I’ve written about search engine optimization (SEO) in the past and have gathered input from a wide range of content and digital marketing experts about the topic. As someone who was writing advertising copy long before SEO was “a thing,” I have kind of a love/hate relationship with the concept. Or maybe I should say a love/grudging respect for the concept. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Marketing Communication’ Category
Sometimes SEO, as We Typically Think of it, Just Doesn’t Matter!
Thursday, February 25th, 2021It’s Time to Move Beyond TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2021
I’ve been working as part of an agency team to create a white paper for a technology client and we’ve been having some back-and-forth discussion about the outline and direction the white paper will take. It was, according to the agency brief, initially envisioned as a “top of funnel” piece. After a review of the draft of the outline, though, one of the client reviewers indicated that she felt it was more “middle of funnel”—and an interesting exchange and spirited debate ensued. (more…)
Content IS King – Regardless of Who Said It!
Tuesday, November 24th, 2020
While there’s a debate about where the phrase “content is king” originally emerged, Bill Gates is widely given credit for the phrase and wrote what Fox Business calls a “remarkably prescient piece” back in 1996 in which he “accurately foresaw the content boom years before Google, WordPress, Facebook and YouTube even existed.” The rest, of course, is history.
Organizations of all kinds have jumped on the content bandwagon, recognizing that the trusted relationships they have with patients puts them in a prime position to share content on a wide range of topics of interest to, and representing value for, their audiences. (more…)
Communication Best Practices Learned From COVID-19
Wednesday, November 11th, 2020
It’s fair to say that few, if any companies—or their communication staff—were prepared to respond quickly and appropriately to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, a pandemic that has swept the world and decimated lives and economies.
As millions of employees suddenly found themselves working remotely from their homes and millions of customers found themselves suddenly shut off from the companies and brands they typically engaged with, communication professionals found themselves grappling with important questions:
- How do we continue to communicate with a suddenly dispersed audience?
- How do we find the right balance between standard key messages and the need to address the ravages of the virus for employees, customers and the community at large?
- How do we strike the tone—certainly not too flippant, but also not too alarmist?
There have been some important communication lessons to be learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. We asked content marketers to share their key takeaways—what has worked well for them, what hasn’t, and how the experience will shape their communications for months, maybe years, to come. (more…)
The 3 C’s of Marketing and STP: How they Align
Thursday, October 29th, 2020
The 3 C’s of Marketing (company, customers and competitors) is a popular model used to help businesses and marketers develop marketing strategies by encouraging them to think about their customers and what they value, what they have to offer that address what customers value/need, and what others (competitors) are offering. It’s a model that also aligns very well with another three-pronged marketing approach: segmenting, targeting, and positioning.Email Subject Lines: It’s Not Rocket Science, But It Is Important
Monday, October 26th, 2020
Like many things we see all of the time, email subject lines are easy to overlook, especially when drafting them. Too often, though, copywriters, content marketers, and others fail to give enough thought to their email subject lines. They’re an afterthought. Something quickly thrown together and easily overlooked, not only by those writing them but those seeing them in their email inboxes! And that’s the problem.
Fail to pay enough attention to your email subject lines and your audience will too. (more…)
6 Tips for Using Social Media as a Lead Generation Tool
Tuesday, August 4th, 2020
We launched Strategic Communications in 2008, at a time when the country was plunging into a deep recession. It wasn’t a great time to land new clients. But it was a great time to take a deep dive into something that was relatively new at the time, at least from a business perspective–social media. At the time there was an interesting talent gap that represented an opportunity for us. Most businesspeople didn’t have experience in using social media channels for marketing purposes and colleges weren’t yet educating students about these new marketing tools. So we were early adopters and spent quite a bit of time learning about and experimenting with the tools that were best positioned in the business-to-business (B2B) space: LinkedIn and Twitter.
Since that time we’ve built our social channels organically and have helped a number of clients do the same. There’s no real magic to this. In fact, the basic tenets of effective marketing via social channels are really the same as they are for using any marketing tools. We recently responded to a reporter’s inquiry about our top tips for marketers using social media as a lead generation tool. We pointed to six:
SEO and Me: A Love/Hate Relationship
Monday, March 16th, 2020
by Linda Pophal
I have a love/hate relationship with search engine optimization (SEO). I understand SEO. I very often use the concepts in my own writing—and often use the concepts in writing for clients. Sometimes, though, and probably because I was a writer long before SEO was even “a thing,” I balk at what can seem at times to be a misguided focus—a singular focus—on SEO to the exception of everything else. (more…)
Making an Offer They Can’t Refuse—or Use
Monday, December 2nd, 2019
by Justin Grensing, Esq., MBA
The tension between the marketing function and the operations function has a well-established history. Marketing wants to sell, but operations has to deliver. Sure it’s great to come up with an idea to sell custom-built widgets at a low price with quick delivery. But, ultimately, someone (operations) actually has to deliver. (more…)
Use Your Boilerplate to Sell, Your Content to Tell
Tuesday, October 1st, 2019by Linda Pophal
Strategic Communications has been working with clients for a number of years now (since 2008). We’ve helped dozens of clients establish themselves as thought leaders and/or drive traffic to their websites to generate leads and drive conversions. Long before then (I won’t even say how long because it scares me!), I was writing features for business and professional trade publications and spent a number of years as a copywriter, writing marketing copy as part of my full-time job.
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