The Found Gen

Marketing That Works.

blogging

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Your Blog is Boring. Let us fix that for you.

“No one reads blogs anymore.”

We hear that all the time. We hear how people only consume bite-sized bits of information, so why bother writing blog posts if no one has the attention span to appreciate them?

Well, if that’s true…Why bother installing ovens in our homes? We mostly microwave, right? Let’s close all the libraries and bookstores. Too many pages. In fact, I’ve just decided I have no patience for pants with zippers and buttons. It’s yoga pants from here on out, people.

Sigh. We’re better than that, aren’t we?

We say it all the time: Blogs are there when you’re not. They assure potential clients that your company knows its stuff, that you’re trustworthy, and that you’re here to stay. Also, your blog shows that you’re smart and witty and super likeable. Maybe even exciting.

Is yours doing all that? It really should be. If you need some help with re-energizing your blog, here’s a start:

  • Assess your content. Is your expertise overwhelming the entertainment factor? If you’re an HVAC company, is your blog a primer on circuits and fuses and mechanical processes? Yawn. Tell your readers how to maintain their equipment to save on house calls. Inform them of the latest and greatest in the home improvements that will add to their home values and lower their bills.
  • Assess your tone. Do you sound like an expert, or a trusted friend? We like to skew our content somewhere in between because, well, we’re all in this together, aren’t we? Let’s help each other out.
  • Don’t overthink your word choices. Steer clear of technical mumbo-jumbo. Here’s a trick we use: Pretend you’re in a real conversation with a customer. Now, write that down. (Sound easy? It is for us. Call us and we can show you how to do it.)
  • Expand your topics. You’re not just interested in strictly business matters; you’re a real person with a life and concerns and joys just like the rest of us. Share yourself – your whole self – with the rest of us.

Or, you can forget all of the above, including the stress and extra work, and simply hire it out. Sometimes the one thing that’s holding back your blog from being the boldest and brightest is…you. We get it. It’s hard to be the best in your business AND be a great, engaging writer. Let us do that part for you. You won’t regret it. (Your readers won’t, either!)

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Things to Avoid When Growing Your Email Subscriber List: Let it grow organically

Email marketing lets you directly engage with potential customers. You just need subscribers.

Growing your subscriber base isn’t always easy, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to build the list. Here are a few things to avoid when growing your email subscriber list, and what you should do instead:

Paying for Subscribers

It takes time to build a solid email list. The possibility of purchasing a few thousand subscribers can be tempting. We get it. But don’t go that route. No matter how cheap the list is, purchased lists actually don’t perform well.

That’s because these people didn’t actively seek your information, and the lists are not segmented. Growing a list organically—no matter how long it takes—ensures that your subscribers actually want your information. And, this increases the chances that they will engage with the information you send.

Sending Emails to Nonsubscribers

This is a tricky one, but it’s always best to have some type of opt-in for people wanting to subscribe to your emails. (And, on the other side, offer an opt-out for people who no longer want your emails.) Many people think it’s not OK to add someone to an email newsletter without them actually opting in.

When people opt in, you know they are truly interested in your information, and there’s a bigger chance they will engage with your content and eventually become a customer. You can include opt-in buttons at the end of every blog post and on social media.

Not Promoting Your Email Newsletters

Growing your subscriber list depends on you promoting the existence of your email newsletters and other emailed content. Some people will find the information on their own by visiting the site, but the more you promote, the more subscribers you’ll get. Create social media posts about your eblasts and encourage people to sign up.

If people are already following you on social media, they are expressing interest in your business or brand. They are also likely to sign up for your emails once you let them know how.

Building an email subscriber list is one of the best ways to generate leads, especially when you’re supplying content that people want and find useful. The Found Gen will not only help you create this content, but we also help you develop an email marketing strategy and grow your email subscriber list. Contact us today.

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Why Your Blog Shouldn’t Be Overly Promotional: It’s the best way to turn people off

Blogging gives you a platform for sharing your knowledge and educating others about your industry. When done right, it is one of the best ways to attract customers.

Your blog is a way of selling yourself and your business without actually selling—or that’s what it should be. The goal of any blog should be to inform, entertain, or educate. It should never be overly promotional. Here’s why.

You Lose Credibility

People visit your site and read your blog because they want to know about your company and what you offer. Blogging is a form of content marketing, which differs from advertising. Content marketing focuses on building trust, not selling. Sharing valuable information with potential customers helps you establish credibility because it shows that you are transparent about what you’re offering. Establishing trust and integrity will make customers think of you when they are looking for a particular product or service.

It Turns People Off

When people are looking for information about something, they want content they can use, whether it’s tips, examples, or news. Essentially, they want answers to whatever problem they have. Blogs that aggressively tout the business and are too product or service focused can be a major turn off. No one likes a sales pitch, and most people can easily spot insincerity and inauthenticity. When your blog its too promotion, you will lose potential customers, and people are unlikely to revisit your blog.

It Decreases Engagement

When people think you’re not just out to sell something to them, they are more likely to engage with your content. They will revisit your blog, sign up for your email newsletter, like or follow you on social media, and contact you for more information. If you position your content in the right light and avoid being too promotional, customers will respond—61% of customers say they have made a purchase because of a blog post. So, that’s something to keep in mind.

The best way to make sure your blog features content that can best benefit your business and attract potential customers, you should hire a professional. The Found Gen can help you develop a content plan and create your blog posts for you, ensuring maximum engagement. Give us a shout.

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Giving Away the Farm: Why It’s OK to Say a Lot in Your Blog

Information establishes trust

“You’re giving it all away for free in your blog.”

You won’t believe how many prospects have told us exactly that in a meeting. But here’s the thing: more often than not, they hire us anyway. The general consensus is, “If they’re giving this to me and I’m not a client, imagine what I’ll get when I hire them.”

Keeping Your Eye on the Prize

The goal of a blog is to educate and entertain. That means you need to provide valuable information to your readers. Your ideal clients will want even more, and they’ll be likely to pay for the privilege.

People respond to great content that they want to read. Focusing solely on yourself and your company will get you nowhere. Instead, your blogs have to be helpful, useful, and informative. When thinking about blog topics, consider what questions, concerns, or challenges that your customers may have.

The Goal of a Blog

When you stick to providing useful information that is valuable to readers, you don’t have to worry about giving away too much on your blog. You’ll achieve these six things:

  1. You’ll gain credibility because readers will see that you know what you’re talking about
  2. Posts will be shared because people like to help others
  3. You’ll establish yourself as the go-to source for your product or service
  4. Readers get a glimpse into your business practices
  5. You get enhanced visibility across multiple channels
  6. Clients will realize you’re the best and right choice
  7. When you’re creating your content strategy, the best way to get the best results is to know your ideal client and what they want. You have to be clear about your goals, as well. This will create the ultimate connection between your blog and your reader.

You should always keep these in mind as the goal of a blog.

If you struggle to come up with blog topics or how much information to include, think about what your potential customers might be Googling to find what you offer. This will help you discover what information to provide. Don’t worry about giving away too much. It will pay off.

If your blog is a struggle, get in touch with us. We can help you create a strategy that gets your business the visibility it deserves. Let’s talk.

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Content Marketing vs. Influencers: Who Wins the Race for Results?

If content is king, then what do we term the influencer? Upstart cousin, twice-removed, tanned from spending the summer in Portofino, about nineteen million followers, intent on taking over the kingdom? Yep. That sounds about right.

Do you ever find yourself confused about the differences between content marketing and influencer marketing? Are you wondering which approach will best carry your brand to blazing success and maximum exposure? Here’s a helpful primer for you, then.

Content vs Influencer, Defined

First, let’s define the two concepts. Content marketing is the process of creating and distributing valuable, relatable content to attract and engage an audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Influencer marketing involves collaborating with a prominent individual (or a group of individuals) to distribute content.

One career path sounds way more exciting, doesn’t it? Who among us doesn’t dream of being an influencer? Earning such a title means we have sway, authority, and even the envy of our millions of followers.

But the problems with relying on influencer marketing are kind of complicated.

When you hand off your brand for someone else to hold, you run the very real risk of diluting your message. Our recommendation is to make sure your brand is strong enough on its own before letting an influencer make it her own. At The Found Gen, our goal is to find brand complements, not competition.

There’s also a lot – a lot, a lot! – of blind faith involved in joining forces with an influencer. Social media changes on a dime, so what guarantees do we have that an influencer will stay on the same message tomorrow as she’s espousing today? We have none.

About the ROI

And what about ROI? An influencer’s amount of followers does not necessarily translate into clicks or sales. We’ve always been swayed by the endorsements of people we admire and idolize, but the internet has blurred what it means to be influential. Sure, we can look at the metrics behind the trending and reach of an influencer, but it’s not a certainty that the strategy will match our brand’s specific goals.

Perhaps most importantly, the problem with influencers is that their very definition is changing at the speed of light. Forget celebrities in the traditional sense. Seventy percent of teen subscribers think YouTubers are more relatable than celebrities.

With 88% of consumers trusting online recommendations as much as personal recommendations, selecting the right influencer seems key. And pricey.

The best strategy is to join forces with an influencer who loves your brand – legitimately, wholly, and passionately. And then get ready to pay. Because influencers are free agents in the content world, always looking for better deals.

If the very thought of an influencer-reliant marketing strategy makes you shudder, we’ve got you. At The Found Gen, we create content that strives to build a loyal, active customer base, affordably and effectively.

Basically, we turn your content into the celebrity. Try us out. Or you could have a go at Lilly Singh, the highest-earning woman on YouTube this year.

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The Benefits of Blogging for Your Business

The blog has come a long way from its early days as a communication platform for online diarists. For small business owners, it might be difficult at first to understand why blogging for business is such a beneficial activity. But blogging for business is indeed a powerful, multifunctional online tool.

In fact, it might be helpful to think of blogging in terms of that other, extremely popular business practice: content marketing. The content marketing strategy revolves around creating engaging, useful, targeted content and sharing it through any number of channels in order to attract and retain customers.

So why is content creation in the form of blogging so great for your business? Here are just a few of many reasons to take to the keys.

Attract New Visitors

Blogging is a great way to get inbound traffic to your website, especially if you have a limited budget. It basically creates content pages that search engines crawl as they process queries and return top results to users. The more new, fresh content and variety of topics you have on your site—and promoted across your social media networks—the better.

Target Niche Communities

If your industry or focus lends itself to niche passions and interests, blogging is a fantastic way to connect with those small yet important pockets of your potential customer base in a way that’s difficult with standard advertising. Think about specific topics of interest to those groups, and reasons why they might be conducting an online search (blogging for business is centered around just that). Then use your blog to offer educational or entertaining content targeting to those topics and provide links to the related services, products and promotions on your site.

Establish Your Biz As an Authority

For businesses that have a solid base of existing customers or operate on a B2B basis, blogging is a great strategy for reinforcing expertise, trust and experience. Think about topics of interest surrounding your core industry and then write to demonstrate your business’s authority. Financial firms can offer tips on saving for retirement or short, up-to-date posts on the stock market. Retail businesses can talk about seasonal trends or street-style inspiration. Go beyond promoting your services or goods and try to speak to what your customers really want to know more about from a reliable source.

Showcase Company Highlights

People identify with businesses they can connect with—and blogging for business is a great way to humanize your brand. Share updates, staff favorites, special sales events and success stories on your blog. Not only will it keep that search-engine-friendly fresh content coming, but it will also build the relationship with your customers and encourage them to engage more with your business.