Quality, helpful content - created on a consistent basis - is a requirement for ranking online. Content creation also takes significant time and effort to do right. Outsourcing this marketing activity is a great option, but how you do ensure outsourced content is written well, using industry knowledge that your audience demands? Read on to learn how HLM tackles this challenge for our clients.
Let's Define What We're Talking About
We're talking about Content Marketing.
Content Marketing centers on the generation of media (written text, video, imagery, etc.,) to promote a businesses services.
Here at HLM, we specialize in written blogs, websites, newsletters, and other deliverables. These combine promotional and informative language - along with SEO best practices - to increase your businesses online visibility and brand awareness & credibility, with the goal of encouraging contact and conversions.
Put simply - we make content that helps your potential customers, clients, and patients discover that you exist, and then "convert" into a lead.
Great - So what do I actually get with Content Marketing?
While we provide several different services that could fall under the broad umbrella of Content Marketing, we'll focus today on one particular service - blog creation.
Why focus there? Because it's a Content Marketing service that plays a significant role in how well you show up online, along with convincing those that do find you online to call you for your services.
It's no secret that Google search results and online rankings have been in significant flux since the beginning of the pandemic - and that's without even mentioning the recent disruptions from the introduction of AI-related algorithms and techniques being used in search.
One method for thriving in the face of search uncertainty is to create consistent, quality content that is helpful for your website visitors, and that portrays you as a credible thought-leader in your industry. You can do this through blog creation.
What Goes Into Blog Creation?
When done right, Content Marketing and blog creation can get pretty involved. When you invest in services like this, you should be paying for thoughtfulness, critical thinking, and strategy - not just for someone's time to sit down and write a few blogs posts occasionally.
What follows are just a few of the steps and stages that HLM employs for all of our Content Marketing clients:
Strategy & Content Calendar Creation
The first and most important part of a content marketing strategy is a client’s goals. They may have open capacity they need to fill or a local competitor hot on their heels. They may need more brand awareness in a secondary service area or they might have a new product to educate consumers on.
After we’ve explored the client’s objectives, we like to drill down to revenue generation. We might ask which services bring in the most business. We might ask what questions they get from customers most often. This helps us write toward where their customers already are.
We also explore any seasonality associated with a client’s business or industry. This might look like laser hair removal in the spring or furnace maintenance in the fall.
With all these aspects in mind (and many more) we craft a 12-month content calendar strategy to achieve the client’s goals.
Deep Subject Matter & Audience Research
The first step in blog creation is definitely research. We have to speak with authority to create trust between a reader and a business. That means diving into our subject headfirst. We need to understand your services, what they do, how they work, why they work, their advantages, their disadvantages, the duration of benefits, and how quickly it can solve a problem.
But it’s not enough to know a good or service inside and out. We also have to understand who buys it and why. That means speaking with clients about their experience and leveraging their insights to boost authority and trust.
Deep SEO-Focused Keyword Research
This stage includes taking a deep-dive look at relevant keywords, so that we can also ensure what we craft and place on your website has the best chance possible of being found on Google and other online sources.
There's a certain 'art' to composing helpful and informative content that a human reader would appreciate, while also ensuring all SEO best practices are followed, to increase your online visibility. HLM has become experts in doing exactly that over the years.
How does HLM find the right "tone" or "voice" for my blogs?
In many cases, the industry itself suggests a tone for us.
For example, you wouldn’t write about Botox with the same kind of gruff, matter-of-fact tone that you talk about electrostatic precipitator maintenance or excavator rental.
Consumers purchase products and services for different reasons. Customers can desire anything from personal change, to financial due-diligence, to phase 1 environmental site assessments. As writers, we rely on something called the Rhetorical Triangle.
The rhetorical triangle is made up of three concepts: ethos, pathos, and logo - better know as ethics, emotion, and logic.
Most purchasing decisions can be traced to at least one major emotion, thought process, or virtue, though most of our decisions combine one or more of these aspects.
For example, a business owner searching for audit services is likely making a logical decision. This person may feel one way or another about audit services, but that emotion is unlikely to be the primary driver of their decision-making process.
In this case, we’ll lean heavily on level-headed, logical writing to make a strong argument for our client.
Alternatively, you may have an adult child researching senior living facilities for an aging parent. Naturally, this is an emotionally-charged decision, but budgetary concerns can’t be overlooked either.
This consumer is experiencing a mix of pathos and logos - emotion and logic.
But here again, there may still be a touch of ethical concern. They may ask themselves, “am I doing the right thing by sending my mother or father to a care home?” In writing of this kind, we have to consider everything our reader is going through.
How Does HLM decide what types of blogs to create for clients?
We have to hit a lot of checkpoints on our way to crafting excellent content.
Empathy is a great place to start. Nobody wants a good or service from someone who doesn’t understand what they’re going through or someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to need AC repair, crawlspace encapsulation, or breast reduction surgery.
But even the best arguments fall flat without keywords, appropriate meta-information, featured images, and clever formatting.
We’re seeing granular trends in content marketing these days. We know what kinds of headlines get the most clicks, which formatting elements to include to boost authority, and how many images a blog needs to satisfy both Google and site visitors.
We also need diverse angles. You can’t come at a good or service from the same angle each and every time. For versatility, we rely on several tactics to keep our copy and arguments fresh.
If there’s a lot of buzz or curiosity about a good or service, we may write an FAQ style blog. These use long-tail keywords (questions that people ask Google), to capture customers at the point of curiosity. By answering those questions, we boost client authority and visibility simultaneously.
If a product or service is complicated, or if there are multiple talking points to explore, we may suggest a 101 style blog or an “Everything You Need to Know About X” guide-style blog. These are handy reference materials for consumers. They’re also genuinely helpful, which Google rewards and clients love. We see exceedingly high “time on page” for blogs of this kind. That tells us that visitors are keeping the blog open as a source while they’re conducting research or exploring their options.
Great - You've convinced me! How do I get started with Content Marketing?
If you need help creating quality content that demonstrates your expertise and helps with your search engine visibility, give us a call at (888) 717-4249 to speak to someone within minutes, or book a call directly with a consultant on our contact page.
