Content Strategy Archives | Bourn Creative

Create An Effective Content Marketing Plan At Content Camp

August 7, 2019 Jennifer Bourn

What do blogging, podcasting, attracting clients, acquiring customers, growing a YouTube channel, building an email list, and establishing a social following have in common?

Content.

No matter what your goal is, if you want to grow your business and expand your brand:

You need to create high-quality, strategic content on a regular basis. Year-over-year growth in unique site traffic is 7.8x higher for content marketing leaders compared to followers (19.7% vs 2.5%) according to Aberdeen.
You need to market that content to gain as much visibility and website traffic as possible. Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads according to DemandMetric.
You need people who engage and interact with your content to take action. Conversion rates are nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters (2.9% vs 0.5%) shares Aberdeen.

Content Camp: A Content Marketing Workshop For Small Business

July 2, 2019 Jennifer Bourn

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of content marketing and how it can bring a flood of new clients to your business and new customers in the door. You’ve probably also heard that blogging is the fastest way to improve your search rankings and attract new clients. You may have even thought, “I really need to be doing that and leverage the free and low cost tools available to grow my business.”

So you decided to look into it — you did online research, read blog posts, watched YouTube videos, and downloaded a white paper or ebook. But there is so much information out there, so much to learn, so many people with opinions, and so many different options, it’s hard to know what is right for your business and where to start to get the most bang for your buck.

You might have also invested in attending networking events and conferences (or sending your staff to these events) to learn about blogging, content marketing, and the tools available. Unfortunately, all you walked away with is a few tips and a giant to do list of things you should be doing. The problem is that you still haven’t made progress.

I get it. I’ve been there.

I see it happening to small business owners time and time again, and it needs to stop.

Your Website Contact Page Deserves To Be A Priority

April 7, 2017 Jennifer Bourn

When anyone thinks of creating a new website, writing website content, or interacting on an existing website to improve user experience, the onsite customer journey, or conversions, they almost always begin with the key services, products and sales pages. They then look at the checkout pages for online purchases, the home page, testimonials or reviews, the about page, maybe an FAQ or support page. They even look at the blog. Rarely does any website owner prioritize the website contact page.

When it comes to the contact page of a website, most people barely give it any thought.

Even some of the most beautiful, well-designed websites in the world have ho-hum contact pages. A basic contact form is added to the page, the page is checked off a list of website to-dos, and focus is given to something that matters more. Or worse, the website contact page is viewed as a necessary evil and is created to be more of a barrier than an invitation.

How To Create An Ideal Client Profile And Use It To Make Your Marketing More Effective

November 7, 2016 Jennifer Bourn

Last week I shared some thoughts on the gut of surface-level blog posts about defining an ideal client and why it is helpful in business. My article on Defining Your Client Persona To Create Targeted Marketing Messages walks you through what an ideal client profile is, why you need one, and how it helps your marketing efforts. I even provided some tips on how to identify who your ideal client is.

The feedback on the article so far has been amazing, so I wanted to take it a step further and really dig in deeper to share exactly how to create an ideal client profile, in another article I wrote for GoDaddy, Narrow Your Focus: Tips For Creating An Ideal Client Profile And Putting It To Work, including:

9 Ways evaluate data to create an ideal client profile
How to get the data needed to create an ideal client profile
How to use an ideal client profile

Here is the full article:

Define Your Client Persona To Create Targeted Marketing Messages

October 31, 2016 Jennifer Bourn

There is a lot of talk about defining an ideal client profile or ideal client persona online and throughout social media, especially in the entrepreneurial, freelance, solopreneur, online business, and internet marketing arenas. Some of it is good, some of it is okay but a bit misguided, and some of it is downright incorrect — yikes!

The problem is the same for anything that becomes a marketing buzz-word or assumed magic pill for success: everyone, even non-experts, jump on the hype bandwagon and start writing blog posts to earn extra traffic and capitalize on the buzzword. This means that many of the blog posts attempting to teach you about ideal client profiles and how to use a client persona aren’t teaching from first-hand experience and wild success, but from mere regurgitation of what they themselves have read online.

If you’re not quite sure what an ideal client profile or client persona is, or even how to use it, this article I recently wrote for GoDaddy, Cast a narrower net: Define your client persona to easily create targeted marketing messages, will get you started in the right direction:

A WordPress Blog Is A Filing Cabinet For Your Website

March 28, 2016 Jennifer Bourn

I’m guilty of it. Almost every blogger I know is guilty of it —, well, at least the bloggers who have been blogging for years. It’s a problem we caused that has haunted us for the life of our blog and now is either a huge task we know we need to tackle, or a huge task we’re just going to ignore and push to the side.

Category and Tag Abuse

WordPress category and tag abuse is a real struggle. It’s how this blog at one point, ballooned to more than 30 categories and 800 tags that I then had to clean up.

Now you may be thinking, “So what? What’s the big deal”

The big deal is that not only does category and tag abuse split and fracture your content, it creates a poor experience for your website visitors, making it harder to find similar or related content about the topic they are interested in on your website.

Categories and Tags Used As Keywords

The problem of category and tag abuse stems from the belief that categories and tags are similar to keywords, and that when assigned a category or tag to a blog post, it is the same as assigning a keyword to the post. This action is further perpetuated by the belief that assigning a post to a specific category or tag like a keyword somehow will help their search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

How To Plan A Blog Post In 10 Minutes

April 20, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

Every website owner loves the idea of a blog. They love hearing about how adding a blog to your website is one of the fastest and easiest ways to increase traffic, improve search engine rankings, build a big email list, gain expert positioning, and attract new clients.

They love the impact it can have on their social media content strategy and they love that blogging for business is free — it doesn’t add another monthly bill. But blogging isn’t really free — it takes time, energy, focus, and commitment.

As a result, end though website owners love the idea of blogging for business, they are not using their blogs! Often nothing new has been published since the site originally went live, or it’s been three, six, or even twelve months since any new content has been added. Yikes!

In my latest article for CoSchedule, How To Plan A Blog Post In 10 Minutes So You Can Write It Better And Faster, I address the biggest hurdle business blogs face — creating content and planning posts.

In this article, I walk you through how to plan a blog post in 10 minutes or less so you can write it better and faster — without stress, frustration, or overwhelm. Plus, I know you don’t need another cookie cutter formula that doesn’t work, so I’m going to walk you through FIVE different approaches to planning and writing blog posts so you can choose the one that works best for you.

Here’s the entire article:

How to Consistently Create Content That Builds Your Business And Attracts Clients

April 6, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

I recently partnered with iThemes Training to deliver a FREE webinar training for graphic designers, web designers, and developers — and you don’t even have to opt-in to watch it!

There is a plethora of information available about how to build a successful web design business, how to write code, and everything from how to choose typefaces and color palettes, to how to design a logo or website. There is also an abundance of information about the effectiveness and power of content marketing, but there is a shocking lack of information about how designers and developers can create content that will help grow their business AND attract clients.

Are you a designer or developer who:

Struggles to consistently create content that resonates with your audience
Experiences frustration with rocky client projects or client confusion
Is drowning in administrative or project management tasks
Doesn’t have time to add yet another task to your to-do list for the week

If you answered yes, this webinar is for you. In it, I walk you through a simple content creation process you can use to grow your business, automate your processes, and attract more clients — and we’ll talk about repurposing content to save you time and effort.

Watch it for FREE with NO OPT-IN needed right now!

Watch The Webinar

Free Tool to Discover Plagarism And Content Theft

March 23, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

Recently a friend reached out with some disconcerting information — Another web design company was using our content and images. At first she didn’t notice, but when she saw my photo on their website, she looked a little closer and sent me a link to check it out.

Unfortunately today owning a website and doing business online also means that if you’re any good or if your site ranks well with search engines, others will steal, rip off, and copy what you do, that you write, what you say, and even how you look. If you’ve never done the research, the blatant thievery and lack of integrity among content thieves online can be shocking and disheartening.

But how do you know if someone is stealing you hard work?

Clear Expectations and Streamlined Onboarding Set The Tone For Client Relationships

February 16, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

Recently, I published a the blog post How To Implement A New Client Onboarding Process And Set Expectations. It walked people through all the basics of creating a new client onboarding process and why it is critical to the success of a service based business.

This post was so much more popular that I could have imagined and generated a lot of emails and questions about the topic, so I wrote a follow up post Clear Expectations and Streamlined Onboarding Set The Tone For Client Relationships about it for WP Elevation.

In the article, I dig deeper with the two most important parts of the client on boarding process:

Welcoming new clients and confirming hiring you was a great choice
Setting crystal clear expectations

I also provide sample content you can use or model when communicating with your clients! Yes, I give you a sample welcome email and a sample expectation-setting email.

Here’s the article:

How To Plan A Content Creation Process Your Small Business Can Actually Achieve

February 14, 2015 Jennifer Bourn

I love content — content planning, content organization, content design, content development, content strategy — the geek in me comes out in full force when it comes to content.

It could be because I like writing a lot, or maybe it’s because I find joy in teaching and sharing information. Whatever the reason may be, creating content comes easy to me.

In my article How To Plan A Content Creation Process Your Small Business Can Actually Achieve for CoSchedule, I break down step-by-step the exact process I use to plan and create content for Bourn Creative. I also share our strategy behind creating internal content for automation, client education, and our systems and processes, as well as external content for marketing, and how you can repurpose content for both purposes.

Here’s the full article:

How To Get Your Content In Front Of The Right Audience At The Right Time

October 2, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Consumers don’t take action when you want them to take action, they take action when they are ready. They don’t buy when you want them to buy, they buy when they are ready to buy, and they certainly don’t read your newest article or blog post just because you published it — it has to be the right audience, and the right content, at the right time.

As a content marketer, your job is to make sure that your content gets in front of the right audience at the right time — when they are ready. That means making sure your content is easily accessible and can be discovered in many different ways on different platforms.

In my article How To Get Your Content In Front Of The Right Audience At The Right Time for CoSchedule, I break down how to reach the right audience, with the right content, and the right time, and provide tips and suggestions to help you get the most out of your content.

Here’s the article:

How to Optimize Blog Posts For Maximum Results And Visibility

August 28, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Every time I speak to a group or organization at about blogging for business, I share the same simple, but often eye-opening statements:

Every time a new blog post is published, a new searchable URL is added to your website
Publishing a new blog post just once each week for a year, will add 52 new searchable URLs to your website
That action creates 52 new ways people can find you online — that’s 52 new chances you have to appear in the search engines results when someone is looking for what you do

If audience members were skeptical about blogging before, they usually then agree that it’s worth their time to take a second look about how blogging for business could help grow their business.

The Problem With Blogging For Business

I speak to a lot of people who think blogging for business is a waste of time, ether because they tried it and it didn’t work, or someone else told them that they tried it and it didn’t work.

WP Unicorn Project: Content Strategy With Jennifer Bourn

July 19, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

One of my favorite things to do is talk shop — to talk about business, design strategy, marketing, getting clients, content, blogging, WordPress — and recently I got to do it again with Suzette Franck and Natalie MacLees on Media Temple’s WordPress Hangout, WP Unicorn Project.

I originally met both of these incredibly smart women at Word Camp Las Vegas. We stayed in touch through Twitter and I connected with Suzette again at WordCamp Phoenix.

Suzette Franck is Media Temple’s WordPress Evangelist and she travels to and speaks at a lot of WordCamps around the country. Natalie MacLees owns Purple Pen Productions, is organizer for WordCamp LA, and is a published author, working on the second edition of her book jQuery for Designers.

Now, about that hangout …

How to Optimize Website Content For Search Engines And People

June 18, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

I know SEO can be overwhelming and I know it feels like A LOT of work — because it is. But, when you take time to understand individual elements and strategies, one at a time, it does get easier!

When talking about organic search engine optimization, I always start with optimizing your on page content because it’s the easiest and most natural thing to do. It’s as simple as formatting your content like you would in a word processing program — as long as you follow the best practices.

What You SHOULD Do When Optimizing Your Content for SEO:

First, you need to make sure your headlines and sub headlines are written clearly, and use your focus keywords naturally and in a normal context that makes sense. Be sure not to force it.

Second, use H tags or Heading tags in your content to mark which parts of your content are headlines and sub headlines. The H tags tell search robots that the content is more important than the body copy or paragraph copy — and provide visual cues to readers and scanners.

Content Tips For The WordPress Page And Post Content Area

April 29, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

WordPress began as a blogging platform and quickly expanded into a content management system that powers 22% of the entire internet.

In fact, according to Matt Mullenweg in his State of The Word 2013 address, 69% of those whom use WordPress use is only as a content management system for their website, not as a blog.

The primary content region on a WordPress site is referred to as the content area. It can contain all different types of content, from text and images, to video and audio. The content area is where the primary web page content or blog post content that you write is added and formatted.

NOTE: Even though content can also be put in a sidebar or in a footer, content in those areas are put into widgets, so they have different names such as, sidebar widget area, footer Widget area, Home page widget area, after-post widget area, etc.

A Website Footer Is For More Than Your Copyright Notice

February 21, 2011 Jennifer Bourn

I guarantee that if you browse the internet for any length of time, you’ll notice that while some websites put a lot of information in their website footer, most simply use it as a space to put their copyright notice and maybe, just maybe if you’re lucky their contact information.

Like your website sidebar, the footer of your website is a very powerful part of your site that can make a big difference in your search engine rankings and how your website visitors move through your website, yet it is one of the most under-utilized tools.

Before I share with you some ideas on how you can leverage your website footer to improve your website and search engine rankings, I want to cover some of the biggest mistakes website owners make when it comes to their website footer: