We’ve helped a fair few other businesses to write and publish their business books with fantastic results, and now it’s our turn! As some of you will know, Sharon Tanton and I are delighted to be writing the Valuable Content Marketing book, published by Kogan Page in the autumn. We want to show as many businesses as we can how to market their businesses and get their message across in the right way today, so buyers come to them.

What’s it all about?

The secret to effective of marketing is simple: make yourself useful and share information that your buyers genuinely value, even look forward to. We want you to rethink your marketing:

Help, don’t sell; show, don’t tell; talk, don’t yell!

Our book tells you all you need to know to focus you marketing efforts on creating really valuable content – on and off the web – for fantastic business results. The book is on what is commonly called ‘content marketing’ – that’s the buzz phrase du jour. It’s about sharing information, or content over the Internet to engage potential buyers and delight your customers. But any old content won’t do – today only high quality content that people genuinely appreciate cuts through the noise.

If ‘content marketing’ is a bit jargony for you try this for size. Think of it as – helpful marketing, or VALUABLE marketing if you like. Our book is a clarion call for high quality, meaningful content that first and foremost helps your type of buyer, and will undoubtedly benefit you. Marketing with valuable content really works, as our clients will tell you. We can’t wait to give you the low down on how to do it well.

We’d love your help

Any good book is a collaboration and we’d love to collaborate with you. We’re looking for stories from all types of businesses about the results they’ve got from their content. If you’ve got a good content story you are willing to share – please get in touch.

Anyone who gets their story published in our book will get a mention in the acknowledgements….and a signed free copy of our book! We’ll also enter you into our Valuable Content Award nominations and you never know you might get a coveted Valuable Award badge for your site too.

>> Good content story? Contact Sonja: sonja@valuablecontent.co.uk

The trials and tribulations of writing a book

We have an inkling that there are others of you out there who might want to write a book one day, so in the spirit of being helpful we’re going to start writing a blog a month on what we’ve learned – so when you write your book you can do it better!

In next month’s newsletter we will address the ‘publish or self-publish?’ dilemma. This was a hard decision for us as there are pros and cons each way. We’ve opted to publish the traditional route with Kogan Page and in February’s post we’ll tell you why.

Related articles:

• Writing a book is a smart marketing move
• Does your business book idea have legs?
• Valuable advice on writing a business book from best selling author Charles H Green

We’ve given you the basics, now here’s an expert view on copywriting for search engines.  Louise Nelhams of Advanced Writing Solutions is a Twitter friend,  a lovely contact we’ve made in cyber space who really knows her SEO stuff.  Here are some advanced tips from Louise on writing valuable content that clients and search engines rate.

Valuable Content Meets SEO

A copywriter’s job is to create valuable, persuasive and engaging copy that will generate leads and hopefully convert to sales. However, with the Internet expanding at an alarming rate, and more and more businesses all fighting to be found in the search engines, it’s now absolutely vital to create your content with a view to SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation.

Learning SEO in-depth, in order to be able to implement every element within your copy, takes a lot of time and a lot of dedication. However, there are plenty of things that the average copywriter can do in order to make a website more accessible and give it a greater chance of being found by your target audience – and unless your client operates within a niche industry, this useful marketing tool can help you to rise above the competition and corner a good portion of your market.

Keyword research

The first and most important element of SEO is keyword research – while there are plenty of highly complex ways to identify the best keywords to use, the Google Adwords tool is a good enough starting point for the inexperienced. Look at search volumes and competition levels – however appropriate you may think a keyword or phrase is, if nobody is using it as a search term, then it’s simply not worth including. During your keyword research, it’s also a good idea to undertake some competitor analysis; look for your biggest competitors and take a look at the page source on their web pages. This will allow you to identify the keywords that they’re using in their meta data and help you to optimise your web content more effectively.

Once you work out the best keywords to use, you need to decide which pages to use them on. If you’ve got a fairly expansive collection of potential keywords, try and target one or two on each page. While you can use the same keyword across multiple pages, this duplication will ultimately lead to you being competition with yourself – although having several pages ranking on the same SERPs (search engine result pages) obviously can’t do any harm.

The clever crafting of keywords

Now that you’ve decided on the keywords you want to use on each of the website pages, you need to think about how you’re going to incorporate them into the copy for the best effects. Usual practice for a copywriter is to keep the content as succinct as possible – we tend to want to avoid wasted words. However, since the Google Panda update, it’s generally believed that every page needs a minimum of 400 words in order to be indexed properly by the search crawlers. This means lots of research and a good relationship with your client; you need to make sure that every page is original and offers something different to the other pages on the website.

H tags are an SEO copywriter’s best friend – ensure that you use your keywords in the main heading and subheadings where possible, because the search crawlers give a higher point ranking to keywords placed in these positions. It’s also important to create a good internal linking structure across the website – use your keywords as anchor text to lead the crawlers to other pages on the site, making sure that your anchor text is relevant to the page you’re linking to. This helps the search crawlers to navigate around the site with ease, which in turn helps them to index the overall site more effectively. It’s also worth bearing in mind that words in bold or italics are also given a higher precedence when a page is being indexed.

The SEO balancing act

Of course, the real trick is getting a good balance between readability and utilising as many SEO strategies as possible. Clunky copy that has been saturated with a high concentration of keywords will not only drive your visitors away, but could also see you being penalised by the search engines. If the keyword adds something to the text, leave it in; if it sounds forced or silly, take it out!

Many freelance copywriters find that they optimise web content to some degree without even realising it; knowing your client, understanding their service and using a little bit of common sense will often lead to appropriate keywords being used almost accidentally. However, it’s certainly worth bearing the above rules in mind if you want to focus your content and get the very best results.

You might like this too:

• The Valuable Guide to SEO and Content
• How to write content so that search engines will find you, and people will like you

Find out more on Louise’s website - Advanced Writing Solutions

What you really need to know about SEO (and nothing more)

Search Engine Optimisation is crucial if you want a consistent stream of leads from the web, but the jargon around it makes me glaze over. Luckily it’s not half as complex and technical as the terminology makes out. In this valuable guide I’ve ditched the jargon in an attempt to demystify SEO for you once and for all. Use these simple tips to get your content found by people searching online.

Why Search Engine Optimisation is so important

There are various ways to get people to your website: you can tell them about it, giving them a link to your URL; you can entice them there by sharing links to useful articles on social media sites; you can share links back to your site in your email newsletters; you can write a blog so valuable that people willingly refer it to their contacts.

Do all this and you will get visitors to your website. If your content is good enough when they get there you’ll build their trust, generate a lead and ultimately win their business. But if you want to maximise your investment in valuable content it’s vital to think about search engines too.

With 77% of all UK adults using the Internet to search for information on products and services, Google has become an indispensible part of modern life. As a business, harnessing the huge opportunity that search engines provide is crucial for making your online presence as effective as it can be.

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO as it is known, is a tool any business can use to ensure their content is as visible as possible to those searching for answers on the web. By getting to the first page of Google’s search results people will be able to find you more easily.

Google loves valuable content

Google loves valuable content. Creating high quality content for your site is by far the most important thing you can do when it comes to SEO. Adrian Knight of Digital Investments UK (resident SEO expert here at Spike Design) explains:

“Google’s mission is to serve the highest quality and relevant material to its searches. Help them to do this by producing high quality, valuable content created with the user in mind, and you will do well.”

Like the rest of us, Google hates spam. Thankfully it is getting far better at distinguishing and ranking sites with genuinely valuable content from those who try and manipulate search results with techniques such as keyword stuffing or bogus link building.

“Google is trying to make it so you don’t have to do SEO,” says Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team. But we’re not quite there yet. Google still needs a bit of spoon-feeding so it understands your content, indexes it appropriately, ranks it and serves your content over your competitors’ to those searching on the web. Here’s what you need to focus on.

Top 5 ways to optimise your content for search

1. Use keywords you care about. With a little research, you can gain a clear view of the words and phrases people most often use when thinking about and searching for your topic online. You can learn how to speak their language, allowing you to create content to satisfy their needs, which is exactly what search engines are looking for.

To generate relevant keywords first talk directly to your customers and find out why they come to you. Then use Google’s free keyword research tool. This allows you to observe the keywords and phrases that people have actually used to find information online in the past.

“Keyword research is cool – it allows you to gaze into your customers’ minds.”

By carefully targeting your keywords you are more likely to answer the search query effectively or ‘own’ the search, allowing you to get to the top of that search results page. Don’t be too scattergun – keep to within 5-20 keywords for your site.

2. Label your content for search engines. We mentioned that Google needs a bit of spoon-feeding. To feed it correctly you need to set your ‘metadata’ right (<- there’s one of those off putting technical terms we mentioned at the start!). Think of metadata as data about your data, or information about your content. It just means acting like a good librarian and labeling your content correctly so search engines can find you easily. Include your chosen keywords – this is a way of saying to the search engines, ‘Hey! Look at me! This page is relevant!’

• Page titles. Use your keywords in your page title. This is the blue link that appears on the Google search page. Keep it short – up to 72 characters will be visible.  Convince the searcher your content is relevant.
• Meta Descriptions. <165 character summary of your page or article using key search terms. This is what appears on Google’s search results and it needs to be informative, relevant, interesting and succinct.
• Headings. Important for the reader scanning your article or page, and for Google too. Use them to show what the page is all about.
• Images. Google can’t read an image so help it by labeling the images you use.

[NB: If you have a blog or a website with a content management system, ask your developer to set it up so you can set the metadata yourself for each new page or article.]

3. Link intelligently in and out your site. When the search engine ‘spiders’ enter your site, you want them to stay there as long as possible so that they can find all the wonderful content that you have in there. To do this, it is important to ensure that you don’t have any dead ends – there should always be links to other pages within your site, particularly those which hold related information. The more links there are to a page, the more the search engines will think it is important.

[NB: Optimise your links by using your keywords within the link text - this is called anchor text since it anchors your web page to the keyword.]

It is also important to link out to other relevant websites. If you write an article that draws information from and links to a host of other relevant sites, the search engines consider that you’re an expert on this subject and will place more importance on your website.

4. Update your site regularly with fresh content. The search engine ‘spiders’ that crawl around the web looking for information do keep a check on your website – they return periodically to see if you’ve modified or added anything. Google, like us, isn’t so keen on stale content – by giving it some ‘fresh meat’ every so often, by adding to your blog for example.

5. Share your content. This point cannot be stressed enough. I want you to fall in love with social media and share your content all over the place! Provided your content is of high quality, the more you share, the more you will gain link backs from other sites.

The rise of blogging and social media has revolutionised how search engines rank websites. A huge 85% of the total factors that influence search engine rankings is dependent on what happens outside of your site (according to Copyblogger’s recent SEO copywriting article).

What other people have to say about your content is more valuable than what you say about yourself. Modern SEO is all about creating content so valuable and compelling that other people naturally want to promote it, to share it, like it and tweet about it. The more that other people link to your site, the more of an authority Google will consider you to be on the subject, doing great things for your ranking.

“Try to make a site that is so fantastic you become an authority in your niche.” Matt Cutts, head of Google webspam team.

Search Engine Optimisation is massively important for anyone creating valuable content. It will help you to make the most of your investment – to get your content found. If, like me, you were originally put off by the jargon surrounding SEO, I hope this has given you some clarity and gets all that great content found by those searching on the web.

Related articles:

• How to write content so that search engines will find you and people will like you
• SEO copywriting – taking it to the next level

Many thanks to Adrian Knight and Claire Rosling here at Spike Island for their help with this article.

The rush to make the most of search engine optimisation has led to a plethora of crummy websites, and a few good jokes.

Have you heard the one about the SEO expert who walks into the bar, public house, pubs, bars, public houses, Irish pub, liquor house, drinks, beer, ale, wine, wines………?

Stuffing your web copy with keywords might fool a search engine into ranking you highly (although Google has wised up and won’t rate you if you look like a keyword stuffing spammer), but it won’t make a reader stick around for long.

No one likes copy that doesn’t make sense. Writing becomes meaningless when it’s overloaded with phrases that add nothing to the flow of an argument, so squeezing in as many keywords as possible won’t win you any friends.  The key to pleasing search engines and people is to create well targeted valuable content, written in a natural and engaging tone of voice.

1. Start with people, not Google

A keyword search can help you plan your article, but your first point of reference should always be your clients and customers, as your aim is to create content that’s genuinely useful to them.  Google can help you do this, by showing you the terms that people are searching for in the wider world – throwing up some related search terms that you hadn’t thought of, maybe offering a sideways route into your subject that you didn’t initially think of – but it can’t replace the real people that you deal with, and that you build your business around.

2. Keep your article focused on the issue

You’ve defined the problem that your clients want help with, and you’ve checked with Google that there’s an interested wider market searching for material on your subject, so write that article succinctly. Both readers and SEO bots like content that sticks to the point. You don’t need to hammer home all the keyword search terms, but do use them as a framework for whatever it is you’re writing. Use your keyword research to keep you on a tight rein. Don’t wander off!

3. Be natural

Write as if you were talking to someone sitting next to you. When it comes to putting pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, write for a real person. Keep the real person in mind, not an SEO bot. Your SEO keyword research has framed your thinking and planning, but it shouldn’t influence the phrases you use, or the tone of voice you adopt. If you’re writing helpful content that answers a genuine need, it will please everyone.

4. Use your keyword in the title

Headlines need to grab attention, they have to cut through an awful lot of chatter on Twitter and all the other places you’ll be publicising your blog. Make it easy for people to find you by crafting the search term they’ll be using into your title. For example, if you were writing about the benefits of reclaimed flooring, say so upfront. SEO bots search for relevant titles, so your article will be found and ranked if it’s called – ‘How reclaimed flooring cuts renovation costs’ – but not if it’s called ‘Flooring it – a guide to cost cutting.’ If you keep the title short, you can give yourself room to add some funny/punny words around it to give it a lift on social networking sites, but make it easy for people to see exactly how relevant it is to their query by giving it a clear title upfront. Don’t be too clever.

5. Use keywords in sub headings

Web readers skim read, so guide them through your writing with sub headings to keep them on track, and show them what’s coming up next. Tying the headings to keywords helps Google see that your article is relevant, in the same way that it reassures readers that your article is targeting the promised issue.

6. Keep producing relevant helpful content

One well written, targeted and engaging article is great for customers and your website’s ranking.  Ten is good, a hundred is even better. Adding more and more pages of genuinely useful content will make your site more attractive to your customers, and it will help your site get found by more people. The thing that will help search engines find you, and will make people like you, is quality content that serves a real purpose. Both Google, and your customer, want you to help them. At heart, it’s as simple as that.

As Adrian Knight of Digital Investments (resident SEO expert here at Spike Island) says:

“Google’s mission is to serve the highest quality and relevant material to its searches. Help them to do this by producing high quality, valuable content created with the user in mind, and you will do well.”

Related posts:

• Business writing: 6 ways to get your business voice right
• Writing for websites

If you want your website to be valuable to your customers and generate a consistent stream of good leads for your business what do you need to focus on? Here are the eight most important elements you’ll need to address with your content and web design if you want your website to fulfil its potential.

1. Focus on your target reader first

If you want to create a website that genuinely works for your business, put the customer first. This means defining exactly who the website is for, building a deep understanding of what their needs are and designing the site and its content around those needs. Just describing your company, what you do, the services you deliver is not enough. You will miss the mark with your customers and miss an important trick with your marketing if you do this. Remember: your website is not for you, it’s for your customers.

2. Content matters

Some mistakenly see a website’s content purely as filler. Bung a few words down to replace all that Lorem Ipsum your designer first put in. Nobody reads it anyway do they? But the content is vital: your words ARE your message. That’s how you communicate your value and get your point across. Don’t begin the design process until you have the content. So think content first, then get the web designers in.

3. Valuable content matters most of all

We see many sites without a shred of valuable content, and some with the right type of content but it’s virtually hidden from sight. Both are missing a trick. Remember: valuable content is what your buyers seek so make your content USEFUL. Think library, not brochure with useful articles, video, slideshows. Fill those shelves over time.

“If your website isn’t getting traffic it’s because your content isn’t important or useful enough. It’s that simple. You’re not raising the bar, helping people, entertaining them, changing lives, and inspiring your readers to take some form of action. If you were, your audience would grow. Trust me.”  Mars Dorian, creative entrepreneur.

4. Good design is essential

Investing in professional design is crucial if you want to give a professional image, entice people to stay on the site, read what you have to say and find the information they want to find, fast. Skimp on good design at your peril. There’s nothing more off putting than a badly designed or confusingly laid out site with content that is hard to read.

5. Make your website simple to navigate

Make it simple for your visitors to find the information they want, fast or they’ll quickly get frustrated and click away. Can they get from A to B? Pay attention to the site’s ‘information architecture’, and make sure it’s structured around your visitors’ different needs. This takes thought and planning. Remember to follow conventions – don’t try and reinvent the wheel.

6. Your content must be scannable

Write it, design it for the busy reader. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen when asked how users read on the web, replied simply: “They don’t.”

“People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.” Jakob Nielsen’s Alerttbox, Oct 1 1997

New visitors will make fast judgements about your site. They will scan first and read only if they can see that it is relevant. If you want to connect with them, get to the point fast. Summarise, use numbered or bulleted lists, highlight key words or phrases, use sub-headings to guide them through the page. And slash that word count. Even more important now we’re reading web content on mobile devices.

6. Learn to label for search engines

Search engine algorithms are getting better and better but if you don’t label your information properly then they will struggle to index your stuff. If you’re going to get the most from your investment in great content, learn how to index it properly so that the Googlebots can can find it. That is, in a nutshell, what search engine optimisation is all about – no black art – in essence it’s about good labelling. Make like a good librarian and index your stuff appropriately.

7. Make your website sticky

The longer your visitors stays on the site, the higher their level of engagement and the more chance you have of starting to build that relationship, get them to sign up, contact you, buy your stuff. So you have to make your website ‘sticky’. Fill it full of information they genuinely value. Link and direct them to related content: “If you like this, you might also be interested in this.” And give them an opportunity to come back: invite them to join your mailing list and, if you continue to deliver them value, you’ll motivate them to come back to your site to learn more.

8. Clear calls to action

We don’t mean just putting your contact details on the Contact Us page. We mean having clear signposts to action across the site – telling your visitor what you want them to DO if they like what they find. So many sites miss out on this. Retailers tend to be better at it – ADD TO BASKET, BUY NOW. For service firms – the purpose of the site is to engage your visitors, to build the relationship, not always to elicit an immediate purchase. The action you want is for visitors to either get in contact with you or give you permission to stay in touch (sign up to your mailing list). Give clear calls to action and spell out the next step you want the reader to take. Make it easy for them.

Build your website around these eight elements and you’ll reap the rewards in terms of visitors, leads and sales in 2012.

Related articles:

• How to create a lead generating, high performance website
• Pack your website full of value

Jim O’Connor is one of the most talented copywriters I know. He has been writing copy for about 20 years and only came across the concept of writing “content” relatively recently.  At first he hated the whole idea – he felt it went against the grain of everything he believed about the craft of concise copywriting.

Twelve months later with a successful blog Jim’s feelings are totally reversed. He now realises that, when content is truly valuable and well presented, it’s a really smart way for a business or individual to build their reputation. So, what brought about his conversion? Here’s Jim’s story.

Less has always been more

“Studying for a degree in English Literature gave me the opportunity to compare and contrast different writing styles.  I soon developed an admiration for those who could say the most in the fewest words.  For instance, “To be or not to be” (the ultimate choice, summed up in 6 words, only one of which has more than two letters), penned by a man who, in the same play, has one of his characters declare that “brevity is the soul of wit”.  A near contemporary of his described his career limiting (to use the modern jargon) marriage in the single line “John Donne, Anne Donne, undone”.

When I started in advertising I discovered that great copywriters have the same ability, believing that “less is more”.  That’s partly because the medium was “paid for” (press ad, poster tv/radio commercial).  You had to fit your communication into a small space or time slot, like it or not.  Moreover, you had to grab attention, and the simpler you made your communication the more likely it was to go in, and stick.  I worked at Saatchi & Saatchi, where they demanded “brutal simplicity of thought”.

The process of writing copy, to my mind, is one of distillation – you boil off everything that is superfluous until you create a highly refined and flammable spirit.  This is then ignited in the heart and mind of the reader/viewer by further compression and the spark of an idea (rather like the ignition achieved in an internal combustion engine – described more fully in my post “Great copy- can you torque it?”).

Why content and copy are chalk and cheese

Writing for the web, as digital writers delight in telling us, is different.  They’re right – and the difference is that the process is often less demanding!

1. With content the writing doesn’t have to be quite so tight.  You still have to keep it concise, but because the email, or website, or post, is not in a “paid for” medium like press or TV, you have a little leeway.  You can scroll off the bottom of the screen, add more pages, or write a follow up post, without having to find another £5,000, £50,000 or £100,000 to pay for larger spaces or longer commercials.
2. With digital writing it’s often the case that more is more.  That’s because it’s partially written for search engines.  So more keywords per page is good.  More posts is good.  More pages every month is good.  More news items is good.  So there’s less of an imperative for brevity.
3. If more is more, quantity can become more prized than quality – because google doesn’t read, it just runs algorithms.
4. Once quantity is valued more highly than quality, “the words” become a standardised commodity that has a set market price.  Hence the term “content” – words are viewed as “filler”.  That’s the attitude of most web designers.  They create the pages then ask the client or writer to “fill it up” – rather like pulling up at the petrol pump.
5. Finally, now that words have been devalued to this extent, the only criteria for selecting a supplier is how quickly and cheaply they can deliver.

McMarketing

This hunger for content, the quantity rather than quality mentality, and the fact that you can find people desperate enough to do the job for the minimum wage has a profound effect.  It has created a situation where “content” is often served up swiftly and cheaply by unskilled operatives who cut and paste pre-prepared material scavenged from other sites.  The process is as swift and unskilled as assembling a happy meal, and the resulting food for thought is about as appetising, nutritious and satisfying.

Junk content vs valuable content

This is the way I felt about content and copy when I met Sonja Jefferson. She, like a few other marketing people I respected, was passionate about the opportunities offered by content and social media.  Because these individuals were obviously very experienced, and certainly didn’t write rubbish, I listened.

Top 3 reasons why people go online – to get information, to be entertained, to socialise – not to be sold to

They showed me research which indicated that the top three reasons people go online is to get information, to be entertained, and to socialise with others.  The one thing they didn’t want online was people giving them a hard sell – even when they were shopping.  So the smart way to use social media is to create a stream of content that satisfies one or more of those needs, whilst keeping it nice and chatty.  Do that and you get people coming to your site on a regular basis.

The key difference between this type of content, and that which I’ve likened to mental junk food, is this.  Instead of being written for search engines it provides something that people find useful and enjoyable.  This, to use Sonja’s term, is quality content, or valuable content – clearly defined by her and other experts in this excellent post – What makes quality content?

A priceless new medium (it’s worth a fortune, but it’s free!)

As I began to experiment with creating and sharing valuable content it became apparent that it’s not just valuable for the reader – it’s also immensely valuable to the company providing it.  Not just because it creates traffic and loyal readers who either spread the word or become customers (often it’s both).  But because it gives that company a way to share its knowledge and experience in a manner that just doesn’t work in sales copy.  They become a trusted go-to expert in their field and build long term relationships with people they would otherwise never have been able to reach through traditional media.  How valuable is that?  It’s priceless.

Do it.  Now

So, I’m a convert.  Writing content that has value for people is something I find immensely satisfying – not least because it’s attracting a string of new clients who now appreciate just how I can help them.  It’s easy to be sceptical (I know, I was).  But try it for a few months and you’ll be amazed at the results.”

Thanks Jim. I’m delighted, but not surprised that your investment in creating valuable content is getting you such great results your articles are first class. Do have a read of Jim’s blog here: thought-provoking, educational and really funny – Jim O’Connor’s Stories That Sell Blog. And congratulations on your Valuable Content Award too Jim!

Relevant articles:

• More from Jim’s on the copy vs content debate: Are the words on your website just dancing around their handbags?
• Jim’s post here on Emotion, not logic will get your message across
• What makes quality content?

If your New Year’s resolution is to blog more for your business, then we congratulate you. Creating a steady stream of valuable content really is the best way to carve out your niche and get your message out to the right people.

Once you’ve got into the swing of writing, you’ll come to recognise the euphoria that accompanies the finishing of a great blog article. There will be five minutes when what you’ve just written is the most important thing that’s ever been written in the entire world on that subject. There’s not a moment to waste – you have to share it now, this very second, your life and the sanity of the world depends upon it!

There’s also a drive to be finished with it. Ticking it off your things-to-do list would make you feel better, so you’re itching to upload.

The very best thing to do now is not to press send, but to save the document, close it, and go back and look at again tomorrow with clearer, more cynical eyes.

Just a few hours distance should make you better able to check the piece for the following common mistakes.

5 things to check before you press publish

1. Is your article on target? It felt like it was at the time, but writing can be deceptive sometimes. Ask yourself, is the content genuinely useful for your clients?  It might be that some simple tweaking is all that’s needed to pull it back in line, or it might be that you need to put it on hold for longer. Great ideas are never wasted, but they do need the right format to fly. Don’t be scared of pulling something if you know it’s not right.
2. Have you missed any words out? Easily done when the prose is flying. Check your copy slowly and carefully to make sure it makes sense.
3. Have you repeated words? Again, it’s a common mistake when you’re writing fast. Check again.
4. Is it spelt right? Is it the right word? Spell check picks up most errors – but it won’t pick up mis-substituted words. Don’t let something go out until it makes perfect sense.
5. Is the grammar correct? Developing a natural and engaging tone of voice doesn’t mean you can stop writing proper, like. Inaccurate grammar stops readers in their tracks, and it makes your writing hard to understand. If you’re not sure, ask someone else to check too. Even if you are sure, a second pair of eyes is a never a bad idea.

So, do keep writing, but make sure you build a window of editing and reflection time into your blogging schedule. And Happy New Year!

Related articles:

• How to write a good enough article
• 5 reasons not to blog
• Valuable content will help you sell

December is the perfect month for planning your approach for the following year. Chris Brogan calls it ‘the power month‘ – and I like that. For all us hard-working business owners it’s our secret slowdown: somewhere between December and January we carve ourselves just a little bit of head space to look forward and think back; a good time for letting those creative ideas fly.

If marketing is one of the things you want to improve next year, here are a few ideas to add to December’s thinking pot:

1. Start blogging in earnest – write articles regularly that help your customers do business better and you’ll be amazed at the results – wider awareness, increased trust, easier referrals, more sales.
2. Keep in touch by email. Don’t forget your current contacts in 2012 – if you want to make your life easier, devote time and attention to keeping in touch with those that know you. Communicate with them regularly in ways they appreciate and find useful and they’ll reward you with referrals and new business when the time is right.
3. Produce something really valuable. Take it further in 2012. Produce a piece of high quality stock content with a shelf life – the really strong, valuable stuff – a useful downloadable guide, ebook, whitepaper, research or king of them all – a book. Up the value for greater return.
4. Stop flirting with social media and get stuck in. It’s no longer on the fringes, it’s how many of your customers and clients research, connect and communicate today. Get involved!
5. Make your website a resource, not a brochure. Turn it into a valuable resource for your clients, not just a promotional tool for you. Stop shouting, start helping: put your clients first.

At the heart of each of these ideas is valuable content. Make your marketing all about creating and sharing information that is genuinely valuable to your particular buyers and watch your business grow.

We wish you the best of luck for 2012.

Related articles:

• Five solid reasons to start a business blog
• Use your Christmas cards to change your marketing forever
• RT, @, #, DM? Twenty Top Twitter Tips

The Valuable Content Awards launched just over a year ago and we’ve uncovered some real content heroes in that time. To win an award your website needs to be packed with helpful, authentic content, written with passion, presented with the user in mind. We only verify content that is genuinely useful to web users: content that gets business results.

This month and for the first time we’re handing out a golden Valuable Content Award to the business whose content we feel is the most valuable of them all. And our award for 2011 goes to consultant Mel Lester and his company The Business Edge.

Mel won our first ever Valuable Content award back in October 2009 and for good reason. As he clearly states on the home page of his website, in terms of value he sets his sights pretty high:

“Mel Lester (aka The Business Edge) is pleased to offer this website as a valuable source of “how-to-get-things-done” information and tools. I set out with an ambitious goal: to create the best internet resource for helping managers of architectural, engineering, and environmental consulting firms succeed, both corporately and personally.”

With his website, blog articles, seriously valuable newsletter and veritable library of free resources (check out his ‘Consultant’s Toolbox‘) we think he delivers, and it’s getting him remarkable business results. Well done Mel! Gold Valuable Content award badge on its way.

Mel Lester’s minimalist marketing approach

Mel is a Practice Management Consultant in Virginia, US. He’s a one man band firmly focused on helping businesses in the Architecture and Engineering field to get things done. Mel is a busy guy, constantly in demand in his industry, with not a lot of time on his hands. He has to make sure he only invests in marketing actions that get him the best results.

Marketing for Mel is all about putting great content out there; making yourself useful; serving your clients, whether it’s in marketing or delivery. Here’s what Mel has to say about his marketing approach.

“One of the biggest challenges for a one-man firm is finding time to develop new business. Come to think of it, that’s the same challenge many of my clients face, even though they may have large staffs. When we’re busy, there’s little time to do anything but serve our clients. There’s also the problem of timing: prospective clients don’t have a constant need for our services, so our sales calls often don’t coincide with when the client has an imminent need.

That’s why marketing is so important. It’s not just about building your brand or increasing name recognition. It’s about being in front of clients—at least in a virtual sense—when the need arises. The one marketing metric that matters most to me is how often prospective clients call in response to my marketing.

“Content marketing is the most effective approach to generating new business.”

But not just any marketing inspires people to contact you. Client respond to content of value, content that helps them better diagnose and solve pressing problems. Several studies confirm that content marketing is the most effective approach in helping generate new business. So why aren’t more professional service firms producing such content?

My clients complain that they don’t have the time and resources to produce it. But I manage to get good traction with my “minimalist marketer” approach (about 70% of my new clients come through marketing). This includes:

• Write one blog post a week
• Market blog postings to multiple publishers looking for content
• Occasionally draw from blog postings to create articles for magazines, journals, etc.
• Search the internet for other people’s good content (usually as part of a paid consulting assignment!)
• Use select Twitter contributors to help keep me supplied with good content
• Draw from all of the above to produce a monthly ezine (newsletter)
• Speak at conferences when I can (invite people to join my mailing list)
• Promote content via Twitter and Facebook
• Share the best material on my content-rich website

All that takes less time than most would imagine, maybe 3-5 hours per week. Besides marketing, I use this content to provide additional insights to current clients, keep in touch with prospective or past clients, and follow up with participants in my training workshops.

If you don’t much time to market, the important thing is to do the few things that work best.”

Congratulations again on all the great content Mel! A worthy gold award winner for 2011 as I’m sure you’ll agree, and hopefully an inspiration to others to get marketing and do the right stuff.

A guest post by David Tovey of Principled Selling.

The advert above first appeared in Business Week in 1958 – yes that’s right over 50 years ago! The moral of the ad’s story was relevant then and it is even more relevant today: build relationships before you sell. The bad news is that we live in far more cynical times than the sellers of the 1950’s; the good news is that we have so many more tools available to help us to address the problem.

We’re trying to sell to a cynical world

The problem? Never before has anyone trying to sell something faced with such a high level of mistrust – just because they are selling. Every day throughout the world there are more and more stories about the general environment of lack of trust. This is the real world that anyone trying to win business lives in – you and me. I’m not sure they were ever really effective but you can be sure the ‘old’ world of using sales ‘techniques’ is well and truly over.

Some will blame buyers; some will think the problem is stupid customers who don’t ‘get’ the benefits of what is being offered to them, some will blame price. The successful will recognise there is a new world out there where only a smart, genuine, trust building and principled business approach gets results. It’s about bringing that 1958 mind-set up to date using modern tools. It’s time to stop thinking about ‘selling’ things and start thinking about building a trusted relationship with target prospects. When we do that a weird thing happens – we actually win more business!

Build a reputation BEFORE face to face meetings

Good marketing builds relationships. All our marketing effort should be focused on building relationships with the type of customers who will build our dream customer base of the future. First, identify who we want to do business with, then start to build a relationship with them using the valuable content approach.

Cold calling senior decision makers (or any buyer), is a high risk strategy. Decision makers are time poor; they only have time to talk to or meet people who will help them address the critical success factors in their business. The key is to build a relationship with them BEFORE the call.

How?

1. Show you are a player in their world. You’ll need social media strategies in place in to address you target audience and of course a brilliant web site that visitors want to return to time and time again. If appropriate in your sector you may have some ‘corporate’ marketing in place that advertises your brand (as McGraw Hill stated). Decision makers want to know you are a ‘player’ in their world and make quick judgments based on what they see and read.
2. Build relevant content that will interest them. Being a ‘player’ isn’t enough though. You will need to engage with your audience by sharing great content with them. In everything you do make sure that you are thinking like a client and only sharing content that will interest them – which is generally not what happens in the typical sales brochure which tends to talk about the supplier rather than the customer.
3. A valuable content marketing campaign, just for them. If you want to meet with a specific senior executive you can build a valuable content marketing campaign just for them. It might be based on two or three tailored letters sent over several weeks with a different interesting and useful article attached. They are highly effective in getting meetings with key people and in helping to build a trusted relationship. When the prospect we are about to meet feels there is already a relationship based on your marketing activities they are motivated to meet us. They want to spend time with us to explore opportunities to do business with each other.

Whatever marketing tool used the key is to build that relationship so that no potential customer starts a meeting with the attitude of the man in that advert!

By David Tovey, firm believer in Principled Selling