Do you have a writing niche like real estate or property development? Maybe you’ve worked in a particular field so you understand the nuances and complexities better than the average freelance writer. This might enable you to position yourself as a topic expert, target clients in that area, and command a healthy rate. Ensure you highlight your point of difference – here are 3 ways to market your content writing services to a niche. 1.Create a targeted lead magnet, pushed out through paid channels like Facebook advertising, to attract new prospects in your niche. This can be a free checklist or ebook relevant to the industry you specialise in. Ensure you include strong CTAs and ask for their email in exchange as a minimum, to then continue sending relevant content in that market segment. 2. Weave your industry throughout your website, SEO and social media – highlight your specialty on your home and about pages, add targeted blog CTAs and garner testimonials from clients in your niche, to make the decision for future visitors easier. If you have an SEO strategy in place, you might decide to build customised pages to rank for keywords in your niche. List the credentials that position you favourably to your target clients to make you stand apart. Include your industry in meta title and description tags, including those for your homepage – i.e. ‘COMPANY NAME – Property Social Media and Digital Marketing’. Weave your specialty keywords into free and paid channels, including social media and search engine marketing (SEM) to continually position yourself as an expert in that field and attract the right...
How can PR elevate your brand in 2019? PR is moving fast, and what might have worked brilliantly for your brand in the past might not be enough in the present. While marketing activities like advertising look to achieve direct revenue, traditionally PR seeks to create a positive reputation for a brand in the market. However, PR is evolving into a sales role by some definitions, leading customers to directly shop the products they see online and in physical stores. We take a look at four ways that PR can support your brand. 1. Effective PR creates a positive brand image With new media outlets appearing all the time, many companies are choosing to outsource PR to agencies. These have the media contacts, know what they want and how to package it up. Within the corporate sector, PR frequently sits under sales and marketing to support revenue generating activity. That’s because effective PR comes down to excellent written and visual communication, pushed out through different media channels. The aim is to create a positive image that shapes perceptions, often through story telling and relating of experiences. There are many approaches to create that positive image, all of which hinge on creative execution and a well-planned strategy that looks outside the box to drive a message home. 2. It achieves exposure in multiple places Many will tell you that traditional PR, in the sense of bulk sending a press release to journalists, isn’t enough any longer. Sending information to the media is still important, and so is traditional coverage like a double-page spread in the weekend paper. But newspapers are...
A large part of running a business is the customer experience you create, in every place your brand is accessible. The customer experience starts from the moment a visitor finds you, and continues after they’ve made a purchase. This experience is what can attract the right type of customer – one who returns to buy from you, and talks about your brand to others. Here’s how to maximise the first four steps of your customer experience, from the point of first contact to purchase. Step 1. Look at every place your target customers access your brand We recommend having at least five brand access points. This might be Facebook, Instagram, a website, a mailing list, digital advertising, a podcast, PR, or advertorials. List all of these in separate tabs on a spreadsheet. Then, look at the activities you’re running at each of these points. You might have Facebook advertising set up for example, for which you’ve created a simple marketing funnel using MailChimp. Map activities and stages under each access point in the spreadsheet, so you have a snapshot of what your market sees. Step 2. Review the content you’ve created for each activity Does it meet these criteria? Is it showing enough value, fixing a pain point and creating trust for your market first, without asking them to do anything? You might want to pull out your customer snapshot, a description of your target customer based on research and information you’ve gathered along the way. Does it speak to customers at their level, in a language they understand? Is it on-brand? You might want to revisit your brand...
We all want more freedom and more space to do the things we most enjoy in life. If you crave breaking away from the 9-5, and writing is your thing, setting up a freelance writing business could be your dream. It can offer the flexibility of working the hours that most suit you, from any location you choose. However, when you go freelance, you’re going into business – and if you hope to succeed, you need to be business-like in your approach from day one. Here are 6 tips to help you turn your freelance pipedream into reality. 1. Prepare financially Switching to a freelance career or not, everyone should know their basic cost of living, or the minimum needed to cover the bills and food each week. If you are contemplating leaving a salaried job to start freelance writing, set aside extra savings (if you can) that will cover your living expenses for a period of time once you leave your job. Alternatively, if it won’t cause issues with your employer, start your business and begin engaging in activities to build your client base before you take the leap out of employment. There are multiple avenues for finding regular writing work – we cover this topic in-depth in our freelance course, Build Your Freelance Content Writing Business. 2. Set your business up correctly so you’re ready to trade These are a few things to consider when setting up any business. If you’ve only ever worked as an employee, you’re likely to need to: Register an ABN (Australian Business Number) If you want to trade under a business name...
Whenever you search anything on Google, chances are you don’t click very far past the first page. That’s why SEO (search engine optimisation), the strategies applied to show high up in Google organically (without paid advertising) is so important in business. While SEO can get complex and time-consuming, there are a few simple things you can start doing straight away to support your ranking. Even if you decide to enlist the support of an agency to optimise your website and content initially, you’ll want to take back the reigns eventually to keep the practices and strategies they implement up. So, these are the SEO basics to start putting in place. If you have a new website, submit a sitemap to Google A sitemap is a file that provides Google with information about the pages on your website so it can start appearing in search engine results. If you’re creating a brand new site, you can submit a sitemap through Google Search Console. Start with the right set of keywords Your keywords are the words or word combinations that people will search in Google when they want to find a product or service like yours. In turn, Google returns a list of pages containing those words or word combinations. Understanding what your market is searching and weaving those keywords into your website, so the copy still sounds natural, is at the core of SEO. Arriving at your list of keywords takes keyword research, which you can do in a platform like SEMrush. Keyword research can be time consuming so if you’re brand new to SEO, you might want to outsource...
