What do you do when you are investing money in creating great content but only have a small amount of subscribers?
Our email list is still small and our social channels is only driving a small amount of readers. We know we have to produce great content to attract more subscribers, but right now the cost to produce this content doesn't seem worth our small audience. What can we do to improve this? Thanks!
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Feb 25, 2016
The answer to that question is probably: change the content writer and make sure you hire a professional one. It's the content that creates the subscribers, so its cost can easily be justified if you test it first through a small exercise or project, and then see if the response is on-target. The right content is an investment, not an expense, as long as it yields returns. Returns on content are not immediate, but should improve over time.
Feb 17, 2016
If the content as an essence of "timelessness" all you need to do is focus on growing the amount of readers. If you get new people a year from now who can still benefit from your content it's worth it. Dive more into the readers you DO have now and learn more about what they're getting from it and how they apply the info. This can lead to testimonial based content later on that can help convince more people of the value you have to offer.
Feb 12, 2016
Hi Becca,
Creating great content isn’t enough anymore if you want your content marketing to be successful. 30% content creation and 70% content promotion.
Research, associate with influencers, helping others and building a network are few crucial points to consider for marketing promotions. There are multiple tools available which can help you to promote your content.
So, think from a user's point of view. Think, what motivates you to like a content or share a content. Is your website contents following those?
Hope this is helpful!
Feb 11, 2016
Perhaps, start answering this simple question:
"WHY do you want to produce great content"
to help people, to challenge them to a cause, to inspire them to grow and change....
Once you answer that, you approx. know the direction of where and what audience you are trying to speak too and actively engage with them.
Deep purpose in what you do, I mean genuine desire to help or challenge or create resonates strongly within people.
Once you know your direction and goals for your content, then you figure out the tools and methods to get there.
Tips:
1. Answer WHY
2. Set the direction
3. Know your audience
4. Set the goal
5. Find the tools
Now that being said.
A. Go to Clarity (https://clarity.fm)
They have experts here, if you can find a "content marketing strategist"
they should help you.
A 30 minute call that costs maybe $100 is well worth talking to someone, to help you answer your dilemma.
B. Be specific and brief and concise with your question, and details.
C. Focus on the main answer you are looking for in specific details. and then Ask.
Since these experts time is limited
Happy hunting!
Feb 10, 2016
Hi Becca,
how are you trying to attract new subscribers? Website and CTA? Social Networks? Contest? Special deals? Influencers and word of mouth? It might take several months, but they are all great ways to increase your number of subscribers and retain them.
Some good tips are also to check your analytics in order to track the visits on your website and the bounce rate, and also to set up an editorial digital calendar. Let me know if you need some more tips! Kind regards,
Anna
Feb 9, 2016
Becca,
Hope you are staying warm in the Windy City!
While it is important to have a presence on the multitude of social channels out there, choose 1 or 2 social media platforms that are producing the most amount of your readers. Learn the ends and outs of these platforms.
In business today, especially start-ups, we tend to put more focus and resources in 'social media'...Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram etc. etc. Our KEY focus must be on creating highly valuable content on our website/blog and turning our website/blog into a social hub.
EXAMPLES: When your readers arrive on a blog post you've created, make sure to encourage comments. Tell your readers to make suggestions, give opinions...however you must interact with each comment with answers and yes, even questions. Provide buttons to social media outlets (not only buttons to social media outlets you are on) and ask your readers to share the post. (People will share you're content with their like-minded friends!)
Do you utilize surveys or fun polls? Give-a-ways?
*IMPORTANT* I'm sure you have heard the following, "The money is in you're list". While this is true, this is also quite deceiving! The most successful businesses I know have very small email lists. A small email list that is filled with the proper clients. Utilize the list you do have...nurture this list and you will have more revenue flowing in to use for advertising.
Resources: Disqus.com for comments
Share-a-holic or CommentLuv for simple social sharing buttons.
SurveyMonkey for surveys and polls
ALL of these resources above are Freee!
Becca, if I can help in any way do not hesitate to message me here on MosaicHub.
With Sincere Gratitude,
Bradley L Chase III
Feb 9, 2016
Becca,
I wanted to share the link below as I firmly believe you will benefit from the information. (And guess what?...it does not link to nor promote me or my business!! ;)
http://unbounce.com/content-marketing/lessons-learned-from-analyzing-top-shared-marketing-blog-posts/
Hope you find this information fascinating and start applying.
With Sincere Gratitude,
Bradley L Chase III
Feb 9, 2016
Becca: I take it from your limited profile that you are focused on career development for young professionals and I am assuming that the content that you are developing is also focused on that area. I am not sure ultimately what you are trying to "sell" (i.e. books, membership site, assessments, resume reviews, etc.) but I would say that you might want to consider participating in LinkedIn groups, by way of example, Linked Strategies (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1245667) and Atlanta Job Seekers - Marketing and Sales (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1827176), that are directly applicable to your services, partnering with others such as ExecuNet where you can participate as a speaker in webinars to build thought leadership in your area of expertise, or to do CPC advertising via Facebook, Google AdSense, LinkedIn, and others. Having worked with many online publishers, I find that most overspend on content development. I often suggest building a defined library of original evergreen content that can be monitized over time and then supplementing this core content with content curated from around the web. It is generally easy to get others to provide you with "free" content in exchange for providing them with clickable author promotion/branding and a few hypertext links to related content on their site. Likewise you can promote your content on other high traffic sites with such a reciprocal relationship.
I hope this helps you think through your options.
Feb 9, 2016
Hi Becca.
Content marketing will help you grow your audience and is a worthy investment in terms of time and energy. It doesn't need to be costly, especially as you're just starting out. Create a good piece of content that offers value to your audience. This means that the content is not salesy or self-promotional at all...think education. What expertise do you (or your team) have to offer your audience that will provide valuable information to them? That's what you should be creating content around.
Then, most importantly, promote the heck out of it by pitching it to trades, blogs and other publications your audience reads as well as to influencers in your industry with the goal that they'll share with their own audiences. Also, share it in communities where your audience congregates online...think Facebook or Linkedin groups, interest-based forums, etc. Then, when you think you've promoted that single piece of content enough...keep going. Think of new ways to get your audience to see it. I'm a big fan of using content in outbound sales campaigns.
My biggest piece of advice: content isn't the field of dreams. You MUST promote it for your audience to find it. That's where the elbow grease comes in and that's where you'll start to see traction in terms of leads. Otherwise, you're just creating a helpful resource and stowing it away on the shelf where no one knows it exists.
Hope this is helpful!
Feb 9, 2016
Becca,
I'm sure the Windy City is big enough to have a Score chapter ;-)
Contact them for a free, confidential review of your business plan.
The first question I would ask myself is whether the value that your content provides to your target audience has been validated against their cost in terms of time & money.
Good Luck!
Doug
PS - A link to your content would be helpful.
Feb 9, 2016
Check out Blogmutt.com, Elance.com, Fiverr and ODesk. It's possible to find good bloggers for very little money. I know! I used to write for them! Many times I only charged $10 to $15 a post for 500 words. I attracted many clients at that rate who went on to pay me more as they saw the value of my posts and what my writing did for them. Now I blog for Homes.com, and ghost blog for business writers for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Great content is worth it's weight in gold, don't skimp. Even if you can only afford one blog a week, better to have that and keep pulling readers back. Offer other companies a chance to guest blog for you. They write the content and benefit from exposure to your audience and your budget benefits from free posts. I'm always happy to work with a blogging budget for a few months just to prove my value, so contact me if you want to do that.
Feb 9, 2016
Do the best you can and limit the posts, to save on costs. Make them regular on a timely basis. Suggestion is to work with holidays, or monthly posts. People will find great content. Would want to know the subject or service you sell. Here to help. Good luck.
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