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?

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.

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?

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.

A guest post by marketing strategist Sean McVey of Hinge Marketing

Professional services firms are changing the way they think about and use websites. Not very long ago the service website was an extension of a firm’s print collateral. It was little more than an online brochure, presenting basic information about the company. More recently, however, the function of the website has begun to shift from providing general information to generating qualified leads.

When looking at effective websites, you will notice that they not only describe the company and its services, but they also provide valuable content to educate visitors.  From white papers to blog posts and webinars, these sites give visitors a reason to come back.  Treating your site as a living breathing entity and updating it constantly with information relevant to your target market will help to build a foundation of trust between you and your prospects. 

What Is a High Performance Website?

If we consider lead generation alone, we can offer up one possible definition of a high performance site: If 50% or more of your business is coming through the web, you’ve got a high performance website.

Sound like pie in the sky? In fact, many service firms today are exceeding that threshold. And they are doing it by crafting their sites to encourage responses from their visitors.

Here are just a few elements you should consider when transforming your site into a lead generating tool:

Clear calls to action – The best performing websites are built with specific objectives in mind. This means telling the visitor exactly where you want them to click. You can use the sidebar of your website to feature buttons that encourage the visitor to take action. Some examples:

• Request a Proposal
• Download our Research Study
• View Our Case Studies
• Watch Our Webinar 

These calls to action create clearly defined pathways for the visitor. These pathways make it easy for a visitor to take the next step in a multi-stage customer development process.

Conversion Forms – If your goal is to have prospects contact you, then you must make it as easy as possible for them to send you a message. Including a simple form on your contact page is a must for any high performance websites — visitors can write a few words and click submit, without leaving the page. A surpising number of firms don’t include forms on their websites. Adding a form to your site removes any friction between the visitor and your goal. They just work.

Forms are also important for tracking purposes. In analytics programs, you can measure how many times people submit your form and get an idea of where those people came from.

Here is a basic form that helps capture information here at Hinge. We’ve intentionally kept the number of fields low to encourage people to use the form.

Retention Elements – Once visitors get to your website, you should try to find a way to bring them back again. Many visitors are in the early stages of the buying process. To turn them into qualified prospects you have to nurture them, which takes multiple touches.

You can encourage visitors to come back to your site in many ways. For instance, you can put offers on your site for newsletter subscriptions, blog feeds, and free white papers. As visitors receive newsletters and blog posts, your company stays top of mind.

Search Engine Authority – None of your website’s elements matter if nobody comes to your site in the first place. The heart of a high performance website lies in its search engine authority. If you have authority with search engines, you will rank well and gain consistent traffic.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a complex topic that can’t be covered in a blog post. From keyword research and implementation to link building, SEO is a long-term initiative that all high performing websites must tackle. For a great free resource on this subject, check out SEOMOZ and their free tools and advice.

Now What?

Retooling your website may seem like a daunting task, but it is a necessary step if you want to generate a significant portion of your leads online. A great starting place is to begin looking at other professional services websites and evaluate what you may be missing. Consider the tips above for your next design and you will be one step closer to fulfilling your company’s online potential.

In today’s professional services marketplace, the almighty referral has a new rival: the high performance website. If you haven’t already, perhaps it’s time to open your mind and open your arms to the precious and potentially generous World Wide Web.

Examples of High Performance Websites

• HubSpot – This software company does a great job of making things easy on the visitor. Basic pathways and calls to action make it very obvious how to navigate the site and contact the company.
• Ian Brodie – This professional services consultant has mastered the concept of retaining prospects through free reports and other outstanding content. He claims that 70 percent of his business is generated by his website.
• WebMarketing123 – Not only is this firm dominant in search engines, they also know how to treat visitors once they’ve arrived. Clear calls to action work together with proven retention techniques such as webinars to nurture the prospect throughout the sales process.

I’ve just had an email from a good friend. She’s an extremely creative event designer and decorator in the hospitality industry and she’s looking for a new job. She asked for my advice on her CV. I reworked it for her – pulling out the important messages and making sure they were clear, upfront and highlighted. I reformatted it to make it easy to read and gave the wording a quick polish. Her experience all stacks up; the CV is looking pretty good.

I also gave her some advice (I just can’t help myself these days); I’m pretty sure it will make a real difference to her job search (and hope she appreciates it!). My advice is this: 

“To prove how passionate and knowledgeable you are in your field, how about setting up your own blog? Your posts could be photos of design ideas you like, recent events you are proud of or just visual elements that inspire you. 

A blog like this is a great way to record your ideas for posterity and build a bit of an archive to remember for your next project. It’s also a fantastic way to prove your expertise and interest in your work, something that I’m sure would really wow a potential employer.”

My talented web designer friend and associate Iain Claridge does exactly that – he collects and posts image of design ideas that inspire him on his brilliant design blog:

• Check out Iain’s design blog - http://www.iainclaridge.co.uk/blog/

Iain set this up originally as a personal ‘brain dump’ for ideas: a repository for snippets of code and chunks of creative inspiration that he found whilst browsing the internet – important information that would otherwise be lost. The fact that others would find it equally useful as a source of information and inspiration was a bit of a surprise for him.

Iain’s blog is now recognised as one of the best design blogs around, with 78,000 unique visitors every month and an incredible 12,417 inbound links. It has been featured in design blogs such as grafik, surfstation and siteinspire and won Iain numerous design assignments – most notably from NASA! 

Iain’s blog is a perfect example of the approach I teach my business clients – get your passion out there, prove your expertise and commitment by producing some really ‘valuable content’. It’s a superb way to show a potential employer or customer that you are serious, knowledgeable and committed to what you do.

Valuable content works.

We talk a lot about how businesses should create content for their websites that is genuinely useful to their customers.

“Buyer behaviour has changed,” we say: “their first port of call is the internet. They are not looking for you, they’re looking for answers to their business problems. You’d better make sure that your website is packed full of valuable information that answers their questions and positions you as the trusted resource they seek.”

It’s a compelling argument but does it really get results?

Here is a case study from professional services business development expert Ian Brodie. Ian’s experience shows you how powerful the ‘valuable content’ strategy for your website really is.

Ian swapped a traditional, corporate website for his current content-rich site with impressive results. Here is his story.

Ian Brodie’s new content-rich website gets results

“I decided to invest in a new website a couple of years ago. Like many business owners I was incredibly frustrated with my existing site. I’d stumped up quite a bit of cash for what I thought was a good looking website. I’d written compelling, client-focused copy describing the problems I had helped clients with and the benefits they’d get from working with me. I had testimonials, case studies, service descriptions – everything.

Well, everything except clients.

Almost no one came to my site (despite paying for some search engine optimisation work). Those that did visit didn’t hang around for long.

At the same time I was hugely enthusiastic about what an effective website could bring me. As a sole practitioner I knew that my time was at a premium. I was spending a lot of time working to win business by going out networking, pitching, presenting and meeting people. I knew that if I could just get my website working for me it could bring me in business while I was with clients, sleeping or having fun.

I already had a separate blog – just for fun really: an outlet for my desire to share ideas on marketing and business development. I noticed that my pretty scruffy looking blog far outstripped my professional website in terms of traffic, and in terms of the connections it allowed me to make with my potential clients and peers in my niche.

Because my blog had useful articles on it, other websites and blogs had no hesitation linking to it and highlighting my articles to their readers. When I used social networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn I had somewhere to send people to read more useful information (rather than just promotional puffery about myself which never goes down well).

Visitors stuck around far longer on my blog. They made comments. Some of them even emailed me to ask questions. I emailed back and we began to build a relationship. This never happened with my corporate site.

I started getting emails from people asking how I could help them in their business. Clients were coming to me!

In the end I abandoned my professional, corporate website. I got the blog tidied up and put all the stuff about my clients and my services as sub pages of the blog. I kept the focus of the new site firmly and squarely on delivering what you call “valuable content” to keep readers engaged and coming back for more – and to get other sites linking to me to raise my google rankings.

And the results?

Thanks to this strategy I now get the majority of my clients via my website - and as I’d hoped, I don’t have to go out and trade my time anytime I need new clients.”

Have a look at Ian’s site – www.ianbrodie.com- not overly fancy in design, just packed with extremely valuable information, absolutely relevant to his target clients, clearly laid out.

The lesson that we can learn from Ian’s story is this:

The most important factor in website success is the quality and depth of its content

Valuable content really does help you sell.

Further reading:

• We too swapped our original corporate site for a blog-based one with content we hope is valuable at its heart. Here is our post explaining why: A new blog-based site for Valuable Content.
• And here is our article on the 4 Pillars of a Successful Business Website: no prizes for guessing that ‘Value’ is the first on the list!

If you are looking for help with your business website – either with its content or your overall approach – we can provide objective assistance. Find out more about our valuable website services or get in touch sonja@sonjajefferson.co.uk.

Autoresponder email sequences are an underused lead generation tool for many of us in the small business world, and, if written well, a great example of valuable content in action. In this article business coach Lee Duncan explains how a carefully crafted autoresponder sequence will benefit your business: motivating subscribers to become paying customers.

First, for those of you not familiar with the term, here’s a quick definition for you. Autoresponding is just the process of  writing and scheduling automatically sent emails to contacts who have signed up to your list. Before you start hollering about ‘email overload’ and ‘the death of email’ have a read of Lee’s experience.  He might just change your mind.

Introducing Lee Duncan

Lee Duncan is a valued contact of mine and a master of internet marketing. You’ll see him online as the Double Your Business Coach at www.leeduncan.com. When it comes to S.E.O. this man really does know his stuff. In fact, if you type in the term ’business coaching’ to Google he comes up second – and this is an extremely competitive space.

But that’s not all Lee knows. He is also an expert in the the use of autoresponder emails to boost sales. Autoresponders are a very powerful email marketing technique that bring Lee and his coaching clients a high degree of success.

1. Autoresponders are an under-utilised tool for small professional businesses. Why?

“I remember getting my first email account and the excitement of receiving an email.  Time has moved on and most of us hate receiving junk mail into Outlook as much as we hate junk mail on the doormat.  As a result, in our minds I think we tend to classify all commercial email as junk, when if fact a lot of it isn’t.

I love the emails I get from Perry Marshall, the Adwords guy, because they’re often informative and provocative.  Meanwhile I get driven to distraction by emails from the many spammers who simply self-promotes products like a jack-hammer into your mailbox almost every day.

One of my clients said his wife told him that the emails we built for his business wouldn’t work, “because people never read that junk”.  So he was delighted to remind her that she always books her next spa treatment at the local beautician in direct response to a regular email she gets from them!  If they’re interested, they’ll read it.  We just need to take the time to make it interesting.

For professionals in business, I suggest that the key to success with an autoresponder is to imagine you’re having a conversation with your subscribers.  Then, when you do take the time to promote your services or a new product via email, you’re not likely to suffer a lot of unsubscribes.”

2. What did you want to achieve for your own business with the authoresponder sequence set up?

“I have used autoresponders for several years now, in fact, as a business coach I’ve been encouraging clients to use them for even longer. As with so many solopreneurs, I’d not really spent as much time on them as I wanted.  I knew that putting a good autoresponder sequence in place would increase the number of leads I generate from my website.  It was a bit of a struggle to write them at first, as I like to provide high quality content rather than an incessant sales pitch, so each email took an hour or two to write.

I realised that I had some capacity for more clients and so I pushed myself to get the autoresponders done.   It took me about a month to get a sequence of 20 in place.”

3. You know your audience well. How do your readers benefit from these emails?

“My goal with every email is to offer some practical insights that the owner/manager of a small can use to improve their business.  It’s my aim to educate and inspire in a practical way.  I write about topics that my audience can relate to: how to improve your cashflow through better credit control; why giving employees shares doesn’t motivate most of them; why your business grinds to a halt when you go away on holiday.

I want to touch on the hot topics for most people in business and give away some useful advice, obviously following the Valuable Content concept that educating and informing people helps to build a relationship that turns into business later on.”

4. What process did you use to set up your autoresponder?

“I noticed that a lot of the “big boys” of Internet marketing use a service called Infusionsoft.  At first I thought it was a bit expensive, but as I looked closer, I realised that it does so much more than my old email service, Aweber, and this persuaded me to switch.  I noted down the top challenges that people running a small business tend to experience and wrote an email message to cover each one.”

5. What advice can you offer for success with autoresponder email messages?

“The secret I’ve found is keeping the message personal and very simple.  Don’t write as if you’re addressing a crowd, aim it at the individual and personalise the message to make it more intimate and engaging.  Make it simple too: the more you try to pack into a message, the more clumsy it becomes.  A single topic, covered in 500 words or less, is very powerful.  Alternatively, a short message that links to content on your website, a survey or similar can be equally effective at engaging your subscribers and building a relationship with them.

Also remember that you’re doing this for business, not pleasure – make sure you put a call to action in every message so that your readers know what to do next!“

6. What results have you seen for your business?

“I put my new sequence into play in March 2010, since then my coaching client base has more than doubled.  I often get messages of thanks back from readers and they will respond to particular messages with queries about how I can help them to solve similar issues in their businesses.”

7. What can small businesses learn here?

“I strongly believe that every business should have at least a basic autoresponder set up to capture leads and keep in touch with them.  Every single client of mine is encouraged to use autoresponders and their results speak for themselves – I’m not called the Double Your Business Coach for nothing!”

• You can find more email marketing tips from Lee here

In our internet-driven business world content is king. The quality of the information you put out across the web will directly affect how successful you are at generating leads and closing business. But what type of content do you need to provide and what should you write about?

Valuable content – 5 top tips:

1. Adopt the right attitude when thinking about creating content. Produce information that is of real value to your customer base. Your position should be NOT “look how great we are” (as in a traditional brochure) but “look how useful we are – we have the answer to your problems.” Create content that is genuinely useful to your customers. Make yourself indispensable.
2. Pick the right tool. There are many different types of content to choose from: articles, newsletters, webinars, online presentations, audio, video, whitepapers, case studies, ebooks…the list goes on. Select the tools that your customers are most likely to engage with. A variety of methods often works best.
3. Informative articles are a great starting point; and the easiest, cheapest and quickest way to get them published and out to your customers is via a business blog. Sign up to Wordpress or Blogger; link the blog to your corporate website and start writing useful, education articles.
4. Think like one of your customers. What questions do they ask when selecting products or services in your field? What problems can you help them to solve? Listen carefully to your customers and create helpful content just for them.
5. Make your website a resource hub. All this valuable content will start to transform your site from a flat, online brochure into a living, breathing resource for your customers. Update your content regularly to keep it fresh and invite your customers to sign up for newly added information.

Valuable content is a win-win for you and your buyers. They learn what they need to help them with their challenge and you demonstrate your expertise and build the trust that leads to sales.

Valuable content heros of the small business world:

• Mel Lester produces a fantastically useful monthly ezine for his architecture and engineering clients: an amalgam of his best blog articles, industry news and trends plus insight from others in the field www.blog-bizedge.biz
• Heather Townsend – a well respected business coach – sends out useful fortnightly efficiency tips on a Monday morning as a reminder to get organised and stay on track www.theefficiencycoach.co.uk/blog
• Bryony Thomas and her company Clear Thought Consulting have created short video tutorials for their B2B clients with tips on all aspects of marketing www.clear-thought.co.uk/10_minute_tips

What would help your customers? What valuable content can you create? I’d love to hear.

Hope this has been useful

I missed an event last week. Seth Godin, described by many as one of the most intuitive marketers of the day, led a talk at Westminster Abbey of all places on the art of marketing and spreading ideas in the digital age.

I’ve read many reviews of the session, and watched clips on You Tube and I wish I’d known about it in advance. His message is a crucial one for anyone selling professional services today.

Seth is the best selling author of several seminal books on ‘new marketing’, including The Dip, Purple Cow, Permission Marketing and Small is the New Big (I’ve got the lot, and recommend them highly). He holds an MBA from Stanford University and his blog (http://sethgodin.typepad.com) is one of the most popular business blogs in the world.  He’s been described as ‘the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age’ by Business Week.

If you’re one of those people who doesn’t get time to read many books, here’s a quick summary of what he has to say:

Seth on New Marketing

• Old marketing is talking at customers with consistent interruption
• New marketing is about connecting with customers
• The art of personal communication and establishing this connection between you and your audience or customers is so important
• Your audience or customers have power – they have the potential to damage you or help you via so many mediums
• Follow your audience/customers; listen to them and make yourself available to them; fulfil their needs
• Educate your customers and give them the resources to believe you
• Traditional advertising is dying
• Marketing by interruption no longer works
• People are wiser: They know how to ignore you
• Don’t proposition strangers
• Learn to ‘date’ your potential audience or customers
• Turn strangers into friends before you market to them
• Entice your audience/customers by offering something they need
• Be genuine and approachable
• Strive to be different and not just another ‘me too’
• Do you or your business have a story?  You need to . . .
• Make sure you live your story and fulfil your promises
• Match the needs of your audience or market
• Create anticipation, personality, relevance
• Content marketing is the only marketing left!
• Don’t forget that we’re in the middle of another revolution – the era of new marketing; build for this new era
• Are you pushing to defend the old, or do you have the wind behind you, heading into the future?
• Make sure you or your company’s DNA shows everywhere, across hundreds of sites
• You can make money by being everywhere or being scarce, but not by being somewhere between
• Don’t be everything to everyone and don’t be scared to turn people away
• Build a tribe of people with a common interest
• Connect with people who want what you want or offer
• Try and attract people with passion (which you will, if you’re passionate yourself)
• Energize your followers
• Remember: people like to be led.  Don’t be afraid to become their leader
• Have balls and go for it 100%.  Don’t try and succeed just by dipping your toe in the water
• If people didn’t take a risk and dare to innovate the world would be a very grey, uniform place
• If your message or product is powerful enough of a proposition, you only need 1000 enthused people to spread your message
• Be extraordinary!

I hope this gives you some food for thought. I think Seth’s right. If you want to know more, check out his website: http://www.sethgodin.com.

(With many thanks to Cardiff-based www.talkcontent.com for the most enlightening review of Seth’s session, posted via Twitter).