2019 - Page 11 of 11 - Outsource Digital Marketing With Tempesta Media

Do You Need Estimated Reading Times, Part 1: What Are Estimated Reading Times?

Posted on January 21, 2019September 3, 2023 by Anastasiia Lavrinenko

The short answer to this is yes, but before we explain that, let’s describe what the reading time is.

What are estimated reading times?

Essentially, estimated reading time is a gauge for how long an average reader would take to read and consume the entire piece of content that’s been presented in front of them. Many audiences look at articles and other content. If they see that it’s going to take too long for them to get through it, they are likely to abandon the page itself.

This increases the company’s abandonment rates, negatively impacting SEO.

Where do you place estimated reading times?

A good rule of thumb is to place estimated reading time at the beginning of each article. The best place for it is after the title and before the body text begins, typically, left-justified. This location directly benefits your target audience.

Many people have very limited time available, and if they see that an article is only going to take a couple minutes to read, they’re much more likely to read it, and actually get to the end of it.

If you are trying to target decision makers who are C-level executives, they are even more pressed for time. As a result, the estimated reading time is even more valuable for this target audience.

Should there be other details aside from the reading time?

There should also be a brief summary placed at the very beginning of the article itself. The summary should be one or two sentences with a couple of bullet points explaining what’s going to be covered within the content.

That provides a relatively low commitment for the target audience and the target reader. If it is written in a compelling enough way, it will induce the reader to go and continue into the rest of the article.

What are some of the negatives associated with adding estimated reading times for your blog content?

Some of the negatives associated with adding estimated reading time really depends on the type of content associated with it. For blog posts, it’s recommended that estimated reading time should be included.

However, for longer-form pieces pieces such as thought leadership, e-guides, and white papers, I don’t recommend including the estimated reading time because of the intent associated with the reader.

What are the benefits associated with estimated reading times for your blog content?

Someone who is going to read an e-guide, white paper, or a deep dive informative article (also known as long-form content), will be more interested in what is going to be discussed and the value that’s going to be provided to them within the content than they are interested in actually saving time.

However, with blog posts, the opposite is true. They’re trying to get a nugget or two of information quickly. After they consume the nugget of information, they want to be able to move on.

In summary, estimated reading times makes sense for both businesses and consumers in the B2B audience. If you are focusing on blog posts and other short-form pieces of content that are generally under 1,000 words, including the estimated reading time makes sense. If you have long-form content, it is not recommended that you include the estimated reading time.

How to Get Started With Hubspot and Marketing Automation

Posted on January 17, 2019September 3, 2023 by Michael Marchese

Now that you decided to move to a marketing automation platform it’s important to think about the implementation plan and how you will measure success.

There are many terrific marketing automation systems including Hubspot, Marketo, Infusion Soft, and others. In my opinion, most marketing automation systems offer many similar features and functionality necessary to achieve your goals. However, the pricing and set up among their solutions differ, so it’s important to consider what is best for your business.

The pricing models also differ across various platforms. For example, some marketing automation systems price based on the number of user seats, the number of contacts, the number of emails, and even specific features on an a la carte basis.

When we decided to begin using HubSpot there were several factors that helped with the decision process. The first was that they offer both a sales and a marketing solution, allowing Hubspot to be the one stop shop for our organization. We found that the sales solution was easy to implement once we created the following:

Email templates
Email sequences
Workflows
Imported our contacts
Downloaded necessary plugins, such as the Hubspot Gmail plugin
Setup our integrations with various tools (such as PandaDoc)
Organized our pipeline

The marketing took us much longer to implement. At the time, we decided to try using HubSpot’s website content management system but found that it was much more difficult than our prior solution (WordPress). Ultimately, we made the decision to keep using WordPress.

Another aspect of the marketing tool which takes a long time to implement is creating the content. Many of the marketing tools require a substantial amount of content, such as blogs and content assets to use for email nurturing campaigns, landing pages, and attracting new leads to your website.

If you are using Hubspot for the first time and don’t have any content on hand, you’ll want to begin creating a content library as quickly as possible. Hubspot’s inbound marketing methodology requires content to guide the prospect through the sales cycle. While Hubspot’s email tools might be easy to setup, writing the emails and creating the content that is included in the emails is the most time consuming part.

A few best practices when implementing Hubspot

Create a glossary for various email templates, email sequences, workflows, and custom fields so that when you bring more people to your team, they’ll be able to understand what the purpose of each email template is being used for. Additionally, it saves everyone time in the long run.
Organize your data so that you don’t bring your old mess into your new mess. Importing the data is pretty seamless using a CSV file. The worst part of the import was importing existing deals to the pipeline, as deals need to be created manually.
As you choose a marketing automation solution, look to see what integrations are available. Integrations save so much time and make the usability so much more enjoyable because your systems are talking to one another.
Utilize Hubspot’s great educational system and knowledge base which can answer most of your questions. The platform will walk you through simple tasks like creating your email signature and updating your notification preferences. The video academy will teach you the strategy behind the campaigns and systems that you build. Be strategic with the checklists to ensure you are productive with your time. There are so many bells and whistles that could distract you!

Buyer personas and Voice Profiles for content marketing

Hubspot’s buyer persona is important to ensure that your campaigns are targeting the right people and that your messages are strategic. Tempesta Media can utilize a Hubspot’s buyer persona within a Voice Profile to make sure that the content is being written for that particular audience segment. When content is written in a way that addresses the buyer persona’s pain points and is easily digestible, the content will perform better.

What Is Content Marketing for B2B and B2C Companies?

Posted on January 16, 2019September 3, 2023 by Michael Marchese

Content marketing is an incredibly valuable tool.

Once you peel away the initial facade of it, it’s actually a toolbox with many many different tools within it, and using the right tool for the content marketing for b2b makes all the difference in the world.

How are B2B and B2C different?

Let’s say for example you want to go and cut a board. You need to use a saw. You’re not going to use a hammer to try to go and cut the board. Well, you could, but it’ll take a lot of work and it’ll look horrible. Using a hammer is not the right solution. The same thing applies to the different types of content marketing solutions that fit within the content marketing toolset.

So let’s start by talking about the differences between B2B and B2C content marketing.

B2B content marketing is where you are targeting other businesses to purchase your products or services just by the very nature of the target markets. The marketing tends to be very narrow and very focused. So an example would be “How many people are interested in buying this titanium cup maker,” which is a piece of equipment.

There’s probably a thousand companies in the country that would be interested in a titanium cup maker. The companies then have an end user audience of millions of people who are interested in titanium cups for camping. So, that’s a really good analogy to use.

In this example, a B2B company is the one that’s making the machine that creates those 10 million cups. A B2C company is the one that’s using the machine to create the titanium cups for camping. So it is very narrow-focused and very targeted. Think of B2C as being broad and one-to-many. The marketing for B2C has a closer one-to-one approach.

What are seasonal and evergreen content ?

Let’s take it a step further. B2B and B2C have different target audiences. B2C targets consumers. The types of content that need to be created here from within the toolkit need to be more visually oriented, more video-oriented, and more perishable. An example of perishable content would be the latest fashion that Kim Kardashian wore this week. An example of evergreen content, which is the opposite of perishable content, is “how to make apple pie.”

Perishable Content: Matters now but won’t be important in the future. The Kim Kardashian outfit topic, no one’s going to care about it next week. It’s no longer important.
Evergreen Content: Information that will remain relevant. You’ll need to know how to make apple pie now, 6 years from now, and even 20 years from now.

Seasonal content can be perishable, especially on the B2C side. Although it is possible to make seasonal content semi-evergreen. An example would be an annual manufacturing MRO trade show that happens every single year. While the content that you create for it could potentially be repurposed, each and every year, you know it’s a seasonal thing.

For B2B, it’s all about educating the potential customer. It’s not about the sizzle; It’s about the substance. So the types of content that are going to be valuable there are going to be long-form pieces of content or long-form blog posts, case studies, e-guides, white papers, and other related content assets. You can also use, though to a limited degree, infographics. The perishable forms of B2B content marketing would include things such as news commentaries as well as press releases.

There is no absolute, one size, fits all. There are pieces of content or types of content that are non-perishable or evergreen that can be used on the B2C side. Likewise, there are perishable pieces of content that could be used on the B2B side. However, the tendencies are that B2C is more perishable while B2B is more evergreen. B2B is more visual and more educational.

Improving SEO Through Content Marketing

Posted on January 14, 2019September 3, 2023 by Michael Marchese

In order to be able to improve your SEO through content marketing, you have to take a couple of key actions right off the bat.

Action item 1: Run an SEO audit

What an SEO audit will do is it will identify various areas that are problematic for search engines to index your website. For example, the audit will identify problems with page load speed and broken links in your site, as well as how your site is viewed on mobile devices… and so much more.

When is the right time to do it?

There’s a couple of schools of thoughts when it comes to timing. I always recommend doing an SEO audit before updating your website. This is because you need to understand what is wrong with your current website before rolling out a whole new website. Otherwise, you’re going to end up risking making the same mistakes you made in the prior website. This can make it even more difficult to fix in the long run.

The second time that you should do an SEO audit is after you’ve launched your new website. The purpose of why it’s being done at this point is to identify where you’ve made mistakes in implementing your new website. This way, you can quickly correct them before they have a negative impact on your search engine rankings.

I actually had a customer several years ago who launched a new website and did not do an SEO audit. They then immediately panicked because all their traffic started to drop precipitously within 30 days of launching their new site. So they immediately called and said, “What can we do?”

What we ultimately found out at that time is that customer was inadvertently creating duplicate copies of their content on their site. One for the HTTPS version of their site and another for the HTTP version of their site, so the search engine was saying, “hey you’ve got a bunch of duplicate content on your site. Therefore I’m going to penalize you.” Not surprisingly, they fixed the error. Their traffic went back to normal within 30 days.

The last recommendation regarding timing for an SEO audit is when there has been a major change to your company’s operations. Let’s say you launched a new product or service or you’ve gone through a brand re-positioning or you’ve consolidated brands into one brand. That is a great opportunity to run an SEO audit.

Those are proactive ways to do it. The only other thing that I would recommend that is more reactive is if you see a major drop in your traffic. Run the SEO audit on it.

Action item 2: Fix the issues found in the SEO audit

The things that come up in the SEO audit have to be fixed first. Once those are fixed, you’ve built a strong baseline or foundation. It’s at this point in time that you can start overlaying content marketing to improve your SEO.

What to do next

What I recommend to my customers is that they identify a couple of low, competitive (or not very competitive) keyword phrases that are within their industry segment that they’re trying to go after. They should focus on developing content around those.

The reason I go right to the source of that, which are keyword phrases, is because your prospective audiences are typing those into the search engines. They’re trying to look for something that they can become educated on and make a decision and ultimately a purchase.

So identifying those keyword phrases and understanding where they fit on the buyer’s journey will determine how well you’re able to do your content through an SEO marketing program.

What’s Better for My Business: Facebook or LinkedIn?

Posted on January 10, 2019September 3, 2023 by Michael Marchese

Businesses have different options when it comes to content marketing promotion.

Two options that always come to mind: Facebook versus LinkedIn, which is highly debated right now on the internet. As the head of Michael Marchese, the CEO and

Founder of Tempesta Media with almost 25 years of industry experience, says it really comes down to audience and purpose. LinkedIn is significantly better for companies who focus on B2B marketing. Facebook is significantly better for those companies with B2C marketing initiatives.

Facebook = sales; LinkedIn = leads

The people that sign up for LinkedIn are employed by some sort of company, whether it’s their own company or another one that they work for. The purpose of why they’ve signed up on LinkedIn is to network from a business perspective with other people, either within their industry or they’re looking for prospective customers. They can also be looking for a specific vendor for a need that they have internally. Just by nature, these people are looking for other businesses.

Facebook, on the other hand, is used on a more social and personal perspective. Facebook users want to stay in touch with their friends and family. They want to learn about various interests that appeal to them personally. Simply put, they’re not looking to do business on Facebook. They’re trying to maintain a social lifestyle.

So at the very root of it, Facebook is geared more toward companies that are trying to go and attract consumers.

A great example would be 7-Eleven. They sell all kinds of food and other products through their stores to consumers. For them, it makes a lot of sense to go and advertise on Facebook because the audience that’s there is interested in purchasing things for their own benefit. So if they can see a coupon off of a free Slurpee at 7-Eleven, that’s going to appeal to them personally.

Likewise on LinkedIn, if Tempesta Media ran a campaign offering content marketing solutions to businesses, those businesses are going to be very receptive because the whole point of why they’re on LinkedIn is they’re trying to go and advance the objectives that I mentioned earlier. So if you’re going to build a professional audience and you’re a B2C-oriented company, Facebook is where you should center a lot of your operations. If you are a B2B company and looking for a significant presence, you want to focus on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn will do a good job for B2B companies in generating leads. Facebook will do a good job on to be for B2C companies in generating consumer sales.

Google AdWords as an alternative to Facebook and LinkedIn

For those companies that are looking at using Facebook as an advertising medium, the targeting platform that’s used within Facebook is incredibly robust and is similar to Google AdWords in terms of its granularity for targeting purposes. Regardless of the size of your budget as a B2C-based company, Facebook is a good alternative to Google AdWords. While incredibly good in terms of its audience, Facebook has limited targeting capabilities.

For companies that are looking to use LinkedIn, they should prepare to spend at least a couple thousand dollars in marketing costs just to get their campaign started and get the initial optimization out of the way. You’re not going to have nearly as many targeting options as you would see within Facebook. I think Google AdWords is also a good alternative to LinkedIn for B2B companies, and that should certainly be included in their mix.

One last tip

However, overall, these are just solutions, and they’re part of what I call paid media. Most companies should make sure that they also have earned media and owned media as part of their digital marketing strategy.

Content marketing is a perfect example of owned media. Guests commenting or posting is an example of earned of earned media. You need all three working together to make your digital marketing program successful.

Seven Best Chrome Plugins for Writers

Posted on January 10, 2019September 3, 2023 by Anastasiia Lavrinenko

Freelance writing is an extremely rewarding creative experience.

You get to explore a variety of interesting topics, learn about new trends and game-changing technologies, and share your opinions with large audiences that value your unique thoughts.

Freelance writing can also be challenging. Your writing ability, organization, time management and research skills are constantly being tested. Luckily, there are several tools at your disposal to minimize or completely eliminate these challenges.

Here are seven Chrome plugins that will help you become a more efficient and successful writer.

1. Grammarly

Grammarly checks your spelling, grammar, and even your vocabulary in any writing that you do online. This is extremely helpful when writing an email or in a Google doc. Even if you write primarily in Word or a similar offline program, Grammarly will still catch some mistakes that your word processor might miss when you copy your text into your blog or article submission platform.

2. Google Dictionary

This one is a real time saver when doing online research for an article. You simply double-click on any word on the page that you are reading, and the definition magically appears. It also stores a tremendously useful history of searched words, just in case you are fond of a new word and want to use it later.
You can download it here and try it now on some weird words: absquatulate, concinnity, funambulist.

3. Power Thesaurus

This plugin is amazing for amazing writers who want to create amazing content. With Power Thesaurus you can avoid disastrously repetitive sentences like that one. You can search any word using the toolbar button or highlight words in the text you are reading to find synonyms and antonyms.
Just FYI, Power Thesaurus has 825 synonyms for amazing.

4. AdBlock

Remember when you got your first smartphone, and you immediately had no idea how you ever lived without it? That is what AdBlock does for web browsing. Research can easily account for half of your time spent writing, and AdBlock makes that a cleaner, faster experience.

There is a reason this extension has over 200 million downloads.

5.OneTab

This is another essential plugin for research. It takes all of your open tabs and places them neatly in a list to help you easily navigate and view the information. It is not uncommon to have more than 20 active tabs when conducting research. OneTab helps writers stay organized and quickly find the information that they need.

6. StayFocused

This one is for those of us that frequently fall down inescapable YouTube rabbit holes. Hours fly by without your knowledge and evening approaches without having started your blog post or article. With StayFocused, you can block certain websites such as Facebook, Reddit or YouTube for a specific amount of time, allowing you to focus on your writing.
It might be overkill for some, but it definitely works.

7. Save to Google Drive

This is another huge time saver that also provides flexibility for writers on the go. With a click, you can save images, PDF’s or web pages to your Google Drive to be accessed later from any device. Save to Google Drive allows you to quickly organize and access research from anywhere, with significantly more free space than Dropbox.

Since you are already using Chrome, this extension is a natural next step for anyone preparing to write an article or blog post.

How to Create Content Around Current Events?

Posted on January 8, 2019September 3, 2023 by Michael Marchese

Creating content around current events is actually a challenge that a lot of businesses face.

The bigger the business is, the more difficult this can be. The reason why businesses have a difficult time creating content around current events is that a lot of them have to go through an entire compliance and approval process internally before even a single piece of content is published to their website.

That approval process can take up to several weeks. Under these assumptions, traditional methods of content marketing can feel impossible for a lot of bigger companies.

There is, however, a way to solve this. We’ve had experience with many of our with our larger clients especially in highly regulated industries such as health care, financial services, and insurance.

Creating content ahead of time

There are certain things that happen in the world or within an industry that, while they are unique, they do happen with some sort of regularity. A good example is a financial services client that covers the stock market, trading, etc. It’s guaranteed that at some point in the future, the stock market is going to go up significantly, or it’s going to go down significantly. Companies can proactively write content around those two events in advance.

Continuing with this financial services example, write a commentary like “The market went up X percent today.” This typically leads to things such as improved GDP or other reasons. You can put your point of view and what message you’re trying to convey as a business or financial services entity.

Then go and get the content pre-approved in advance so that the moment that when the stock market goes up 3 percent or conversely goes down, you’re ready with content that you can put out, which has already been pre-approved to comply with your internal processes.

Another example is in the insurance space. Within this space, there are unfortunate events that do happen with regularity. Examples are security breaches or cybersecurity breaches. These can also be natural events such as hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, tragic snowfall with blizzards, earthquakes, and volcano eruption. It’s not difficult to write content around those events and communicate your point of view so that when such an event happens, you’ll at least be prepared with a message.

That’s one way a lot of larger corporations are being able to stay on top of the current events that happen while still keeping in place the compliance and regulatory requirements that are associated with their industry.

Creating content using templates

Now if you’re in an industry that doesn’t have all that overhead or you are at a company that can make decisions faster, there are other tactics that you can use.

Many clients take advantage of our ability to follow specific keywords or trends associated within their industry. So whenever a large event happens that is associated with an industry brand leader, we can quickly summarize the event or create an article about what happened. We can also provide a standardized point of view based on a Voice Profile.

The summary of the article is something that’s very easy to get approved internally. If your company already has worked with us to develop talking points that you want to be conveyed, then it is easy to turn an article around in a couple days. Within that event happening, you can be one of the first companies to talk to it.

This concept of what I’m discussing is called a news commentary, and it is a readily available content option within all customers interfaces. Customers can easily order such content on a timely basis, by selecting the News Commentary option.

News commentaries can utilize template sharing because once a format is locked in, they are easy to develop. For example, a news commentary format typically includes an overview of what the major event was, what the impact was, and then provide a direct link to whatever the major news source was that covered the event.

From there, the key talking points and additional insights are linked together in a homogeneous fashion by the customer’s writing team.

Digital Marketing Podcasts to Help Your Business Thrive

Posted on January 7, 2019September 3, 2023 by Michael Marchese

The podcast segment of media broadcasting exploded in 2017. Audience growth afforded podcasters a chance to get their share of over $220 million dollars in ad revenue and other client conversions.

American listenership grew by six million that year. That followed many listeners taking notice to the podcasts’ learning and entertainment opportunities.

There’s a space for digital marketing podcasts, too. As the industry changes shape, these fantastic podcasts keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest in content and digital marketing:

Marketing School – Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips by Neil Patel and Eric Siu.

Neil Patel has dominated the industry as digital marketing guru for a while. This short and snappy, yet informative podcast wastes no moment. Every word from Patel and fellow expert Eric Siu is a story with tips for entrepreneurs to apply immediately.

Con: The intro and outro music lacks the savor of the digital marketing podcast topics.

#FlipMyFunnel Podcast by Sangram Vajre

Sales funnels are at the foundation of great content. To emphasize that, Sangram Vajre delivers a wide assortment of sales and marketing material from some of the greatest in the business. Guests frequent the show to have real conversations that listeners view as informative a valuable.

Ask Gary Vee Show by Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary’s casual yet confident style and delivery sets his digital marketing podcast apart. Guests range from seasoned and new business owners of all ages and industries, including music artists. Social media and content creation strategies are on the topic list. Listeners beware! Audio podcast listeners cannot see the visuals that Gary uses often. His global audience also has trouble grasping examples referring to American activities.

Skill Up by HubSpot

Like the seasons change, so do the topics of Skill Up. Hosts Matt Howells-Barby and Jorie Munroe give their audience in-depth lessons on each segment of digital marketing. Skill Up podcasts are rather lengthy, so carve out 45 minutes to an hour in the morning, on a break or before bed.

Entrepreneurs on Fire by John Lee Dumas

The podcast carries the perfect name for a fiery host with an energetic spirit that will put some pep in your marketing step. JLD has interviewed some of the best known entrepreneurs and marketers such as Tim Ferris, Grant Cardone, Seth Godin and Tony Robbins. One of the biggest treats is how each episode closes with a new marketing tool suggestion. Expect to hear the same tone of voice on every episode and some of the same questions on every episode.

Get More Clients with Smarter Email Marketing by Brian Clark

We know by now that list building is the new prospecting. Once subscriptions overflow, you must make the right moves to convert sales and maintain a loyal following. Host Brian Clark of Unemployable goes through each component of email marketing from sequences and sales funnels to the actual email content and copy.

Social Media Marketing Podcast by Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner

In this podcast, listeners will hear from social media experts to share their strategies. Another topic of discussion will be businesses who are winning through incorporating social media the right way. You will leave each podcast with specific action steps in mind to improve your social media plan.

Online Marketing Made Easy by Amy Porterfield

Amy delivers a unique cocktail of marketing tips for online businesses. Her podcasts present details that many marketing experts charge top dollar for. Find snippets of marketing masterclasses, online business guides and advice to make your passion profitable.

Call to Action by Unbounce

If you enjoy hearing about other entrepreneurs’ victories, this is the podcast for you. Each week, guests share their marketing triumphs. You can then apply to those tips to find your own success. Digital marketing professionals also break down every aspect of the craft.

Duct Tape Marketing Podcast by John Jantsch

The podcast has an interesting name for an even more intriguing setup. John interviews some of the most impressionable authors and business professionals on their marketing strategies. A marketing expert himself, John shares valuable tools to help you understand and apply digital marketing.

Social Business Engine by Bernie Borges

Social media is an all-day job and only a portion of digital marketing, so using technology is a must to get it all done. Social media technology is the theme of this podcast. Borges sheds light on brands using modern tools and automation to enhance internal and external business operations.

Copyblogger FM by Sonia Simone

Conveying the right message in the right form is essential in digital marketing. Across all methods of content marketing, strong copy is the foundation to a successful business. Tune in to learn all things copy as Sonia Simone teams up with experts to discuss the different segments of copywriting.

The Mad Marketing Podcast by Marcus Sheridan

In these sessions, Sheridan pours his expertise into the audience. His mission is to get to the meat of marketing by answering questions to give a clear picture.

Content Convergence by Steve Rubel

With so much content and limitless options, you only have a few seconds to catch your audience’s attention. That’s what you will learn from the Content Convergence Podcast. Steve Rubel’s weekly podcasts feature marketers from across the globe to share their recipes for success.

The Tim Ferriss Show by Timothy Ferriss

Timothy Ferriss is a familiar name that pioneered the “work smarter, not harder” digital nomad movement. His best-selling book, “The Four-Hour Work Week,” mapped out what to do and how to do it, including the marketing aspect. Now his podcast continu
es to provide life hacks, including those in the content and digital marketing space.

Conclusion

Digital marketing podcasts prove it is one of the fastest growing sectors of business. Something that once seemed sketchy is an everyday activity for millions around the world. Listen in if you are looking to improve your sales, grow your business and keep up with the evolution of digital and content marketing.

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