Creating product names your customers end up falling in love with … seem impossible?
Here’s the thing …
When something has a name, it has value and an identity.
A baby becomes ‘Jonathan,’ a cat becomes ‘Fluffy’… Friday night with the kids at grandma’s becomes ‘date night.’
With a name, the generic becomes specific. Filled with meaning.
Marketing companies know the power of creating the right product names, which is why millions of dollars are poured into branding.
Get the name and image right and your product is on the tip of everyone’s tongue and they slip into your everyday life. Your wife doesn’t ask you to get tissues from the store, she asks for Kleenex, your son doesn’t ask for acetaminophen, he wants Tylenol.
And sometimes a name skyrockets the price.
In the UK, common painkillers such as acetaminophen cost around 16 pence from the supermarket.
Choose a ‘famous’ product with the same ingredients (and effects) and you can be paying 1000% more.
Commerce-style pages like Store, Products, Services, or Work with Me
And website pages that update frequently like your:
Blog or podcast content
As we tackle this topic of how to write your website content, we’re going to focus on getting your static pages created first. We’ll get them done, published, and working for you, and then we’ll work on how to write a blog post and other frequently published content.
Content creator friend, if you’ve wondered about the best blog post length — can we get real for a sec?
The only kind of content that works for your business is the kind that’s published.
Period, full stop.
The #realtalk about blog post length is this:
Imaginary content doesn’t count
Content plans, outlines, or first drafts won’t help
Your content strategy won’t do a thing until your planned content goes live
In this article, we’re going to take three things into account:
You
Your readers
Your rankings
You may have written content to rank in search engines. You may have written blog posts with your readers in mind. But have you added yourself to the equation?
In the end, your content is:
Created by you — and your health and wellbeing matter
Consumed by your audience — your content length should meet their needs
Found by your prospects — your content needs to rank in search engines so it’s found
We’re going to tackle these in reverse order, starting with the basics of writing content that gets found by the people you want to attract.
You pour hours into researching, writing, polishing, and promoting your content.
But there’s one crucial task you must master if you want people to actually read and absorb those words you’ve written … content formatting.
How to make a sensational first impression (and grab skimmers by the eyeballs)
Click to pin!
The moment they arrive, your site visitor’s fingers are still hovering over their keys, ready to click away.
How will you keep them there?
How will you invite them to stick around and read a while?
My friend, it’s easier than you think.
Today, I’m going to show you how a handful of simple content marketing formatting examples that will help you design a page that looks inviting, engaging, and authoritative.
It doesn’t take long to polish your content in this way, especially once you make it a habit.
Let’s get you into the habit of formatting your website text like a pro.
Wondering how to succeed with your online business — but feeling a bit overwhelmed as you build it?
Truth is, there’s Too Much Information out there. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, welcome to the club.
You’re in very good company.
C’mon in and stay a while, my friend.
Because right here on this page, I’ve gathered some of my top (free!) resources in one place. No need to click around the entire internet.
If you need online business tips and tricks, you’ve just found a whole page of them — complete with free worksheets, a free workshop, a free course, and more.
All in all, there are 17 free online business resources on this page, divided into the categories below.
It’s a companion to my first book, Master Content Marketing.
Master Content Marketingis about how to get your content created. Master Content Strategy is about how to map out a sustainable content strategy that moves you closer to your business goals.
In today’s post, I’m sharing a chapter from the book which explains one of its core concepts — the Lifecycle Approach to Content Strategy.
It’s not easy to link to resources in a book — but in this article, I was able to link to lots of additional resources for you to explore. Enjoy!
Back in the last millennium, I found myself expecting my first child.
It was an exciting and confusing time. In the process of growing a baby, your body does all these strange things! Foods you once loved suddenly disgust you. Smells you enjoyed begin to make you queasy. And you crave weird things you’ve never craved before.
I was living far away from my mother and any female relatives, so I had no one to confide in. In the midst of the week-by-week upheaval, I found consolation in a book called What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
It was chock-full of (almost) too much detail about every month of pregnancy. It gave context to the changes I was experiencing as my child grew and developed — it helped me realize they were all normal. Knowing that these strange changes were something every mother lived through helped me take the changes of pregnancy in stride. It was all part of my new reality and completely normal.
In this book, we’re going to take a What to Expect… approach to content strategy. The more I thought about how to teach this topic, the more I realized that there’s no single approach to content strategy that will work for every type of business.
This is how the content marketing lifecycle approach was born.
Instead, it’s most useful to think about content strategy as something that evolves over time, during the lifecycle of your website as it grows and develops. I’m going to approach this topic from what you — as a content creator — can expect as you manage your website through its stages of growth.
What Is the Lifecycle Approach to Content Strategy?
The need to adapt a content strategy based on the age of the website you’re creating content for was driven home for me when I moved from creating content for my growing website, BIG Brand System, to managing the massive and mature content marketing resource that is Copyblogger.
Back in 2015, I was put in charge of the editorial department of the Copyblogger blog. And I quickly realized that the content strategy needed for a mature site with nearly ten years’ worth of material was completely different from the content strategy needed on a younger site like mine, which was just five years old.
You’re about to learn how to adapt a content strategy to the age of your site. As a website and a business matures, its needs change — and its content strategy should adapt to the stages of the content marketing lifecycle.
The Three Lifecycle Stages: A Brief Overview
Your approach to raising your profile using content marketing is going to morph through the years. Master Content Strategy will help you anticipate and plan the work you’ll do in each stage of your website’s growth. You’ll have a clear idea of what to aim for so you can build toward the right goals with every piece of content you create.
Let’s go over the three content marketing lifecycle stages here. In the upcoming chapters, we’ll cover them in detail.
Your New Website: Birth through Year 1
On a brand-new website, you’ll focus on populating your pages with helpful content that establishes your expertise.
Clear, consistent categories, so people arriving on your website understand who it’s for and what it offers.
Polished content that makes a great impression. Aim to hone your voice and to get better with every piece you publish.
Your Growing Website: Years 2 through 5
Your website is still new at this stage, and now you will have some flesh-and-blood audience members. You can do things like ask them to leave a response in your comments section or on social media. You can create content to help with their real-life challenges.
Aim for:
A new piece at least every other week, so you can continue to serve up useful, engaging information your audience can count on.
Deep-dive content that delivers in-depth information on specific topics that help your audience and your business.
Multimedia content that expands your message to other platforms. If you haven’t explored repurposing your content, this will be the time to start.
Your Mature Site: Year 6 and Beyond
At this stage, you may have 300+ pieces of content on your site. It’s time to put on a new hat and start to approach your content like a resource librarian!
You may continue to publish every other week — but there’s more you must do. Going forward, focus on directing visitors around your site so they can easily find what they need.
Aim to:
Develop an updating habit. Some of your content is quite old. If it’s still being found, is it still reflecting positively on your business? Is it still relevant?
Get a clear view of what content is most popular so you can link back to it from newer content and link forward from it to newer content. (This simple tip will allow older content to help newer content.)
Master multimedia content and an expanded presence on outside platforms. Make it a habit to repurpose every piece of new content you create, so it’s findable in other places and helps people discover your website.
It sounds like a lot of work, but remember that in the content marketing lifecycle, you’re in only one growth stage at a time. Keep this book at hand to help you navigate smoothly through the stage you’re in and anticipate what lies ahead.
Let’s dive into what defines Very Important Content (VIC). This is what I want you to aim for as your site evolves! After that, we’ll talk about what to expect as your website comes to life, begins to grow, and matures.
