How to structure your web content for success

When you’re planning your website content, your top priority should be making it easy for your users to find what they are looking for – it must be all about the user experience. And a good UX design needs well-structured content that takes your audience’s needs and user journeys into account.

Here we share some top tips for structuring your content, and the best ways to use it to signpost and guide your user to make your website effective.

Structure for readability

The much-cited Nielson Normal Group research studies found that 79% of test users simply scan pages and only 16% read word-by-word. Users want to spend minimum amounts of time on each page, not trawl through text, so structure to help readability.

Remember these tips when creating and editing your content:

• Include an introduction or opening that flags up what the page or article is about
• Use a hierarchy of information – less important information may need to go on a separate page or lower down in another section
• Use bullet points, lists and short, snappy paragraphs to help with skim-reading
• Break text up and add variety to your pages using images, videos and other media
• Consider drop downs (accordions) for larger blocks of text which go into detail on a particular subject to help quick browsing
• Create landing pages with links out to child pages for larger sections, rather than creating long pages with lots of information all bundled together

Guide your user

If your user can’t find what they need, or the structure of your content is illogical, then you risk a high bounce rate and low conversion rate. When you’re used to your own website it’s easy to slip into thinking it’s obvious where to click next or how to find certain content, but your user may have only just landed on your website. Look at your structure from the viewpoint of a first-time visitor and make navigation intuitive.

Make it easy for your user to find their way around:

• Use headings and subheadings to signpost your content
• Tell the user where to go. Is there relevant content on another page? Tell them to click through. Is there a handy video guide below? Tell them to watch it
• Think about how presenting certain information (such as opening hours) in a carefully formatted table can make it easier to read
• Use clear hyperlink text so the user knows where they are going and what to expect
• Group small amounts of related information visually and prioritise key elements so that your content has a logical structure
• Ideally, only use one call to action per page – preferably styled as a button with just a few words specifying a clear action such as ‘Get in touch’ to boost conversions
• Use different design elements to separate out sections and to make key information stand out, for example testimonials or client logos

Structure for success

Here at asabell we have experts on hand to help you with creating and editing copy, and we’re highly experienced in bringing fresh eyes to your website with a deep-dive audit. If you’d like some support with your website structure or content, please get in touch.

How to predict what content will convert a lead into business

As B2B marketeers, we all want prospects to get in touch. But to transform enquiries into actual business, you need to understand where each potential customer is coming from. Each prospect will want to see different types of content, so you’ll need to tailor your strategy accordingly to convince them you’re the right fit for them.

These are the four broad types of customer you need to get to know. Get familiar with them, so you can identify what stage of the journey they’re at, and effectively channel their enquiries into lead conversion success.

The quick contacter

How do they get in touch?

They might phone, ping off a quick email, or send a message via your contact form; either way, they’ve done it straight away.

What content would they like to see?

At this stage, don’t invest too much time or offer a proposal – this might even be off-putting for them. They probably just want a quick conversation, so give clear examples of your work online and some of your relevant past clients.

How well do they know you?

They probably don’t know much about you beyond your landing page or social media profiles. Give them an insight into who you are and what you do but don’t invest too much time. It’s likely they’ll be calling around several different options at the moment, so have some information ready to go that you can quickly and easily tailor for these types of enquiries.

Unless they’re a small company, they’re unlikely to be the key decision maker within their organisation, so give them a professional and persuasive synopsis that they can easily present on to their boss. Don’t inundate them with too much detail. Nurturing leads like this can take a long time and can often be frustrating if they don’t get back in touch, but never underestimate the longer-term value of a good first impression.

The warm lead

How do they get in touch?

They’ll probably contact through personal communication channels, whether that’s direct to your personal email, telephone, or via social media.

What content would they like to see?

This type of prospect will most likely have already seen examples of your work on your website and promoted on social media. Don’t undermine your familiarity with each other by guiding them to content that’s easily available online. Take the time to pick content, case studies and clients that match their enquiry and business.

How well do they know you?

They will already know of your company, so will be aware of what you do and may have even contacted you in the past. You may not need to send them a hefty proposal. Navigate the conversation and find out the best next steps to secure a conversion. Warm leads can become loyal and longstanding customers, so make sure to nurture your ongoing relationship.

The keen researcher

How do they get in touch?

Keen researchers usually narrow down their options to a handful of choices and send out email enquiries to all of them. Even on first contact, their brief will already be detailed, so they’ll appreciate it if you can move quickly to a more in-depth discussion, perhaps over a conference call platform where multiple people can be involved.

What content would they like to see?

Remember, these types of prospect are keen investigators. Don’t be surprised if they’ve researched your past clients, read examples of your work and are familiar with your testimonials and case studies. Respond quickly and, if possible, head straight to offering a solution or a proposal. There’s a high chance they’re a decision maker at their business, so always offer detailed and concrete solutions and strategy.

How well do they know you?

They’re likely to know a lot about you, so you’ll need to catch up and quickly understand more about them. Ask constructive questions about their pain points and make sure you do your research before any further communication. However, because they do a lot of groundwork, it’s also very likely they’re already in negotiation with your competitors. Because of this, try to offer competitive pricing, a timeframe and respond to enquiries quickly.

The networker

How do they get in touch?

They might have attended a webinar or conference, be connected with you on social media, or have spoken to you informally, face-to-face before.

What content would they like to see?

Networkers collect various materials from various companies. They see a lot of different names, so you need to make sure that yours stands out and the material is easily digestible. You should always have branded sales material in your toolkit ready for these types of enquiries.

How well do they know you?

A networker may know your professional reputation but may not know you personally. Make sure to exchange contact details and connect with them on LinkedIn. They may not have a specific need or problem in mind right at this moment, but they like to explore potential options for the future and build their databases. Try to think long-term strategy and find ways to stay in touch and keep them updated.

Turn prospects into customers

By understanding each prospect’s needs, you’ll be able to appropriately field each enquiry and nurture them for successful returns.

At asabell, we’ve spent over sixteen years dealing with a wide range of different customers and understand the complexities of their unique needs. That’s why we’re more than equipped to help you tailor your strategy to each proposition. Whichever way prospects get in touch, we can make sure you have the right strategy and content to turn them into business. If you’d like to find more about what we can offer you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

9 mistakes that show your copy is behind the times

Copywriting has changed fairly dramatically over the last few decades since digital took over.
The majority of content is now written for the web and social media channels. It can be difficult to keep up with best practice and writing conventions, but it’s important – you don’t want to stand out for the wrong reasons.

Here are some pointers on what to avoid when it comes to writing copy for digital channels.

1. Long paragraphs.
   Remember most platforms like websites have relatively narrow columns for copy, much narrower than Word. In fact, it’s likely someone may end up reading your copy on a mobile screen. Also, users tend to skim read blog articles and web copy, so it’s best to break it up and make it easier to digest. There’s nothing more annoying than landing on a page that has a huge block of text to try and absorb.
   
2. Indenting paragraphs.
   A space between them will do. This isn’t a letter from the early 20th century, it’s a nice, clean bit of copy going onto a digital channel.
   
3. Double spacing.
   This is a legacy of typewriters, but your content won’t match the formatting and layout of your other digital content if you start adding in double spaces. Also, it’s often difficult to be consistent with double spacing and you end up with a weird mix of single and double spacing, especially if multiple people are editing a bit of copy.
   
4. Being too salesy.
   Sales-driven content can come across as insincere and be off-putting. This includes cheesy one-liners and exclamation marks. Just avoid them.
   
5. Keyword stuffing.
   It’s so obvious when you’re writing content just to fit in as many keywords as possible rather than with your reader in mind. If you are writing an article about a particular subject, then related keywords will naturally crop up without you having to force it.
   
6. Overuse of bold, italics or even worse, all caps.
   There are better ways to draw attention to key points such as using subheadings or single-line paragraphs.
   
7. Using obscure words in order to elevate your copy.
   Generally, it’s best to keep content simple and relatively easy to understand. There’s no need to oversimplify but also no need for unusual or flowery language. You could alienate your audience.
   
8. Forgetting who you are speaking to and what tone of voice to use.
   If you’re writing for a younger audience or a more informal channel (e.g. social media) then overly formal writing will look out of place. Think carefully about where your content will appear and who you are speaking to.
   
9. Using ‘click here’ or URLs for hyperlink text.
   There are a number of reasons why you shouldn’t do this, ranging from SEO to user experience. Plus, the link will take up unnecessary space if the link text is a URL. Try to describe in a few words what you are linking to, for example: BBC website.

Don’t be afraid to ask for some professional support. Here at asabell we have dedicated copywriting experts on hand to help you produce the best possible copy. Catch people’s attention with your content – but for the right reasons. Get in touch to find out more.

Sales enablement for the win(ning of new business).

You might be wondering what sales enablement actually is. Well, put simply, it’s your ticket to boosting sales. But behind this is a collection of marketing resources that help your salespeople seal the deal.

The sales call is only one part of getting a new client to sign on the dotted line. It’s a rare prospect who buys from you during their first contact with your organisation.

That’s why you need to build a wider sales-enablement campaign — including sales emails, cheat sheets and organised calling days — to bring that new revenue through the door.

Supporting your sales superheroes.

It can often be hard to convince sales professionals that marketing materials really can help them. But we’ve run more than a few campaigns in our time that show sales enablement is totally a thing.

Take, for instance, when one of our clients tasked its sales teams with winning back 60 accounts from competitors in 60 days. Sounds like a tall order, right? Well, our ‘Heroes’ collateral helped the salespeople smash their targets — and saw the campaign extended way beyond its original remit.

To do this, we created a company superhero — along with flyers, posters and cardboard cut-outs. Oh, and chocolates made an appearance too (followed by a swift disappearance once eaten).

When people met their targets, they got to become their favourite superhero — as we created framed photos and awarded certificates.

It might all sound daft without seeing it in action. But the salespeople all bought into the campaign, and made it a huge success. A superhero theme might also seem frivolous when budgets are tight. However, for relatively little investment, you can seriously boost your bottom line.

Three ways to enable sales.

So, how do you go about creating your own super-successful sales-enablement campaign?

Well, here are three steps you need to follow to get your sales team selling as they’ve never sold before:

1. Share best practice.
   
   How does your top seller tackle a difficult sale? Find out, and share their knowledge. There’s no to reason to keep the things you do successfully a secret. And collateral like cheat sheets give you simple ways to make sure everyone in your sales teams has access to best practice.
   
2. Own the customer conversation.
   
   Two-thirds of sales teams struggle with not being able to find content to send to prospects. Create emails, presentations, data sheets and more, and you’ll have plenty of useful info to seal the deal.
   
3. Upskill your people.
   
   You can’t expect your people to all work the same way. But you can encourage them to adopt best practices by providing training materials such as internal emails and intranet campaign pages. This gives your people the helping hand they need to turn prospects into customers.

Play by your own rules, and get results.

There are so many ways to give your sales teams the edge when they talk to prospects. It all depends on what’ll work best for your people.

Sales enablement allows you to win business by making sure everyone has the tools to share your message and work together.

Give us a call to find out more about how we can help you shape your team into a room full of sales-target-busting superheroes.

How to write a great case study in 4 easy steps

A good case study is like sales gold dust. It’s the closest thing you’ll get to one of your satisfied customers going around and telling all your prospects how great you are. In just one short document, you can evidence that you understand your customers’ issues AND know how to fix them.

So why do so many case studies end up as dry, underwhelming documents that do nothing to win business?

A case study that lacks impact is often the result of poor planning and execution. The good news is that there is a winning formula: follow our four key steps to make sure your case study brings in the business.

1. Find the story

Creating an effective case study is all about telling a story, complete with a plot that sees the hero facing and triumphing over a challenge. Ideally, there’ll be some element of struggle in it before moving on to a happy ending. If you find what you intend to write about doesn’t have a story to tell, cut your losses and find a different topic for your case study.

Your customer must be the hero of the story. Make your customer’s main challenge the villain of the piece and remember that your company, product or solution must only ever be a supporting character. As with any good story, your plot will centre around your hero, and will take them on a clear journey. And maximise the reality, believability and relatability of your story by mentioning any hitches that you and your customer had to overcome along the way. Making your customer the hero has three main benefits:

1. A customer is more likely to sign off a case study that shows them in a good light.
2. It creates a story experience that the reader is most likely to identify with.
3. It stops you focusing the piece on your product or service. This means you’re less likely to get side-tracked into listing features that detract from the story and are better suited to a datasheet.

Wondering how we could tell your customers’ stories? Take a look at some of our case study examples.

2. Let your customer’s voice shine through

Wherever possible, conduct interviews with key players in your customer’s company to capture the human angle for your case study and let the personality of your customer’s business shine through. By talking through their experiences you’re more likely to extract genuine responses that your reader can relate to; written inputs tend to be more clinical and can slip into industry jargon that sound stilted, significantly reducing readability.

Prepare thoroughly for your interviews by speaking to the person that has the closest relationship with them in your company:

• Get the background to the events you’ll be exploring and your colleague’s side of the story so you can make sure you cover every aspect in your interview.
• Prepare open questions beforehand and work logically through the story journey.
• Seek out the transformation story. Explore the position of your customer’s company before and after your actions so you can draw out the contrast.

Listen out for good quotes to incorporate into your writing and use them liberally. The way your customer expresses themselves will be far more effective than your reportage of what they said. Don’t be afraid of a natural-sounding quote; think of it as one peer talking directly to another.

3. Maximise layout and design to make your messages easy to absorb

Boost your chances of your messages coming across loud and clear by making the most of imagery in your case study. The right images embody your customer’s industry and help to draw your reader into the story. Images also create more of a magazine feel, so reading the piece feels light and easy.

Design your case study with the skim reader in mind:

• Include call out boxes containing headline results and key benefits.
• Use subheadings to signpost the main points of the story.
• Consider including graphics to illustrate products or services mentioned, or design mini infographics to draw attention to key stats.

Need a hand to make your case study look good? Take a look at some of our examples for a taste of what we could achieve for you.

4. Work your case study hard

Creating a great case study is not enough — you need to get it noticed by the right people, and that can take some work. Start by customising your core story into the right formats to suit a variety of channels. Begin by creating a short, two-sided version for a quick read, and a succinct couple of paragraphs to get across the key points in presentations. Could it work as a video case study?

Plan how you’re going to promote your case study:

• Consider promoting it across your social channels using custom-designed images.
• Think about how you can feature it on your website with a call-to-action banner.
• Make sure your sales teams know about it and have strategies for using it to best effect.

Once your case study is up and running, keep an eye on its performance. Check back in with your sales teams to get feedback on how your case study has been performing so you can incorporate their opinions into your ongoing case study strategy. Find out the reach of your case study on social media, and website views, too. All measures of effectiveness will support your overall case study programme.

Sell your success with a story

Never underestimate the power of a good case study. Sharing your customers’ stories is a sure-fire way to convince prospects to choose your business. By explaining their journey, your satisfied customers help others to visualise how they could achieve a successful outcome with you, too.

At asabell, we create case studies that win business. To talk through how we can help you share your customers’ stories, get in touch.

Not sure where to start when writing the copy for your new website? Got a website that’s not getting your messages across?

Follow our four top tips to get your website copy working hard for your business.

1. Talk to a person, don’t lecture an audience

It comes as a shock to some businesses, but your website isn’t about you, it’s about the people who use it. And, to make sure your copy is as effective as possible, you need a clear picture of your target user. Working out who you’re writing for will keep your copy sounding natural, helping you to avoid overly formal phrases that turn people off. It’ll also make sure you’re giving your website visitors the information they’re looking for.

Boost your chances of grabbing attention and fulfilling a need by creating a list of product/solution benefits your website covers. All too often, customer websites focus on features (what a product can do) rather than benefits (how a product can help the user or provide something of value to them). Use these benefits as main messaging throughout your website copy.

Determine your benefits-led messaging by asking these key questions about your target reader:

• What are their priorities?
• What problems do you help them avoid or solve?
• What do they want to know about you?

2. Make ‘easy’ your priority

With your messaging centred firmly on the benefits of working with you, focus on creating a reading experience that makes things as easy as possible for your reader.

Start by getting your level right: work out the gap between your expertise and your reader’s knowledge. Tell them what they already know, and you risk patronising them. Make things too complicated, and you’ll only achieve confusion. Clear communication depends on pitching what you’re saying at your reader’s level of comprehension, so they understand with minimal effort.

Next, make sure you write clearly, using simple language in short, active sentences. Basically, talk like a human being, using ‘you’ and ‘we’, rather than the third person. Remember, your aim is to make it as easy as possible for your reader to absorb your messages (and sounding like an academic paper really won’t help).

Keep the problems your business can solve in mind when writing and describe the positive actions your products or services deliver. This will give your website a dynamic, problem-solving feel that’s attractive to business prospects. Save any negative language for describing the pain points your products or services will solve.

Make it easy for your reader to trust you by avoiding overblown claims. Instead, make clear statements and back them up with proof, such as stats, case studies or testimonials. And remember that using jargon isn’t a shortcut to authority. If anything, it’ll turn your reader off, lacking the conviction and authenticity of direct statements.

Finally, include plenty of opportunities for your readers to convert their interest into action. Incorporate a clear call to action at least once on every page, making it easy for them to take the next step.

Deliver an easy experience for your readers:

• Talk to your reader’s likely level of expertise, without jargon.
• Use simple, active language that focuses on problem solving.
• Offer plenty of opportunities to progress working with you.

3. Write for skim reading

No one reads every word of every web page on a site, so don’t write your copy as though this is what your visitors will do. On average, users spend less than 15 seconds on a web page, scanning for something relevant and picking out what they want to know more about. With limited time to grab their attention, you need to opt for a journalistic approach. Don’t hide your main messages in lengthy explanations; invert your writing structure and start with what’s most important — in case that’s all they read — then go on to offer more detail.

Write for scanners to get your messages across loud and clear:

• Headline your key point in simple language.
• Use subheadings to signpost key content.
• Break messages up into subpoints using numbered lists or bullets.

4. Think SEO

Once you’re happy that your website copy is clearly communicating your benefits, think about how you can optimise it for search purposes. This isn’t an excuse to stuff your copy with keywords, because that will make it sound unnatural and unappealing — and can have a negative effect on SEO. Instead, read through your copy to see where you can add a keyword without adversely affecting the flow or the meaning.

Try to use your most important keyword in your page title and use your primary keywords in the first sentence if possible, to signal to search engines what your page is about. At the very least, use your primary keywords in the first paragraph. Subheadings, alt tags, meta descriptions and the file names of any images are all helpful places to feature keywords.

Once you’ve covered off these prime areas, try and weave in your keywords and common alternatives naturally throughout the body of your copy to help search engines validate that your page should rank for your keyword(s) and related search terms.

Balance SEO requirements with delivering an effective reading experience:

• Write for your reader first and SEO second.
• Incorporate keywords carefully into your page structure.
• Use keywords as naturally as possible.

5. Win business with effective website copy

You know your customers and prospects better than anyone, so use that insight to create web copy that really speaks to them and tackles their problems head on. Make every word on your site work hard to build relationships and win you business.

If you’d like a hand, at asabell we help businesses with their web copy all the time — from new enterprises starting from scratch, through to existing businesses who want to bring their copy in line with their latest strategies.

We’re expert at interviewing you to get all the information we need to create effective website copy that gets the job done. Get in touch to talk about what we could do for your business.

Not sure what to say when things start going awry?
Here are a few tips we’re using in the asabell team.

1. Why you need to say something

The most important thing in times of significant change or crisis is to keep talking to your customers. Most people are seeking security, reassurance and a glimmer of hope that things will return to normal soon. That’s something you can provide. Whether you’re continuing as business as usual, or hoping to be back up and running shortly, share that information and stay front of mind for customers.

2. Start with a personal message

If you have a few key clients, why not send them an email? If your customer base is much larger than that, social media could be the way to go. Either way, a personal, reassuring message letting them know how you and the team are adapting is a good way to stay in-touch. Customers can see right through companies that communicate using spin, so be honest, and explain where you’re at. (But watch your language, more on that below!)

3. Don’t overshare

While it’s important to keep your customers in the loop, don’t use your marketing as a space to vent. While it’s good to be honest, customers don’t need a blow-by-blow of everything you’re finding difficult, or to hear from you all the time (unless you’re updating them as a situation develops). Remember that your customers are potentially struggling too, so keep your communications regular without spamming, and stick to channels that are appropriate.

4. Stay calm and keep it consistent

This one’s probably a no-brainer, but it’s really important not to encourage panic or hysteria. Keep your messages calm and stick to the tone of voice you’ve already developed and are comfortable with. Like your tone of voice, the channels you use to communicate should also remain consistent — so that your customers know where to find you. Simple, subtle messaging often works; call a spade a spade but don’t feel the need to reiterate details of the crisis or situation if it’s already common knowledge.

5. Keep communication focused

As we’ve outlined, it’s important your messages are honest and calm, and a good way to achieve this is to try to focus on positive messages, solutions you can offer or important call to actions. For example, perhaps there are products and services you provide that will be important for people during the crisis or once it’s over. Or maybe you’ve weathered storms before and have some insights and wisdom to share with others about how your business coped and bounced back. If you have something that’s positive to share, do it — a little good news can go a long way!

If you want some help to get your messaging right during the current Coronavirus measures, and once things start getting back to normal, get in touch to discuss how we can help.

Easy first steps to personalising your B2B communications

A personalised approach in B2B marketing enhances relationships and increases the likelihood of sales. But how do you get started?

What does it take for people to give away information?

One of the first challenges you face in B2B marketing is finding out information about your target audience. It’s a conundrum — people want to feel the company understands their needs and is addressing them on a personal level, but they’re reluctant to part with the information about themselves that will make a personalised approach possible. Fifty three per cent of B2B marketers state a lack of data is the reason they don’t personalise their content.

No one wants to put their personal information on a website without having some sort of connection to the product or company. Yet, in order to build that investment and trust, people need to feel they’ve received something from the company first. It’s a cycle that seems unbreakable, yet you can control this by making the first move.

Get going with personalisation.

The first, all-important steps to personalisation involve collecting essential data from those who visit your website. The more you learn about your visitors, the more you can personalise further contact with them.

Ideally, you’ll build up an initial picture of your visitor through the following data: name, email address, company name or website, company size and budgetary plans. However, it would be a very tolerant and trusting visitor who would give you all that information straightaway, so you’ll need patience and an effective strategy.

Take it step by step to build trust.

Start by creating a compelling piece of content such as a white paper or an eBook and ask visitors to share their name and email address in return for access. Remember the requirements of GDPR and include consent to use the data in an approved format. Then, put together a lead nurturing campaign, using those details, to strike up a dialogue. Remember always to offer something in exchange for more data. More great content expanding on the topic that sparked contact is ideal for this — perhaps offer a webinar as a second step, and to access it, your lead needs to enter their company size and URL.

Further content could unlock further information, until you have a comprehensive picture of your customers and prospects. It’s important to stay focused on achieving a deep understanding of your target audience and not get side-tracked into a profiling exercise. By breaking up data collection in this way you build trust and learn valuable information that you can weave back into the development of your website, for example, fine-tuning your CTAs.

The information that will allow you to create person-centred content and approaches is easily accessible, it just takes patience and the right strategy. If you’d like some more pointers on how great content can unlock your sales potential, then get in touch.

The infinite vastness of the cosmos can make life on Earth look insignificant. But it can also teach us a thing or two about B2B content marketing.

You need to think ‘big’ when writing.

It’s always handy to get a bit of perspective when writing an article. Take the Universe, for instance. The Earth’s a pretty spacious gaff, right? Well, you can fit our planet into the Sun more than one million times and still have space to stack your DVDs.

And that’s not even all that impressive. The Sun is tiddly in comparison to the largest star we’ve discovered so far (2,000 times more tiddly, to be precise).

Avoid disappearing into a constant stream of content.

Like the Universe, the amount of content on the internet is massive. Let’s put it in perspective. Every second online sees around 7,770 tweets spring into existence, and 70,928 YouTube video views.

It’s now nearly impossible to keep up with everything, so you’ll probably only look at the stuff that really grabs your attention.

It’s the same for your prospects. They won’t read your articles if they don’t see a good reason to. So, to help you out, we’ve put together our top tips to make it happen:

Do…

• Use your people’s expertise — get your staff to write about what they know.
• Post regularly — build a body of work that shows your followers how reliable your insight is.
• Plan ahead — create a schedule and stick to it. It’ll help you organise your key messages more clearly.
• Write simply — lead your readers through a coherent argument with a clear conclusion.
• Make a point — Show how you can solve your audience’s problems.
• Be consistent — your audience is more likely to follow you if your tone of voice is consistent and becomes familiar.
• Promote your articles online — support your content by sharing it on social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Don’t…

• Write for the sake of it — make sure you’ve got a clear message to put across.
• Rush to post your article — there’s nothing wrong with adding new ideas to your plan, but you need to leave enough time to create a good article.
• Overwrite — most articles are 300-500 words long. You don’t want your readers to give up half way through your message because you’ve drawn it out too long.
• Give up — you want your followers to see you as knowledgeable so you need to keep them up-to-date as frequently as you can.

Make your article writing simple.

Writing is easy. Writing something your audience wants to read is harder. Take a look at the rest of our blog to see how we do it, and get in touch if you’d like us to lend you a hand — we’ve got the Brian Coxs and Neil deGrasse Tysons of the writing world waiting to help you out.

Inbound marketing is all about creating content that prospects will proactively seek out. And to do that, you need to offer them something pretty special…

Enter the eMagazine.

eMagazines are digital collections of quality content that are as glossy as their printed counterparts, but come at a fraction of the production cost.

They give your prospects something to read that’s entertaining, looks awesome, and, importantly, brings your messages to the fore.

Right now you’re probably thinking: that’s all great, but how do I actually create something that’ll resonate with my audience? And what should I eat for lunch?

Well, for lunch, we’d emphatically suggest pizza — because, pizza.

And as for crafting a compelling eMagazine, we’ve got some tips that’ll get you off to the best possible start.

The dos and don’ts.

Do…

• Think glossy magazine and use eye-catching images. Make sure these images are high-quality so there isn’t a pixel out of place and you get the clarity that’ll grab attention.
• Include a wide range of content — an eMagazine is your chance to both show off and to showcase every aspect of your organisation.
• Think about how you can keep design consistent. Create some spread templates and reuse them, as printed magazines do; it’ll help your content feel warm and familiar.
• Decide how often you’re going to publish — and stick to it. No one wants a disappointed readership.
• Use material you already have. Case studies, interviews, photo shoots, white papers and brochures all have elements that lend themselves to eMag content.
• Shout about it — let your customers know there’s a new great read out there. Use your social channels, drop prospects an email or pick up the phone.

Don’t…

• Treat it like a blog; it’s bigger than that — you can use articles, but only in conjunction with images and other forms of content.
• Be afraid to push the design boundaries — this is your chance to add imagery into the communications mix, so make the most of the opportunity. Your design could create fresh and welcome perceptions amongst prospects.
• Include things for the sake of it. Beware of padding things out; you risk diluting your overall message.
• Forget about it once it’s done — your eMagazine is a great tool to share with customers and prospects in most situations — until the next issue comes out.
• Think it’s restricted to an online presence — you can print it out, too.

So, what are you waiting for? Get writing — your prospects will appreciate it, we promise.

And if you need more help creating a connection with your prospects, then get in touch — we’d love to talk to you about your B2B marketing strategy. And pizza. We’re always happy to talk about pizza.