VIDEO: Why telling the story of your business is key to getting press
Being able to tell the story of your business is a major step towards gaining press coverage.
Famous entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, Anita Roddick and James Dyson are all examples of expert storytellers, whose businesses have reaped the rewards of their tale-telling expertise.
WATCH Jon Card explain why this matters so much to business journalists like him:
Must-have content marketing tools for 2018
Everyone knows that content is king. We love content because we know it can also be the key to gaining excellent coverage from the press. The good news is, savvy companies have created a number of excellent tools to help people create audience-driven, press-worthy content.
Let’s look at what some of the top tools do and how they can help you generate great content.
TOP CONTENT MARKETING TOOLS
- YouGov Profiles show traits of your typical user in a fun, interactive way. The 'lite' version is free
- Answer The Public shows the questions people are asking about your brand or industry. Free to use & makes cool diagrams
- Google Trends again, free. It reveals what search terms are trending - including YouTube search if you're creating video content
- Buzzsumo shows the most popular articles according to social media shares. A paid for platform but you can do a free trial
- ahrefs shows where you and your competitors are getting inbound links. You could also try the Moz Link Explorer for free
- Google Alerts keep you up to date with relevant industry topics and brand mentions. Quick to set up and manage - do it now!
- Google Surveys can help you research your market. Choose a one question survey for highly affordable research
- Twitter polls can help you tailor content as well a generate it
LEARN ABOUT YOUR TYPICAL USER
Knowing your consumers’ needs and interests gives you the power to connect with them more effectively. Now, you can craft messages and campaigns which resonate with your user and encourage them to engage. Tools which can help you find out about your typical user include YouGov profiles. Here’s the free version: yougov.co.uk/profileslite#
GAIN INBOUND LINKS WITH YOUR CONTENT
Great content starts with a deep understanding of the consumer’s perspective. What are their pain points? What are they thinking? What specific information are they looking for? Answering common questions is a way to create content people will be interested to read, and relevant sites are more likely to link to. Try answerthepublic.com to find out what people are asking.
MAKE YOUR CONTENT FRESH
Users will react well to content that is fresh. Google Trends can help you identify seasonal and trending terms, as well as terms which have become less interesting to people over time. You can also search for top terms on YouTube specifically. AND, you can compare terms to find out which you should use to provide a fresh and interesting title. https://trends.google.com/trends/
LEARN FROM HIGHLY SHARED CONTENT
Finding out which content which has been shared the most in your industry has a range of benefits. It can help you identify content you’ve created which has been popular, so you can plan similar kinds of posts and articles. It can also help you gain ideas from competitors as well as other influencers. Use buzzsumo.com to search relevant keywords, sites and pages to find out what works.
LEARN FROM INBOUND LINKS
ahrefs shows where you and your competitors are gaining inbound links to your site. This can help you identify interested audiences, generate content topic ideas and provide insights into the type of content that’ll gain more links to your site. A free tool you can try to find out more about your inbound links is Moz’s Link Explorer: https://moz.com/link-explorer
LEARN FROM FRESH INDUSTRY ARTICLES
When you’re a content creator, nothing can beat being up to date with the goings on in your industry. Setting up Google Alerts for relevant terms is quick and easy, and will lead to a deeper understanding of your industry, relevant topics and how they’re developing over time.
ASK YOUR USER FOR THEIR ADVICE
Asking relevant audiences for their advice is both engaging for them and insightful for you. You can set up a Twitter Poll in seconds and gain fresh information. The poll itself, if written concisely and engagingly, will also be highly shareable. You can also promote the poll to relevant, engaged users. You can use the results to inform your content, or even as a basis for an article in its own right.
DISCOVER DEEPER INSIGHTS
Going beyond the Twitter Poll, a Google Survey provides insights into consumer opinion but also offers demographic information like gender, location and age. Use a one question Google Survey and you can gain 1,000 responses for £100. You can still gain multiple insights by using the multiple choice option.
IN THE FUTURE
With technology enabling a host of new software applications, we're expecting to see plenty more exciting content marketing tools come into play in the next couple of years. One example is Yappa. Set to be the world's first insight driven marketing platform, Yappa will use AI and machine learning to help you make better content for your specific audience. We'll keep you updated!