Yesterday I attended the Yulbiz meeting in Montreal, where Muriel Vandermeulen, a European specialist in writing and Webcast, hosted a conference that was entitled Writing for the Web: How to implement an editorial marketing strategy that ensures visibility and conversion. More than 100 participants, bloggers, translators, specialists in communication and marketing and so on had attended to hear and learn more about content marketing.
For my part, the words ‘marketing’ and ‘conversion’ had caught my attention because writing for the web is strategic and everything that is done online should be measured. Here is some information that was presented at the conference that I think is important to share.
Writing for the web; a marketing strategy
When writing for the web, we have 8 seconds to start the well known named AIDA marketing process or Attention, Interest, Desire and Action in the visitor. Thoroughly using the writing, typography and signage techniques on a website helps to direct the visitor to eventually go to the action, so, to convert based on business objectives.
Create an editorial experience for the reader
It is important to create an editorial experience for readers by writing content based on their interests and their level of commitment to your brand or business.
For a successful online marketing strategy, it is essential to clearly define your editorial calendar according to four types of content and, establish a percentage for each.
- Competitive: popular content, of which all industries speak of (50%*)
- Focus – Content that distinguishes a company based on one or two keywords (40% *)
- Niche -. Content more specific to the characteristics of our products, our services or our geography (10% *)
- Avoid – content that should not be spoken of (0%*)
*Percentages suggested by the lecturer.
It is not enough to qualify the content, but we still need to quantify it also. This exercise is part of the marketing strategy of publishing that allows our content to stand out from those of competitors and end up in the top search engine results, such as Google, if the content is written and published in accordance with good SEO practices.
Listen to generate interest
An interesting technique to establish the subjects which could interest the visitors, is to take the comments or requests which they emitted in the forms on the Web site or via the social networks and answer their questions or concerns by the means of a blog, or the drafting of a downloadable guide, for example. This tactic will certainly make it possible to attract new visitors interested in the same subject on your Web site.
Therefore, according to the AIDA process, content that is created and published on the website, via commercial email or shared to social media, should help create a desire and reaction from the visitor. I will discuss these two steps in a future blog as that’s where the budgets invested become profitable. Do not abandon your content strategy after only a few months because according to experts, there must be a period of at least one year before you see any results.