Webdeology: October 2011

Seth's Blog: Questions for a new entrepreneur

Questions for a new entrepreneur

A few things came up over coffee the other day. His idea is good, his funding is solid, there are many choices. Some of the questions that don't usually get asked:

Are you aware of your cash flow? The thing about a fish in the stream is that it doesn't care if the water is six inches deep or a foot deep. As long as it never (ever) goes to zero, it's fine. What's your zero point? What are you doing to ensure you get to keep swimming?

Are you trying to build profit or equity? A business that builds a brand, a footprint, a standard and an audience might end up being worth millions (witness Tumblr, which has many millions of value but zero profitabilty). On the other hand, a business with no exit value at all might spin off plenty of profit (consider the local doctor's office). It would be great if you could simultaneously maximize both the value of your company and the profit it produces (in the short run), but that's unlikely.

What's your role? Do you want to be a freelancer, an entrepreneur or a business owner? A business owner is the boss, but it's a job, a place that is stable and profitable. An entrepreneur is an artist of sorts, throwing herself into impossible situations and seeking out problems that require heart and guts to solve. Both are fine, but choose.

Are you trying to build a team? Some business owners want to minimize cost and hassle. Others are trying to forge a culture, to train and connect and lead.

Which kind of risk is okay with you? There's financial risk, emotional risk and brand risk (among others). Are you willing to put your chips on the table daily? How about your personal reputation?

And finally, and most important, why? Why are you doing this at all?

The 5 Elements of Exceptional Business Content

There are quite a few motivators for content creation in business. Marketers' goals for creating content can include brand awareness, lead generation, thought leadership, and search engine optimization. The great thing is, remarkable content can contribute to accomplishing all of these goals, and that's why content is one of the core parts of inbound marketing. The key is making sure the content you create is exceptional enough to achieve these goals.

So how do you ensure the content you create deserve an A?

Here are the top five elements of business content that can make it truly exceptional.

1. It's Well-Written/Produced

First thing's first. No one is going to read or ultimately share content that sucks. An attention-grabbing blog title might help to attract an initial slew of views for your blog post, but if what viewers find when they get there is a poorly written or produced piece of content, they probably won't browse for more, and they likely won't even get through the full piece of content they initially came to your site for. Make sure you're putting forth the effort to make sure your content meets a high standard of quality, or you'll build a reputation for bad content (and no one wants that).

2. It's Targeted

Content that isn't appropriately targeted toward the audience you're trying to attract for your products/services isn't, well, the right content for your business. Think critically about the personas that make up your target audience. Now brainstorm a list of their wants, needs, and problems. Once you've identified their needs, then you can focus on satisfying those needs through the content you create for them.

3. It's Optimized

Exceptional business content is optimized with two completely goals in mind. One is search engine optimization. Because one of the main benefits of lots of content is lots of chances to improve SEO, marketers must be sure each piece of content (blog articles, ebooks, videos, etc.) they create is effectively optimized for the keywords they want to rank for in search engines.

The other thing for which your content should be optimized is lead generation mainly because, when optimized effectively, your content can be such a great source of leads for your business. Make sure you're positioning your more premium content like webinars and ebooks on landing pages behind lead generation forms, and include calls-to-action on your blog content that points to these landing pages to ensure your blog is also contributing to lead generation.

4. It's Valuable

We recently published a full blog post about the importance of offering value in social media to generate more followers, and a lot of the concepts covered in that post can be applied to content creation as well. Your content will achieve much greater success if it's valuable -- specifically, valuable to your target audience. You'll need to do some work to understand exactly what it is that makes something valuable to your target audience, but once you do, make sure you apply what you learned to the content you create. In general, content will likely be valuable to your audience if it's not focused on your products/services and it also educates, advises, informs, and/or engages them.

5. It Drives Results

What's the point of all this focus on content creation if it's doing nothing to help your business? If you're spending the time to make your content exceptional, it should be driving results as well. Make sure you're using marketing analytics to track the ROI of your content. Take a look back at the motivators for content creation we touched on in the first paragraph of this article. Is your content helping you rank better for the keywords you're targeting? Is it generating traffic and leads? Is it increasing your thought leadership and brand awareness? If your content is contributing to all of the above, it's a great indication that you're being successful at generating exceptional business content.

Webdeology

Saturday, October 29, 2011