8 Business Growth Goals IT IS POSSIBLE TO Conquer With Great Content

Content, content, content

Let's not pretend: creating great content frequently could be a real drag.

After all, you didn't enter this business to be a writer any longer than to be a salesperson, an accountant or a lawyer. However, just as Additional hints can't don't fill your sales pipeline or pay your bills or protect your company's assets, you can't ignore your content.

Why is content so important? Because it's the fuel that propels your organization growth engine. Whether you call it a blog, a magazine, a resource library or perhaps a newsletter, your content may be the one weapon in your arsenal that will help you conquer nearly every challenge of growing an organization in today's marketplace:

1. Increasing get more info and driving traffic

You can't win a customer that can't find you. And much more often than not, today's customer wants you online, which is why it's critical to optimize your organic search ranking.

People tend to think of SEO as if it's some occult form of black magic. As the practice of SEO is obviously complex, the one thing you need to remember is that despite the fact that se's are driven by intricate algorithms, all of those metrics and calculations are founded in delivering high-quality, relevant results that will be the most beneficial to real people.

Real people value good content. Due to this fact, so do Google, Bing and Yahoo.

There is no more rock-solid SEO strategy than publishing great original content frequently. As you develop valuable, (legitimately) keyword-rich content that becomes popular through page views and one way links, your degree of perceived authority on that subject will increase in the eyes of the search engines, which will increase your ranking in searches that pertain to your core offering. And the bigger you climb in the rankings, the more potential prospects should be able to find you.

2. Attracting more targeted traffic

If all you want is to send your website visit stats through the roof, there are plenty of attention-grabbing stunts you can pull to draw sheer numbers.

But numbers don't necessarily equate to dollars. For your business to grow, it is advisable to consistently attract the types of people to your website whose needs and interests are the most closely aligned with the services or products you will need to offer.

This is where your articles steps up to the plate. When you publish unique, insightful information that appeals to your tribe, you'll attract visitors which will become your fans, spread the word about you, bring their friends and, ultimately, turn into customers.

3. Building trust and converting customers

Bringing visitors to your site is just the first step. Your job isn't done and soon you convince them to entrust their hard-earned dollars to you.

The task of creating trust with a prospect when you're standing before them is really a relatively straightforward proposition.

However, you don't will have the luxury of a face-to-face encounter to make a first impression. Instead, more often than not, you're relegated to building trust by way of a computer screen. And thanks to all the Internet people and shysters out there, the burden of proof you must overcome to establish your trustworthiness is really a large one.

So what options do you have? You can always sing your own praises in the most flattering and superlative fashion. Of course, it doesn't hold much sway in the absence of solid evidence to support your claims.

Don't just cross your fingers and hope that your customers will buy into your sales pitch. Instead, let your articles make the case for you personally.

Your content is the proving ground for your expertise. If you're a large phony and you have no idea what you're talking about, it will become obvious pretty quickly. But when you have something of genuine value to offer, and you give it away willingly upfront before you ask anyone to spend a dime, that's where real online trust-building begins.

4. Differentiating your company from your competitors

Your organization doesn't exist in a vacuum. There are numerous others who do everything you do and sell what you sell. For your business to grow, you must be able to make a compelling case for why people should buy from you rather than the other guys.

This is usually a challenge that goes back to the genesis of marketing, but in the Age of Information, it's one that great content can complement way toward helping you overcome.

Make no mistake: your content is not your sales pitch. But if you can provide truly useful information your customers can't find elsewhere, you're making an implicit case for the benefits of doing business with you.

For example, suppose you're a general contractor, and you've created a comprehensive online resource library for homeowners that covers everything home improvement-related: the latest renovation trends, how-tos for simple DIY projects, advice on upgrades that deliver the very best ROI, etc.

This is the type of information that your clients will truly value. And by demonstrating your authority, you'll prove that everything you have to offer is a lot more than only a common commodity, that will even help you fend off lower-priced competitors. Your customers won't care just as much about saving a few dollars if they feel well informed knowing their project is in the hands of a trustworthy expert.

5. Generating word-of-mouth marketing

You live in the wonderful world of your services and products. You eat, breathe and sleep your organization. Talking about everything you do is second nature for you. The same will not hold true for your customers. They don't proceed through life searching for opportunities to be your walking, talking billboard.

However, great content has the capacity to get people talking. Everybody loves information that gives them ways to save money and time, makes life easier or gets their creative ideas flowing.

And in the culture of the net, we're all hard-wired to be like-button-pushers and retweeters. So when you give your customers nutrients that sparks their interest, they'll be instinctively inclined to talk about it with others, and your name will travel all over right along with the content you've created as it passes through their networks and their friends' networks, too.

6. Expanding your customer base

The interminable task of business growth is identifying resources of new potential prospects and finding ways to get before them. This quest is what's kept the purveyors of mailing lists in business for many years.

But in today's Web marketing universe, you don't have to shell out thousands of dollars to gain contact with clients. Communities exist everywhere round the Web, and your content can be your foot in the entranceway.

All you have to accomplish is identify those whose tribes' interests align together with your products or services, and offer to provide content for their websites. In trade for offering your valuable expertise, you should have the chance to take the stage in front of a brand new audience of potential prospects, who will become more receptive to what you should say because of the cache of trust conveyed to you by the established leader of that tribe.

If you're an event planner, for example, you could approach the owner of a popular local blog geared to moms and offer to create an article on a timely topic of interest, such as for example "10 Trendy Summer PARTY Themes."

Without ever needing to make a direct pitch for the services, you'll suddenly have a new tribe of potential prospects who know who you're, and when you've done an excellent job, is going to be inclined to click on through to your website to see how many other ideas and information you must offer. In terms of exposure to your target demographic, your content-driven approach will deliver a greater ROI than traditional advertising ever could.

7. Building community and keeping customers engaged

You wouldn't hand a customer a brochure and expect them to awaken every day excited to read it over and over again.

The same holds true for your website. You can't expect to build community around a vanilla site that's about you and your service or product offering. No matter how beautifully crafted it might be, there's nothing to keep people coming back. They'll obtain the basic information they need, and they'll move on.

Great content may be the key to transforming your company's website into the hub of a thriving online community. People don't desire to interact with brands; they would like to interact with other folks. Content puts a human face on your company and makes your brand approachable. It's the common ground between your company as well as your customers.

And not only can be your content the spark that ignites conversation, but it's also the fuel on the fire that keeps it going. Once you recognize and react to those who comment on and share your posts, you make sure they are feel like they're section of something meaningful and present them added motivation to invite others to become listed on the party.

8. Driving innovation

Among the best fringe benefits of the duty of researching and writing top-quality content is that it forces you to keep up with what's going on in your industry.

When you're trying to build your business, it's easy to get tunnel vision. You get so deeply immersed in the day-to-day nuts and bolts you do not make time for the big-picture thinking that's necessary to reach another level.

Creating content requires you to be a perpetual student of what you do; to be constantly reading and exploring in order that you have fresh, exciting suggestions to tell your readers.

This, in turn, enables you to a sharper, well informed, more agile businessperson. Rather than doing things as they've been done, you'll be on top of the trends and prior to the curve, having an overabundance of inspiration for what things to try next.

What you put in is what you get out

Just like other things, what you placed into your content it is exactly what you'll receive out of it.

If you want your content to assist you meet your business growth goals, it must function as real deal. more info must be meaningful. It must be unique. It must be too valuable to ignore. It has to address real issues and problems that are relevant to your customers. It provides practical solutions and insightful tips which are so excellent they'll eagerly await the next post and gladly transfer your links to others.

Creating content of this caliber takes time. It requires hard work. Most importantly it requires discipline and commitment. Unless you make your self buckle down and hammer out the good stuff week on week and month after month, you'll quickly lose your audience to somebody who will.

On the other hand, once you faithfully publish the sort of content your visitors crave, the reward is really a sales engine that's so powerful therefore robust, you'll put your organization in a competitive position anyone would envy.

Based in Charlotte, N.C., Fame Foundry is the trustcasting agency specializing in driving business growth through marketing, website design and development, traffic building, public relations and social media marketing, creative design, media and software and information technology. The firm publishes The Fame Foundry Magazine at http://www.famefoundry.com and produces two podcasts - The Fame Foundry Podcast and The Fame Foundry Marketing Minute - all focused on helping owners and marketers overcome the challenges of doing business in today's marketplace.