content targeting

How To Help Your Clients With Website Content Strategy

For small and medium-sized organizations, content is usually the trickiest part of putting together a website. That often results in it being the one thing web designers are left waiting for when trying to finish off a project. Even if the overall design and functionality are a go, a lack of content halts progress.

Over the years, I’ve found myself asking why this is such a challenge. But after seeing it time and again, a few things have become clear.

First, clients are generally not content creators. Most don’t sit there and write on a daily basis. Therefore, they don’t necessarily know what to say. Or, even if they have some talking points, they might struggle in articulating them.

Then there is also the obstacle of time. People who are busy running their business or non-profit may simply have trouble finding a few hours to concentrate on writing. Content strategy takes a back seat to other tasks.

This presents an opportunity for web designers to come in and save the day. With a little help, we can get the processes of creating and organizing content moving in the right direction.

Focus on the Most Important Details

If you’re redesigning or completely rebuilding an existing website, some of the hard work may be done for you. You can look to that content for clues regarding what’s important.

Even if that existing content is messy, it can still be useful. Search out the key selling points and discuss them with your client. Present them as a means to achieve their goals for the project.

Each organization will have their own unique message to share. An eCommerce shop, for example, may want to talk about their attention to detail when it comes to customer service. Meanwhile, a medical practice will want to concentrate on their expert staff and specialties. This type of information can prove vital in content creation.

The goal is to help your client to narrow their focus. Having a better understanding of the task at hand can provide them with confidence. They’ll be better positioned to produce compelling content.

Provide Visual Guidance

Another way to help clients develop a successful content strategy is through visualization. We do this by providing templates or prototypes that outline the various sections of a page.

This offers an immediate form of guidance that your client can reference when writing. They’ll have a better idea as to the desired length of content, along with how to make it easy to digest. It takes a lot of guesswork out of the process.

Of course, they may not exactly stick to the standards you’ve set. But that’s not the point. It’s more about getting them to think in terms of how that content will be seen by users. Even if they’re not initially thrilled with the mockup, you can work together on finding the right balance.

Another side benefit is that this trains clients to take a more consistent approach. In practice, this means that although the content may change from page to page, the format doesn’t. Users won’t be treated to succinct descriptions on the Services page while being expected to read a meandering, 20-paragraph opus on the About Us page.

By providing visual guidance, clients can simply fill in the blanks. It’s more efficient and less stressful.

Promote Common Sense and Ease-of-Use

When it comes to organizing content, things can get out of hand in a hurry. And they often become extreme.

Some clients may insist on cramming a massive amount of information onto a single page. Others could be just the opposite, with secondary pages that contain no more than a sentence or two. Neither of these strategies is likely to be a hit with users.

Thankfully, a little education can go a long way. When discussing content organization, focus on these fundamental questions:

How easy is it for users to navigate?
Is all the content on a particular page truly relevant?
What is the overall point of the content, and, is it obvious to the user?
Should a long page be split up into multiple sub-pages?
Are we missing any key information?
What’s best for SEO?

By asking these questions, you have the opportunity to fill your clients in on the finer points of a user-first approach. The answers should lead everyone in the right direction.

Write It Yourself

There are certain clients who may never become comfortable with writing and organizing content. Or they may just be unlikely to get around to doing the work. This is not only fine, but it’s also an opportunity for web designers.

Invest $500 to get $2500 in a week legit and real

By offering to write the content yourself, you will take some pressure off your clients – not to mention make some extra money. It could be a win-win situation.

You may find clients who are very happy to delegate this responsibility and pay you for it. In addition, it allows them to act in more of an editorial role. They can review what you’ve done and then collaborate with you to make the content the best it can be.

However, your work will likely be better received if you put in that initial research. As mentioned above, have a discussion about the most important messaging points. This will ensure a smoother process and better end result.

A Proactive Approach to Content Strategy

As with other areas of web design, being proactive with content is often key to a successful project. Keep in mind that your clients are most likely looking to you for some guidance. Therefore, your expertise and leadership may be just what they need to move forward with confidence.

And, just maybe, it means you won’t have to wait around nearly as long for that content to arrive.

By: Eric Karkovack

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The Digital Project Manager

How to get website content from clients without a headache? This is an age-old question that a lot of DPMs in our community are asking. Today, Alexa and I break down the approach we use to get the right files, on time, in the right format, when we manage website projects. Related Resources: When you’re done with this video, make sure you check out these related resources: Podcast: How To Get Website Content From Clients (With James Rose From Content Snare) https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/… Podcast: How To Project Manage A Corporate Website Build (With Rich Butkevic) https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/… Article: Deliver Your Next Website Project On Time With These 5 Tricks https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/… DPM Membership: https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/ Follow us on social: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedigitalpr… Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedigitalpm/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/1809… Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedigitalpm

How To Curate All The Content You Need In Your Business With Curation Lab

If you are thinking of writing the content yourself, you will spend 2-4 hours a day, 5 days a week. After this, you won’t have time left to focus on the money-making activities of your business.

Understandably…companies either outsource (content creation), hire full-time content writers…

…or just give up on creating quality content marketing plan for their business.

Which path will you take?

The first to go out of business are the ones that don’t have a content marketing SYSTEM in place.

Leaving out content marketing from your marketing strategy is suicidal for your business.

The second ones to go bust are the ones that outsource content creation on platforms like Fiverr and UpWork. As they say – when you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys! Most businesses that rely only on these platforms either end up paying too much, or pay too little for bad content quality. Which results in terrible content marketing.

Check how expensive these services can get:

So paying $500 for an article…

…or paying someone $125 per hour for content writing is not really financially recommended.

You can also choose to hire these people as freelancers, but to begin with, you will not be their only client.

…and at prices like these, they will soon run your bank empty, even before you start getting paid as an affiliate or product creator.

Why waste money when you can use our system?

…and it’s time to reveal this system to you:

Create UNLIMITED Content For Yourself And Your Clients…

The system that I want to share with you is – Content Curation.

More specifically – content curation on your blog and social media, to drive traffic and sales.

Now I know you’ve seen other people talk about this before.

You have probably even TRIED it, but not as successfully as you would like.

Well, we do something different.

We have introduced AUTOMATION into the system, so we don’t need to search everywhere for worthy content to curate.

In 3 simple steps, here’s how this system works:

You INSTANTLY find content that is trending or going viral (no need to hire people to do this, our system does it for you)
You share it on social media and your blog with a single click (no need to do manual copy and pasting!), and
You stack up campaigns so that you continue to get traffic, automatically! And you move FAST!

This is EXACTLY what these influencers were doing.

They were using expensive tools like BuzzSumo to find this trending and relevant content. Some even had teams of 5 to 10 people working AROUND THE CLOCK to curate viral content from RSS feeds, and other websites online.

Then, they were using this content to get more engagement and profits.

Upon realization, and looking at what existed in the market…

My team and I got to work and created a POWERFUL tool that was based on the SAME concept as BuzzSumo, but not as expensive.

A tool that helps us curate viral and trending content in just a few seconds.

The ONLY difference is that unlike these other guys – I am going to let you HAVE this tool (and my system) and save you a LOT of time and a HELL LOT of money…

Source: How To Curate All The Content You Need In Your Business With Curation Lab | Online Marketing Tools

Tappit – Use OTHER People’s Content and Videos To Bank MILLIONS In Profits Every Month

The idea is simple, more content you have, more traffic you get, more leads and more Commission you generate. By using this amazing app you will Build your own beautiful and super engaging Viral website with 3 simple clicks and Put most profitable links on your sites using artificial intelligence. Create and post viral videos and content in just one click and Post Videos and Content on 10+ social media networks in single click. Create SEO friendly pages automatically with Built in Free Remarketing system included…..

A Future of Monetized Branded Content Begins With Customer Value – Lauren McMenemy

Content noise has reached epic proportions, and standing out from the crowd is no longer as easy as chucking money into paid distribution. Providing customer value becomes paramount as users have millions of links all vying for their clicks. They are more discerning, and also more skeptical; so the quality and provenance of content is evermore important.

Traditional media outlets have been struggling with this for at least a decade. As the internet became all-pervasive, media companies just duplicated their print offerings online, for free. It was a scramble to stay relevant in a digital age, but it actually damaged brands and the industry as a whole. By the time paywalls started going up, and the publishers began asking their audience to pay for access to content they had already been getting for nothing, the expectation and value of the content had already been assumed to be, well, free. Consumers naturally were resistant to suddenly being required to pay to read. After all, the internet should be free… right?

“In the transition to digital, a great error media companies have made is trying to emulate technology companies’ business model. If you’re Google or Facebook, advertising works. You’ve got the scale to make sense of keeping a product free … [But] unless buoyed by reach of billions of users, those who don’t charge for at least part of what they do are doomed.

“If you stand by the principle of not charging for anything, sooner or later it’ll make you compromise on everything,” writes online publishing course owner Edward Druce on Medium:

This is all well and good for traditional media outlets, those places we’ve turned to for centuries to inform and entertain us. We pay for the print versions, and evidence shows around two-thirds of news outlets in Europe now have some kind of pay model for digital content.

But the media landscape has changed—brands are now getting in on the publishing act. As brand publishers mature in their offering, the big question has yet to be asked: Will consumers pay for branded content?

Legacy Branded Content Still Sells

The short answer is yes, actually. Age-old content marketing products like the Michelin Guide, prove that consumers will pay for content that provides value, regardless of who has written it. Michelin now prints a range of travel guides, maps, atlases, and more to complement the world’s best-known restaurant guide—all created, of course, to get people into their cars and wearing down their tires.

In the UK, The AA (Automobile Association, a roadside assistance provider) follows a similar path, but adds in printed versions of the Highway Code and books to help study for your drivers license. Once you’ve got that license, you’ll need their services, of course.

It’s not just the car industry that has customers paying for content. Weight Watchers Magazine has a total paid circulation of 1,127,545, 90% of which are subscribers. That’s more than one million consumers automatically paying monthly for a magazine that has the sole aim of promoting the Weight Watchers nutritional plans.

So while paying for branded content can work, these are special cases of well-established brands providing tremendous customer value. There is still yet to be a brand that harnesses the power of a paywall for branded content on a mass scale. However, marketers aren’t ruling out the possibility.

Ideas for Leaders explores the idea of charging for online content, ironically placing the crux of the content behind a subscription paywall: “It is crucial how a fee-based charging structure is implemented: charge too little and you are missing out on valuable subscription revenue; but charge too much—or for the wrong content—and you will lose viewers, further undermining advertising revenues. The key is for media companies to take a flexible approach, charging optimal fees for selected content.”

How Can You Charge For Content?

There are various models out there, both in the traditional media world and the world of freelance creators, that a company could look to adapt for its own revenue stream.

A paywall

Hide all of your content behind a payment portal, and charge an annual or monthly subscription fee for access. This model, however, requires a lot of trust on the part of the consumer given they are basically purchasing your content without knowing its quality. If you disappoint them, it may well do more than just lose you a subscriber—it could hit your brand’s reputation.

Remove the ads

If your content hub is currently complemented by banner advertising—be it for your own company, or sold space—some of your audience may be willing to pay a small subscription to remove the ads. Of course, this option is less likely today as ad blocking software is becoming more prevalent, and will necessitate flexible design.

Premium content offerings

Taking a cue from the Telegraph, you could drop the paywall in favor of offering additional special content in exchange for a small payment. In this way, most of your content will remain free to access, but those who truly value the quality of your analysis would get access to special reports or additional reporting.

One-off publications

Many brands know the impact a special report or regular review can have on downloads. True customer value can be found in providing industry analysis or investigative reporting. These publications are the result of months of hard work—why give it away for free? Likewise, you could ask for a small stipend in return for e-books and educational resources. Take a leaf from Michelin’s book and consider producing a guide that will offer insights to your industry.

Webinars and e-learning

Edward Druce’s Course Concierge, helps content creators to serve their audience and get paid for their efforts. One of their clients is Steve Ramsey, who spent 10 years creating woodworking videos on YouTube for a subscriber base of nearly one million people. He’s now offering more in-depth online courses to that subscriber base and making nearly 10 time s the income he was on YouTube alone. While Steve is a one-man operation, what’s stopping your company from launching your own online instructional programs?

Paid subscriptions

Subscriber numbers are the holy grail for content marketers, a sign their content offers a valuable ROI to a loyal audience. It’s also a great way to create a community, something many freelance content creators have been doing via sites such as Patreon and Substack.

The former allows creators to run a membership business for fans, providing a meaningful revenue stream while being free from restrictions of third-party platforms such as YouTube. Substack, on the other hand, helps writers to start an email newsletter that makes money from subscriptions. A very new platform, it reportedly has just over 11,000 subscribers to newsletters paying an average of $80 a year for content.

Both options present a quick and easy way to monetize content as well as examples of how a brand might be able to build a subscriber base willing to pay for its content.

Asking for Payment? First, Offer Value

One of the founders of Substack, Christopher Best, has wise words for content creators looking to start a payment model: “The most important thing is knowing who your audience is and what they need and what they want; it’s them feeling like they have a connection with the author that gets people to pay,” he told Nieman Lab.

“When you’re orienting towards paying subscribers, you do start to see some metrics that don’t necessarily matter—just getting a huge number of clicks, in an advertising-driven world that is an end unto itself. But it doesn’t matter from a subscription perspective. On the other hand, you still have to get people to show up and see what you’re doing; you also have to show them the value of what you’re sending them.”

Mind you, a poll held on debate.org found only 20% of Americans think newspapers should charge for content online, so what hope do brands have? It doesn’t mean it’s not possible, it just means you should very carefully consider how you introduce the new revenue stream.

Ensure you’re offering optimum customer value, which means your content should be absolute top quality. Nothing “quick and dirty” will cut it. And importantly, don’t try to charge for something that was previously free. If this is something you want to explore as a potential new revenue stream, introduce a new content outlet, and perhaps test it out on small pieces to begin with.

One marketer I discussed this idea with spoke of an idea he’s had for a while—that the future of journalism will go the way of music, and we’ll have a Spotify-style service for written content. The idea would be that you pay to subscribe, and in return you get access to content from a selection of quality publications who are then paid royalties for access. There’s no reason why content from a brand couldn’t fit such a service—as long as it is top quality.

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6 Essential Content Creation Tips For eLearning Success – Shift

You’ve been tasked with developing your first eLearning course. Now what?

Let us help you get with it and nail each aspect of the content development process.

Probably you are wondering if there is one perfect roadmap for relevant and engaging eLearning content. However, given that the variables of each project make each session unique, it is difficult to box elements into one plan.

Varying factors include:

The size of your team
Amount of content
The subject at hand and ideal delivery content
The audience’s knowledge or understanding of the course
Your business goals

These differences will affect the direction of the course. That said, rest assured there is a silver lining. Although the intricacies of the roadmap are not standard, several guidelines can provide the foundation for compelling content and a well-structured course.

Tip #1- Setting the Bulls’ Eye: Forming Your Learning Objectives

By definition, objectives are basic tools that underlie all planning and strategic activities.To accurately guide you through the stages of content development, your learning objective needs to be defined early on and must be crystal clear. Mainly, it’s going to come down to identifying the performance or skill that the learner needs to achieve to be competent in their role.

This statement will serve as the foundation for instructional material. This frame will provide your team with the direction to select and organize content without hesitation. When the outcome is clear, it’s easier to determine the ingredients you’ll need.

Some tips for writing your learning objectives:

Use simple language and measurable verbs.
Remember to be clear about the knowledge or skill gap that you are hoping to fill. List specific and measurable elements that the learner will have to master upon completion.
Make sure you are clear about what will they gain by taking this course.
Important! Keep the learning outcomes in mind at all stages of designing a course. Whether you are chunking content, designing activities, planning assessments, or choosing images, you have to remember that every element in your course should align with the learning outcomes.

Tip #2- Consulting the Crowd: Pinpointing Gaps

Questions, assessment, and focus groups often reveal insightful information. You can also survey your audience to learn more about their backgrounds and experience levels. Having your learners take a pre-assessment can inform you that most of your online learners share a skill gap.

Knowing this can allow you to supply additional information or resources to specific areas for improvement. Why?

Not all learners start from the same place. This will help you determine where those gaps are.
Not all learners will acquire information the same way. You may acquire insights to how to deliver the knowledge that they lack.

Pre-assessments help you identify what learners already know, need to know, and how you should deliver the information. After reviewing your objectives, your team should focus on researching the audience’s needs as a priority. These insights coupled with your learning objectives will formulate the strategy for success.

Tip #3- Planning is key

If you are just back from a session with the SME, you are possibly armed with a lot of information that he or she thinks is crucial to learn about the subject. Think twice before dumping it all on the learner. Your SME is undoubtedly an authority on the subject, but you are the training expert. You know the learning outcomes of your course. Best, you know the expectations of your learners.

To begin, create a list of significant topics and sub-points. Still amiss about what to include, here are some points you must enlist too:

A list of “Must Know” content (critical to achieve the learning outcomes).
“Should Know” content which is concepts that the learner needs to understand as a core part of the training course (important background information that you can give away as handouts)
A list of “Nice To Know” content which adds value to the understanding of the subject, but the learner can do without these points.

Listing out topics is an essential way to help your team visualize and scope each lesson. Be as detailed as possible about your main ideas when creating this list of topics so that it highlights all of the key aspects of your course. Be sure to include an estimate of slides, screens, and interactive elements you’d like to incorporate into the course. Integrating each of these points will help your team avoid redundancies and irrelevancies.

HOT TIP! During this stage, experts advise that you gather your team and stakeholders to review and evaluate the relevant topics. This step will be instrumental in identifying which content is missing.

Here are some tips on how to draft your course outline:

Think about the topic and all it conveys. Once you’ve created a list that is thorough you can start grouping like steps into sections or modules.
Break your course topic down to steps.
Then, you’ll need to buff each individual step out further. Basically, turn the goals established in point one into subtopics/sections. Create at least 3, but no more than 8 titles that make up the “modules” or sections of the course.
Decide how you’ll present your content. As you fill out the steps, decide whether you’d rather create a screen with bullet–points or a talking head video that shows your audience what you’re trying to teach them.
Plan your intro carefully too. The first minutes of your course are key to grab attention!
Plan practice activities and assessments.
With each proposed lesson, refer back to the learning objectives; say true to what your learner needs to know.

Also read: The Art of Creating Short but Effective eLearning Courses

Tip #4- Always Conduct a Content Inventory

It makes perfect sense to know exactly what you have in the inventory, regarding existing content, before starting out on any new project. The opportunities for reusing and repurposing existing content, text, images, and video are endless, once you know exactly what you currently hold in your repository.

Go down your list and check off the items you have available in your company and highlight the ones that are missing. Why should you do this? The benefits are obvious, but we will list them out happily:

Reviewing the material you already have ( it can be PDFs, Powerpoint presentations or any other material available) and identifying what needs to be created will provide your team with some direction.
When you realize how much information you already have at your disposal, you will have a better idea of how much development time you saved.

Once you have certain content available, here are some questions that you can run this material by:

Is this material outdated, incomplete, inaccurate or un-engaging?
Is there any feedback available on how it performed?
What isn’t working with the current program?
What was missing from this content?

Separately, some questions that you can run this material by can include:

What don’t employees know that they should?
Without letting the existing content dictate the new material, how can this new content be coupled with the previous information?

Tip #5 – Working Smoothly with SME’s to Translate their Knowledge into Engaging Content

Working with an SME (Subject Matter Expert) is vital to get the right information down. Working together, you can collect the most crucial information needed to align with all the objectives and points listed above.

The thing to keep in mind when working with SMEs is being particular about what you want. This detailed communication is essential to have before meeting with the SMEs.

You can do this by providing a questionnaire, that way everyone can provide insights and feedback.

This post highlights an actionable roadmap for engaging SMEs and collecting their require information so that you can develop quality content on time and within budget.

Here are some amazing tips for working effectively with SME’s.

The Essential Guide to Better SME Kickoff Meetings

Tip #6 – Design Last, Storyboard First

To avoid overloading your audience with irrelevant content, it’s imperative to organize your content. Use storyboarding to determine the direction of content, without trying to load too many concepts into one course. With a storyboard, you can maintain an outline while you create your course. This level of organization ensures you include all main points without venturing into less important topics.

Storyboarding brings all the elements that will make up the elearning course together. Much like a story, each element contribute to the understanding of the next, creating an narration for a lesson or feeling of resolve in the end.

With the use of Powerpoint or your own storyboarding tool, your process can go a little like this:

Write your course title; make this brief, but descriptive.
Write your course overview, here you’ll want to list key points from your learning objectives
Use the text and images in your screens. Make sure any visuals you include add impact.
How-To’s need to be done right. Make sure that each sequence is clear and provide additional resources in case the learner is interested in reading more.
Use real life scenarios and brief examples to illustrate application of the skills being learned.