Reddit can be used to help make sure that your followers get to those proper channels.

The Xbox sub-Reddit shows how to use Reddit for customer service.

#3: Create a Network

Anyone can create a sub-Reddit, and with the right strategy you can easily build a network (several interlinking sub-Reddits) around an idea.

This is what the SFW Porn Network has done. They created a network of interests like nature, cars and cities for people who are “addicted” (hence the “porn” in the name—it’s not actually explicit material) to discussing these types of images and posts.

The following helped them create this strong network:

• Have a common naming convention (subject + porn).
• Have a common navigation that links all of the sub-Reddits.
• Monitor to make sure the images and content are high-quality.

If you have one popular sub-Reddit, it’s easier to get those followers to go to another sub-Reddit on a similar topic. The benefit of creating a network is to amass a large following inside the growing and active Reddit community.

The Water Porn sub-Reddit showing how to create a network on Reddit.

#4: News and Calendar

It’s simple. Brand advocates and followers always want to know the latest news and upcoming events.

For example, fans of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team want to know the game schedule, the team’s standing in the NL East and other vital information. The Phillies sub-Reddit does this by having an updated calendar and league ranking board in the sidebar.

Depending on your brand, consider using some of the following in your sub-Reddit sidebar to ensure your followers stay in the loop.

• Have a calendar of events.
• Display your company news.
• Increase the percentage of a brand goal reached.

The benefit of displaying your news and events to your followers is that when they visit, they are immediately updated with the most important facts and status of your brand. Displaying this information increases the reach of your news and can helpcontribute to increased attendance at your events.

The Philadelphia Phillies sub-Reddit showing how to display news and events on Reddit.

#5: Perform Interviews

The wildly popular show Breaking Bad got its fans involved with the brand by holding interviews with the cast of the show. The actors themselves answered the most popular questions that Redditors wanted to ask.

Doing this consistently not only grew the size of the community but also brought it closer together by eliminating the wall between actor and fan.

The benefit of this approach is again to allow your followers the opportunity to be heard and interact with your brand in a memorable way. Facilitating the opportunity for fans and celebrities to communicate is a great way to create a strong memory for those fans of the brand.

These experiences and memories strengthen your fan base and improve the likelihood that your followers will continue to support the brand.

The Breaking Bad sub-Reddit showing how to use Reddit to interview people.

#6: Creating a Community

Out of the many sub-Reddits I’ve searched through, none compares to the brand and community built by the Game of Thrones sub-Reddit. The group does not do just one thing right, but has taken several steps to create a strong, tight-knit community. It’s a great example of what a brand can and should do on Reddit.

Below are the different strategies they’ve used to really make their community stand out.

Get Everyone Into Character

The best part of joining a community is connecting and talking with others with the same interests. Beyond the amazing look and feel of Game of Thrones sub-Reddit, here are a few things they’ve done to make sure followers get into character:

• Give your followers a name.
• Make it easy for readers to add Game of Thrones flair to their name.
• Provide a link for users to download wallpapers in the background.

Game of Thrones sub-Reddit showing how to get followers into character.

Spoiler Control

There is nothing worse than finding out the final score of the big football game before you are able to watch it. Just like how co-workers can spoil things around the water cooler, someone can easily spoil the ending of a Game of Thrones episode on Reddit.

The Game of Thrones sub-Reddit has taken the following steps to ensure that their followers don’t get their favorite show spoiled.

• Have a posting policy.
• Create theme modes (Normal, Talk Only, Mute Talk, Show Spoilers).
• Create a spoiler guide and link to it often.

Game of Thrones sub-Reddit showing how to control spoilers on Reddit.

Conclusion

Creating a community on any platform takes a lot of time and hard work, and Reddit is no different. If you have a product or brand that thrives on interacting and gaining feedback from people, Reddit is a great place to do it.

What do you think? Fellow Redditors: What brands do you think are doing sub-Reddits right and why? For those of you who have never tried Reddit, what questions do you have? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Starting out with mobile social media marketing

We are all part of the continuous mobile buzz and it doesn't look like it will be stopping anytime soon. Everyday you find people sitting at their favourite coffee shop with their tablets and smartphones working. The new on the go office space is 100% mobile and it's no longer necessary to sit in a cramped office to get work done. It is now easy to get things done on the go.

People are slowly shifting away from reading traditional newspapers as all the latest news can now be accessed from mobile devices. E-books are changing the way booksellers are selling books like Amazon. When last did you go to a bank to do a bank transfer? Why am I asking this? It's simple - the times are changing and you should get your business on board.

Online you will find many digital marketing articles explaining that Social Media is the best route to take for Internet marketing. Even though I agree with that, I believe you should take your social media campaign further and integrate mobile marketing into your strategy. This will help boost your business to be visible in the ever changing digital business world. With a mobile marketing strategy, your customers will be able to have access to your business on the go, virtually from anywhere in their own comfort zone.

If you already have a social media marketing strategy and it is geared for traditional online users, I guarantee you that you are missing out on lots of valuable business. To start integrating mobile marketing with your social media campaign, find below a couple of tips that can help you with this.

Mobile social media marketing tips

Use mobile platforms: Create profiles on social media platforms such as Foursquare, Google Places, and other related local networks. Having an active presence on these mobile platforms will help your customers find you online.

Mobile website: By creating a website for your business that is mobile friendly with mobile friendly graphics, guick loading times, your business will be ready to tap into the mobile market.

Mobile app: This is very different from a mobile website. A mobile app for your business can help your users interact with your business. You can create a mobile app to allow users view your latest news and blog posts, schedule appointments, contact customer service or even place orders. The possibilities with a mobile app is endless.

QR codes: Create a QR code that you can use in your internet marketing strategy. One of the easiest ways to create a QR code is to use Google's URL shortner Goog.gl.

As more people are starting to use smartphones for business, make buying decisions, and to find information, it is important for your business to tap into this medium in order to reach customers.

Using your blog for search engine optimization

Using your blog as a Search Engine Optimization strategy for your website has many benefits on improving your organic website rankings and attracting targeted website traffic. Blog marketing  is a method of using optimized blog posts that provides value to your website.

When you publish a new blog post, Google sees this post as a new page to your website. By using keyword rich links in the content of your blog posts that links to the most relevant page on your website provides a powerful way to increase your links on the search engines.

How are you going to optimize your blog to have the best SEO benefit for your website?

SEO Optimization

Make sure that the structure of your blog is 100% optimized to support your website. To gain natural links from your blog, make sure to make it original and interesting. Other bloggers will link to your blog if they find it interesting or when they are referencing you on their own posts. Other ways you can optimize your blog is by submitting your blog feed to blog aggregators such as Technorati and adding an SEO pluging to your blog to help you with the optimization process.

Keywords

Create a blogging campaign by listing the keywords you will be targeting in your blog posts. These keywords can include all the phrases that are relevant to your business and that you want to use to be found for on the search engines. Usually this list can be anything between 30 and 300 keywords that you can use in the content of your blog posts. If you use a blogging keyword plan when writing your blog posts, it will be much easier to stay on topic when writing new blog posts.

When writing new blog posts, make sure to use a minimum of 300 words and posting new posts at least twice a week. If you don’t publish new blog posts on a regular basis, you will lose interest from the audience you are trying to reach.

The 5 Core Elements of Online Content Marketing [Infographic]

You can have hundreds of websites on the internet, but if nobody knows about you, you are invisible. A well-planned, creative Online Marketing campaign can put you out there for the world to see and instantly increase your sales. Take a look at this infographic I came across on SocialMediaToday.com with the core elements of Content Marketing.

If you are a marketer or business executive looking for new ways to connect with your audience, you should consider online content marketing. Its 5 core elements work together to deliver your brand message efficiently and cost-effectively. By learning to shift resources from traditional marketing methods to the 5 core elements detailed in the Infographic below, you will be taking that first critical step in shaping your online content marketing strategy.

Core Elements of Online Content Marketing

Infographic by Synecore Technologies 
Submitted by Jacey Gulden

Conversion Testing For Your Business

We all know how important “Word of Mouth” marketing is and with the power of the Internet it is even more important. You must have Internet Marketing integrated in your business. Web visitors are more inclined to buy your products, services or solutions when they verify your credibility. Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including: design, development, advertising, and sales. Take a look at this article from TopRankBlog.com about conversion testing for your business.

In the 1989, Greg LeMond overcame a 50 second deficit in the final stage to win the Tour de France by 8 seconds.  He clocked the second fastest time trial ever recorded in the Tour de France.  So how did LeMond secure a stunning victor after 3 weeks and 2025 miles?

Optimization.  The optimization of his equipment, including aerodynamic handle bars and helmet, allowed LeMond to shave crucial seconds from his time and ride to victory in front of his less well optimized competitors.

Optimization results had a big impact on this race and they can have a big impact on business as well. I recently attended a session by Mikel Chertudi, Senior Director of Marketing of Adobe on Conversion Optimization: From Strategy to Execution. He offered strategies for businesses to optimize their digital marketing, in order to move ahead of the pack and secure a victory.

Conversion Optimization: 3 Key Takeaways

1. Alignment & Strategy

The path to successful conversion optimization begins with linking optimization goals to your overall business strategy. This may seem like an easy one, but the fact is, not everyone is doing this.

In order to do so, think in terms of how conversions impact your overall business results. That is how you tie number the impact of more conversions to your sales and marketing budget, relevance and revenue. Create an optimization strategy statement which clearly states your goals and secure buy-in from key players within your organization to move forward. This ensures that conversion optimization is a focused effort for your organization and you have both the funding and buy-in necessary to support conversion testing and implementation.

2. Process & organization: Once you have aligned your strategy, the next step is understanding the processes, organizational design, and elements to create a true culture of optimization.

Creating an optimized organization and process is vital at this stage. Focus on process design, change impact, organizational design and end user training. Also consider the roles and responsibilities of the people who will be involved.

In addition to process, you must create a culture of optimization. Not only do you have to have buy-in from your executive team, your organization must be willing to invest in people, training and technology in order to facilitate testing. In order to ensure ongoing impact, create processes to perpetuate culture, like weekly optimization update emails.

3. Tactical Execution: Now that you have laid the ground work for conversion optimization it is time to get started.

Our recommendation is test, test, test! Testing is the only way to truly know what is working and what is not when it comes to your digital strategy. If you are wondering where to get started, here are top five areas which offer the most impact.

Top 5 Conversion Opportunities for Maximum Impact

1. User Experience Design and Site/Page Layout:  Design and site layout out are huge opportunities to impact the overall user experience. Page layout can impact what content is read, clicked on, and how much time the visitor spends on the page. Try testing these aspects:

• Auto-sizing/movement of content: The size of the browser window and design can impact how content moves around on the page.  Try testing moving around certain page aspects to determine if conversion rate goes up.
• Pop Ups vs. Static content: Test offering value added content, like a download, on the page instead of through a pop up.

2. Lead Form and e-Commerce Process Testing

• Lead form: Once a user has clicked on the lead form, the form itself can have a huge impact on whether or not they fill it out and submit or simply exiting the site. Test the pre-population of certain fields based on IP address in order to determine conversion changes.

3. Headlines and Bullets In Body Copy

• Question versus Statement: While a question may seem more engaging, test leveraging a statement instead.
• Bullet Points: Summarize copy using easier to read bullet points to determine impact on conversion.
• One Offer versus Two Offers: Create a test leveraging multiple versus a single offer to determine which is most successful. Although a single offer is more targeted, multiple offers may win out.

4. Relevant Images

• Beautiful versus Easy to Read Images: The look and feel of your images can be highly influential on conversion rates. Test the preference of your audience for images which are beautiful, compared to easy to read  when it comes to conversions.
• Call to Action with Marquee: Try adding a call to action within your Marquee image rather than next to it. This small change may have a big impact.

5. Calls to Action

• Button versus Link: Testing switching a link to button. Buttons tend to be more attention grabbing and easier to read.
• White paper versus guide: Finesse the wording of your call to action to determine what works best for your target audience. For example, update ‘download white paper’ to ‘download guide’ to test the psychological impact of wording.

You can use these tests to get you started but one of the most important ideas here is that you can and should test everything.  Every audience is different, so try testing some best practices you assume are true. You may be surprised on the impact conversion optimization can have on your business results.

What type of conversion testing are you doing in your business?

Why you have to do keyword research for your SEO campaign

Keyword research for SEO is one of the most neglected parts of the search engine optimization process. Many new internet marketers are under the impression that you only have to do keyword research once and be done with it. That is the wrong way of doing keyword research. In all essence, most internet marketing methods revolves around keywords. Keywords are used for search engine optimization, social media marketing, and even for social media optimization purposes.

Once you have done keyword research and you have a list of all the keywords you are targeting, don't see that list as set in stone. Make sure to revisit your keyword list often. This doesn't mean everyday, but at least once every few months. If you are targeting an industry with a lot of changes happening often, then you will most likely have to visit your keyword list often.

The goal of keyword research

The main goal with doing keyword research is to find the keywords and phrases people are using when doing a search on Google. This doesn't mean that you should only use the keywords that has the most search volume. If a popular keyword doesn't relate to your business, don't use it, but take note that search queries usually changes over time. What people search for a couple of months ago regarding a certain topic will most likely not be the same thing they are searching for right now. To make sure you are using the right keywords what people are searching for, keep an eye on current trends.

Look at search trends at least once a month. Measure these trends on Google and the popular social media channels. If something catches your eye as a trending topic that you can use for the keywords you are chasing, start using those keywords and phrases with your campaign.

4 Ways to Budget Your Business Like a Pro

The Internet has brought media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet Marketing in terms of providing instant responses and eliciting responses are the unique qualities of the medium. Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including: design, development, advertising, and sales. Want to budget your business like a pro? Mashable shares its tips with us below.

Nobody likes to talk about budgeting. Even more, budgeting is sort of a drag to do — but all can agree it’s incredibly important.

A few companies have launched software to make budgeting faster and easier. Plus, options for interaction with fellow entrepreneurs on sites like Twitter and Quora enables relevant feedback so you don’t pay excessive amounts for a service you don’t need. Read on to discover a few ways you can manage your company’s spectrum of debits and credits without too much stress.

1. Use Software

If Excel spreadsheets, paper receipts and data entry don’t match your cloud storage lifestyle, you’re in luck: Many entrepreneurs felt the same and a few decided to create an app that would turn their dream version of budgeting into reality.

inDinero is like Mint for small businesses and offers a deep feature set for keeping your transactions in check. You can connect bank accounts to view all of your cash flow in one place, as well as set categories, which inDinero will bucket transactions into automatically.

If you’re looking to solve a more specific problem in your workflow, there are niche finance solutions as well.Xpenser is a platform specifically for expense reports, with apps on iPhone, Android and Windows. FreshBooksis for invoices, and while it’s especially useful for freelancers and the self-employed, it’s also been used effectively by teams.

Apps like these will help to visualize cash flow, something that’s difficult to get a handle on with multiple accounts and payments that are set on automatic.

“So much of entrepreneurship is future-focused,” says Derek Flanzraich, founder of Greatist. “Especially in terms of funding and revenue generation — it’s tough sometimes to remember you need enough money in the bank today.”

2. Hire Outside Help

When you’re bootstrapping, you’ll want to take extra care when deciding what tasks to outsource — because, if you can do it yourself, why pay someone? For Melani Gordon, founder of Taphunter, bookkeeping was one task that was just too time consuming to fulfill in-house. For Taphunter, Gordon hired a CPA separate from her bookkeeper. She’s found this to be more affordable, but don’t forget that you’ll take on an extra task — making sure these two people are communicating with each other.

The third piece of the financial equation for Taphunter required finding a financial expert to act in an advising role.

“The bookkeeper or CPA doesn’t have the pulse on the startup world, so we had to go out and hunt for this type of person to help with our financial modeling,” Gordon explained.

The financial expert offered specialized expertise to nail down its cost of acquisition — which Gordon says is a moving target in the beginning, when there’s little data to go on. Drilling down on the ROI of sales staff and/or marketing is included here.

3. Ask Around

Money is a touchy issue, but remember it’s often easier to be transparent about how much you’re paying for a service during in-person conversations. So, next time you’re at an event or getting coffee with other entrepreneurs, ask if they don’t mind sharing how much they pay in fees for something you’re looking to buy.

Flanzraich also found Quora to be helpful in answering questions, especially generics such as “How much is too much to pay for … ?” Even though each industry and region is unique, it helps to get a general idea so you know you’re not getting robbed — especially while your company is young.

Every small business is different. State taxes will vary, and due dates won’t be consistent. Even though the web is filled with how-to explainers and guides on budgeting, you won’t know how your business is different until you get started.

“Especially for companies in which most employees are under 26, health insurance costs can vary like crazy,” says Flanzraich.

4. Overestimate Monthly Burn

Is it better to be safe than sorry? Probably.

Most of your expenses are predictable. Office expenses — including desk, phone, furniture, computer, and if your company employs salespeople, travel, entertainment, gas, mileage — are commonly divided up by headcount.

“We’ve seen us and entrepreneurs around us underestimate month-to-month travel, entertainment and office expenses,” says Gordon. One lesson learned was to stagger hires over a period of time, which will reduce monthly burn.

And, in the vein of preparing for the worst, consider unfortunate things like parking tickets and high gas prices, if employees (or you) will be doing business travel on the company’s dime.

Budget success, as most will agree, is not necessarily hitting the nail on the head with what your expenses end up being. It’s setting yourself up for the least money-related stress possible. There’s enough to worry about with product, recruitment, PR and more — don’t let that unexpected debit put you in the red. Make sure there’s room for a few untimely expenses and if they’re avoided after all, you’ve got extra cash.

What steps do you take to budget more effectively? Let us know in the comments.

4 Blogging Tips to Double Your Site Traffic

Did you know that you can use yourbusiness blog for branding and it also establishes you as the authority in your niche? Blogging is an interactive method that will allow you to reach your target audience. This can include using the blog for website traffic, reaching new customers, branding, and it can be used as a communication medium. take a look at these tips below from SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Jason Crawford, president of the Parts and Service division of Block Imaging, was upstaged by his six-year-old daughter.

In her ponytailed debut on the Block Blog, Crawford asked her, “Madeleine, do you know how to fix a laser aimer?”, to which she confidently replied, “Yes!”

The pair then demonstrated with charming aplomb a simple troubleshooting tidbit for Block’s medical imaging equipment customers.

The video was one of a slew of ideas that came out of a two-day retreat aimed at kickstarting a company-wide commitment to content marketing through their blog.

Since then, Block has seen an increase of approximately 150% in organic search traffic to their site, which has translated to more and better-qualified leads and shorter sales cycles.

Sales volume has increased significantly enough since September that the company—which had been in a slump—hired 13 employees, including 3 additional salespeople.

Organization: Block Imaging International, Inc.

Social Media Handles & Stats:

• Website — Block Imaging International Inc.
• Blog
• LinkedIn
• YouTube — 12,591 views

Highlights:

• Organic search traffic increased from 4,000 to approximately 10,000 visits per month
• A single post was the impetus for a $70K order
• Three new salespeople hired since the company-wide commitment to blogging
• Over 250 downloads of The C-Arm Buyers Guide in its first 3 months

Block’s search traffic increased significantly after a September 2011 company retreat focused on content marketing.

Block Imaging, a 70-person company in Lansing, Michigan, provides preowned and refurbished medical imaging equipment, including machines for MRI, CT, X-ray, C-Arm and mammography, to a worldwide market.

Their sales growth over the past year is to a great extent directly attributed to theirfocus on content marketing through their blog.

Four factors have contributed most to their blog’s success.

#1: Buy-In From the Top

The atmosphere at Block Imaging in summer 2011 was fearful and distrusting; sales were down and every department had scaled back.

Vice President of Marketing Krista Kotrla articulates that they had two options: “Are we just going to accept this not being a good year and cutting and scaling back on everything, or are we going to go all-in on something to try to grow this business?”

She had experimented with getting a blog going the previous December, but participation and results were spotty. “It was kind of relegated to the marketing department trying to get an article from the company president maybe once or twice a month,” she said.

Kotrla proposed a two-day company-wide retreat with a content marketing specialist to launch what she calls a “culture of content marketing.” Response to the retreat was extremely positive, generating a host of ideas for blog posts and videos such as the one Crawford made with his daughter.

“I had never written a blog before, and I had never done a blog video before, but I figured we’ve got to start somewhere,” Crawford said. “It really came down to being willing to be a little vulnerable and a little real with people.”

Block Imaging employees in a team blog-title brainstorming exercise at their company retreat.

“It was a definite intentional shift from leadership saying that this is the way we are going to go, this is the wave of the future,” said Product Manager Chris Sharrock.

#2: Make it Easy for Everyone to Contribute

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy at Block for coming up with content. Sharrock dove in wholeheartedly, and has no problem consistently cranking out two to three blog posts a month, but some others have needed a little more help and encouragement.

Some people can take a list of keyword phrases that marketing has gleaned from Hub Spot and run with it; others work better with a specific blog post title. Others are more comfortable verbally. “Some salespeople feel much more comfortable standing in front of the backwall we set up in the conference room and filming a short video,” Kotrla said.

And if there is someone who hasn’t sent any submissions in a while, “We pull them aside and in a one-to-one meeting, try to figure out what they need,” she said. “Is it more keywords, specific titles? Sometimes they just need permission to stop the daily grind and sit down and talk it out. Other times, they feel more comfortable if they know it’s being reviewed by an engineer, so we’ll take a salesperson and an engineer out to lunch and flesh out a few outlines.”

Block’s ambitious goal of one post every weekday means managers must keep on top of department quotas, but they find that an atmosphere of inclusiveness and flexibility has far better results than reprimanding people for not participating. To date, over 40 people from the 70-person company have contributed to the blog.

#3: Empower a Content Officer

One strategy that has helped tremendously is to have a single point of contact for all blog drafts, someone they have taken to calling the “Content Officer.”

Jordan Batterbee, originally from engineering support, emerged as a natural writer who can take a draft, outline or even a list of bullet points from another team member and craft it into a well-edited, SEO-keyworded post, injecting some humor and personality along the way.

Jordan Batterbee, Block Imaging’s Content Officer

Having him as the conduit for all posts has been “hugely significant,” said Kotrla, “Because it made it a lot easier for people to contribute very little and turn it into a post that they get recognized for. It makes it easy and comfortable for people to participate.”

Batterbee has increased his contribution to the point that he is about to move over to marketing full time. “I wish we had invested sooner in developing a dedicated person to carry more weight in helping to oversee our blogging machine,” said Kotrla.

#4: Make it Fun and Rewarding

The one factor that ties everything else together is consistently celebrating and rewarding contributions to the company’s content marketing, creating an environment where employees are intrinsically motivated.

“Every two weeks at the staff meeting, we reward two content superheroes who have contributed something significant to the blog. We have a Spiderman mask and a Wolverine mask that they put on and we take a picture that we share in the next all-team PowerPoint presentation,” said Kotrla.

Two of Block’s biweekly Content Superheroes.

“We also have a really cheesy Plinko board with gift cards at the bottom, so they get a gift card, too. But it’s not really the gift cards, it’s the fun of knowing that you contributed. We try to inspire in the team that all of their efforts arecontributing in a significant way to the overall company vision.”

But besides the chance to unleash their inner superhero, the biggest motivator for Block’s employees is success.

Said Crawford, “When we get feedback when someone says, ‘Your answer to a common question helped me make a better decision,’ or when people begin to see that they helped someone get a better result or find an answer to a problem they were having, that’s a great feeling that people want to experience again and again.”

What do you think? Does your company have a blog? What strategies are succeeding or not succeeding in your content marketing? Leave your comments and questions in the box below.