Author: Kristan Manley

A content management solution is a must-have tool for your content marketing team. From publishing to reporting, a CMS will help you create a better process.

Content management solutions (CMSs) are platforms you can use to publish content and organize this workflow. Advantages include tracking your goals and helping team members collaborate.
The following CMSs will help you upgrade your content marketing program.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a popular CMS among large companies. It offers an entire suite of tools to take advantage of.
This platform streamlines your workflows with features that track your tasks and goals. You can add unlimited users and integrate it with Gmail or Outlook too.
You can also use HubSpot to work with a wide range of formats for your content. Think forms and newsletters. Plus, the mobile app is ideal for teams who work on the go.
Besides the free customer relationship management tool, there are also hubs for marketing, sales and customer service.
HubSpot stands out thanks to its reporting tools. You can use them to analyze the user’s journey and use these insights to write content better and faster.

WordPress

WordPress powers over 30% of the top 10 million websites. It’s a popular platform for a reason. It’s scalable, and the plugins allow you to customize as you please.
The user-friendly interface makes WordPress easy to handle too. You can publish content, edit texts, add images and more.
The WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get) is one of the most famous features of WordPress. It’s a convenient tool for publishing content quickly and ensures users have a positive experience with tasks like content formatting. Use SEO plugins and other add-ons to get more out of WordPress.

Drupal

Drupal is an open-source CMS that has been around for 20 years. It’s flexible, scalable and easy to customize.
Drupal comes with different add-ons and modules, so you can choose which ones you want to use and create a personalized tool.
This content management solution also allows you to manage more than one workflow. The API-first approach is interesting if you have an e-commerce store because you can integrate it with Magento.
Additionally, you can turn to an online community for help. The different themes and mobile responsive designs can enhance the user experience. Drupal also stands out thanks to its emphasis on security.

Joomla

Joomla is a free open-source CMS. It powers over 9% of business websites. Advanced users can unlock more possibilities with their coding skills, but you can still benefit from Joomla if you don’t know how to code.
This platform includes SEO tools for optimizing your content, and the security features are impressive. You’ll also find some customizable templates to make your content look unique.
The publishing tools will help with tasks like managing media and articles too. You also can create categories to organize your content.

Tempesta Media

Tempesta Media’s platform can help you completely streamline your workflow for convenience and improved collaboration.
The platform offers a centralized dashboard containing both your content and social media marketing programs. From this central viewpoint, you can see on what date specific content or posts will be ready for publication. By clicking on any content, you can quickly zoom in to see more details, or take specific actions including:

• Change the scheduled publication date.
• Make changes to the content.
• Modify supporting social post messaging.
• And much more.

Tempesta Media has easy integrations with both WordPress and HubSpot, allowing easy integration
Another benefit is avoiding duplicates when you publish content. You can review published pieces and look for gaps in your strategy for easy optimization.
This tool will help you save time too. You won’t have to switch between different platforms. You won’t have to import data from one platform to another either.

Final thoughts

These five tools are convenient options for streamlining your content management workflow. Make sure you choose ones that match the goals and needs of your content marketing team for maximum success.
To learn more about our centralized dashboard designed for content management, contact us today. Then download our e-book on 100 mistakes businesses often make with their content marketing programs to learn how to best manage your strategy.

Having an engaging and consistent social media presence has now become a necessary tool in any content marketer’s tool belt. Where once posting a blog a week to your website was enough to get attention and traffic, people now want curated content fed directly into their, well…feed.

Be it Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, every industry has a social media platform that helps you reach your audience. However, posting once a week or a few times a month just isn’t enough. Social media is designed to be a real-time, constant flow of information. So posting infrequently means you may get lost in the noise.
But how do you keep up with that much volume? Most of you likely struggle to find the time to produce one original piece of content a week, let alone one a day as Twitter recommends. That’s why many have turned to curated content as the answer, and maybe you should too.

What is curated content?

To curate content is to collect articles other people have written and share them on your social media page. You usually accompany them with a quick comment about why that content caught your eye or why it would interest your audience.
These articles can include anything from news stories to blogs to published white papers. The type of content isn’t important – it’s the message that it delivers and the engagement it sparks.

How does sharing someone else’s content help me?

The mainstay of content production has always been posting original, thought-provoking content to demonstrate the knowledge your clients need. So how does sharing content from other people help you? It does in a few ways:

• Stay consistent across all your platforms: As stated before, each social media platform requires a consistent flow of posts to keep your audience engaged. Upload two posts per day on Twitter, one post per day on Facebook and 1-2 posts per week on LinkedIn. Finding content rather than creating all of it is much less time-consuming, so keeping up with that volume is easier.
• Build credibility by presenting value to your audience: By sharing content that shows value to your audience, you become known as a source of information. This means that when they have a problem or need a service, you are top of mind.
• Better understand your audience and what’s important to them: Understanding what topics your customers engage with can help you decide the ones worth creating as original content. For example, say one of your curated posts drives a high rate of engagement or prompts a lot of questions. Use your next piece of original content to answer those questions and provide more in-depth thoughts on the topic.

How do I choose what content to share?

The internet is full of a seemingly endless supply of content, but not all of it is share-worthy. It’s important to select your curated content articles with care. After all, while you may not be writing the content yourself, by sharing it, you are attaching your name and your company’s brand to the ideas that it includes. To ensure that your content makes the right kind of impact, make sure that every piece of content is:

• In line with your audience and adds value: Every piece of content you share should have a goal that is aligned with your target audience. Even if the purpose is to demonstrate what not to do, ensure that your message gives them a valuable takeaway.
• Timely: Social media is a live feed of information that is constantly refreshing. Therefore, WHEN you share has almost as big of an impact as WHAT you share. If you share a much-talked-about topic, or one that’s slightly dated, ensure you highlight what’s different about your information. What are you offering that is new or makes it worth listening to?
• Reliable and trustworthy: Always ensure that your source is one that you can trust. Your credibility is on the line with every post. So, make sure you fact-check and only present information you are confident in.
• Engaging and well written: Even if all of the other checkboxes are marked, if the content you are sharing is hard to read, full of grammar errors or contains awkward sentences, your audience is likely to tune out before they even begin.

What if I don’t have time to find content?

While curated content is less labor-intensive than creating original content, it can still take time to find the perfect article and craft a message that drives engagement. Consider outsourcing this task to a content curation service such as Tempesta Media. You’ll receive maximum social media marketing benefits without sacrificing other aspects of your business.
To learn more about how Tempesta Media can help you reach your audience and deliver quality content at scale, contact us today.

Everything from the words you choose to the complexity of your sentences affects your readability level, and you need to choose it carefully.

Anyone creating or distributing digital marketing content knows the importance of getting your message across to your audience. You select the right topic and the right key points to cover to make it valuable. What about how easy that content is to actually read? This seems like a simple piece of the puzzle to look at, right? It is, but that may be why it is so easy to overlook.
We’re talking about your content’s readability level. You need to choose it wisely so your readers clearly understand your message and feel connected to it.
But how do you measure it? How do you choose the level that best matches your audience? Read on to learn more.

How do you choose the right readability level?

When choosing the readability you want to target, you need to understand your audience and their expectations. This determines how complex or how simplified your content should be.
For example, say you intend to speak to a team of experienced technical engineers, but you talk to them as if they’re fifth graders. In consequence, many of them are going to check out purely because they assume the content isn’t meant for them.
Alternatively, say you’re speaking to a person who is just starting out and trying to learn about your topic, and you fill the page with complicated phrases and unexplained jargon. They are also going to look elsewhere for what they need.
Additionally, review the demographic statistics for your target audience to identify their education and experience levels. This information won’t be an exact fit, but it’ll give you an idea of the people you’re speaking to. Aim closer to the lower end of this range, as it is much easier to capture an audience who feels the content is a little oversimplified than to engage readers who can’t understand it at all.

How do you check the readability level before publishing?

Readability is normally scored in terms of the grade level that the reader needs in order to understand the text.
There are a number of different formulas commonly used to check for readability. Most of them compare the total numbers of words, sentences and syllables in a text using an equation. This formula determines how difficult the text is to read. Longer sentences and words with more syllables equal a higher reading level.
There are several readability tools available online, such as Readable.com or Readability Formulas, where it analyzes the content for you. All you have to do is paste your text into the box. Having one of those handy is a big help.

How do you adjust the readability level?

Once you know your goal readability level, or the score of a particular piece of content, there are a few factors to keep in mind when adjusting readability:

• Sentence length: Think of the popular children’s book “See Spot Run” in contrast to any of Hemingway’s novels. One of their biggest differences is the length of the sentences. Short and simple is easy to read. Once you head into long, complicated sentences full of punctuation, and full of helpful (yet sometimes confusing) adjectives, the reading level becomes a little more advanced. And it is possible to swing too far in either direction.
• Word choice: This goes beyond choosing an average word length that matches your audience’s reading level. Keep in mind that if you use words that are not well known, such as pedant (one who is overly concerned with rules or precision), your audience may still need to find a dictionary despite the smaller number of syllables.
• Jargon and acronyms: Almost all industries have commonly used technical terms or acronyms. Some will tell you to avoid them as much as possible. But that isn’t always necessary; it depends on your audience. For seasoned veterans, such terms make them feel right at home. For everyone else, it looks as if you’re speaking Greek.

How does readability affect sales?

When your audience is reading your content, it’s all about making a connection. Even if the content is a thought leadership piece with no sales pitch, still situate your company top of mind.
What better way to make a connection than to deliver content that not only is on topic and adds value but that also delivers that value in a language they can understand? Conversely, if customers leave your blog feeling as if the content was either too simple or over their heads, the likelihood that they will think of you again when they need service is pretty low.

In summary

Choosing a consistent readability level that matches your persona is critical in connecting with your audience and ensuring that your message is clearly understood.

Need help?

If you have a content marketing program or are planning one, download our e-book 100 Mistakes Businesses Make When Starting, Optimizing and Scaling Content Marketing Programs.
This e-book will walk you through the mistakes of hundreds of other companies and the challenges they faced in implementing their content marketing programs. To learn more about how Tempesta Media can help you streamline your content creation process and deliver quality content at scale, contact us today.

Welcome to the second installment of our multi-part series on our content marketing platform features. Here, we cover our content analytics capabilities.

Content analytics basics

When many companies start out, they struggle to identify the best metrics that will assess how their content marketing program is performing.

To combat that, we have identified several key metrics at the beginning of a program’s life cycle that companies can use to measure the performance of their content marketing campaigns. These metrics fall under the term content analytics.

In the early stages, your content marketing program will drive your top-funnel metrics. In other words, these metrics generate awareness of your product or service and your company.

For example, top-funnel metrics would include the number of organic searches that arrive on your site. Other metrics include new visitors, time spent on site, bounce rate and more.

Additionally, as your content marketing program grows, you can define other metrics that are specific to your unique goals. Specifically, pay attention to content production metrics – these will help you determine whether you are meeting your content creation and delivery goals.

Furthermore, look at your publication schedule. Are you consistently publishing content? Are you publishing on the same days and at the same times? Moreover, which times produce more visitors or better engagement? With this information, you can alter your publication schedule to optimize your program and maximize results.

Tempesta Media’s content analytics feature

Tempesta Media’s content analytics feature focuses on an executive dashboard that covers top-funnel metrics. In fact, this gauges how your metrics are performing in real time and over a period of time.

As your program grows and you create more content, you’ll see your metrics improve. When you publish and share that content, our module is able to provide you these metrics in a simple and visual way. All you have to do is click the analytics button, view the custom dashboard screen and identify how they are performing.

These features and more are what we’ve created for our customers, and they are included in certain subscription levels and available as an add-on feature.

Get started today

If you have a content marketing program, or are planning one, download our ebook:  100 mistakes businesses make when starting, optimizing and scaling content marketing programs.  Learn from the mistakes of hundreds of other companies.  100 mistakes walks you through common and uncommon challenges that they faced with their content marketing programs.

For learning more about how our content analytics feature can help your business, please contact us today.

Contrary to popular belief, email is still an extremely strong form of communication and a reliable way to boost engagement rates. However, email will only benefit your marketing initiatives if you craft and send them correctly. If you don’t, you run the risk of overwhelming and annoying your audience, which can ultimately result in lost prospects, dissatisfied customers and a drop in revenue.

What type of content is email good for?

Email is not perfect for all of your content goals, so it’s important to know how to pick the right channel for your content. A good rule of thumb is to limit email content to information that conveys customer benefits or that outlines special updates:

By limiting your emails to cover these announcements, you decrease the risk of annoying or overwhelming your customers with unnecessary information or incessant communications.

Create effective email copy

Crafting successful emails doesn’t stop at picking the right topic. You also have to format them effectively.

Snappy subject lines

Always include a short, snappy subject line to grab your reader’s attention. If you don’t entice them to open it, they won’t. Make sure that your subject line clearly outlines the purpose of the email and shows your customers some type of value. Consider using personalization, certain buzz words and emojis to capture attention:

• [Name], don’t miss out on your free gift!
• Act now and receive this $$ discount.
• 5 tips to craft the perfect email.
• Attention! The product you’ve been waiting for is here.

Direct body copy

Keep your email copy short and to the point, clearly showcasing the value and purpose of the communication. Your customers don’t want to spend five minutes reading an email.

Focus on answering the question: Why should my audience care about what I’m telling them? This will help you focus on summarizing your information and eliminating any unnecessary verbiage.

Enticing CTA

To wrap things up, include a call to action (CTA) to outline the next steps customers should take. Without one, your customers may not know how to further engage with your company. Additionally, be sure to link your CTA with a relevant page on your website. This will further encourage engagement because you’re providing a quick and simple way to continue the interactions. Without a link, some of your customers may not bother to find the information on their own. Keep the CTA simple: Visit our blog, Contact us for more information, Download your coupon now.

Send emails that work

Make sure you know your audience. You don’t want to send them irrelevant information – that will just dissuade them from opening any other emails you send them. Use analytics and A/B testing to figure out what your customers are interested in. Additionally, give your emails a personal touch by addressing individual customers and, if applicable, add a snippet of content that alludes to previous conversations (i.e., vacation time, new subscription upgrade, recent feedback) to show that you pay attention to their specific situations.

Furthermore, make sure you track spikes in engagement rates and analyze open rates. Your customers will start to show a pretty reliable pattern of what they open and when they open it. Although optimal times will vary, consistently good times include:

• Tuesdays
• Thursdays
• 10a.m.
• 1p.m.
• 6p.m.

Email effectively with Tempesta Media

Tempesta Media is dedicated to creating quality content at scale, all while providing a platform that streamlines your content creation processes. Email copy is one of the nine content types that our industry-specific expert writers can craft, allowing you to create a customized solution that fits your unique goals.

If you have a content marketing program, or are planning one, download our ebook:  100 mistakes businesses make when starting, optimizing and scaling content marketing programs.  Learn from the mistakes of hundreds of other companies.  100 mistakes walks you through common and uncommon challenges that they faced with their content marketing programs.

To learn more about our content services, contact us today.

Case studies and testimonials play a pivotal role in a company’s ability to attract leads. Whether we want to believe it or not, we’re all influenced by our peers. In fact, consumer who reads personal recommendations about a company’s products or services is 83% more likely to buy. For B2Bs specifically, 90% of buyers said positive customer success content influenced their purchasing decisions.

As a business, you want to showcase your customers’ experiences with your company. It not only helps boost leads and sales but it also broadens your brand’s visibility.

What are testimonials?

Testimonials, used in the business sense, are affirmations about a company’s character, qualifications, quality of products and level of service, to name just a few. They provide honest opinions about your company, and customers usually gravitate towards companies that have solid testimonials from actual buyers. Testimonials can be influential in a potential buyer’s decision to purchase from you because they see real reactions and real outcomes.

Successful testimonials can be presented in a variety of ways, including customer quotes, videos, audio clips, customer interviews, blog posts, peer review sites (i.e. Yelp), social media posts, press reviews and case studies.

What are case studies?

Case studies are a type of testimonial but are structured as comprehensive stories about your customers’ experiences. They are typically written in long-form, exploring different topics in detail. Topics covered in a typical case study include:

• An outline of the customer’s challenges or conflicts they faced.
• An account of how they approached their dilemmas.
• A description of any failures to self-resolve their problem.
• An explanation of how your product or service helped resolve their problem.

Case studies usually have data points and research integrated into the story to make it more persuasive. These details provide real examples of success and show how your processes and solutions actually work. This type of content is a strategic way to position your company as a problem solver.

How testimonials and case studies help you gain more customers

Including testimonials and case studies in your content marketing strategy can go a long way towards boosting your brand exposure, increasing trust, establishing credibility and giving you a competitive advantage. When potential customers read these types of content, they understand the types of problems you’re able to solve and how you do it.

However, to get testimonials or the material you need to create a case study, you have to ask your customers for help. When you start this process, be sure to do the following:

• Create a survey or feedback form. It’s a simple and convenient way for data gathering for both you and your customer.
• Make sure to ask about what you can improve on. It’ll help you pinpoint weaknesses and strengthen your brand.
• Ensure your customers know what they are filling out. Inform them of your plans for their answers so they are not surprised or frustrated when they see their responses publicized.
• Consider offering an incentive to those who fill out the form. It’ll promote more responses and benefit both parties.

When planning your content strategy, you have a number of different types of content to choose from. Your best bet is to use a variety of content strategies to keep things interesting for your audience. Case studies and testimonials are often overlooked as a content option, but they shouldn’t be.

If you have a content marketing program, or are planning one, download our ebook:  100 mistakes businesses make when starting, optimizing and scaling content marketing programs.  Learn from the mistakes of hundreds of other companies.  100 mistakes walks you through common and uncommon challenges that they faced with their content marketing programs.

Tempesta Media offers case studies as one of our nine content types. To learn more about how we can help you, contact us today.

Blog posts are one of the most effective forms of content marketing. As such, it’s important to structure them in a way that will promote high chances of success. In order to optimize your blog content, be sure to address these factors when formatting them.

Word count

Ideally, a blog post should contain about 500-1,000 words. You want it to be long enough to be informative, but short enough to hold your readers’ attention span. How you determine word count will largely depend upon your audience and their reading level as well as your marketing goals for the piece. However, B2C blog posts tend to be 500-600 words while B2B posts are more in the 600-1,000 word range.

Paragraph length

Balance is the key when it comes to paragraph length. Short paragraphs can make it difficult for readers to connect ideas, and it often interrupts your article’s flow. Longer paragraphs can be difficult to read, and you’re likely to lose your readers’ attention.

Ideally, aim for two to four sentences within each paragraph to hit that happy medium. For longer sections or paragraphs, integrate bullet points to help balance your text readability.

Images

As the old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” This definitely holds true with blog posts. Statistics show articles with images get 94% more views. This is not insignificant. When selecting your images, be sure to:

• Include visual content that relevant to the information you are presenting.
• Include images that have a clear resolution.
• Incorporate a variety of image types, including photos, charts, infographics and video (when applicable).
• Create your images in-house or access them legally.
• Add captions to any images.

The reason images are so powerful is simple. Pictures help break up chunks of text and improve readability. Articles with images also improve memory and information retention. In fact, people remember 65% of information paired with an image as opposed to only 10% without one.

SEO

Writing and selecting images is only a part of creating a successful blog. You’ll also want your posts to be optimized for SEO so you receive better SERPs (search engine results placements). Be sure to include relevant keywords, trusted outbound links and internal links to other areas of your website.

If you’re looking for expert quality content for your blog, contact Tempesta Media to learn more about our content solutions and optimization services.

You’ve probably heard it a million times: SEO is crucial to the success of your content marketing program. What you may not have heard as often is the reason why it’s so important.

What does SEO mean?

Essentially, it’s an acronym for “search engine optimization.” Search engine optimization is a quantifiable way to bring organic traffic to your website without having to pay search engine companies for positioned ads. By having good SEO, your website will appear higher on search engine results pages. Many companies gear their strategies towards Google since it owns about 75% of the market share, but other engines such as Bing and Yahoo follow the same process for choosing qualified websites.

Search engine optimization brings organic traffic

The more optimized your website is, the more likely that your website’s traffic will increase. When positioned towards the top of search engine results pages, it is more likely that people will choose your website over a competitor who is farther down the results list. How do you get your website to appear at the top though?

Components needed to make a successful strategy

In order for your initiatives to be successful, you’ll need to focus on both on-site and off-site factors. Utilizing both will help you to build trust and credibility while providing your audience with a better, more engaging experience. Consider these factors when building good search engine optimization:

• On-site: Build site maps, add focus keyword phrases, utilize good website code and update your older content.
• Off-site: Concentrate on link building, get other trustworthy websites to add links to your page, get news sites to publish your press releases and have guest articles written about your company on other websites.

An effective strategy means distributing content that is regularly updated, informative and actionable. Landing on page one of SERPs (search engine results pages) doesn’t happen overnight, but if you commit to your strategy, you’ll demonstrate value and position yourself as an authority in your industry.

SEO isn’t a project that has a beginning and an end – it is an ongoing effort. As such, the quality of your content plays an important role in creating a good search engine optimization strategy. If you’d like to learn more about Tempesta’s content solutions and how we optimize your content, contact us today.