In my previous blog I covered a range of tools which have helped us achieve our objectives via our WordPress-driven website. In this second part we’ll look at another five handy tools that make life that little bit easier.

One little word of warning (again). Multiple plugins + a fussy theme can lead to all sorts of interesting incompatibility issues. I use a last-in, first-out principle if a plugin just refuses to play nice or causes anything else to act oddly. So while these 10 plugins all work for me and in combination on the ENNclick site, this may not be the case with a different WordPress theme. You’ve been warned!…

6. Blubrry PowerPress Media Plugin

To its credit today’s WordPress is a good bit more media friendly than in the past. Yet it doesn’t provide a comprehensive set of podcasting tools to make the act of adding audio or video to posts or pages any easier. Blubrry’s PowerPress Media Plugin fills that void, providing a handy set of tools to allow you to update various podcast directories, including iTunes. It also offers a host of other tools, such as ready-to-go embeddable players.

All of this can then be controlled from the main edit page, making the act of adding audiovisual content that little bit more straightforward.

7. Akismet Comment and Trackback Spam Plugin

You know when you first login to your admin screen chances are you’ll be faced with a module from Akismet. For many people, Akismet is a real must-have as it can greatly reduce the comment and trackback spam you inevitably get on your site. If the odd one does get through, just mark it as “spam” on the moderation screen and Akismet will learn to spot it in future.

The one downside with this plugin is that it’s not free for commercial businesses. Personal blogs can use the plugin for free or make a voluntary conribution. However, at time of writing a small business will pay the equivalent of USD5 per month.

Yet, with spam a huge time-sink for any successful and/or popular website, adding this plugin may be worth every penny.

8. Microkid’s Related Posts

If you regularly update content on your site (and you should for SEO purposes) over time you’ll begin to realise that you have a wealth of information in the form of previous posts which are relevant to the content you’re about to publish.

You could manually search for past posts and add links to them from the bottom of your current article. But with this plugin you don’t have to.

With Microkid you simply search for relevant keywords and it serves up suggested posts for you to select as a handy ‘related content’ segment to your new update.

This plugin seems very simple yet, in truth, it’s hugely powerful, encouraging people to explore past content that otherwise would be gathering digital dust, and in doing so, staying that little bit longer on your site.

9. Subscribe2

No doubt you’ve read many an article heralding the impending demise of email. Don’t bet on it! Email remains, by far, one of the most effective ways to reach people you want to maintain contact with.

Subscribe2 allows you to add an email sign-up feature to any WordPress-powered website, which ensures you capture the email contact details of anyone interested in being updated about new content you post to the site. This is an absolute must-have on any website. You do not want to miss the opportunity of capturing a person’s personal contact address in order to establish a regular line of communication for the future. It’s a fundamental of permission marketing.

Subscribe2 also allows you to specify what type of website update you want to send out your email alerts for, and enables you to personalise these email messages.

Subscribe2 isn’t the only plugin allowing you to capture emails from site visitors but it’s one of the simplest to set up and, to my mind, one of the best.

10. Google Analytics Dashboard

If you do a little research on what you can do to personalise the main dashboard in WordPress you’ll discover that you can move around the various modules as well as collapse or remove them. You can also add new ones.

The Google Analytics Dashboard is a case in point. It kind of sells itself in the name. It allows you to preview key analytics in your dashboard, without having to leave the site or open up a new browser tab to visit your Google Analytics account.

Yes it’s fantastic being able to delve into the minutiae of data about who clicked what, when and how long they stayed on the site, or even what page was the last they saw before leaving… etcetera, etcetera. But Google Analytics can overwhelm with granular data; in truth most of the time what you’ll want is a quick overview of how your site is trending and what pages or posts are getting traction with site visitors.

That’s why this simple dashboard module is an absolute must. In our case it’s positioned so it appears above all other dashboard data.
–

Q. What are your favourite WordPress plugins? I’m always looking for good ones to join my Top Ten – leave a comment below.

Ralph
@ralphenn

Top 10 WordPress plugins — Part Two is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

But what do you do when your work for customers is too confidential to publicise? 

If you’re reading this, you may be working in a marketing function and trying to convince senior management that they need to capture customer stories. Here are some counter arguments you might come across, and how you can answer them:

“We could never write case studies about our sensitive work for customers”

Do not rule out the possibility of conducting interviews with your customers, no matter how confidential the work you do. Your customers will perform two functions when they agree to an interview:

• first, they provide a description of what they value about you, which may include unique perspectives and attributes of your company that you hadn’t realised or you’d forgotten you possess;
• second, during the interview your customer may provide a quotable quote that you can use in your marketing materials to show other people that you’re already trusted by flesh-and-blood customers.

Even if you never get to the second part, the first part is so tremendously valuable, words fail me in describing it. I’ve never met a company who doesn’t struggle to explain concisely what they do and why they’re good. The customer perspective takes some of the struggle away, and lets you start describing yourself and your value in a way that’s grounded in fact. If you’re struggling with your company’s messaging, the customer perspective is often the key to unlocking the right language.

“What if our customers won’t go on the record with a comment?”

A good approach is to tell the customer that you’re working on your messaging and you want to be sure that how you describe yourself is realistic, based on how customers actually see you. You could then ask if they’d be willing to speak with the writer who’s working on the messaging – if your customers really value you, they’re unlikely to say no.

(If the customer asks questions at that stage about confidentiality or publication, you can reassure them that nothing will be published without their permission. The first objective is to get customer perspective; if they’re happy to go on the record with a testimonial, that would be great but it’s not obligatory.)

“It’s probably safest if we do the customer interviews ourselves”

It might be safe but it’ll never work as effectively as using an experienced outside writer. A skilled copywriter, ideally with a journalistic background (yes, I am describing the ENNclick team), knows how to get interviewees talking and draw out information in a natural way. There’s also no baggage: unlike one of your internal staff interviewing your client, your customer can be sure that we have no agenda other than to get the facts. The straightforwardness and objectivity of the relationship between the writer and the interviewee keeps it all simple and increases the likelihood that you may even get a testimonial on the record.

“Case studies that don’t mention the customer are useless”

As long as the case study mentions the customer challenge, the approach you took to solving the problem, and the benefits after the fact, it’s not essential to include the customer’s name. Of course, including names is always preferable. But in certain markets – for example if your company offers highly strategic or commercially sensitive services, or if your customer considers you a “secret weapon” they don’t want to reveal to competitors – no one will be surprised if the names are missing from the case study. Names, places and dates will always make your case study more effective, but if an unnamed case study is all you can get, it’s far better than nothing at all.

Sheila
@sheilaenn

What are your feelings about getting the customer perspective as you work on your messaging? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

How to write case studies for confidential clients is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

First of all I want to congratulate Matt Cutts of Google on once again sending the global SEO community into a spin, he never fails! And he doesn’t even have to say too much to do it.

Now, with this latest SEO ‘announcement’ do you take him at his word or do you add a pinch of salt?

At a recent SXSW conference discussing ranking factors, with Matt Cutts and search engine journalist Danny Sullivan among others making up the panel members, the age-old question of “if everyone is doing SEO then what happens” was asked. From this seemingly ordinary, almost scripted, question came an extraordinary answer from Matt. You can find the full audio clip here (courtesy of SearchEngineLand).

Google’s SEO Tweaks

“Normally we don’t pre-announce changes but…” cue massive inhale of breath. Matt and his team of anti-spam engineers have been working on the algorithm that will “level the playing ground” between “over-optimised” sites and sites with useful, relevant content. So all you SEOs practising a bit of keyword stuffing and link exchanging simply to try and fool Google, you may commence shaking. Matt explained that with the new algorithm, to be introduced over the coming weeks, Google will become smarter, and its ability to recognise relevance will greatly improve. This means sites not practicing SEO to any great extent but which contain relevant content will be accounted for. Make it natural people, for Google and the user.

But is all this really anything new? Time and time again we hear how Google will penalise sites that practise questionable SEO but some still manage to sneak to the top of the rankings. However, credit where credit is due. Last year Google’s Panda update did address the issue of duplicate content, while around the same time going for the jugular of sites with too many above-the-fold ads on landing pages. This gave quality SEOs a ray of hope. And with this latest move from Google, perhaps the tables have finally turned.

Cause for Concern?

Understandably those who have been optimising their sites for many years are a bit concerned. Will Google determine their site is over-optimised? Matt, may we have a clear definition please? Thanks!

There is one message from the book of Google that reads true. That is that they strive for relevance and user experience and they believe that webmasters and SEOs alike should strive for a similar goal. Once the user finds your website through the correct search query, you should greet said user with architecture that is easy to navigate, design that’s easy on the eye and a site full of juicy content. This will ensure that many more users will follow.  Get into people’s conversations and the subsequent social signals will pay dividends.

SEO: There are no shortcuts

There are no SEO shortcuts with long-term advantages. It requires time and graft. Let Google throw out all the algorithm changes it wants to. Those SEOs creating fresh content and engaging with their community – in short performing “proper SEO” – need not fear.

Andrew Lafford
RingJohn.com

RingJohn is an internet marketing agency with offices in London, Dublin, New York & Rome, offering a range of internet consulting, implementation services and training courses to ensure long-term success. – more

Google’s SEO tweaks keep industry on its toes is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

While there are plenty of other time tracking tools on offer, few match Toggl for its simplicity and convenience. Whether you’re at your desk or on the move, Toggl provides a flavour of its service which will work on Android, iOS or any other browser-friendly web-connected device.

Even Toggl’s free service provides enough value that very small businesses may not feel the need to go Pro. That said, the paid version adds extra personalisation bells and whistles including allowing the branding of time sheets and being able to specify billable hourly rates per client. This all makes it an invaluable tool if you charge customers based on time spent.

You can also allow others in your company to be part of the same account so it’s easy to see who was working on which project and when. This makes it very easy to see what the total time allocation of all staff on a particular job came to. The free service allows you to add up to five staff in this way.

But perhaps the best aspect of all is Toggl’s simplicity. You literally sign up (or login using an existing Google/Google Apps account) and you can be tracking your time instantly. It’s even less effort than keeping time logs in a spreadsheet.

Toggl is a classic case of the Freemium model done right. It’s free service is so good that, should the need ever arise, paying for the Pro extras would be a pleasure…

Ralph
@ralphenn

You’ll flip when you Toggl is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

At ENNclick we not only use WordPress to deliver our blog and our entire site, we also regularly come across many client companies who use it.

In this two-part blog I’ll highlight what I like about each of my Top Ten WordPress plugins. One little word of warning. Multiple plugins + a fussy theme can lead to all sorts of interesting incompatibilities. I operate the last-in, first-out principle if a plugin just refuses to play nice or causes anything else to go haywire. So whilst these Top Ten all work for me and in combination on the ENNclick site, this may not be the case with a different or custom theme.

So without further ado (and in no particular order), here are my first five:

1. Sharebar – make your blog more social

If you’re going to the trouble of blogging, you need to make it easy for visitors to share or like what they read on your site. Sharebar offers a really slick little plugin which lets you provide a dynamic range of social site functionality including, but not limited to the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. It’s the customisation which makes this so useful. If a new service, such as Google+ comes along, it’s possible to be up and running with the new option in short order.

Alternatively, if you don’t like the graphics or defaults already included you can use the plugin to create the bar the way you want it – either as a floating or fixed horizontal, or as a vertical either above or below your blog entries. You can see it in action now with our own Sharebar to the left following you as you scroll down the page.

2. RSS Footer – say more about who you are

I like RSS Footer because it’s an excellent way to enhance the value of our RSS feed and potentially encourage people to visit our site — we use it as a branding opportunity to tell people who we are and where we’re located.

RSS Footer has actually been superceded by being reversed into the WordPress SEO plugin. However, if you’re not wanting all the bells and whistles on offer in WordPress SEO then this will suffice. Quite simply RSS Footer allows you to append additional information into your site’s RSS feed, either above or below each entry. You can also link back from each RSS entry to other web pages. You can see, at the bottom of the image to the right, what we did with our footer.

3. WP Post Footer Library – stop repeating yourself

A footer plugin of a different kind here. Have you ever had that situation where you find yourself constantly copying and pasting the same standard information into the bottom of each new post from a previous post?

You could, if you wanted to, delve into the guts of your Editor and your theme’s associated page templates to hard-code a footer, but this can get a little hairy if you’re not confident about what you’re doing. Added to this, hard-wiring a piece of regular content into your page lacks flexibility should you ever want to change it.

Take, for example, a scenario where there are multiple authors and each would like their own custom footer content… like their bio perhaps. With the WP Post Footer you can create multiple footers and simply select the one that’s required on the post page.

But caveat emptor must be the guiding advice as this plugin, whilst working perfectly on this site, did not work on another site I manage. You just have to test it with your setup and see if it plays nice with your other plugins and themes.

Whilst not as flexible, this alternative footer solution also has some merit if WP Post Footer refuses to play ball for your particular WP theme.

4. WP Super Cache – speed up delivery of blog pages

Unfortunately the web is a busy place these days and web pages have become increasingly complex. When a web page was comprised of a single html document, it didn’t take very long to load. But most modern sites are a complex construction of multiple elements of content. This adds up to a significant overhead in terms of the time it can take to both deliver those bits of content, and to pull it all together into something presentable in the user’s web browser.

WP Super Cache tries to claw back some of the downsides to database-driven websites which are made up of a patchwork of content pieces. This plugin generates static html files from your blog’s database. After this html file is created your webserver will then cough up that pre-cooked html file instead of running a database query and constructing the page on the fly each and every time someone requests it. This is a big time-saver and should, for most people, make your website feel that much faster to load.

5. Twitter Widget Pro – good things come to those who tweet

If you’re already tweeting, good for you! (If you’re not, promise me you’ll think about it, especially if you have customers or a reputation you’d like to protect.) This plugin makes it easy to add your company’s tweets to your blog. It handily provides a drag and drop widget which you can then add to your (hopefully widget-friendly) theme as a sidebar element.

Once added, Twitter Widget Pro allows you to feature fresh content on your site in the form of your tweets (or the Twitter streams from anyone you choose to feature). It’s a great way to add a little bit of personality to a website that might otherwise seem unloved, especially if you only add a new blog once in a blue moon.

Q. What are your favourite WordPress plugins? I’m always looking for good ones to join my Top Ten – leave a comment below.

Ralph
@ralphenn

Top Ten WordPress plugins — Part One is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

Below we feature part four in the series, called “7 Ways To Improve Your Internet Marketing” in which ENNclick interviewed key team members of energy software management company Enerit on how it uses social media to reach out to customers.

This case study features an interview with Maricka Burke Keogh, Senior Online Marketing Executive, and Eimear O’Brien, Online Marketing Executive at Enerit, a client of Enterprise Ireland. Enerit received support from the Enterprise Ireland Internet Marketing Unit to assist with the development of its Internet marketing strategy.

Energetic social media strategy boosts Enerit’s profile

Using social media, energy management software company Enerit is building a name for itself as a thought leader in its sector, as well as boosting its sales prospects through effective lead generation.

Galway-based Enerit is using social media to great effect as it strives to grow its reputation in the energy sector. And with plans in the works to broaden its social media strategy even further, Enerit is well on its way to becoming a recognisable global brand.

LinkedIn a hit for generating leads

The star performer in Enerit’s social media strategy is LinkedIn. Maricka Burke Keogh, Senior Online Marketing Executive for Enerit, says the business networking tool has been instrumental in boosting traffic to the company’s website and helping to identify relevant sales leads.

As well as a company page on LinkedIn, Enerit’s employees, including top management, all have separate personal LinkedIn profiles. The company’s strategy is clear when it comes to LinkedIn: no “hard sell”, explains Maricka. “On LinkedIn, our aim us to showcase our technical expertise and thought leadership.”

Enerit does this through active participation in LinkedIn Group Discussions. “We’re lucky that our CEO, Paul Monaghan, and COO, Mike Brogan, are passionate about social media. They’ve joined a number of relevant groups, like the generic ISO 50001 Group, and regularly comment on topics or start discussions themselves. I continually monitor LinkedIn and these groups and if I see a relevant discussion I point them in that direction. It’s much more effective for our management and engineers to be commenting on topics rather than our marketing staff,” explains Maricka.

Paul and Mike have also built up good networks on LinkedIn and they regularly communicate with their contacts, sending them Inbox Messages about any relevant Enerit news or developments. In fact, one such message sent out by Paul, highlighting Enerit’s recent work with Pfizer, increased referral leads in December by 100 percent, according to Maricka.

“LinkedIn has become one of our top sources for referral leads, and because we can target such relevant contacts the leads are proving to be extremely high quality,” she says.

Though the majority of traffic to the Enerit website comes from organic search results for either “Enerit” or “ISO 50001? and direct traffic, LinkedIn is fast becoming a key factor. In December, 20 percent of traffic to the website came through referrals, with over a quarter of that traffic generated through LinkedIn. “And this is very high-quality traffic, with LinkedIn visitors spending on average 2.52 minutes on our site,” says Maricka.

Building credibility through social media

As it continues to build strong networks on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Enerit has plans to exploit its growing contacts. With any testimonials it has received from energy consultants Enerit adds a link to the consultants’ LinkedIn profile pages.

“We believe these testimonials with links to the consultants’ LinkedIn pages make for very credible recommendations of our software. We then feature these testimonials on our own company LinkedIn page, adding to our growing reputation,” explains Eimear O’Brien, Online Marketing Executive for Enerit.

Growing contacts list with Twitter

As well as LinkedIn, Twitter also plays a role in Enerit’s social media strategy. The company has been increasing its Twitter followers steadily and has started to attract increasingly relevant followers. “When we first started on Twitter it was mainly people looking for jobs that were following us, now it’s companies, energy managers and potential partners that we can target,” says Maricka.

All Enerit press releases are tweeted on Twitter and the marketing team also tweets any mentions of Enerit in media articles globally. The team also include links to its Twitter profile in all press releases to encourage relevant people to ‘follow’ Enerit on Twitter.

Maricka outlines how Twitter has become a key research tool for Enerit as it accumulates contacts and targets. “We regularly analyse our followers: we see who they follow and who’s following them and assess if these are relevant to us. That way we can compile a ‘who’s who’ for our sector, quite easily.”

“We’ve also found this a useful way to see which trade magazines would be worth getting in touch with. Once we identify the magazines and editors interested in our sector we get their contact details and send in our press releases, widening our global reach,” she explains.

Sharing knowledge to build the brand

For Enerit, its main aim with its social media presence is to raise brand awareness by demonstrating its expertise. As it plans a new website with increased social media functionality, Enerit is also planning on building on its current online strategy.

For example, Maricka says she aims to develop a separate technical Twitter profile for Enerit, where people can ask technical queries about the company’s software. “As we continue to grow the business, we think Twitter could become an ideal medium for answering customers’ queries,” she explains. Maricka takes her inspiration from PC manufacturer Dell, which she says has used this strategy to good effect.

Also on the cards is starting up a profile on Quora, a “questions and answers” network. “Quora is something we’re exploring. It allows you to answer questions and start conversations on very relevant topics – so you can help people by offering tips and advice, and also give our thoughts on new developments, implementations and standards. Our engineers would be actively involved in this – showcasing their expertise.”

Video is another area that Enerit is keen to explore. The company’s new website is likely to feature a series of videos explaining its flagship software, as well as some training videos. Maricka also plans on expanding on the company’s thought-leading strategy by offering research whitepapers for download from the Enerit blog as well as sharing presentations via Slideshare.

There’s little doubt that social media plays a prominent role in Enerit’s overall marketing strategy, and with active support from top management, who are keen to share their knowledge on the various social media platforms, Maricka says she has been able to make a great start since she came on board in August 2011.

Q. What internet marketing techniques would you recommend? Share your thoughts below.

[This case study originally appeared on Enterprise Ireland's Best Connected website.]

Using social media for e-marketing success is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

At ENNclick we have offices in Ireland and the UK. I recently visited the East Lothian Coffee Morning (ELCM) meet-up near Edinburgh, which covered the topic of business blogging.

At my local ELCM meet, most of the businesses in attendance were sole traders and, perhaps understandably, quite a few were yet to utilise blogging as part of their online activities.

So in this, our very own ENNclick blog, I thought it’s perhaps time to re-visit the reasons why just about everyone with a commercial web presence ought to be blogging.

Why blog at all?

Writing about your area of expertise ought to demonstrate a couple of things to people visiting you on the web:

• You know your subject
• You care about it enough to write about it

Remember, if you’re not blogging and a local competitor is, you’re already losing out! The reality is that companies that do blog inevitably gain benefit, in terms of being detected by Google and other search engines, each time new material gets published to the website’s blog. They will rise up the search results. You won’t.

Ideally you want to have your blog living on your website’s domain, so that it’s situated at something like myblog.mywebsite.com or mywebsite.com/myblog.

Blog little and often

We have one client who writes blogs regularly. That’s good. They’re often very, very long. That’s bad!

Fresh material means Google and the rest will re-visit your website/blog and update their search results accordingly. However, remember the medium! The web is mostly read on people’s computer monitors or increasingly on portable devices like iPads or other tablets and smartphones.

By their nature these devices are not good for long dissertations. Leave that for paper. So if you’ve got 1,500 words in you, by all means go ahead and write it. But then take that story and split it into three blogs of 500 words each, breaking it up with sub-headlines for each key point you are making. And a picture or two always helps. Less is definitely more.

This approach means you also get more bang for your blogging buck, with no additional effort, and three bites at the cherry instead of one.

Content does not always mean writing

I’ve heard the phrase many times… “But what the hell am I going write about?” Fair point. If you’re not a writer or comfortable with words, you’ve got a number of options.

• Get someone else in the business to write for you
• Get a copywriter — like ENNclick, for example :) — to do the heavy lifting
• Do other forms of content

On the last point, just consider that content can be things like audio, or video, or a slideshow or a picture. Really anything that’s relevant to you and your customers has the potential to be a subject you can ‘write’ about for your blog.

So don’t assume you need to write loads of material. It might be a picture or two of some product or service you provide for one blog post, or a video demonstration which you upload to YouTube and then paste into your own blog.

What’s the competition doing?

Still stuck for ideas? The next option is perhaps the easiest. Simply look to what the competition is doing? Have they got a blog? What do they cover? What do you think they lack? If there are gaps there you can fill them on your own blog.

If you’re familiar with RSS then subscribe (using free tools such as Google Reader) to sites you think do a good job of covering your area. Then you’ll always have a ready-made, real-time tool for telling you what the competition’s blogging about.

Also, look at other geographic markets and see what they do there. If you sell William’s wibbly widgets in the UK or Ireland, how do companies blog about their wibbles in the USA or Australia?

Blogging goes beyond your website

Don’t forget that your blog will, over time, give you a bigger overall footprint in search engines and increase your chances of being found. But that’s only half the story. Don’t forget to comment (positively or not at all) on other blogs in your area. And if you happen to have a link at the bottom of your comment leading back to your site, all the better.

When you publish a new blog don’t forget to promote it via any Facebook, Google+ or Twitter accounts you may have already set up as part of the business. It’s the old ‘build a better mousetrap’ metaphor. If you’ve got a great new blog post, tell everyone about it or they won’t beat a path to your door!

A dormant blog is worse than no blog

The line above says it all really. Do not start blogging if you haven’t got a plan to keep it updated — be it daily, weekly or monthly. Fresh blog entries will give you fresh chances to reach people looking for your product or service via the web. No updates subtly suggest that you just don’t care.

And the rest…

Tags – In your blogging CMS, always use tags to add context to your blog entry. For example, if you operate in a particular geography, include the cities or parts of the country you cater to.

Categories – Categorising your content usually manifests itself in the web link to the blog. It can help you to be found in searches, so include a relevant category for your blog. Do not, under any circumstances, just publish to ‘uncategorized’! That’s Bad Juju, looks unprofessional and is best avoided.

Links – Give up some link love. If you refer to other companies or useful online resources, link to them. Links from your blog posts can be just as good for your site as links to you.

Spelling – Need I say this? Bad seling wil get notised and it realie can leav a bad impreszion with peiple so do spell check or beyter stil hav somewon else read it!

Do as I say… not as I do!

And I can now report that the above post was around 1,000 words and quite possibly verging on too long for a blog. But hey, that’s the exception that proves the rule… isn’t it!

Q. What other tips would you add for budding business bloggers? Share your gems below.

One more thing…

Here, for those interested, are the slides which were used at the ELCM event (with thanks to Al Bryce).

Ralph
@ralphenn

A few tips on business blogging is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

Marketing executives can find themselves fighting board-level misconceptions about the value of the marketing function itself. If you are a marketing person and you are trying to reinvigorate your company’s messaging, here are some of the (unspoken) assumptions you may face, along with suggested responses for tackling them.

“We’ve never needed marketing before.”

Sales-driven organisations with significant revenue and repeat business can be reluctant to relinquish budget to marketers. But in a blog-fuelled, Adwords-driven market, even well-heeled companies could find themselves fighting off nimble young competitors who are using the web to quickly build a reputation and convey an air of credibility. It’s best for your organisation to get its own blog/brochure/e-zine/LinkedIn group into shape now, so you’re better able to step up to the fight if you need to defend your market share.

You’d be surprised how easily a determined start-up can use marketing, especially online and social media marketing techniques, to pose a competitive threat to you, even if they lack your decade-plus of experience or turnover in the millions.

“We can measure sales, but how do we know if marketing is working?”

Actually, today’s marketing communications vehicles (like e-zines, blogs and electronic direct mail) make it easy to see who’s reading what you send and whether that awareness is converting to sales. The best e-zine platforms have on-board analytics, and don’t forget you can put unique web addresses into your digital communications to see which route prospects took to reach you.

“Our budget would be better spent on new salespeople, not on ‘touchy-feely’ stuff.”

New York-based PR specialist Helena Bouchez put it brilliantly when she defined the marketing/sales divide in musical terms: a company needs a drumbeat to lay down the rhythm (salespeople) but it also needs the bass line to make everything feel groovy (marketing people).

The fact is, grooviness matters: marketing creates the mood music, the environment, in which the sales conversation can take place. Your salespeople can talk product and benefits, but customers also base their buying decisions on criteria like whether they believe that you are a credible, established, service-focused vendor who understands their business – it’s touchy-feely, but it’s what helps close sales. (See also our blog post on ‘Putting emotion into online marketing‘.)

“Our biggest customers are totally loyal; we don’t need to market to them.”

But could you be communicating better with them? It’s shocking how often a company’s customers – even their best customers – are unaware of their supplier’s fuller service portfolio. Don’t lose these upselling opportunities. Those loyal customers are already sold on you as a supplier. Why not make sure they know about everything you have to offer? A series of focused brochures or an e-zine gives the perfect vehicle to help with that education process.

“Why should we pay a copywriter/PR person/branding expert; can’t we do this ourselves?”

Don’t underestimate the power of the fresh perspective an outsider can bring. Whether you use a copywriter or another communications specialist, their newness to the topic can be an asset to you because it helps you focus and simplify your message. The outsider’s probing questions, even if they are at times simplistic, force you to clarify your thinking, and clear writing begins with clear thinking.

And don’t even think about trying to write customer case studies yourself. Your customers simply don’t talk as freely with you as they would with an outside writer, to whom they might reveal secrets or offer powerful testimonials they would never give to your face. (For more on this, see our posts on ‘How to write great case studies’, part one and part two).

“A copywriter would just get in the way.”

On the contrary, in many cases a communications professional can bridge the divide between different parts of your own organisation. As a copywriter, I’ve been in meetings where the marketing team gets the first in-depth business update it’s had in months (on things like customer-facing developments and product enhancements) because we’re all sitting around brainstorming content for the next issue of the newsletter.

For e-zines in particular, an approach that works well is to create an Editorial Board drawn from sales, marketing, solutions, technology and PR, both to create these opportunities for dialogue and to give other stakeholders a sense of ownership of the final publication.

Sales people and marketing people move to a different beat, and that’s a good thing. A skilled manager, like an experienced conductor, can merge the sales and marketing teams, with input from customer service, finance and human resources, to create harmonies that work for your customers and your bottom line.

Sheila
@sheilaenn

So your boss thinks marketing is a waste of time? is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

So how do you get started with your content marketing program? The good news is it’s easier than you might think, and more cost effective. Here are a few ideas on how you can begin by working with a content provider:

High-quality infographics

Developed with a writer and a talented graphic designer, these newsy visualisations of trends and data are so useful. Include them in your own blog, offer them to prominent industry bloggers or publications, and you’re sure to get those sites publishing both your infographic and a link to your website, all of which will enhance your standing in Google’s eyes. Consider for example the Angry Birds infographic that we blogged about in September: well researched, compellingly designed and eye-opening, this graphic is classic “link bait”, attracting all kinds of writers and bloggers who want to republish it. The best ones take time and great research to produce, so do set aside budget if you plan to go down this route.

Ghost blogging service

Set up a weekly appointment to speak to your content writing agency on industry trends and ideas, upcoming events or the latest equipment and services from your vendors. Using your thoughts and insights, an experienced writer can easily create a short ghost blog post that conveys your ideas succinctly – and it’s very cost effective.

How-to videos

Have you seen ENNclick’s social media tips videos about HootSuite and LinkedIn, which we produced using Screenr? Be prepared: you’ll need a few “takes” before the words and actions flow easily, but how-to videos are so easy to do, and there’s nothing better if you want to help orient your customers. You can upload your how-to video to YouTube as well as other free video sharing websites, all of which improves your visibility for Google.

High-end animation

With high prices for short animation videos, you might wonder why anyone in their right mind would go down this route. But consider the viral potential, the YouTube visibility and the highly impactful brand message you can deliver with an animation that has a solid concept, great animation scriptwriting and brilliant artwork behind it. And don’t forget what you would pay to commission, write, illustrate, print and distribute a high-quality glossy brochure: the costs are roughly comparable.

Yes, there is a role for print: in fact ENNclick’s own most successful marketing initiative in 2011 was our hardcopy ENNclick brochure. But if you’re a start-up or if you’re trying to expand your business with a new range of services, would it be better for you to have an animation sitting online gathering Google’s attention, or a glossy brochure sitting on a desk, gathering dust?

What about grooming all of your content for search engine optimisation?

The most successful search agencies – such as Ring John, which recently delivered a brilliant SEO Boot Camp for the ENNclick team – are Google connoisseurs, and scrutinise and optimise every detail of your website and your other online activities, to improve your search engine rankings. But you also need to be sure that your content writing team has a clear appreciation of SEO: as a content provider, we at ENNclick make sure we know and absorb your target keywords and the audience you’re aiming at.

The content writing agency you choose should also excel at rewriting: Google hates to see any duplicated content, anywhere, and an experienced writer can turn your thoughts and ideas into various iterations for different outlets, from YouTube to your blog to LinkedIn. Some real writing skill is necessary for this, and for all website copy writing, which must strike a careful balance between readability and keyword density.

The content agency and the search engine optimisation agency are unlikely to be one and the same, but both provide a piece of the puzzle: a steady stream of high-quality content, and the in-depth Google skills to leverage that content as part of an overall SEO strategy.

One word of caution: when it comes to quality content, if you pay peanuts you will get monkeys. It has been recently demonstrated that Google has, and will continue to develop, new search techniques to spot poor quality content a mile off.

Now for something completely different

As you plan your marketing activities in 2012, will you do the same-old same-old? Even if creating a steady volume of quality content hasn’t been part of your strategy in the past, maybe 2012 is the time for something completely different.

Sheila
@sheilaenn

Content: still king after all these years, Part 2 is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

For businesses everywhere, this means that content creation absolutely must become one of your 2012 New Year’s resolutions.

No matter how well you know your business, it’s often hard to get your head around this requirement to write content. Most of us hardly have time to take care of the customers and deadlines we already have, let alone set new deadlines for creating new material for the web. “And anyway,” the little voice in your head might be saying, “isn’t writing content supposed to be somebody else’s job?”

Content creation is everybody’s job!

It has to be everybody’s job to create content in your organisation. Look around and you’ll see great examples like Chuck’s blog, written by EMC’s Global Marketing CTO, where top management with specific subject matter expertise are speaking in real voices to new and potential customers.

The public wants to hear, from the horse’s mouth, what your company is planning, thinking, or worried about. Heavily groomed press releases or corporate statements aren’t enough. They want the real news, direct from your experts, and they want it frequently.

Yes, that means your public relations office must release its chokehold on marketing communications and empower everyone in the organisation to create content, whether it’s a one-sentence status update on LinkedIn or Twitter or a more thoughtful response on an industry blog.

This may feel like a shocking culture change, but it’s necessary in an age when your company is judged and made visible by the calibre and frequency of the content you produce. Your company can minimise the risk of content no-nos – for example an employee talking about something that’s commercially sensitive, or attacking a competitor too vociferously – by publishing a social media policy that employees need to read, and by quick reactive responses if issues arise.

The greater risk is not creating content at all: a large, established company with a big brand can easily be outpaced by a nimble new competitor with fewer resources but a bigger voice online.

(Want proof of that? Just look at how well-known some of the biggest tweeters have become, starting with few resources apart from their own initiative and ideas.)

No time to write content? Think again

This may have not occurred to you, but you don’t actually need to write the content yourself. A content marketing agency such as ENNclick can work with you to make your brand and website more visible to Google and other web search engines, by helping you create fresh, unique and, most important of all, interesting content.

In part two of this blog we’ll look at just how you go about this task, by exploiting resources you already have or can easily access, in order to create original and relevant content that will get you seen as part of your search engine optimisation strategy.

Sheila
@sheilaenn

Content: still king after all these years is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.