Check all the parts out and do leave comments with any questions or other areas you'd like more information on.
A quick, cost effective and easy way to create content is to get testimonials from your existing clients and users of your website. Make sure you ask for permission to use their answers and quotes in the future. Testimonials can be gathered in a number of ways:
- Send a request for feedback via your newsletter or database, ask a series of questions in return for a benefit or discount with your business. Remember to ask for a quote you can use later on.
- Use an online survey company like Survey Monkey
- If you have a retail store, talk to your customers directly and ask for feedback
- If you are online only and do not have a database, you can use a pop up survey company like Kampyle
The idea is to get people to tell you what they do and don’t like about your business and service. If it is negative you have valuable information on how to improve your business or website. And if it is positive you can use it as testimonials on your site and within your content. Testimonials with photos are proven to create trust markers within your website and people are more likely to buy where there is a real testimonial or feedback about your company or product.
If you find you have a customer who is a ‘raving fan’ then you can also go one step further and do a case study on them, find out the story behind what makes them successful or such a happy customer, then use the photo, blog or video tips to create a whole story about them. This is very powerful content and can be used to promote your business or site in many ways.
Blog Posts
If you have a blog you do
not need us to tell you the benefits of being able to post on multiple subjects.
However, if you currently do not have a blog as part of your website this is
something you should consider as it is quick and very easy to implement using
software like Wordpress. Being able to blog
regularly on many topics helps you to create what is called ‘long tail’
keywords within your content, in other words you can add into the blog the
longer full sentences that people are searching for via search engines.
Blogs also allow you to talk about extra subjects and ideas that you do not want to create individual website pages for but are relevant to your business. For example if you sell facial moisturiser, you can blog about skin conditions that affect people like eczema because your product might help relieve that problem.
Some other blog post ideas are:
- Events your business might be involved in or events and functions that are related to your industry
- Good news stories or testimonial, a successful person who used your product or service.
- New or existing staff members profiles
- Solutions to problems that relate to your business
- Hints, guides and tips based articles
Video
This is similar to blog
posts except they are of course captured on video, the same principles apply in
that you can video staff members, testimonials from clients, events, hint and
tips, give guides or just a thought for the day.
People think that creating
video content is hard and expensive, however, there are ways to do it more
economically.
Firstly video recorders are now relatively cheap to buy, like the
Kodak
Zi8 which I personally have or you can even use the video facilities on
some mobile phones. We use our iPhones in the office to do quick behind the
scenes style videos that are short and can be uploaded to your social media and
blogs on the go.
If you want to edit your videos and make them more professional most video recorders will come with their own editing program or you can purchase software with more advanced features to do this like Pinnacle
Your Turn
Please do leave comments, questions or observations.
In our final part of these series, Photos, using your existing data and Autoblogging.
Paula is a Senior Account Manager at Traffika.
