Smart content marketing

Regular visitors to our blog will know that we are big fans of The British Library business and IP centre. They regularly run courses at less than £50 covering everything from business planning, marketing and researching product ideas

As a soft toy wholesaler we spend a lot of time running the day to day parts of our business and not enough planning for the future so its great to spend a little time outside of the business looking back in to it

The last course we attended was on how internet and social media could help your business grow. There were a couple of clear things I took away from this course.

It has long been accepted that people surf the net rather than slowly browse. This means that when they land on your website you literally have seconds to attract their attention before you move on. What is your call to action? Why are they going to stay on your website. You should clearly state what your website does, your contact details and if possible a compelling offer.

This applies not just to the home page but to all pages on your website where visitors are likely to land on

Content is king. People are looking for solutions to their problems and it is content which will provide this. Interesting relevant and up to date content will not only ensure that people stay on your website but also will gain their loyalty/friendship.

In addition search engines value content. Google values content and will rate your website accordingly

For instance we regularly post about toy safety legislation and other issues to do with soft toys not only because we care passionately about our toys but also we want our customers to know that we care! We don’t sell our fair-trade ranges just based on price so retailers need to know that we are an authority in our area

Keywords. There is no point in having content which is not relevant to what you are trying to sell. You need to identify the key words that people will use when searching for your particular product/service and use them within your content. It was recommended that for every 100 words you use 3-4 of them should be key words. Any more than this could make your article read weirdly. Also key words in titles are more effective than in normal text, but make sure it still reads well. If it doesn’t then you could come across as a spammer. I am totally failing to do this in this article so do you mind if I quickly put in crochet toy wholesaler to try and up the count of keywords?

Content is great on your website but it is also very valuable when used on 3rd party websites via blogs. For this reason you should be looking to submit your articles, thoughts and opinions on to other peoples sites via blogs and social media. Remember to link back to your own website, and to do this using key words not your company name.

Not only will spreading content around like this build your authority but it will also increase the links coming back in to your website. Google now rates links as a recommendation to your website and views them as one of the most important indicators of quality (and therefore ranking!)

The other key point was competitive analysis. To be honest the last time I did a SWOT analysis of competitors I was employed by a high street retailer! We always feel that no one else has such a wide range of fair-trade toys and that comparing yourself to other companies is a rather negative use of time.

However this may be fine in the “real” world but its different in the digital world. You need to be on the first page of the Google search so what your competitors do, what key words they use and how they represent themselves are key. So have a look at who you think is in competition with you and have a poke around at what links/key words they have using the following tools in Google

Site: web address of competitor – this will show how many pages of your competitor’s website are indexed. Then type

Site:keyword to show which key words they are using

Link:webadress to show how many links they have coming back in to them

Final words

Within the next year 50% of websites will be accessible by mobile phone. Will yours? This can be done by a 3rd party provider such as www.mobify.com

Facebook and Linked in adverts are growing rapidly. Could they be useful for your business? The key difference to Google ads is that google ads search by a keyphrase while social media ads can use demographic information as well.