Thank you to all who joined and helped to make it a wonderful place. The Facebook book club that was sponsored by McKeating Solutions has closed. We gave it a great go for a solid portion of 2018. As part of the group, many new friendships were made and lots of great advice and information was shared. The decision to close content and coffee was not an easy one. Running the group was cutting into the time, energy and resources that are needed in order to best serve the McKeating Solutions clients. Life also affected Content and Coffee closing. While it was a great joy to foster these connections, life has moved in a different direction. In 2018, founder, Maggie Franz got married and became not just Maggie Schott, but a wife to a hardworking nurse. If you know a nurse and their hours, you know that time with that…
When it’s McKeating, there’s a lot in your name. The blog’s been quiet recently, which is odd for a content marketing company. Yes, I know. But, that’s because I’ve been quite busy writing for other companies and my younger brother was in town this past week. He is a newly minted Doctor and this was the only two weeks he’ll have off from now until…well sometime in the new year. We were thrilled to be able to spend time with him and celebrate his recent engagement to his long time girlfriend, who is also a marketer! Where am I going with this? What does this have to do with the McKeating name? Joe is not just following in our grandfather’s footsteps as a doctor, he is the spitting image of Philip J. McKeating and…
Learning their likes and interests without directly engaging them. In a previous post, I discussed the importance and benefit of starting a dialogue with your customers in order to find out the types of content and topics that they want from you. In this post, I’m going to go over a few other ways that you can gain insights into the types of content in which they might be interested, to supplement when you cannot directly engage with your customers. I tend to recommend these two posts in tandem rather than stand alone advice, as they work well together and give you a well rounded understanding of what is interesting, relevant and meaningful in terms of how to build your content. Following Industry Trends The big names in your industry put a lot of time, effort and money into developing or determining what the next industry trend will…
Every brand, every entrepreneur has a story. How do you tell it? First let’s dive into what a brand story or brand narrative means. While these words might inspire thoughts of fiction, yours should be anything but. Your brand, your products and/or services exist in our world, they interact with your customers’ lives in one way or another. Your narrative or story is the way that you capture those interactions, and explain them to new and future customers. Let’s look at an example – the ever recognizable brand CocaCola. Their legacy product coke is a refreshing carbonated beverage best served cold. Coke is also full of sugar and acidic enough to take the rust off of metal so I’m told. Is that what they tell us through their branding? Absolutely not. Their current marketing initiatives, which all stem from their overarching brand…
Well, by asking them of course. As a small business, you interact with people on a daily basis. Whether they’ve come into your store, made an online purchase, or just connected with you on social media. All of these interactions are worth their weight in gold…well in today’s currency at least. But they can be even more valuable, if you use them to help gain information that will allow you to attract and convert additional customers. But what will they think? Sometimes we have this irrational fear that asking our customers questions, like what kind of content do you find relevant and meaningful in your life will make us look less professional. But think about it. When was the last time a brand actually asked you what they could do for you? When our opinion is valued, it creates a stronger connection, an increase…
And trying to do everything entrepreneurial by yourself. It takes a lot to run a business, from actually marketing and selling your products services, to the accounting, the marketing, etc. Often I see entrepreneurs trying to accomplish every aspect of their business on their own. This is a slippery slope that bottoms out in burn out. Why do we think we must do it all? There are people who have come before us, having done it all, and managed to somehow do it all successfully. This proof that one can possibly do it all by themselves, has led to a false expectation that in order to be an entrepreneur, we must do everything our business requires by ourselves. This isn’t true and for many, it isn’t healthy. For other business owners, this might stem from the notion that the journey of an entrepreneur is a solitary…
Is Content Marketing Right for Small Business Owners The answer is a resounding “Yes!”. Cell phones and other gadgets like those in home AI units from Amazon and Google have made talk to text searches sky rocket. Think about the last time that you were looking for a new place to eat, or a salon to get your nails done…did you whip out your cell phone and go straight to your search engine of choice? Chances are really good that you did. My husband and I do this all of the time, and it turns out that a lot of other people do too. How do you make sure that our business shows up in the results for these searches? By creating content of course! If you are creating content that is relevant to your customers searches, you will show up in their search results. It…
What does it really take? Becoming an entrepreneur is a journey. It just doesn’t happen overnight. If anyone has lead you to believe that, I’m sorry – but its just not true. There is a lot of hard work and creative energy that goes into going into business for yourself and you cannot rely on someone else to invest it. Yes, you can get help, guidance, and even contract with different people along the way to help you, but at the end of the day, it comes down to you. So what does it really take to become an entrepreneur? It takes Passion: I’ve joined a couple of online groups for entrepreneurs, and have seen people reach out and ask how can I become one? Does anyone have any work from home business opportunities? Does anyone know of anything that I can do to…
And be consistent in your content Content Marketing requires us to create a lot of powerful content that is on message, and on brand, but what about on tone? Tone is a quality we use to describe voice. Can your content have a voice? Your voice, comes through in your content when you write. For example, informational content tends to have a more serious tone, but depending on who you are educating, you might take a different tone. Other content designed to entertain your audience, will tend to have a lighter, more humorous tone. Think of your content as the voice of your brand how you communicate with your current and prospective customers. Your actual voice should line up with that of your content to provide your customers with an authentic and consistent customer experience. There really is no right or wrong tone, (even a negative tone, as long as…
It’s Not You – It’s the Algorithms If you’re sharing relevant, and interesting or meaningful content, you should be getting the engagement that you want right? Not necessarily. Let’s take a look at why you might be missing out on some of the followers and engagements you need to move your business forward. Facebook, Instagram, and other social media websites have left their message board roots and grown smarter, forcing us social media managers to learn and become smarter too. If you have been having trouble acquiring new followers or engaging the ones that already follow your platforms, it could be the algorithms. Behind the Jargon. If you’ve been working on building your social media presence you have probably heard people talking about algorithms before. But what are they and why are they hard to understand? Great questions. Algorithms are…