If content is king, then context is queen. With all forms of content, it has to be relevant to its intended
target audience if it’s going to be viewed, engaged with and add value to the brand experience. For
content to be relevant it has to help the prospect or customer with a problem and/or task at a specific
point in their research and purchasing journey or conversion funnel.

Before creating your content strategy you must review all your target audiences, the point that they will
be involved in the purchasing process (researching, reviewing, short listing, evaluation, etc) and their
specific issues and needs at each stage of the process. This will help you identify the different wants and
needs of the various stakeholders in the DMU (decision making unit), enabling you to plot out the types
of content that will be relevant to your audiences at each stage. At this stage you should also identify
content that already exists within the organisation (brochures, case studies, datasheets, etc) that can be
repurposed and the gaps where content needs to be produced.

As you define your audiences you should determine the types and formats of content that are going to
be the most relevant to each of them. For example, if you’re trying to communicate a technical issue,
an animated video might be a more effective at delivering the message clearly and concisely than a
whitepaper. For audiences that are on the move, a downloadable audio podcast might be more useful
than printed content. Content format is not only important from a relevancy point of view but also
from a distribution perspective in terms of the social channels, where the content will finally reside.

While evaluating your different target audiences you also need to identify the touch-points that they will
be using at each stage to source and receive information as this will help define the distribution strategy
for your content and any barriers (connectivity, browsers, etc) to access that need to be addressed.

Never underestimate the power of the blog

By now, you know how important it is to have a blog, right? Whatever business you’re in, blogging is a must. It helps you and your business in so many ways. Blogging can bring more traffic to your site, help to establish your expertise, add compelling content to an otherwise stagnant website, help you build a community of loyal followers, and much more.

Blogs are now more powerful and more popular than ever. Which means your target market probably has several big bloggers in it already. The competition for most good keywords is fierce so you need some kind of trick or strategy to get your blog to the top and noticed before your competitors.

Here are the Atkins Biz blogging tips to get you noticed in just 30 days:

1. Hit Social Media Hard – This might fall under the category of “duh” but social media is an excellent tool for driving traffic to your blog. Using Twitter and Facebook, as well as LinkedIn, YouTube, and others, depending on your focus, can help you build and strengthen a community around your blog and your brand. Of course the trick is to do it right. Without going into thousands of words on how to “do it right,” for now, just remember that people want value. That means posting interesting, compelling, and/or entertaining information on a consistent basis. You’re going to tell your connections and followers about your blog on social media, but that’s not all you should talk about, or it will not work.

2. Get Involved in Forums – One outstanding way to connect with others who have the same interests as you is to participate in online forums. When you become active on a forum, like the one here on YoungEntrepreneur.com, people who might not have otherwise seen or heard of your site will notice you. Just like social media, though, you’ve got to do it right. Rather than promoting your own stuff, help people out, answer questions, ask questions, and truly participate. This will raise your credibility and get people wondering who you are and what you do.

3. Make it Easy to Share – Your blog readers shouldn’t have to search around for a re-tweet or Facebook ‘like’ button on your posts. In fact, they won’t. If it’s not easy for them to share your blog content, they just won’t share it. So make sure every post has an easy method for your readers to send it out to their social media and email connections. You can bet that any post that’s ever gone viral has had this element.

4. Give to Receive – Much like you need to do for social media and forum marketing, it’s a good idea to visit other blogs and provide value in their comments sections. Comment marketing is a topic all in itself, because there are so many advantages to commenting on other blogs. For instance; you might build a relationship with the writer of the blog; you’ll build credibility with their audience – if you’re taking the time to provide value, not just “cool post”; and you’ll give people a reason to check out your own site – again, if your comments are good.

There are other techniques and factors involved in increasing your blog traffic, such as SEO, SEM, site design, and of course, content. But the above actions can be completed in a short amount of time each day and can make a big difference in the amount of traffic you pull in. Do them consistently, and you’re likely to start seen results in 30 days or less.

Or, if you know you need a blog but are too busy to a) write on it or b) promote it – we can help. Visit our social media marketing page for more details. We already ghost write and are the outsourcing provider for several Hastings based businesses.

We all know how annoying it is when your broadband grinds to a halt and we either need to go and have a walk for a bit or sit staring at our browsers. Well, imagine if we just didn’t have broadband?!

It’s amazing to think that some areas of the UK just don’t have broadband yet. Small businesses in rural areas are suffering due to either slow dial-up Internet connections, or a complete lack of one. This means some businesses aren’t being created or are completely unable to expand in their areas - without the Internet.

There’s some great news though!

The government has announced that £530m is to be invested across the UK, with Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt indicating that £294.8m would go to English counties, £68.8m and to Scotland.

In England county councils and local enterprise partnerships are tasked with leading widespread broadband roll-out. The Government funding will be available to those showing realistic delivery plans and the ability to match government investment by way of European grants or other source funds.

So then, let’s hope our locally elected representatives can get to grips with this need and get something sorted. Especially for those of us in Hastings!

Oh yes, before we forget. East Sussex, Brighton and Hove have been allocated £10,640,000 in investment. Will our councils match it?

Despite how big Facebook or Twitter may get, your company website is still essential

On more than one occasion I have come across blog posts, or “marketers” claiming that businesses should just do away with their company sites and turn their social networking profiles into final destination of all their inbound marketing efforts.

So what’s our point of view on this? Don’t do it.

While social media may be at the core of how we connect, communicate and grow online, a social profile cannot replace the value of a well optimized website. Your website has to remain the central hub of your inbound marketing.

Social media marketing is a powerful and useful tool when handled appropriately. It allows you to connect with your customers on a personal level and stay connected with them throughout their day. Now people have smart-phones your target audience is almost always online, no matter where they are or what they are doing.

Social media marketing is not the magic bullet to your online marketing needs.

Think of your Internet marketing like a bike wheel. Each of the spokes represents a different online marketing tactic: blog posts, Twitter, Facebook, inbound marketing etc. All of those things connect back to your main website, the hub of your wheel. You can’t afford to be missing any of the spokes, because it weakens the effectiveness of your wheel. But you can’t even build the wheel without a strong and constant center to hold everything together.

The spokes of your wheel can be replaced at anytime (measuring and testing).

Social media isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but there are also no guarantees that it will stick around forever or remain as powerful as it is today. That’s why you have to diversify your inbound marketing efforts so as to not rely on one source of traffic. If Facebook where to disappear tomorrow for some reason, what would you be left with? Would you still have a strong online presence or would you fall of the face of the Internet?

Note: The same argument could be made for your website if Google were to shut down, hence the need for diversity.

Businesses should never favor one inbound marketing tactic (social media, SEO and content marketing) over another. The most successful websites are the ones that develop and integrated approach.

Remember, your website has to be the thing that pulls all your inbound marketing together.

Simply put, a linkback is a link from another website to yours. Why do you need them? Well, not only does it widen your possible net (by pushing your website link here and there), if the website that’s linking to you is reputable it can also help with your Google ranking.

5 Simple Ways To Get Linkbacks

Link Directories *
There are number of free link directories on the web, the most popular one is dmoz.org. The problem is, once you submit your link, it can take ages for the link to show up on the directory. You should still give it a shot because a link back from dmoz.org is priceless. Most link directory owners approve your links within few days and there are growing number of directories out there.

Comment Posting
Posting comments on articles and other blogs is beneficial in two ways, it creates communication between you and other commentators and it allows you to linkback to your blog. You should try to comment as much as you can but also make sure you are not bombarding senseless words.

Forum Signatures

Forums allow you to have a personalized signature, use that signature to your advantage but linking back to your website. You might think your blog is unrelated to the forum so why bother but you are wrong. A linkback is a linkback is a linkback.

Guest Post

This is my favorite way to build up linkbacks, guest posting on other blogs. This is beneficial for both the blog owner and the blog writer because one gets free content and the other one gets free promotion and a permanent linkback.

I just told you about the five simple ways to get linkbacks for your blog. Try to follow the above mentioned guidelines and maybe one day you will thank me.

*We have just joined the UK Web Designers – Directory of Web Design Companies in the UK | Web Designers – Directory of UK website designers.

Quick Tip

While trade shows, media coverage and the rest might be important, nothing beats customer interaction. If you’re using social media and your customers are too, make sure you’re doing it right. Just blasting out information with no interaction is useless. Nothing will build loyalty quite like someone feeling like they’re talking to a real person.

Monitor for mentions of your name using every tool you can. Be that through Google alerts, a social media dashboard or something as simple as a Twitter search. When conversations are going on, walk up (virtually) and introduce yourself. We’re in an age where people don’t always buy products, they buy a feeling. Make sure you’re there to give it to them.

Do some homework, find out what people think about you and then make sure that you’re marketing yourself to that topic, and market where your customers are hanging out.

Anything else is going to border on a waste of effort.

Certification Awarded by HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing University Training Program

Hastings – 26th July – The Inbound Marketing University awards the Inbound Marketing Certification to Liam Atkins of The Atkins Biz Network, as part of its comprehensive Internet marketing training program (http://inboundmarketing.com).

This certification acknowledges Atkins’s proficiency in inbound marketing principles and best practices. These principles include: blogging, search engine optimization, social media, lead conversion, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis.

Atkins started his own company at the age of 18, initially providing website design services to companies in Hastings, before branching out into social media marketing management and training. His aim is to help get all small businesses noticed online and playing with their big competitors.

Atkins joins an elite group of Inbound Marketing Certified Professionals. Only just over 2,000 individuals across the world have successfully passed the IMU program.

To complete the Inbound Marketing Certification, Atkins completed 16 in-depth classes covering each facet of inbound marketing and passed a comprehensive certification exam. (View the full list of classes: http://inboundmarketing.com/university/classes)

The courses are taught by a knowledgeable faculty of professors, including New York Times’ best-selling author Chris Brogan, Google’s Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, Internet celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk, best-selling author and international speaker David Meerman Scott, and more. (View all professors: http://www.inboundmarketing.com/university/professors)

If you’re like me and you subscribe to a zillion email newsletters, blogs, RSS feeds etc, you probably hear the following type of stories fairly regularly:

“Jane got chatting to the guy sitting next to her in the dentist. The topic got around to business, they exchanged cards, and a few calls later she had a new client.”

“John was at a party a few weeks ago. The conversation turned to what everyone in the group did for a living. John shared his “elevator pitch” and two of the people there followed up with him later – one becoming a client within a few weeks.”

Now I don’t know about you, but whenever I read these stories, or hear similar ones from people talking about their experiences, my immediate reaction is “that’s so unfair. Why can’t this happen to me once in a while?!”

When I go to the dentist, the topic never gets round to business. When I meet people at parties, I either don’t talk or it’s too loud to talk!

So how come the people stories like these seem to have so much more success in generating leads and turning awkward social moments into business moments? Is there a secret they’re not sharing that they do and we don’t? Some amazing technique we’ve not heard of?

I’m not sure, but I have an idea.

You see, what the stories usually omit is that the people they’re talking about initiate conversations EVERY time they’re at the dentist (or the doctors, or at the hairdressers, or in a queue for tickets, or…). Only one in twenty turns into a business discussion – and that’s the one you hear in the story. Of course, one in twenty is one more than you get if you don’t initiate any conversations at all.

When they’re at parties, the conversation doesn’t always turn to business. It’s just that they go to more parties than us, and they’re that person bringing up business.

In short, they turn more social situations into business than you or I because they put themselves in more social situations than you or I, they proactively talk to more people than you or I, and they bring up business more than you or I.

The rather simple logic is that all other things being equal, if you want to win more business, you’ve got to do more business development or NETWORKING!

Many people wish and hope their boat will come in one day and they’ll win the lottery, but yet don’t often buy a ticket. It’s the same here, you’ve got to buy a ticket to be in with a chance, or, you’ve got to turn social situations around into business situations.

Is your WordPress blog being sluggish, is it tired and in need of some much needed TLC and upgrades?…

• Are you nervous of updating your WordPress, plugins and themes?
• Is your WordPress secure?
• Would you like to have someone take care of those things, check things over and make sure all is working well?

What your WordPress MOT includes:

• a review of the latest updates, taking care of those for you if required.
• a check on security and backup issues
• looking over your general set-up and making suggestions that will be useful for you
• and some ideas on how you can improve your blog/website

To book in your MOT we need the following, please:

• Your name and address
• The website/blog address and login address too
• An admin level login to your WordPress
• Any particular points you want us to keep in mind or report on

E mail liam@atkinsbiz.com so we can book you in for your MOT.

We will do 20 MOTs at this price for the summer, so book yours now.