We’ve helped a fair few other businesses to write and publish their business books with fantastic results, and now it’s our turn! As some of you will know, Sharon Tanton and I are delighted to be writing the Valuable Content Marketing book, published by Kogan Page in the autumn. We want to show as many businesses as we can how to market their businesses and get their message across in the right way today, so buyers come to them.

What’s it all about?

The secret to effective of marketing is simple: make yourself useful and share information that your buyers genuinely value, even look forward to. We want you to rethink your marketing:

Help, don’t sell; show, don’t tell; talk, don’t yell!

Our book tells you all you need to know to focus you marketing efforts on creating really valuable content – on and off the web – for fantastic business results. The book is on what is commonly called ‘content marketing’ – that’s the buzz phrase du jour. It’s about sharing information, or content over the Internet to engage potential buyers and delight your customers. But any old content won’t do – today only high quality content that people genuinely appreciate cuts through the noise.

If ‘content marketing’ is a bit jargony for you try this for size. Think of it as – helpful marketing, or VALUABLE marketing if you like. Our book is a clarion call for high quality, meaningful content that first and foremost helps your type of buyer, and will undoubtedly benefit you. Marketing with valuable content really works, as our clients will tell you. We can’t wait to give you the low down on how to do it well.

We’d love your help

Any good book is a collaboration and we’d love to collaborate with you. We’re looking for stories from all types of businesses about the results they’ve got from their content. If you’ve got a good content story you are willing to share – please get in touch.

Anyone who gets their story published in our book will get a mention in the acknowledgements….and a signed free copy of our book! We’ll also enter you into our Valuable Content Award nominations and you never know you might get a coveted Valuable Award badge for your site too.

>> Good content story? Contact Sonja: sonja@valuablecontent.co.uk

The trials and tribulations of writing a book

We have an inkling that there are others of you out there who might want to write a book one day, so in the spirit of being helpful we’re going to start writing a blog a month on what we’ve learned – so when you write your book you can do it better!

In next month’s newsletter we will address the ‘publish or self-publish?’ dilemma. This was a hard decision for us as there are pros and cons each way. We’ve opted to publish the traditional route with Kogan Page and in February’s post we’ll tell you why.

Related articles:

• Writing a book is a smart marketing move
• Does your business book idea have legs?
• Valuable advice on writing a business book from best selling author Charles H Green

What you really need to know about SEO (and nothing more)

Search Engine Optimisation is crucial if you want a consistent stream of leads from the web, but the jargon around it makes me glaze over. Luckily it’s not half as complex and technical as the terminology makes out. In this valuable guide I’ve ditched the jargon in an attempt to demystify SEO for you once and for all. Use these simple tips to get your content found by people searching online.

Why Search Engine Optimisation is so important

There are various ways to get people to your website: you can tell them about it, giving them a link to your URL; you can entice them there by sharing links to useful articles on social media sites; you can share links back to your site in your email newsletters; you can write a blog so valuable that people willingly refer it to their contacts.

Do all this and you will get visitors to your website. If your content is good enough when they get there you’ll build their trust, generate a lead and ultimately win their business. But if you want to maximise your investment in valuable content it’s vital to think about search engines too.

With 77% of all UK adults using the Internet to search for information on products and services, Google has become an indispensible part of modern life. As a business, harnessing the huge opportunity that search engines provide is crucial for making your online presence as effective as it can be.

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO as it is known, is a tool any business can use to ensure their content is as visible as possible to those searching for answers on the web. By getting to the first page of Google’s search results people will be able to find you more easily.

Google loves valuable content

Google loves valuable content. Creating high quality content for your site is by far the most important thing you can do when it comes to SEO. Adrian Knight of Digital Investments UK (resident SEO expert here at Spike Design) explains:

“Google’s mission is to serve the highest quality and relevant material to its searches. Help them to do this by producing high quality, valuable content created with the user in mind, and you will do well.”

Like the rest of us, Google hates spam. Thankfully it is getting far better at distinguishing and ranking sites with genuinely valuable content from those who try and manipulate search results with techniques such as keyword stuffing or bogus link building.

“Google is trying to make it so you don’t have to do SEO,” says Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team. But we’re not quite there yet. Google still needs a bit of spoon-feeding so it understands your content, indexes it appropriately, ranks it and serves your content over your competitors’ to those searching on the web. Here’s what you need to focus on.

Top 5 ways to optimise your content for search

1. Use keywords you care about. With a little research, you can gain a clear view of the words and phrases people most often use when thinking about and searching for your topic online. You can learn how to speak their language, allowing you to create content to satisfy their needs, which is exactly what search engines are looking for.

To generate relevant keywords first talk directly to your customers and find out why they come to you. Then use Google’s free keyword research tool. This allows you to observe the keywords and phrases that people have actually used to find information online in the past.

“Keyword research is cool – it allows you to gaze into your customers’ minds.”

By carefully targeting your keywords you are more likely to answer the search query effectively or ‘own’ the search, allowing you to get to the top of that search results page. Don’t be too scattergun – keep to within 5-20 keywords for your site.

2. Label your content for search engines. We mentioned that Google needs a bit of spoon-feeding. To feed it correctly you need to set your ‘metadata’ right (<- there’s one of those off putting technical terms we mentioned at the start!). Think of metadata as data about your data, or information about your content. It just means acting like a good librarian and labeling your content correctly so search engines can find you easily. Include your chosen keywords – this is a way of saying to the search engines, ‘Hey! Look at me! This page is relevant!’

• Page titles. Use your keywords in your page title. This is the blue link that appears on the Google search page. Keep it short – up to 72 characters will be visible.  Convince the searcher your content is relevant.
• Meta Descriptions. <165 character summary of your page or article using key search terms. This is what appears on Google’s search results and it needs to be informative, relevant, interesting and succinct.
• Headings. Important for the reader scanning your article or page, and for Google too. Use them to show what the page is all about.
• Images. Google can’t read an image so help it by labeling the images you use.

[NB: If you have a blog or a website with a content management system, ask your developer to set it up so you can set the metadata yourself for each new page or article.]

3. Link intelligently in and out your site. When the search engine ‘spiders’ enter your site, you want them to stay there as long as possible so that they can find all the wonderful content that you have in there. To do this, it is important to ensure that you don’t have any dead ends – there should always be links to other pages within your site, particularly those which hold related information. The more links there are to a page, the more the search engines will think it is important.

[NB: Optimise your links by using your keywords within the link text - this is called anchor text since it anchors your web page to the keyword.]

It is also important to link out to other relevant websites. If you write an article that draws information from and links to a host of other relevant sites, the search engines consider that you’re an expert on this subject and will place more importance on your website.

4. Update your site regularly with fresh content. The search engine ‘spiders’ that crawl around the web looking for information do keep a check on your website – they return periodically to see if you’ve modified or added anything. Google, like us, isn’t so keen on stale content – by giving it some ‘fresh meat’ every so often, by adding to your blog for example.

5. Share your content. This point cannot be stressed enough. I want you to fall in love with social media and share your content all over the place! Provided your content is of high quality, the more you share, the more you will gain link backs from other sites.

The rise of blogging and social media has revolutionised how search engines rank websites. A huge 85% of the total factors that influence search engine rankings is dependent on what happens outside of your site (according to Copyblogger’s recent SEO copywriting article).

What other people have to say about your content is more valuable than what you say about yourself. Modern SEO is all about creating content so valuable and compelling that other people naturally want to promote it, to share it, like it and tweet about it. The more that other people link to your site, the more of an authority Google will consider you to be on the subject, doing great things for your ranking.

“Try to make a site that is so fantastic you become an authority in your niche.” Matt Cutts, head of Google webspam team.

Search Engine Optimisation is massively important for anyone creating valuable content. It will help you to make the most of your investment – to get your content found. If, like me, you were originally put off by the jargon surrounding SEO, I hope this has given you some clarity and gets all that great content found by those searching on the web.

Related articles:

• How to write content so that search engines will find you and people will like you
• SEO copywriting – taking it to the next level

Many thanks to Adrian Knight and Claire Rosling here at Spike Island for their help with this article.

Jim O’Connor is one of the most talented copywriters I know. He has been writing copy for about 20 years and only came across the concept of writing “content” relatively recently.  At first he hated the whole idea – he felt it went against the grain of everything he believed about the craft of concise copywriting.

Twelve months later with a successful blog Jim’s feelings are totally reversed. He now realises that, when content is truly valuable and well presented, it’s a really smart way for a business or individual to build their reputation. So, what brought about his conversion? Here’s Jim’s story.

Less has always been more

“Studying for a degree in English Literature gave me the opportunity to compare and contrast different writing styles.  I soon developed an admiration for those who could say the most in the fewest words.  For instance, “To be or not to be” (the ultimate choice, summed up in 6 words, only one of which has more than two letters), penned by a man who, in the same play, has one of his characters declare that “brevity is the soul of wit”.  A near contemporary of his described his career limiting (to use the modern jargon) marriage in the single line “John Donne, Anne Donne, undone”.

When I started in advertising I discovered that great copywriters have the same ability, believing that “less is more”.  That’s partly because the medium was “paid for” (press ad, poster tv/radio commercial).  You had to fit your communication into a small space or time slot, like it or not.  Moreover, you had to grab attention, and the simpler you made your communication the more likely it was to go in, and stick.  I worked at Saatchi & Saatchi, where they demanded “brutal simplicity of thought”.

The process of writing copy, to my mind, is one of distillation – you boil off everything that is superfluous until you create a highly refined and flammable spirit.  This is then ignited in the heart and mind of the reader/viewer by further compression and the spark of an idea (rather like the ignition achieved in an internal combustion engine – described more fully in my post “Great copy- can you torque it?”).

Why content and copy are chalk and cheese

Writing for the web, as digital writers delight in telling us, is different.  They’re right – and the difference is that the process is often less demanding!

1. With content the writing doesn’t have to be quite so tight.  You still have to keep it concise, but because the email, or website, or post, is not in a “paid for” medium like press or TV, you have a little leeway.  You can scroll off the bottom of the screen, add more pages, or write a follow up post, without having to find another £5,000, £50,000 or £100,000 to pay for larger spaces or longer commercials.
2. With digital writing it’s often the case that more is more.  That’s because it’s partially written for search engines.  So more keywords per page is good.  More posts is good.  More pages every month is good.  More news items is good.  So there’s less of an imperative for brevity.
3. If more is more, quantity can become more prized than quality – because google doesn’t read, it just runs algorithms.
4. Once quantity is valued more highly than quality, “the words” become a standardised commodity that has a set market price.  Hence the term “content” – words are viewed as “filler”.  That’s the attitude of most web designers.  They create the pages then ask the client or writer to “fill it up” – rather like pulling up at the petrol pump.
5. Finally, now that words have been devalued to this extent, the only criteria for selecting a supplier is how quickly and cheaply they can deliver.

McMarketing

This hunger for content, the quantity rather than quality mentality, and the fact that you can find people desperate enough to do the job for the minimum wage has a profound effect.  It has created a situation where “content” is often served up swiftly and cheaply by unskilled operatives who cut and paste pre-prepared material scavenged from other sites.  The process is as swift and unskilled as assembling a happy meal, and the resulting food for thought is about as appetising, nutritious and satisfying.

Junk content vs valuable content

This is the way I felt about content and copy when I met Sonja Jefferson. She, like a few other marketing people I respected, was passionate about the opportunities offered by content and social media.  Because these individuals were obviously very experienced, and certainly didn’t write rubbish, I listened.

Top 3 reasons why people go online – to get information, to be entertained, to socialise – not to be sold to

They showed me research which indicated that the top three reasons people go online is to get information, to be entertained, and to socialise with others.  The one thing they didn’t want online was people giving them a hard sell – even when they were shopping.  So the smart way to use social media is to create a stream of content that satisfies one or more of those needs, whilst keeping it nice and chatty.  Do that and you get people coming to your site on a regular basis.

The key difference between this type of content, and that which I’ve likened to mental junk food, is this.  Instead of being written for search engines it provides something that people find useful and enjoyable.  This, to use Sonja’s term, is quality content, or valuable content – clearly defined by her and other experts in this excellent post – What makes quality content?

A priceless new medium (it’s worth a fortune, but it’s free!)

As I began to experiment with creating and sharing valuable content it became apparent that it’s not just valuable for the reader – it’s also immensely valuable to the company providing it.  Not just because it creates traffic and loyal readers who either spread the word or become customers (often it’s both).  But because it gives that company a way to share its knowledge and experience in a manner that just doesn’t work in sales copy.  They become a trusted go-to expert in their field and build long term relationships with people they would otherwise never have been able to reach through traditional media.  How valuable is that?  It’s priceless.

Do it.  Now

So, I’m a convert.  Writing content that has value for people is something I find immensely satisfying – not least because it’s attracting a string of new clients who now appreciate just how I can help them.  It’s easy to be sceptical (I know, I was).  But try it for a few months and you’ll be amazed at the results.”

Thanks Jim. I’m delighted, but not surprised that your investment in creating valuable content is getting you such great results your articles are first class. Do have a read of Jim’s blog here: thought-provoking, educational and really funny – Jim O’Connor’s Stories That Sell Blog. And congratulations on your Valuable Content Award too Jim!

Relevant articles:

• More from Jim’s on the copy vs content debate: Are the words on your website just dancing around their handbags?
• Jim’s post here on Emotion, not logic will get your message across
• What makes quality content?

December is the perfect month for planning your approach for the following year. Chris Brogan calls it ‘the power month‘ – and I like that. For all us hard-working business owners it’s our secret slowdown: somewhere between December and January we carve ourselves just a little bit of head space to look forward and think back; a good time for letting those creative ideas fly.

If marketing is one of the things you want to improve next year, here are a few ideas to add to December’s thinking pot:

1. Start blogging in earnest – write articles regularly that help your customers do business better and you’ll be amazed at the results – wider awareness, increased trust, easier referrals, more sales.
2. Keep in touch by email. Don’t forget your current contacts in 2012 – if you want to make your life easier, devote time and attention to keeping in touch with those that know you. Communicate with them regularly in ways they appreciate and find useful and they’ll reward you with referrals and new business when the time is right.
3. Produce something really valuable. Take it further in 2012. Produce a piece of high quality stock content with a shelf life – the really strong, valuable stuff – a useful downloadable guide, ebook, whitepaper, research or king of them all – a book. Up the value for greater return.
4. Stop flirting with social media and get stuck in. It’s no longer on the fringes, it’s how many of your customers and clients research, connect and communicate today. Get involved!
5. Make your website a resource, not a brochure. Turn it into a valuable resource for your clients, not just a promotional tool for you. Stop shouting, start helping: put your clients first.

At the heart of each of these ideas is valuable content. Make your marketing all about creating and sharing information that is genuinely valuable to your particular buyers and watch your business grow.

We wish you the best of luck for 2012.

Related articles:

• Five solid reasons to start a business blog
• Use your Christmas cards to change your marketing forever
• RT, @, #, DM? Twenty Top Twitter Tips

The Valuable Content Awards launched just over a year ago and we’ve uncovered some real content heroes in that time. To win an award your website needs to be packed with helpful, authentic content, written with passion, presented with the user in mind. We only verify content that is genuinely useful to web users: content that gets business results.

This month and for the first time we’re handing out a golden Valuable Content Award to the business whose content we feel is the most valuable of them all. And our award for 2011 goes to consultant Mel Lester and his company The Business Edge.

Mel won our first ever Valuable Content award back in October 2009 and for good reason. As he clearly states on the home page of his website, in terms of value he sets his sights pretty high:

“Mel Lester (aka The Business Edge) is pleased to offer this website as a valuable source of “how-to-get-things-done” information and tools. I set out with an ambitious goal: to create the best internet resource for helping managers of architectural, engineering, and environmental consulting firms succeed, both corporately and personally.”

With his website, blog articles, seriously valuable newsletter and veritable library of free resources (check out his ‘Consultant’s Toolbox‘) we think he delivers, and it’s getting him remarkable business results. Well done Mel! Gold Valuable Content award badge on its way.

Mel Lester’s minimalist marketing approach

Mel is a Practice Management Consultant in Virginia, US. He’s a one man band firmly focused on helping businesses in the Architecture and Engineering field to get things done. Mel is a busy guy, constantly in demand in his industry, with not a lot of time on his hands. He has to make sure he only invests in marketing actions that get him the best results.

Marketing for Mel is all about putting great content out there; making yourself useful; serving your clients, whether it’s in marketing or delivery. Here’s what Mel has to say about his marketing approach.

“One of the biggest challenges for a one-man firm is finding time to develop new business. Come to think of it, that’s the same challenge many of my clients face, even though they may have large staffs. When we’re busy, there’s little time to do anything but serve our clients. There’s also the problem of timing: prospective clients don’t have a constant need for our services, so our sales calls often don’t coincide with when the client has an imminent need.

That’s why marketing is so important. It’s not just about building your brand or increasing name recognition. It’s about being in front of clients—at least in a virtual sense—when the need arises. The one marketing metric that matters most to me is how often prospective clients call in response to my marketing.

“Content marketing is the most effective approach to generating new business.”

But not just any marketing inspires people to contact you. Client respond to content of value, content that helps them better diagnose and solve pressing problems. Several studies confirm that content marketing is the most effective approach in helping generate new business. So why aren’t more professional service firms producing such content?

My clients complain that they don’t have the time and resources to produce it. But I manage to get good traction with my “minimalist marketer” approach (about 70% of my new clients come through marketing). This includes:

• Write one blog post a week
• Market blog postings to multiple publishers looking for content
• Occasionally draw from blog postings to create articles for magazines, journals, etc.
• Search the internet for other people’s good content (usually as part of a paid consulting assignment!)
• Use select Twitter contributors to help keep me supplied with good content
• Draw from all of the above to produce a monthly ezine (newsletter)
• Speak at conferences when I can (invite people to join my mailing list)
• Promote content via Twitter and Facebook
• Share the best material on my content-rich website

All that takes less time than most would imagine, maybe 3-5 hours per week. Besides marketing, I use this content to provide additional insights to current clients, keep in touch with prospective or past clients, and follow up with participants in my training workshops.

If you don’t much time to market, the important thing is to do the few things that work best.”

Congratulations again on all the great content Mel! A worthy gold award winner for 2011 as I’m sure you’ll agree, and hopefully an inspiration to others to get marketing and do the right stuff.

A guest post by David Tovey of Principled Selling.

The advert above first appeared in Business Week in 1958 – yes that’s right over 50 years ago! The moral of the ad’s story was relevant then and it is even more relevant today: build relationships before you sell. The bad news is that we live in far more cynical times than the sellers of the 1950’s; the good news is that we have so many more tools available to help us to address the problem.

We’re trying to sell to a cynical world

The problem? Never before has anyone trying to sell something faced with such a high level of mistrust – just because they are selling. Every day throughout the world there are more and more stories about the general environment of lack of trust. This is the real world that anyone trying to win business lives in – you and me. I’m not sure they were ever really effective but you can be sure the ‘old’ world of using sales ‘techniques’ is well and truly over.

Some will blame buyers; some will think the problem is stupid customers who don’t ‘get’ the benefits of what is being offered to them, some will blame price. The successful will recognise there is a new world out there where only a smart, genuine, trust building and principled business approach gets results. It’s about bringing that 1958 mind-set up to date using modern tools. It’s time to stop thinking about ‘selling’ things and start thinking about building a trusted relationship with target prospects. When we do that a weird thing happens – we actually win more business!

Build a reputation BEFORE face to face meetings

Good marketing builds relationships. All our marketing effort should be focused on building relationships with the type of customers who will build our dream customer base of the future. First, identify who we want to do business with, then start to build a relationship with them using the valuable content approach.

Cold calling senior decision makers (or any buyer), is a high risk strategy. Decision makers are time poor; they only have time to talk to or meet people who will help them address the critical success factors in their business. The key is to build a relationship with them BEFORE the call.

How?

1. Show you are a player in their world. You’ll need social media strategies in place in to address you target audience and of course a brilliant web site that visitors want to return to time and time again. If appropriate in your sector you may have some ‘corporate’ marketing in place that advertises your brand (as McGraw Hill stated). Decision makers want to know you are a ‘player’ in their world and make quick judgments based on what they see and read.
2. Build relevant content that will interest them. Being a ‘player’ isn’t enough though. You will need to engage with your audience by sharing great content with them. In everything you do make sure that you are thinking like a client and only sharing content that will interest them – which is generally not what happens in the typical sales brochure which tends to talk about the supplier rather than the customer.
3. A valuable content marketing campaign, just for them. If you want to meet with a specific senior executive you can build a valuable content marketing campaign just for them. It might be based on two or three tailored letters sent over several weeks with a different interesting and useful article attached. They are highly effective in getting meetings with key people and in helping to build a trusted relationship. When the prospect we are about to meet feels there is already a relationship based on your marketing activities they are motivated to meet us. They want to spend time with us to explore opportunities to do business with each other.

Whatever marketing tool used the key is to build that relationship so that no potential customer starts a meeting with the attitude of the man in that advert!

By David Tovey, firm believer in Principled Selling

Is your company Christmas card the only time old contacts hear from you each year?

If it is, you are missing out on the most effective and enjoyable route to new business. In this article we look at how ‘Keep in Touch’ marketing can reward you with referrals and sales.

Marketing is not the same as lead generation

Contrary to a popular myth, marketing is not just about generating new leads. As one of my favourite US marketing bloggers, Sonia Simone puts it:

“So many businesses think ‘marketing’ is the same thing as ‘lead generation’. In other words that marketing equals chasing down strangers so you can wrestle them through the conversion process and turn them into customers.”

Many professional businesses make the mistake of devoting all their time and a considerable amount of budget to the unrewarding slog of lead generation when there’s a far more cost effective and rewarding way to boost sales.

“Stay in touch. Too many businesses chase new businesses chase new business when existing customers and contacts are far more valuable.”

So says smart marketeer Mick Dickinson and he is right. If you want to make your life easier and frankly more enjoyable next year, stop spending all your time trying to wrestle down strangers: devote much of your marketing time and attention to keeping in touch with those that know you. Communicate with them regularly in ways they appreciate and find useful and they may well reward you with referrals and new business when the time is right.

Keeping in contact in ways your customers find valuable is the most effective route to consistent sales. This is ‘win-win’ marketing. Your customers and contacts get something that they value and can learn from. You get an opportunity to prove your expertise, and stay in contact, so they’ll remember you when a need arises.

Your 5 step ‘Keep in Touch’ marketing plan

1. Create a database: Put together a list of your contacts. This should include current and past clients; those you’ve quoted for, but not yet done business with; partners; suppliers and anybody else you have a valued business relationship with. You can use a simple contact database (we love Highrise) for this task.
2. Plan and be consistent: Devise and execute an achievable programme of communication throughout the year, whether it’s a quarterly newsletter, a monthly missive or a weekly blog – whatever works for you and your customers/clients.
3. Provide targeted, useful content: Create and send out informative, well-written information to your contacts, content that they’ll find valuable e.g. articles, ‘How to’ guides, whitepapers, e-books, video. NB: each different type of contact will have different needs and interests. If you have very distinct sets of customers think about tailoring your communication for each group.
4. Ask for their permission to keep in touch: Invite them to join your list and stay in contact. You’ll get a smaller, but far more engaged list and no reports of spam! (We use Mailchimp to manage our list and email marketing, with the help of Eli Barbary, our ‘keep in touch’ lady).
5. Measure results: Make sure you record all your activity and the results it brings on your contact management system. See what works best, for you and your contacts; continue with those activities that bring the most benefit.

A monthly email newsletter is a very effective way to do this – Mel Lester, a US-based business consultant I follow on Twitter, produces the most valuable, targeted newsletter I’ve seen to date: see one of Mel’s newsletters.

Your Christmas cards as a catalyst

Your company Christmas card list is a great place to begin this new approach. Customers can often drift away because they don’t feel appreciated or just plain forget you. Christmas is a good opportunity to thank them for their business during the past year and show them that you value them as contacts.

Use this occasion to sort out your database of contacts. Send each one a card with a personal message and include your business card as an invitation to stay in touch. Don’t stop there: this can be the beginning of a whole new approach to your marketing for the coming year.

Remember: marketing is not the same as lead generation. Stop spending so much time wrestling down strangers. Start communicating with your current contacts regularly, in ways they appreciate and find useful. You’ll find that ‘Keep in Touch’ is a remarkably effective route to more business next year.

Other articles you might like:

• How to keep in touch with customers until they are ready to buy
• 6 simple ways to produce content that shows that you care

Yoke is a new design studio. Run by Jay Bigford and Alister Wynn here at Spike Island, the company is six weeks old today and it’s looking like a runaway success. In just six weeks they have landed their dream client, have just about all the work they can handle with a stream of good leads coming in – and all this without having to resort to ‘cold calling’ too.

Yoke have their launch and marketing strategy absolutely right. Here is their story:

The Cornerstones of YOKE’s Marketing Strategy:
- A clear, honest, positive mission that runs through all that they do
- A targeted, niche approach with absolute certainty of who they want to do business with
- A beautifully designed website with valuable content at its heart
- Writing and sharing relevant articles on topics close to both their own and target clients’ hearts
- Building relationships through Twitter
- A web strategy that’s wider than their website

Sonja: “What is the big idea behind Yoke?”

Jay: “We are both experienced freelance designers, with a background working for digital agencies on web design projects for global brands. Alister and I been friends for 12 years and from the start it was clear that we shared the same goals and values. We have always loved design but we wanted to do more than just earn our keep: we want to make a difference too.

We launched Yoke so we can offer our services to people or organisations we think are really trying to do something positive for our planet.  Often these organisations don’t have big budgets for online marketing services. Our aim is to take our knowledge and skills and help their causes by giving them the digital tools they require, at a significantly lower rate than that of a large agency. We really want to help.

Sonja: “How did you come up with your launch ideas?”

Jay: “We thought long and hard about how to start our studio. Many people who do so take a client with them and build their company off that relationship. We couldn’t do that: many of the clients we’d worked for previously didn’t fit our selective work ethic.  Our policy is to collaborate with those who are contributing towards positive change in the world.  We looked at the design companies who inspired us.  Their websites were way more than just beautiful portfolio sites – they talked about more than just design; they seemed to write a lot, sharing their expertise in the widest sense.  We decided to do the same but take it one step further.  We write about subjects that interest us on a personal and professional level which we feel helps us connect with our clients.  We wanted to prove our ideas without being smug or judgmental. Content and tone were absolutely key.

Sonja: “Tell us about the steps you have taken so far.”

Jay: “Our first step was to get our website right. We couldn’t launch the company without it. We paid close attention to design, layout/usability, content and wording – they all had to work together to provide the right platform for our business. We wanted a site people learn from and start conversations, not just a portfolio site.

We had a clear idea of the organisations we wanted to help. Our next step was to write articles and reports on subjects close to their hearts (for example one on using social media for social good, another on trends in online grocery shopping). We wanted to show that we understood their issues, and give them something useful to think about.

Before we started we thought we might have to cold call to make contact. We weren’t looking forward to this I can tell you! We noticed that many of them were on Twitter. What has really surprised us is that just by connecting with them on Twitter and swapping news and our reports was enough to get their interest. The ‘Twitter handshake’ is amazingly powerful – you get a totally different response to a cold email or call. You can really build relationships via Twitter.  You have to make sure you get your bio just right: this gets delivered to their inbox and can make all the difference.

The other thing that has worked well was to get our site up on design inspiration sites across the web. I put us on one or two and had a great response. It’s gone viral – we’re now on 20-30 sites!  We’ve landed a couple of really interesting projects in the States this way. We’ve just won the ’site of the day’ award on a fantastic site called awwwards.com. We were up against loads of other sites and reviewed by an international panel of judges. Part of the prize is getting featured in a book they produce. It just doesn’t get better from a marketing point of view.

Sonja: “What success have you had to date?”

Jay: “We thought we’d have to do a lot of free work for small companies to get to where we are now, but three weeks in and we are working with our dream client – The Sustainable Restaurant Association – on a really important campaign to reduce food waste in restaurants.  The campaign has been endorsed by the likes of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and other chefs and celebrities, so will make a big impact. We have created the identity for the campaign as well as delivering a cutting-edge responsive website that is optimised for mobile use.

We have also landed two jobs in the States working with online marketing agency Thoughtlead.  After discovering our site on design award sites Thoughtlead got in contact: they shared similar goals and ethics to us as well as loving our style and design.  We are really overjoyed that people are actually connecting to our message and contacting because we have shared beliefs.  This has far exceeded our expectations.

We have now got a steady stream of work coming in and are feeling good about the fact that we can turn down work that doesn’t fit our market and ethics.  We have turned away at least eight projects so far because they don’t fit with our values. We now have six projects booked in, not bad for six weeks after launch!

Sonja: “What advice would you give others looking to launch a new business?”

Jay: Stay positive and play to your strengths. There is no point trying to sell yourself as something you are not.  The main reason for us starting the business was because we had something valuable to add to the discussion, a voice worth hearing. It is important to find your voice and give it a defined tone that people can relate to. The content of our site was key: images can only say so much and we really want to start discussions, change behavior and influence change – hopefully by people engaging in our writing we may achieve this. I would also recommend treating everyone you work with amazingly, it helps your business reputation and also makes people happy which is what it’s all about!

Alister: Specialise in a sector and create a connection with your market that is personal.  At Yoke we believe strongly in sustainability and working towards a better future.  This comes across in our work and people connect with this: it’s why they get in contact.

Sonja: Thanks very much Jay and Alister. What a fantastic start! We love the idea behind Yoke and we think your marketing approach is just right. We’d like to award you this month’s Valuable Content Award for your beautifully designed, content rich website with a sound message at its heart.

• Narrow Your Niche For More Leads
• Pack Your Website Full of Value
• The Perfect Couple: Content and Design
• What is Your Crusade?

The signposts your clients seek

I’m doing some research for a new project – writing landing pages for a Pay Per Click web campaign – and I’ve been assessing my client’s competition. The pages are for a legal firm, so it’s a very crowded market, yet one firm keep coming up top, again and again. And the thing that’s keeping them there is a very simple piece of valuable content.

This firm has created a very straightforward and well written pdf document that answers all the ground level questions that I, (and I presume potential clients,) will have on the subject. It’s not flashy, or particularly visual – nowhere near as comprehensive as an e-book – it simply lays out the key areas you need to understand.

Their expertise in the area isn’t explicitly referred to – but is implicit in the fact that they have created this ‘all you need to know’ document, and put their name to it.

For me, and potential clients at the information gathering stage of a project, resources like this are invaluable. We don’t want to ‘ring for a free appraisal’ – talking is something that comes a bit later, when you’ve orientated yourself in the area, and you know what you don’t know, and where you need help.

However their website would be the first I’d go to, if I wanted more information. And were I looking to pick up the phone to someone, they’d be top of my list, because they have already shown themselves to be understanding of my situation, authoritative, and ready to help.

How to create a valuable document to signpost people to your company

It’s not difficult to create this kind of valuable document, it just needs a clear understanding of your potential clients’ problems and a willingness to share your expertise. Here’s what you need to remember:

1. Choose the right topic. What terms do people search for in your business? What are the most frequently asked questions from your newest clients?  Build a document that addresses this, and get it up on your website as a simple download.
2. Don’t write the book. This law firm’s pdf worked because it answered the basic questions, and laid the ground rules. Going into too much detail would be a mistake here. Signposting documents aren’t the place to show off everything you know, rather they should answer clients first questions, and lead them to the next stage.
3. Make it quality. Had this document been poorly written – stuffed with SEO filler words or simply not good to read – it would have had the opposite effect on me. Constantly being sent to a poor resource is irritating. If it’s going to surface again and again, make sure it stands up to all the attention.
4. Consider design. You don’t need to go overboard and invest in something too polished. Nor do you need images, it’s fine to produce something text only.
5. Think about typography. Potential clients are hungry for information, but they’ll still thank you for making it easy to digest: pick a user friendly font; consider judicious use of headlines to make your content easy to read on the web; allow enough white space to give the words room to breathe; break the text up into chunks.
6. Clear calls to action. This kind of document is the opposite of a hard sell sales piece, however you do want potential clients to know where you are once they’re ready to talk. Include some suggestions for further reading, and do include your contact details.

There’s an awful lot of business content out there today isn’t there? From blogs to books, ebooks to email, tweets, video, slides, webinars, podcasts and more: we’re a society on information overload. Whatever the medium, if the information you put out is not of high quality – really high – we’ll ignore it, block it, delete it, click away. You’ve got to go a long way for your content to cut through the noise.

But what makes ‘quality content’? How do you create content so valuable it can’t be ignored? I asked some of the thinkers I most respect for their views:

Content that is created with the buyer in mind

- David Meerman Scott

Quality content is to be determined by those who interact with the content. So the best way to create quality is to understand deeply the people who you are trying to reach. You need to create the content especially with your buyers in mind.

David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker and author – www.webinknow.com.

Content that informs my world

- David Tovey

For me there are two types of content. The best is that which addresses my world, my issues and which makes me think the writer understands. After that it is content that informs and educates me, introduces new ideas and concepts that will help me to help my clients.

David Tovey is MD of PACE Partners International, a speaker and firm believer in Principled Selling – www.principledselling.org

Content that has substance

- Jane Northcote

The content I regard as valuable is:

• useful and functional – gives me answers
• beautiful and entertaining – gives me pleasure

It has to do at least one of those things. If it does both, I consider subscribing. You ask specifically about what I read. In general I am operating on a lap-top or vertical screen, having not yet succumbed to an iPad. So reading is actually quite difficult. I don’t want to read, I want to see.

Blogs that are valuable have substance: numbers, places, people’s names, descriptions of real events, graphs. I distinguish “substance” from “opinion”. Substance is more valuable than opinion. And opinion without substance is not valuable at all.

Jane Northcote is a management consultant, thinker and author of Making Change Happen – www.janenorthcote.com. You can read Jane’s full comment on content here.

Content relevant to each stage of the buying journey

- Bryony Thomas

Quality in terms of content is to a large part dependent on context. Even extremely insightful, well-written, content can be completely useless if presented at the wrong time, to the wrong person and at the wrong stage in the buying decision. I think it’s vital for content marketers to think carefully about the sales journey and to develop powerful content for each step of buying decision.

Bryony Thomas is a marketing speaker, author and consultant www.bryonythomas.com.

Content with a strong point of view, supported by design

- Christopher Butler

At the most basic level, valuable content is content that does its job, whether that be to entertain, to educate, or to sell. But that doesn’t do much to describe how content can meet this criteria.

Ultimately, I think the answer to what makes content valuable is similar (if not the same) to what makes good writing and good thinking. If I had to choose one key ingredient, it would be a writer or speaker’s strong point of view. A compelling point of view comes from a very fine balance of erudition and originality (or in other words, taking liberty with tradition). As Emerson wrote, “He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.” That may be a bit grandiose for what we do, but there is a solid point here. Be well read, but not too well read. Be discerning in what you read, and wise about what you repeat.

On the web, there is another issue to consider: how good design supports good content. It’s not enough to simply publish a good article. The page that contains it needs to be designed to focus the attention of time-pressed, distracted readers and do so confidently, keeping its own distractions–advertisements, calls to action, related content widgets, etc.–to a minimum. Thoughtful originality is essential here. What works for big, unfocused audiences will not work for smaller, focused ones. For the rest of us, the better we are at knowing our audience, the better we’ll be at writing content they’re likely to read and respond to.

Christopher Butler is an author and Vice President of Newfangled, a niche US web development company specialising in websites that work for marketing services companies.

Content with meaning

- Charles H. Green

To be valuable content must have uniqueness at the client level, and it must be meaningful. Absent such meaning and “content” is just fodder for robo-marketing, a kissing cousin to spam. My advice:

• Don’t just produce content—say something.
• If your content doesn’t have a message, it’s just content.
• Don’t be content with “just content.”
• Content is less than the sum of the words; meaning is greater.
• When you write, speak or sing; do with a particular real person in mind.

Charles H. Green is a consultant, speaker, author of The Trusted Advisor – www.trustedadvisor.com and new book The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook. You can find his full comment on content here.

Value can’t be faked

Thank you to all who gave their ideas here. They sum it up for me. Truly valuable, high quality content has all the attributes they describe so well: it’s useful, relevant, informing my world world, created with deep understanding of the reader; it has substance, an opinion – all made visual by strong design.

And just one last comment from me: valuable content is not a ‘technique’ – you’ve got to care, to believe in what you put out there – true value can’t be faked.

What is your view?

How about you? What content do you find valuable and why? I’d love your thoughts.