However, sales consultant and author Scott Leese has a different take on this old-fashioned sales archetype. Customers and prospects are more knowledgeable and sophisticated than their parents and grandparents. They resist being pushed into anything. Today’s salesperson needs to ditch the cold calls and canned pitches and change their approach to stand out.

In this article, you’ll learn why personalization and authenticity now outweigh scripts and pressure tactics, and why today’s salespeople need creativity and writing chops — not just closing experience.

The Classic Sales Archetypes (and Why They’re Outdated)

So what are those old-fashioned sales models? Let’s take a look.

The Type A Closer

The Type A is the stereotype for sales: a highly competitive and results-oriented individual. “This is the personality that is the loud life of the party,” Leese commented. “Sometimes in a good way. Sometimes in a bad way.”

However, today’s buyers are wary of hard-sell tactics, making this aggressive approach appear pushy and inauthentic.

The Quiet Workhorse

At the other end of the spectrum is the salesperson who focuses on empathy, relationship-building, and listening. But this archetype can also lack confidence. Said Leese: “If you don’t heal that person’s defective insecurity, they’re not going to thrive.”

The Over-Analyzer

This archetype is dedicated to facts and data. While reports and intel can help support a sales pitch, Leese said that this individual might be too slow and calculated to shift gears quickly if a situation changes.

Why Sales Needs a New Breed of Talent

Today’s environment — not to mention prospects — requires up-to-date salespeople who can handle the following.

Overcoming Buyer Skepticism Requires Authenticity (Not Canned Scripts)

Artificial intelligence is everywhere in marketing. “We’re at a place where I think everybody is extremely suspicious of any piece of written content at all, and whether it’s authentically human,” Leese noted.

He explained that the successful sales individual will do everything in their power to prove they’re a human, not a programmed chatbot. “The only way to be unique and different is to do things that prove your humanity,” he added.

Exceeding Customer Expectations Requires Personalization at Scale

Today’s prospects and customers want the personal touch.

In one instance, Leese had some difficulty making a sale with a Chicago-based company. The problem? The two partners said they didn’t have time to discuss it with one another.

With some digging, Leese learned that the partners liked baseball; one cheered the Cubs, while the other was a White Sox fan. Leese sent two tickets to a Cubs-White Sox home game, suggesting the partners discuss the sale proposition there.

“They took a selfie at the game, texted it to me, and said ‘hey, thanks for the game,’” Leese said. The partners also had their talk and told Leese to call them to discuss the details of the sale.

Getting in front of prospects is one thing. Personalization takes it further. “That stuff is mattering more and more,” Leese said. “And that’s how you’re going to stand out.”

Cutting Through Content Saturation Requires Originality and Authority

There’s a lot of content out there these days. Leese noted that many people continue to push out blog posts, emails, and other types of content, which muddies the messaging waters. Additionally, a lot of low-quality, spammy content makes it difficult for the good stuff to shine.

So, yes. Salespeople need to be good writers.

“Salespeople of my age or older will tell you that one of the reasons they got into sales was because they weren’t good at math or English,” Leese said. Charm and an ability to talk were more than enough.

That doesn’t fly these days.

Salespeople can fight the saturation battle by providing high-quality, targeted content that is well-written and focuses on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).

Leese said he also maintains a strong sales personal brand. In fact, he’s been writing posts on his LinkedIn profile for years and currently boasts 125,000 followers. “All of my business comes through these social platforms,” he added. “If I didn’t know how to write and didn’t practice it, that’s a whole channel that disappears.”

So, What Other Skills Do Modern Salespeople Need?

The modern sales archetype requires a mix of essential sales skills that go far beyond persuasion and product knowledge.

Constant Curiosity and Creativity

Salespeople must be in learning and experimentation mode, 100% of the time. Leese acknowledged that reading a book or studying online is difficult when a salesperson is expected to execute all day long.

But finding salespeople with a continuous learning mindset is important.

“You’re driving around, shuttling your kids all over the place. Are you listening to music? Or are you listening to a podcast about the latest and greatest (sales) tools?” he said. “I am constantly trying to find ways to insert learning into my day.”

The best salespeople today are also creative salespeople — designing personalized outreach strategies, experimenting with new channels, and finding innovative ways to start conversations. Instead of following a script, they tailor approaches for each prospect, blending storytelling, social proof, and even content assets to spark interest and build trust.

Personal Branding Capacity

What is the role of personal branding in sales? The short answer is that sales branding gets your sales team (and by extension, your company) noticed, especially in a competitive industry.

The longer answer is that sales teams that focus on personal branding are considered more reliable, credible, and trustworthy by their customers.

Leese boosts his personal brand with LinkedIn posts and comments. The social media platform is also a source for generating leads. When people tag him with questions on other social media platforms like Instagram, he suggests they direct message him on LinkedIn. “If they’re willing to take that extra step, then I feel like they’re a little bit more serious and a bit more qualified as a lead,” he said.

Additionally, Leese’s branding and LinkedIn network (what he calls the “network playbook”) can shorten sales cycles.

For example:

• Person A (the salesperson) is friends with and has a first LinkedIn connection with Person B.
• Person B is friends with and has a first LinkedIn connection with Person C, a sales prospect for Person A.
• Person B introduces Persons A and C.
• The latter agrees to meet with the former, as Person B provided a trustworthy referral bridge.

“All three parties are happy at that point,” Leese commented. “This is the fastest, easiest, most cost-effective revenue channel that there is.”

But the key to this approach is a trust-building social media presence. This means your salespeople should have high-quality headshots, fully optimized profiles, and consistently post or share videos that showcase their expertise.

Leese also explained that a salesperson using the network playbook to scale revenue doesn’t risk brand damage from overdoing it with cold calling or emailing. This type of authentic, content-driven sales approach positions the salesperson as a trusted expert, helping to close deals.

An Ability to Understand KPIs

The classic sales archetype measured key performance indicators like calls, contacts, and quotas. Certainly, calls and contacts should still be measured. However, the salesperson’s KPI universe has expanded to metrics covering network growth, thought leadership, number of follow-ups, data entry, revenue, and more.

Tracking engagement with content, brand mentions, and inbound opportunities is now just as important as traditional numbers. While focusing on such details may not be a strong suit for many salespeople, “it helps them stand out,” Leese noted.

Embracing the Modern Sales Archetype

A couple of decades ago, Leese said he would have been handed a sales script with a list of people to call. Then he’d have been told to go sell without asking questions.

“But that doesn’t work anymore,” he said. Curiosity, network growth, personalization, and content are integral to today’s modern sales archetype.

Still, don’t dismiss the traditional activities. Leese pointed out that successful salespeople today are driven, ambitious, and know how to listen — just like in the “olden days.”

ClearVoice’s team of content strategists, writers, SEO specialists, and more has the expertise to create content that supports your sales efforts. Connect with a content specialist today to help your salespeople see more success.

The post Say “Hi” to the Modern Sales Archetype: Curious, Creative, and Content-Driven appeared first on ClearVoice.

A content marketing strategy must not be stagnant. It needs to evolve. A flexible content marketing strategy helps to improve audience engagement.

The result? Increased brand awareness and a boost in sales.

It’s true that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all marketing content strategy. But the most successful plans rely on general steps and advice.

This article provides those steps. It also offers insight to help you with your content marketing strategy checklist.

Changes in content: Then and now

“Content marketing” is a 2000s term that dates back more than 100 years.

During the late 1890s, John Deere produced “The Furrow.” This was a lifestyle magazine directed to farmers. The publication circulated and increased brand loyalty which, in turn, increased sales.

The role of content marketing these days isn’t much different than that of the late 19th century.

Any content marketing strategy worth its salt focuses on three things:

• Identifying your audience’s pain points or problems.
• Developing and disseminating information that provides solutions.
• Encouragement for the audience to take positive action.

At one time (the 2010s), a successful content marketing strategy focused on keywords. This strategy then changed to the use of short- and long-tail keywords.

Fast forward to today, keywords are still important.

But more critical is solutions-based content that answers questions or solves problems. Content must continually drive audience engagement. So solving audience needs ALWAYS comes first in a successful content marketing plan.

Why update your content marketing plan?

To answer the question of “why update?” let’s review the above.

The audience’s needs come first. However, the audience needs continually change. So your strategy should, as well.

Let’s also return to 2010. At that time, smartphones were still — well, phones. They had minimal internet access and even less content. Social influencers hadn’t yet come on the scene. And while blogging was commonplace, it wasn’t in wide use.

Things are different now.

Much of the population owns smartphones. People consume a lot of content from those smartphones. If that content is yours, you’ve succeeded in engaging your audience. You’ve also succeeded in connecting that audience to your brand.

So, an effective content marketing strategy should include the following:

• Understanding/defining your audience
• Researching your competition
• Researching topics and keywords
• Planning your production schedule
• Creating and promoting the content
• Measuring and analyzing the content’s effectiveness

To update your current content strategy, analyze it first. Determine what worked well. Figure out what wasn’t so effective and why. Then, examine current technologies and the competition.

Once you’ve completed this process, take the following steps:

• Set your marketing goals and budget
• Examine your audience’s needs
• Determine your content formats
• Select the right marketing channels
• Put measurements in place
• Perform SEO audits on your website

These are the basic steps for business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategies. But there are other strategic steps you should take based on your end user.

The B2C content marketing strategy checklist

The goal of a business-to-consumer content strategy is transactional.

In other words, you want the end user to eventually buy your product or service. To get the end user to that point, you must learn your audience’s pain points. Then, develop content to offer solutions and encourage action.

You also want to make that content—and its solutions—as easy to find as possible.

So, your 2025 B2C content strategy checklist might include the following:

• Refreshing your website design to make it more content-rich and user-friendly.
• Checking your online reviews and local listings to ensure positive word of mouth.
• Boosting your social media efforts. Go beyond Facebook or X posts. Consider visuals for Instagram or videos on TikTok.
• Incorporating E-E-A-T signals into your content. Hire writers with industry experience and relevant qualifications and highlight bios on your site.
• Reviewing your search engine optimization strategies/SERP ranking. This ensures your solutions-oriented content is getting noticed.

The B2B content marketing strategy checklist

Unlike the B2C scenario, your business-to-business strategy is less about transactions and more about relationships.

Your end user isn’t an individual. Rather, that potential buyer is a business. The decision-makers need solutions to benefit their companies instead of themselves.

Another thing to keep in mind?

The B2B audience has a long chain of command, as well as a longer buying cycle than that of a B2C audience.

So, your content should still provide solutions. But those solutions might involve more product detail and descriptions. It also might focus on financial benefits to your audience. This could include an ROI increase or other incentives. The content should also generate long-term relationships with your audience and referrals to other businesses.

With this in mind, your 2025 B2B content strategy checklist might include the following:

• Implementing marketing automation to keep current clients happy while nurturing new leads.
• Creating business pages on social media networks.
• Brushing up your referral strategies.
• Ensuring your website contains landing pages and strong CTAs.
• Improving trustworthiness by hiring writers with industry expertise.

Keeping your content strategy current

A successful content marketing strategy is solutions-based. This is the case whether you’re reaching out to individuals or businesses.

That strategy should also be flexible.

Examine ongoing channel strategies. Also, research changing audience needs and content formats. Be sure that your brand is front and center with prospects and customers.

Additionally, consider collaborating with content marketing experts. Outsourcing content strategies and content creation can boost your messaging efforts. This, in turn, can help increase your brand awareness.

ClearVoice can help you work on your content strategy. Our expert creators are also on hand to develop solutions-oriented content.

For more guidance on content strategy, schedule some time with us.

The post Checklist: Content Marketing Strategy Essentials for 2025 appeared first on ClearVoice.

Whether you’re new to the game or have been at it for a while, you might ask yourself, “How much ideation is enough?” This is valid: Too little ideation can lead to lackluster content, content gaps, and a disenchanted audience. Too much might result in “decision paralysis” or burnout while stretching your resources too thin.

The goal of an ongoing and productive content strategy is ideation frequency, which, as Goldilocks and the Three Bears put it, is “just right.”

Ideation and Content Strategy

Before determining the “how often,” let’s examine the “what.” A successful ideation strategy has four components:

• Identifying and solidifying topics to engage audiences, provide solutions, and impart knowledge
• Determining themes and issues to support your brand’s strategies and goals
• Formulating audience-friendly formats through which useful, engaging, and interesting content is delivered
• Measuring the effectiveness of content, formats, and audience engagement and making changes to the process when necessary

The above is built on a foundation of your organization’s goals and your audience’s pain points. Once you’ve determined those objectives and needs, it’s time to determine how often to brainstorm.

Establishing an Ideation Schedule

In theory, you could meet with your team daily and kick around great ideas for those blogs, video tutorials, or podcast series. In reality, no one has that kind of time. The following chart provides a good idea of ideation meeting frequency.

There are various frequency timelines and a reasoning for each. For instance, you may follow one of the following or something in between: 

• Weekly: This is used to generate many ideas and fast. It allows you to be reactive to sudden industry news or changes and ensures enough content for your social media and blog. 
• Bi-weekly: This tends to be great for staying on top of any ongoing trends or seasonal changes, as well as discussing and continuing conversations on topics or formats currently ongoing. 
• Monthly: This may be the most common frequency type. It is used to formulate ongoing and major campaigns within your marketing operations. It allows you to plan and schedule pillar content pieces. Think of the hub and spoke model. And provides for ongoing engagement with your audience. 
• Quarterly: This is often used to examine quarterly metrics and content effectiveness. Many use this frequency to align with quarter business goals and adjust to those current and/or new goals.

Content schedule

An up-to-date content schedule determines how often your team meets. That schedule also dictates when more content (and, therefore, more meetings) could be necessary. For example, you might have a higher content push during certain times of the year.

Industry trends

Your content must reflect industry developments to ensure greater audience engagement and action. If your organization operates in a field experiencing many changes, you need to meet more often with your ideation team to develop content that addresses various issues.

Audience engagement

If your audience has an ongoing relationship with your content, it’s time to pop the champagne. To keep attention and interest, you should plan to meet regularly to ideate new topics, formats, and distribution efforts.

Available resources and capacity

Larger teams generally have the budget and capacity to meet more frequently (as well as having greater content needs). However, if your team consists of a copywriter, designer, and SEO specialist (with a smaller budget), you’ll likely get together less frequently to ideate.

At ClearVoice, we’ve often found that many customers have a desired monthly cadence of content that varies across different content formats. But that helps tee things up for ideation cadence and amount. We’ve determined it’s always best to double the desired amount. So, if there’s a need for eight blog posts a month, we need to ideate a minimum of 16 post ideas.  Those ideas should include a working title, a brief description, and any specific reference link for support or comparison. 

Choosing the Topics to Ideate

Once you’ve determined ideation frequency, it’s time to work on the content process. One issue involves timely versus evergreen topics, which are essential for a balanced content strategy. Selecting which to use will depend greatly on your content schedule, organizational goals, and, of course, audience engagement.

Timely content: Getting it done now

Timely content is used for current events, trends analyses, or seasonal campaigns. The goal here is to gain your audience’s immediate attention with content like:

• Social media posts and “newsy” website blogs
• Infographics, charts, and graphs
• “Trending” podcasts
• Topical webinars

Timely content drives short-term traffic. Once a trend disappears, a season ends or a fad fades into oblivion, so does the content’s relevance.

Evergreen content: Distributing whenever

Pine trees in forests — evergreens — stay green year-round. Your evergreen content does the same thing. It remains relevant over time, no matter when your audience engages with it.

• Evergreen content includes:
• Website resource pages
• Blog or website FAQs
• “How-to” video tutorials
• eBooks or white papers

Evergreen pieces attract and engage audiences over a longer period, with relevance continuing over time.

Finding the topics

A topic list is essential for results-driven ideation. Yet one issue plaguing many marketing teams is where to find likely ideas. Brainstorming with your team is one way to generate concepts. Other sources include:

• Audience/stakeholder feedback
• Secondary sources (news articles, research papers)
• Digital idea generators, including HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator and AI tools like Chat GPT or Gemini

Having topics ready at ideation meetings can reduce discussion time and possibly the frequency of how often you meet with your team. Additionally, another invaluable way to pinpoint ideation topics is through keyword research.

Ideation, SEO, and Keyword Research

Your content should be engaging. It should also rank high on a Search Engine Results Page. The higher your content ranks, the more eyeballs view it. The more people look at your content, the more likely they are to act favorably.

As such, a successful ideation strategy relies on search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword research through the following:

• Use the right tools. Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, and Moz are great for identifying keywords. If possible, also study long-tail keywords to help drive higher conversion rates.
• Incorporate content mapping. Content mapping matches keywords to content type. For example, question-focused keywords can be re-created as FAQs, while “how-to” keywords can be the basis of video tutorials.
• Focus on content relevance. It’s important to understand users’ needs when they type queries into search engines. Understanding user pain points helps in designing effective content.
• Perform a content gap analysis. Look for any information “gaps” your audience might face when searching for solutions. If you find a lack, develop content to fill it.

Organizing Ideas from Ideation Sessions

Figuring out how often to get your team together is essential. Getting team members to pitch in ideas is also necessary. Once those topics and ideas are in place, it’s time to organize them. The better the organization, the better — and more effective — the resulting content. The best methods of organization include:

Documenting all contributions. Use a central digital tool like Trello, Asana, Google Docs, or Miro. Or go old school and record everything on a whiteboard. It doesn’t matter as long as everything is captured. While you’re at it, take time to categorize ideas to save time.

Grouping ideas under specific categories. Once the ideation session is complete, take the time to organize those terrific thoughts, discussions, and topics under specific categories. These groupings can include (but aren’t limited to):

• Thematic (new product launches, seasonal trends, news events)
• Content types (blogs, infographics, white papers, podcasts) and audience preferences)
• Release dates (timely versus evergreen)

Ensuring topics align with audience needs and organizational goals. Ultimately, the topics should focus on specific objectives (lead generation, sales conversions, website visits) while increasing brand awareness.

Assigning ownership for each topic. The team or individual you delegate is responsible for taking the necessary steps to get an idea from concept to execution. Be sure to follow up; the last thing you need is for things to fall through the cracks.

Topic organization is one reason why ideation frequency consideration is essential. If you’re meeting too often with your team, you could end up with many ideas. But you might not have enough time — or resources — to move those ideas into actionable content.

Further Optimization of the Ideation Process

Ongoing scheduling, regular meetings (but not too many), in-depth research, and stimulating discussions are essential methods that support ideation strategies. Other best practices to incorporate include the following:

• Incorporate cross-functional teams. Bring others into your ideation process, like folks from the sales and production departments. Don’t keep it to just the marketing team.
• Stick to the agenda. Brainstorming is fun. It can also be long-winded. Create a concise agenda to keep your team on track while discussing topics, formats, and distribution processes.
• Follow the feedback. Study metrics to determine if the resulting content from ideation processes increases conversions, engagement, click-throughs, or views. Also, tap into audience feedback loops for responses to your content and to generate future ideas.
• Constantly review and refine. Ideation is not a “one-and-done” process. Continually examine your ideation process, from meeting frequency to content creation and distribution. If something isn’t working, figure out why and change it.

Ideation Frequency for Stellar Content

A key to a well-oiled ideation strategy is brainstorming ideas. Another key is how often you meet with your team. Ideation frequency greatly depends on your organization, industry, resources, and audience. Consistency is important whether you have a brief daily meet-up or a two-hour monthly gathering.

So be alert to the signs that you might be ideating too much (burnout, indecision, too many ideas for effective topic organization) or not enough (lackluster content, content gaps, dwindling audience engagement).

If you need help with your ideation process, we’ve got your back. Our professional content strategists, editors, and writers can provide superior assistance at any point during your content strategy process. Connect with a content strategist today to discuss your content creation and ideation needs. 

The post How Much Ideation is Enough? A Guide to Effective Content Brainstorming appeared first on ClearVoice.

You might be intrigued by supplementing your well-led marketing team with fractional content specialists, SEO experts, seasoned copywriters, or talented graphic designers. But what might get in your way is a boatload of misperceptions or the “Five C Myths” of fractional teams. These Five C Myths are cost, commitment, communication, competencies, and capacity.

If you’ve considered employing fractional talent to help with your marketing department but are wary because of some horror stories you’ve heard, read on. By the end of this article, you’ll understand why the Five C Myths are — well, myths. You’ll also understand how fractional experts — including skilled content strategists, creators, and analysts — can increase your marketing team’s productivity, helping you vastly improve content quality and quantity and conquer your competition.

The Brief Overview: Defining a Fractional Team

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce defines fractional hiring as bringing on board an individual for a “fraction” of the time that a full-time employee would work. Under this definition, fractional experts are often lumped into the same classification as part-time employees or freelance contractors. There are similarities — fractional experts are self-employed, can be retained for project work or permanent endeavors, and share their time with several clients.

However, fractional team members differ from freelancers or part-time employers because of their years of focused experience and extensive knowledge base. As your marketing leaders partner with skilled fractional teams, you benefit from a group with in-depth intelligence, concentrated skills, and off-the-charts abilities.

Implementing fractional roles into your organization means you can handle challenges cost-effectively and capably. The process also allows your leaders to focus on big-picture strategies rather than spending their time churning out blogs, infographics, PowerPoint presentations, or other needed content.

But first, let’s bust the “Five Cs” of those fractional myths.

Myth #1: Cost

• Misperception: Fractional teams cost too much
• Reality: Hiring fractional talent and integrating fractional roles reduces payroll and other personal-related expenses

Let’s take a look at the following table, which details the average rates of full-time employees and their fractional expert counterparts. Keep in mind that personnel costs can vary based on several factors like experience and geographic location.

If the hourly rates of the above-mentioned fractional jobs put you off, consider the following:

• Fractional experts don’t generate recruiting, hiring, or payroll costs
• There’s no “downtime” with fractional experts as there might be with full-time employees, leading to higher productivity levels
• Fractional teams add to your cost savings through remote work and using their equipment

Thanks to the above, companies have saved between 20 and 40 percent by hiring fractional talent instead of full-time employees to plug gaps.

Myth #2: Communication

• Misperception: Because many fractional teams work off-site, communicating with them is impossible
• Reality: Many tools exist to streamline interactions between yourself, your full-time employees, and your fractional team

Certainly, many fractional experts work off-site and might only show up in your office periodically. But technology makes it easy to stay in touch. Plenty of tools like Zoom, Google Meets, and Microsoft Teams (not to mention email, texts, and messaging services like Slack or Teams) allow for continuous connections between your marketing leaders and fractional team.

Myth #3: Commitment

• Misperception: Fractional teams don’t have the same commitment to companies as full-time employees
• Reality: Fractional team members are highly committed to you and will work hard to help you reach your marketing goals

Put another way, fractional experts are also business owners who provide a service. They’ll do everything possible to ensure you’re happy with that service. This means they focus on your needs, creating and implementing results-oriented strategies to help you reach your goals.

Still, you might be concerned that fractional experts “share” their time with other organizations, meaning less time for you. Put those concerns aside. Your fractional team member is a time-management wonder, capable of handling multiple tasks and projects for different companies.

Myth #4: Competencies

• Misperception: Fractional employees lack the experience or educational background for full-time jobs
• Reality: Fractional experts are seasoned professionals with years of experience, knowledge and training

We’ll repeat this louder for those in the back of the room. Fractional experts differ from freelance generalists because they’re highly specialized in their marketing fields. They’ve been through every challenge or success you can imagine.

The fractional copywriter has a vast background in creating compelling content that generates leads. Meanwhile, the fractional content specialist has extensive knowledge in determining strategy and delegating tasks to the right people. The fractional SEO expert understands what’s needed to get your messaging to the right audiences.

Furthermore, because of their intense focus on their fields, fractional experts keep up with the latest trends. As a result, their state-of-the-art intelligence and proven techniques boost your marketing efforts, helping you stand out.

Myth #5: Capacity

• Misperception: Fractional teams are helpful only with small jobs or one-off projects
• Reality: Because of their flexibility, fractional teams handle any and all gaps you need to be plugged

Fractional teams can be hired for your short-term campaigns. Or, you can leverage them as part of your full-time marketing team to develop and implement longer-term tasks and higher-level strategies.

You might hire a fractional team to spearhead your ongoing social media campaigns. Or you could turn to that team to design and implement a continuous content strategy. Maybe you need experts to help improve your SEO efforts over time.

The beauty of fractional teams is their flexibility and ability to fill the existing openings in your marketing team.

Successfully Integrating a Fractional Team

Hopefully, the above myth-busting discussion relieved your concerns about bringing fractional teams on board. If you’re gung-ho about bringing these experts on board, consider the following to create a successful synergy between your team and fractional experts.

Define roles, responsibilities, and expectations. You have expectations for your employees, which you outline and discuss with them. You need to do the same when you bring fractional teams into your organizational culture. They need to know what you expect, including responsibilities, KPIs, and other information. Also, provide onboarding and training to ensure your fractional experts understand their tasks and corporate culture.

Keep communication open. We mentioned above that plenty of technology exists to keep in touch with your fractional team. Use that technology to schedule regular meetings, set agendas, and keep projects moving. Establish appropriate response times for emails and messages. It’s also a good idea to pair fractional team members with your employees for faster responses.

Provide access to company resources. Because your fractional experts are an extension of your marketing team, they must have access to the same information and material as your full-time employees. Don’t be shy about allowing them access to corporate information, campaign numbers, click-throughs, or anything that can help them get the job done.

Ensure regular feedback and evaluations. Similar to how you treat your full-time employees, providing feedback and assessment to your fractional experts is essential. These fractional team members need to know that they’re working toward your goals effectively. They also need to know if something isn’t quite right and requires re-setting.

Myth-Busting to Benefit Your Marketing Efforts

Understanding the reality behind fractional teams’ “Five C” myths reveals a clear picture that focuses on high-level expertise to solidify and direct your company’s overall marketing and content efforts. Pairing fractional experts with high-quality marketing leadership can help you reach your company’s objectives with help from seasoned experts while saving considerable costs and efforts from recruiting, hiring, and retaining full-time employees.

ClearVoice has the experts available to help you form a fractional marketing dream team to help you with everything from high-level strategy to in-the-trenches content development. To get started on building your specialized fractional team, connect with a content specialist today.

The post Fractional Marketing Teams: Debunking the “Five C Myths” appeared first on ClearVoice.

Since then, incorporating SEO into content creation strategies has morphed from “good to have” to “absolutely essential.” But SEO these days involves more than finding the right keywords and figuring out how to incorporate them in your website, jump pages, or blogs so they don’t look too odd. Personalizing your content can help move your SEO efforts into positive territory.

SEO and the “Personal Touch”

The idea behind SEO and personalization is that whatever request or question the user plugs into a search engine returns results specific to that individual. These results might consider the following:

• Location
• Previous search history or online behavior
• User interests
• Language

Let’s put this another way. Once upon a time, whenever you plugged a request into a search engine, you got the same results as your neighbor or work colleague who might have input that request. Today, your search engine query will generate a different response than that sent to your colleague or neighbor.

This is why, for example, if you plug “ice cream” into your Google or Bing search engine, the response might be that you can find Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey (one of your favorite flavors) at the local Kroger store (about two miles away).

There isn’t anything magical about this — it boils down to algorithms. The search engine relies on your information to generate those seemingly specific results. It also boils down to your intent and how Google analyzes it based on previous behaviors.

You might be getting results about Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream because you might have researched it. Meanwhile, Google or Bing knows where you live because your “location-sharing” feature is switched on. From this, the search engine surmises you intend to find Chunky Monkey near you.

Content Personalization and SEO Outcomes

Moving from ice cream to strategy, personalized content strategies involve messaging based on information from your audience that creates a specific, targeted experience. Today’s online users want that personalized experience, as shown by the following:

• 76 percent of consumers indicated they’re more likely to buy when messaging is personalized
• 77 percent of consumers have selected or paid more for a brand that prioritizes a personal experience
• 73 percent of customers want companies to understand what they need
• 80 percent of consumers indicated they were more likely to make a purchase when a brand offered a personalized experience

There’s more – personalized content has a positive impact on SEO because it engages your audience. Here’s how it works:

1. Your target audience uses a search engine to ask questions or solve problems.
2. Based on the information you already have about your audience (behavior, location, language), your content answers that question or solves that problem in a tailored, specific manner.
3. Problem-solving content — and the personalized manner in which it’s delivered — keeps your audience engaged, meaning higher dwell rates and fewer bounce numbers.
4. Because personalized, specific content effectively answers questions and improves engagement, it’s rewarded with a higher search engine results page (SERP) ranking.

Incorporating Personalization into Your SEO Strategies

The connection between personalization and SEO means your content should incorporate multiple ways to hone your message – to personalize it. Here’s how to do this:

Conduct audience research

Certainly, this is a given for general content strategy. But you’re not just identifying problems to solve. You’re also analyzing other factors. You need to understand your audience’s past behavior, where they live, and what language they speak. Implementing an advanced segmentation strategy can be a game changer in this department. Leveraging customer insights for success can be another one.

You should also examine external factors, like what your competition is pedaling. Economic trends. Even the weather forecast. The goal is to understand everything you can about your audience to add to your content’s personalization.

Choose the right keywords

Again, obvious. Keywords are an essential part of any SEO strategy. But the “personalization” keywords more effectively target the message to your audience. Taking the “Chunky Monkey” example above, one example of a personalized keyword string might be “Where to find ice cream in New York City.” Or “how the occasional ice cream can benefit growing children.” These keyword strings direct your audience to content about New York City ice cream (location) or how the calcium in ice cream can help kids (parents).

Create relevant content

Any content you generate must be relevant to your audience and align with their search intent. This is especially true when incorporating personalization attributes into your efforts. Knowing your audience comes in handy here. If your users want to know more about New York ice cream, you can generate all kinds of blogs, jump pages, and banners related to that topic.

Knowing your audience also means considering other issues, like language. If you’re attempting to personalize content for an international audience, avoid Google Translate. Instead, find a bilingual content producer.

It’s also important to understand that language differs within countries. Let’s put it this way — the humble submarine sandwich is also known as a hoagie (Pennsylvania), grinder (New England), hero (New York), or Po’ Boy (New Orleans). Being clear on dialects and regional behaviors is important in content personalization.

Measure and change

Content personalization isn’t a one-and-done scenario. It requires ongoing tweaking and analysis to generate the desired results. Analytics is an integral part of this process. Keeping an eye on visits to your content is important, as are other factors like engagement, conversions, dwells, and bounce rates.

The Pitfalls of Personalization

Content personalization can be a wonderful tool to reach your audience, address its concerns, and improve your organic traffic rate. However, there are caveats connected with such a strategy. Be wary of the following:

Over-categorization

The goal is to direct your content to the right audience. Not narrow it down so that it appeals only to a niche segment. Traveling this path could alienate other members of your audience who might benefit from what you have to say). If those users don’t have content relevant to their needs, they could lose interest and go elsewhere.

Ignoring the fundamentals

Regardless of how well you personalize, remember that your content must demonstrate expertise, authority, and trust. Personalizing the information is to achieve a more specific focus, not to change the purpose. Along those lines, other SEO fundamentals — including URL structures and metadata descriptions — shouldn’t be changed.

Duplication of efforts

In your zeal to personalize, you might be tempted to rehash that existing blog or website copy and “personalize” it by changing maybe a word or two. Google tends to flag highly similar content, which could lower your SERP. Instead, change the content using different formats and language.

Ignoring privacy concerns

Personalizing content means you need information about website users. But there’s always the risk of invading users’ privacy. This is a narrow line, as browsing histories and purchasing habits represent sensitive information. Protect that data and use it only for your content efforts and nothing more.

Personalization as the Path to Growth

Search engine optimization has moved from adding random keywords to online verbiage to developing engaging content. Tapping into your audience’s unique attributes is an increasingly important part of that strategy. Taking those extra steps to boost your content’s personalization strategy can pay off through greater engagement, a higher search engine ranking, and more effective lead conversions.

ClearVoice is here to help you create personalized content that engages your audience and generates quality leads. To learn more about how we can be a valued addition to your content efforts, connect with a content specialist.

The post Everything to Know About the Power of SEO Personalization appeared first on ClearVoice.

That’s a lot of dollars. It also underscores the need to produce great content.

But generating compelling content is half the battle. The other half is ensuring that the content you create content ends up in front of your audience. This, in turn, requires a well-thought-out content distribution system to ensure content delivery via the right platforms.

A solid content distribution strategy does the following:

• It tells you what content distribution platforms and channels are best for reaching your audience
• It helps you determine the tone, language, and “feel” of your content
• It allows you to measure what works and what doesn’t when it comes to engagement and action

Content Distribution Platforms Defined

Content distribution involves using different channels and platforms to share your content. While content creation has gotten a lot of attention, content platforms, not so much. However, distribution is an important facet of content marketing, and platform selection is also an important facet of distribution.

According to MarkWide Research, the global content distribution platform market is experiencing phenomenal growth due to an increasing demand for seamless content distribution across different channels. Businesses better understand the need to deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time.

You likely already know there are a plethora of platforms on which to share your content. There’s social media, your website, paid platforms, and more. From a high-level view, content distribution platforms can be divided into three basic categories: owned, earned, and paid. Each has its place in your distribution strategy.

Owned Distribution Platforms – 100% Controlled

Owned distribution gives you total management over content creation and how it’s circulated. As the title suggests, you “own” those platforms and what’s on them.

Your website is the poster child of an owned distribution platform – you are in charge of it and decide what to upload. Also owned? YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, X or LinkedIn pages. Another owned platform example involves emailing – again, you determine what and to whom your information is through platforms like Constant Contact or MailChimp).

Then, there are third-party “community” platforms like Quora and Medium. While you don’t strictly “own” these, they do allow you to publish content for free, giving you greater reach.

The main advantage of owned platforms is that you own and control the content on them. The more owned platforms you have, the larger your digital footprint and audience reach.

But there can be downsides, including:

• Extra effort required to drive audiences to these platforms
• Emails could be flagged as spam (or end up in a junk file)
• Updates in social media platform algorithms: the content that appeared at the top of your audience’s feed last week could be lost in the ethernet this week

Earned Distribution Platforms – Sharing the Content “Wealth”

Earned distribution occurs when third parties borrow your content to repost, curate, and showcase it on their platforms or channels at no cost to you. Those third parties can include customers, prospects, journalists, and bloggers.

If the blog on your website finds its way to a client’s site, this represents earned distribution. Articles published on a third-party site like Forbes Council also qualify as earned distribution, as do brand reviews on unaffiliated platforms. The journalist or blogger who likes your content well enough to repost on their news sites is also an earned distribution platform (it’s even better when they tap you as a source for their original content).

The remarkable aspect of earned distribution platforms is they boost the “street cred” of your brand. The content is still yours, but others find it compelling enough to share with their audiences. Content through earned distribution platforms also tells your audience that your audience that your content (and, by extension, your company) is important enough to merit mention by an independent source.

However, earned distribution is “earned” for a reason. You must build relationships with others and encourage them to share what you produce. Plus, this works only if you have content worth sharing.

Another potential downside is loss of control over what you create. Third parties can cherry-pick your content and use it however they please. There’s also the chance that those other platforms might not credit you as the content’s source.

Paid Distribution – Cash for Visibility

As the name suggests, paid channels or platforms mean you pay to showcase your content. Examples of these platforms include:

• Pay-per-click, like Google, Facebook or Instagram ads
• “Follower” content
• Paid content on social media, like that on Google search engine optimization pages
• Paid influencers on YouTube or Facebook/Instagram “Reels”
• Sponsored paid content on sites like Buzzfeed or Apple Podcasters

Paid content platforms can provide a built-in targeted audience for your product. These platforms can increase your visibility and generate metrics to measure your results.

On the other hand, you’re paying to get that content in front of your audience. Content with the word “sponsored” ahead of it might not have the same cachet as earned content.

Paid distribution platforms can generate “ad fatigue” among your followers. Let’s put it this way – you’re not the only one paying to take possession of your audience’s eyeballs; you compete with other content. Furthermore, the ads “following” your targeted audience from site to site could create a backlash against your brand.

Evaluating Platforms – What’s Right for You?

So, yes. There are a lot of content distribution platforms out there. In addition to spending time creating your content, evaluating what platforms are best for showcasing it is essential.

For the best results, consider the following:

Your marketing goals. What is the goal of your content? Do you want to encourage sales? Generate leads? Educate? The best platform for sales might be those social influencers or sponsored content, while owned content platforms would be your best bet for educating and informing. Email platforms can help generate leads.

Where your audience gets information. Your content aims to address and solve your audience’s problems. The goal of your platform is to put that content in front of your audience. This means you need to research where they go for information. If they frequent X regularly, your efforts should be focused on that. If they read Medium or tune in to what the latest influencer has to say on YouTube, focus on those platforms.

Avoiding Content Distribution Common Pitfalls

Avoid potential problems with your content distribution efforts with the following tips:

Select the platform BEFORE creating the content

The typical order in content marketing involves developing the content first and then worrying about how it’s disseminated. This is not a good strategy. The best use of content distribution platforms is to decide on your audience’s pain points (Marketing 101). Then, determine what platform (or platforms) you’ll use to target that audience. After that, you can create your content.

Use more than one platform

Here’s another fun fact: 90 percent of content marketers use websites and blogs the most in their content strategy. The owned distribution platform is all well and good. But if this is all you’re using, you could miss out on a wider audience reach. Consider developing sources to boost your content on earned distribution platforms. In some cases, a pay-to-click campaign can also be effective. The takeaway here? Don’t limit yourself to just one platform.

Adapt content to fit the platforms

Whether you’re using owned, earned, or paid platforms, adapt that content to fit your platform. Posting a 1,000-word treatise on X isn’t a good idea. By the same token, YouTube runs videos, not white papers.

You can also design content to encourage sharing it on other platforms. For instance, well-designed infographics are picked up by other parties and shared on platforms. So are well-thought-out videos.

Rely on KPIs and metrics — and adapt

Ensure that the time and effort you spend on content creation and distribution are adequate by putting key performance indicators and other metrics into place. These can tell you if the platforms are effective in reaching your audiences. If they aren’t, you might need to re-evaluate your platforms.

Knowing the Right Content Distribution Platform

You could have the best, most compelling content out there. But it doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t reach your audience. You should spend as much time determining how that superb content is distributed as you do in creating it.

Content distribution strategies should also be fluid. You should pay attention to feedback and metrics to ensure that your platforms reach the audiences you want. Understanding content distribution platforms and how they operate is essential to your overall content marketing efforts. 

Reach out to ClearVoice for assistance reaching your content creation and distribution goals. We’re happy to sit down with you and analyze how your content strategies can be improved. 

The post Mastering Content Distribution: Choosing the Right Platforms and Channels appeared first on ClearVoice.

However, not all case studies are created equally. Some are more effective than others in introducing and solving content strategy challenges. 

In this article, we’ll share best practices for developing a worthwhile content marketing strategy using case studies of real-world examples. We’ll also discuss multiple areas of your strategy, including workflow management, talent management, SEO, and content scalability.

Workflow Management — Getting From Start to Finish

Many companies assume that generating lots of content is an effective content strategy. Unfortunately, that assumption is incorrect. There also needs to be a structure in place to develop and disseminate your content. 

One way to avoid the “all-or-nothing” content strategy is to focus on workflow management.

Content workflow management is a series of tasks that take content from ideas to delivery as efficiently as possible. It consists of six elements:

1. Create
2. Capture 
3. Manage 
4. Delivery 
5. Preserve 
6. Analytics

Within these six sections are sub-modules, which are:

• Creating and writing content
• Filing and sharing
• Social and collaboration

Workflow is essential because it helps break content creation and production into straightforward, manageable tasks you can execute smoothly.

Case study: Narrato

Narrato’s case study examines how a content agency moved its content creation process to Narrato’s Workspace. It outlines all the steps taken that helped simplify the many moving parts of a content workflow strategy.

But, the challenge with this case study is how hard it is to follow verbally and visually. Images of the user interface provide examples, but the presentation is unclear, which isn’t what you want. Case studies should have a clear flow and structure that’s easy to follow. 

Case study: FreshLime

Our FreshLime case study focuses on workflow issues involved with content creation. 

FreshLime is an online platform that helps clients increase their revenue through customized content services. Since their clients operate in various sectors, FreshLime needed content creators with specific industry expertise. And, because of the sheer amount of content required, FreshLime needed a way to track the content creation process.

Our content platform helped FreshLime layout procedures from start to finish, creating seamless collaboration between FreshLime and ClearVoice. We also developed and maintained a content calendar to track FreshLime’s client content requirements.

Takeaway

Although content is an end goal, workflow management is the cornerstone of any content marketing strategy.

Talent Management — Finding & Keeping the Right Creators

The key to quality content is quality content creators. But good writers and content creators are notoriously tricky to find.

So, how do you find the right talent for your business? 

The first step is to examine what type of content you need. Then, determine the creator’s role in developing that content. It’s also necessary to outline anticipated volume and frequency.

Before bringing the content creator on board, examine their: 

• Skill level
• Experience
• References
• Level of audience understanding
• Fit into the company’s budget

The question then becomes where to source that talent from. There are a lot of “content services” available. Quality solutions, like ClearVoice, ensure experienced content creators through in-depth vetting and hiring processes.

Case study: Cisco

Our Cisco case study focuses on their CloudCherry acquisition. After they acquired it, Cisco instituted a rebrand, which required content support. Cisco turned to us, and we facilitated using expert technical writers to develop short- and long-form content pieces. By turning talent management over to us, Cisco could focus on larger-picture tasks and higher-level strategy.

Case study: Outriggers Hotels

Outrigger Hotels needed highly localized content. Through outsourcing to us, we paired them with writers who had a deep understanding of different worldwide locations, which led to consistent, high-quality content creation for them.

Takeaway

Talent management is an essential facet of content creation. But, it takes a great deal of time and resources to find and maintain experienced, knowledgeable content creators. Outsourcing your content creation can help match the right talent to the right content project. You must research the content agency’s reputation, references, and “talent bench.” 

Developing SEO Strategies

Many case studies highlight how quality content can provide a good foundation for boosting search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

There are a few reasons why content strategists focus on search rankings. First, organic search tends to be the primary source of website traffic. The higher you rank, the higher the probability of organic traffic. Second, SEO also builds trust and credibility in a particular brand while providing a better understanding of audience needs.

And with Google owning close to 93 percent share of the market, we all know which search engine to target.

Case study: American Egg Board

Rise Interactive’s case study about the American Egg Board offers a good overview of how content can help improve search engine rankings. They worked with AEB to improve SEO by upgrading their website with fresh content, a clean design, and adding keywords. The result was a streamlined website, higher organic search numbers, and increased website visits.

However, the case study declines to mention certain factors. Specifically, ongoing, relevant content is also essential to improve and maintain search engine rankings.

Case study: Jerome’s Furniture

Jerome’s Furniture is a SoCal furniture retailer that needed to increase organic website searches through a higher SERP position. Our strategists developed an SEO-specific plan to increase website traffic. Then, the ClearVoice editors and writers stepped in to improve the company’s website content and create informative blogs that answered users’ questions.

The strategy also called for the addition of buyer’s guides. These downloadables provide advice on everything from getting better sleep to buying multi-use dining tables for the holidays. That strategy reduced keyword stuffing, improved the company’s page-quality score, and lowered ad spend. The result was higher website traffic and fewer dollars spent on advertising.

Takeaway

The one requirement of a strong SEO strategy is flexibility. It’s important to keep current with Google’s requirements. Before starting any content-related SEO strategy, companies need to understand their audience. Take time to research the target audience’s pain points and the solutions it seeks.

Developing the Right Content for the Right Purpose

Almost all companies want to develop and implement some kind of content strategy. Recent insights show:

• 60 percent of B2C marketers use content marketing strategies
• 56 percent of businesses worldwide intend to spend more on content creation
• 73 percent of businesses have a designated employee to monitor content creation

Source: Review42

What the above statistics don’t outline is the myriad of different content types available. When discussing content strategies, the first thing — and many times, the only thing — that comes to mind is blogs.

There’s a good reason for this.

Blogs are an excellent cornerstone of an effective content marketing strategy. They’re relatively easy to produce, approve, and distribute. When crafted properly, blogs can be top performers in providing fresh, consistent content that answers questions. As a result, they help generate more website traffic.

But blogs are only one type of content. In content marketing, there are four main content categories:

• Written content
• Visual content
• Interactive content
• Video content

But it doesn’t stop there. An effective content marketing strategy strategy focuses on the right content based on the customer’s buying journey. This journey guides customers through the “sales funnel” or “marketing funnel” through the following steps:

• Top-of-funnel: increases brand awareness and trust
• Middle-of-funnel: allows customers to research and solve problems
• Bottom-of-funnel: where customers are ready to take action

Case study: GLOBO

This study focuses on GLOBO, a language-support company that helps companies communicate in over 350 languages.

GLOBO was struggling with its messaging. They needed a plan to frame their brand as a compassionate, mission-oriented company. The messaging goal also needed to nurture potential users to action. In this case, subscribing to the product.

We helped GLOBO strategize how to create content for various parts of their marketing funnel and ensured they used the proper content formats to engage their audience at each stage.

Takeaway

Not all content is created equal, and blogs aren’t the only answer to a content marketing strategy. Sometimes, a solutions-based email or an infographic might be more appropriate. 

Before determining the best content to use, first find out:

• Where’s the audience in the buying journey?
• What problems are they trying to solve?
• Are there trends that might be in play? 
• What’s the right messaging, content, and dissemination process?

Also, focus on why the content needs to be in place, what it offers, and how to distribute it best.

Determining Content Scalability

Any robust content strategy includes building agile content systems that can quickly produce a large amount of content and disseminate it to the right audience at the right time. 

In other words, scalability.

Many companies face a scalability issue when fulfilling their content marketing strategy. They might have great content plans in place. But turning those plans into reality requires a streamlined system and quality content providers.

However, it’s incorrect to assume that scalability means hiring more people. Content scalability isn’t a personnel issue. It’s a systems issue. 

Case study: Updater

Updater, a household moving app, wanted to scale its content efforts. But it knew managing that in-house would be time-consuming and expensive. 

When they partnered with us, we matched them with the best writers for their needs and budget to increase their content creation. We also used our workflow management to streamline their content review and approval processes. The result was a more consistent content flow and improved brand recognition.

Case study: Charles-Kenyon

Charles-Keynon needed to scale its content efforts on behalf of its clients, which consist of banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions. But, they were finding it challenging and time-consuming to create original content consistently. Plus, the client approval process was very slow. 

We worked with Charles-Kenyon to overhaul their content creation process. We developed blog and article pitch requests that were sent to their clients. And we implemented a system to ensure the clients responded to those pitches quickly. Last but not least, we matched them with our expert writers and editors to create thoughtful and engaging content that satisfied their clients. 

Takeaway

Putting more content into circulation shouldn’t always require additional resources. Instead, the focus should be on improving content flow and getting that information from ideation to approval and dissemination in an efficient fashion.

Explore all the details and takeaways to inspire your next phase of marketing content production, performance, and scale with our in-depth guide.

Final Thoughts

Case studies provide best practices that enhance the creation process. They outline the steps to guarantee a steady flow of quality content, ensuring your content plan benefits your company’s marketing efforts.

Now more than ever, it’s the ideal time to leverage an external partner to support your content creation. At Clearvoice, we can support and scale your entire content marketing strategy. Discover our solutions or talk to a specialist today to get back time in your day, focus on what matters, and create great content faster. 

The post 9 Case Studies to Inspire Your Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on ClearVoice.

This has certainly been the case in the content world.

Generative AI, or AI that produces content, is making headlines throughout the world of content creation. In a recent study, 65.8% of people believe AI content is equal to or better than human-written content!

On one side, AI creates tons of readable and visual content in seconds. On the other side, content creators fear their livelihoods going up in smoke.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Generative AI is useful for helping the content creation process, but AI  requires the human element. This ensures quality control and helps content resonate with its target audience.

Understanding AI content marketing

Artificial intelligence simulates human intelligence processes. AI systems examine large amounts of data for patterns or correlations. Then these systems make tasks based on those analytics.

AIs like ChaptGPT and Google’s Bard access a universe of information from the internet. This information allows the AI to generate content, like articles or images using user-generated prompts. The results are almost instant. AI spits out thousands of words in seconds—running laps around their best human counterparts.

AI-generated content: Its limitations

Generative AI requires prompts like tone, length, language, and other factors to create content. And yes, with this information (and internet research), the system can create a helpful and informative blog post.

Your AI prompts might include:

• Keyword lists related to a specific topic: If your content is about widgets, potential keyword prompts might include “a widget,” “app widget,” or “at a glance widget.”
• Potential user questions about the topic: Users’ questions might include “what are the best widgets to use?” or “how to use widgets.”
• The keywords’ search intent: You can do this by typing the keyword (“widgets”) into a search engine bar, and examining the results. Those results are the “prompt” you’d give to the AI.

Expressing your brand voice

AI is fast. But it lacks the creativity, experience, and wisdom that professional writers or designers have. One goal of content is to nurture customers along the marketing funnel. Great content moves those customers from brand awareness to action. AI doesn’t understand your audience’s pain points. It doesn’t know what might shift your customers from impartial observers to active buyers.

Plagiarism

Another problem with using AI for all content creation is plagiarism. AI pulls from existing verbiage and visuals from various parts of the internet. It examines this information for patterns and what makes sense and reassembles them to new text or visuals.

But those words and images might be under copyright protection. This could be problematic for the brochure your AI system created. Unless you ran that piece through a plagiarism detector, you could receive a “cease-and-desist” letter or a penalty from Google.

Impact on SEO

One of the main reasons to create content is to land on the first page. So, how do search engines regard AI-generated content? Does Google penalize AI content?

The answer is yes. Google says AI-generated content violates Google guidelines. If Google catches your AI-generated content, they’ll penalize your content, which lowers your SERP rankings.

Can Google detect AI content?

The answer is no.

Google systems don’t automatically detect AI-generated content, at least without human reviewers. But this ignores what Google likes. Specifically, Google rewards content that is authoritative and relevant to users. Whether AI or a human being creates content, it won’t rank without that authority or relevance. And Google always acts against spammy content, no matter who – or what – writes or designs it.

How NOT to Use AI for Content Creation

Even with the above caveats, you might be tempted to incorporate something like a ChatGPT into your content creation efforts. But that generative AI shouldn’t be the sole source of your content.

What to avoid with generative AI

Avoid using generative AI for:

Blog-post creation and publishing: Generative AI is only as effective as the information it finds on the internet. Relying on AI for all of your blog creation opens the door to mistakes and inaccuracies. It also puts you in the crosshairs for copyright violations.

Image and art development: Your ChatGPT or WriteSonic scours the internet for artwork and images. The problem is that the AI doesn’t give credit to the original artists. This means you (via AI) are stealing art from actual artists. You don’t want to be known for copyright violations.

Subject-matter expertise: While AI simulates human intelligence, it isn’t human intelligence. Google Bard isn’t an expert in your industry or field. It doesn’t have the vast background or knowledge you do. AI pulls information from other sources. Those sources could be your competition. If you rely on AI alone, you could be publishing your competitors’ insights, instead of your own.

The Right Way to Use AI for Content Creation

AI could be a helpful tool for your content strategy. When used correctly, generative AI can help in the following ways:

1. Developing content briefs

Content briefs are an important part of your content strategy. They can also be the bane of a strategist’s existence. Briefs merge information from multiple stakeholders into one document. An AI system can bring it all together and create a useful outline that a writer can flesh out.

2. Improving social media

AI boosts social media engagement very well. Let’s say you want to generate widget content for Facebook or Twitter. An AI tool scours the internet, seeking massive amounts of information about widgets. That technology also pinpoints the most audience-appealing stuff about widgets. After generating the info, your AI can create a highly engaging post, complete with a catchy, hard-to-resist headline. Some AI tools also create hashtags, adding to the post’s engagement.

3. Brainstorming

Even the most talented writer or designer gets stuck. An AI generator can answer questions you may have about a topic and deliver surprising results. Your human team then takes care of polishing that content and making it sound (or look) great.

4. Rewriting existing content

Ask a generative AI to rewrite your case study into a 500-word blog post and be amazed by the results. But be sure to check for mistakes and inaccuracies before publishing that piece.

5. Creating meta descriptions, headlines, and titles

This written content is important to an SEO strategy. But many writers struggle with these aspects of content. Involving an AI system in this process provides many options and useable summaries.

6. Developing original images

As we explained above, using your AI to generate images from the internet is a strict no-no. However, the technology can be useful to help spur ideas for your own original artwork or graphic designs. You can also use tools like DALL-E 2 to generate original images with just a text prompt. When using AI for anything visual, be sure you aren’t stealing work from other artists or designers.

Should you replace human writers with AI?

Short answer: No.

While freelancers are not your direct employees, your guidance and feedback considerably impact their performance. And if we’ve learned anything from above, it’s that AI is useful, but we still need humans. And what better than industry-expert, vetted freelance writers and editors?!

Your impact, along with a positive working relationship, benefits their long-term reliability and productivity. Some ways to ensure a good working relationship with freelancers are:

• Be clear and concise in your expectations and feedback
• Respect their time by being prompt with payments and feedback
• Give honest feedback and allow them to correct anything that may not be going well
• Offer regular work to keep them engaged
• Give them a heads-up if you need to decrease or increase their workload
• Give praise when they do a good job

The future of AI and content marketing

When cutting through the AI generation hype remember this: the technology is great at assisting, but it shouldn’t be the sole generator of content.

New technology always disrupts the established order. People went from writing articles and books by hand to the printing press. Then came the typewriter. After that, the computer arrived.

None of these advances removed the need for human creativity from content creation. In fact, quite the opposite. It enhanced the capabilities of individual contributors, stimulated creativity, and enabled higher-quality content.  This is true when discussing generative AI. AI will be another advancement in the content generation process.

Looking for human creators to assist with your content creation and strategies? Connect with us to learn more about outsourcing your content production.

The post When You Should and Shouldn’t Use AI for Content appeared first on ClearVoice.

You’re in charge of generating demand for your company’s products or services. You could also head up and research pricing strategies. You’re also responsible for keeping abreast of marketing trends. Plus, you also need to know what your competition is up to. On top of this, you’re probably responsible for preparing and presenting regular reports to senior management.

With all this and more, you have little to no time to add content marketing strategies tasks to the mix.

You know that content strategy is vital to marketing efforts. Quality content promotes audience engagement and brand awareness. But you don’t have time to add these tasks to your already lengthy “to-do” list.

One way to deal with this issue is to hire an experienced content marketer to join your staff. Alternatively, you could outsource these tasks to a qualified, experienced content strategy service company.

But which solution is more effective for you, your tasks, and your organization?

Read on to learn more.

Defining content strategy services

First of all, what does a content strategist do?

Let’s take a moment to discuss the definition.

A content strategist helps plan, develop, and distribute your content. The content strategist determines audience needs. Then they develop the right messaging to meet those needs. They also determine the appropriate channels to disseminate those messages. Furthermore, the content strategist ensures it aligns with your business goals.

Content strategy activities include (but aren’t limited to):

• Determining how content fits with business goals
• Assessing KPIs and other metrics for content analysis
• Researching target audiences and their pain points
• Conducting content audits to identify gaps and propose solutions
• Sourcing content ideas and their presentation
• Determining the correct content formats and distribution methods
• Organizing human and other resources to develop appropriate content
• Analyzing SEO and SERP strategies

Marketing managers have little time to complete any of these above tasks. These require the help of a content marketing manager.

In-house or outsourced?

By now you probably realize the value a content strategist can bring to your company. The next step is determining whether to hire an in-house team or outsource to a content marketing strategy service.

Building and maintaining an in-house content strategy team offers many benefits.

An in-house team knows your company, mission, brand, and vision inside out. It also understands your company’s messaging. This means there’s no time-consuming learning curve required. Finally, that in-house team also understands your company’s processes and procedures. This can be helpful regarding the review and approval of content.

Now here’s the challenge.

Building that perfect in-house team is difficult. It would be best if you took the time to find the right people to fill content strategy, creation, and analysis roles. These individuals need the right skills. They also need the right personality to fit your company’s culture.

Employee inertia might also be a problem. No matter how talented your content strategy team is, some members might get bored. Then they’ll leave and take a job with your competition. Additionally, your company’s culture or processes might inadvertently block innovation or creativity.

This could spell disaster for content creation efforts.

Outsourcing content marketing strategy services can take care of the above issues.

Working with an established content strategy agency gives you access to qualified staff. This staff has the time and experience to help you plan, and implement that plan. The content strategy services agency knows about SEO audits, audience research, and content gap analyses. The agency also offers outstanding content creators who can create the right messaging.

The outsourcing process helps mitigate the problems of an in-house content strategy management team. At the same time, outsourcing offers extra services to boost your marketing efforts.

Is it worth the cost?

Hiring content strategy help does mean a financial commitment. But is it less expensive to keep that assistance in-house? Or to outsource it elsewhere?

To answer the in-house question, let’s take a look at salaries.

According to Glassdoor, a content strategist’s annual salary is approximately $71,380. This appears reasonable enough. But that strategist will likely want to hire staff. It takes more than one person to create, distribute and analyze content.

Here’s the salary for a basic content management staff:

• Senior content writer: $66,175
• Graphic designer: $46,976
• Content analyst: $63,548

The above totals about $248,000 per year, on average. And that’s just for salaries. To attract the right talent, you need more than a base wage. You need to add in benefits.

At the very least, this might include paid time off, health insurance, and a 401(k) matching program. You can also add payroll taxes as an added expense.

The total of staffing an in-house content management team could exceed a quarter of a million dollars a year.

Now let’s examine outsourcing costs.

These vary, depending on how much help you need in this area. Monthly averages can be as low as $6,000 or as high as $50,000 a month, or more. But with that cost comes seasoned professionals with years of experience.

That price tag also includes outstanding content creators. These individuals know how to craft blogs, white papers, newsletters, emails, and other content. Outsourcing also eliminates the administrative hassles of salaried employees.

Finally, outsourcing offers scalability and flexibility. Whether you need more or less content, the agency works to your requirements and budget.

Outsourcing content strategy to experts

Content strategy management is essential to marketing efforts.

It’s also an extra task for you to handle. When choosing between in-house staff or outsourcing, the latter provides many more benefits.

Working with a content marketing strategy services firm helps you develop an effective plan. It also provides you with access to content creation and analytic abilities. This, in turn, ensures you can help your organization achieve its goals.

ClearVoice has the experience and reputation for helping you build an effective content strategy. We also have a deep talent bench to create quality content.

To learn more about how we can help, schedule some time with us.

The post Content Strategy Services: Are They Worth the Cost? appeared first on ClearVoice.

Learning how to increase your domain authority is a crucial component of your online success.

Once upon a time (read: before Google became a thing), search engine optimization metrics focused mostly on text length, keywords, accurate HTML tags, and internal and outbound links.

For instance, if a viable keyword was “plastic,” your goal might have been to insert this word as often as possible in your website copy, whether it made sense or not. Mentioning “plastic” a few times on your site pages would increase the likelihood of a top rank on a search engine.

Fast forward to — well, now — and it’s safe to say that a successful SEO plan involves more than stuffing keywords into content. Achievement in this endeavor involves paying attention to on-page SEO strategies and off-page SEO techniques to achieve a high search engine results page (SERP) ranking.

Part of that strategy should include analyzing and improving your domain authority. Dedicating part of your efforts to achieving a high DA can help increase your website’s visibility. This, in turn, can drive more organic traffic to your website and power you to the top of that SERP.

Defining domain authority

The domain authority is a ranking metric developed by SEO marketing consultant Moz, which offers a domain authority checker to determine a website’s DA. Knowing that DA tells you where your domain ranks on a SERP, relative to your competition.

Understanding this is important, as it explains what a high DA doesn’t do. As in, a high DA doesn’t mean a top ranking on Google.

What it does mean is that if a user queries a search engine for assistance you can provide, a high DA pushes your domain to the top of that SERP, above your competition.

Now, Moz’s DA metrics aren’t the only game in town. The website authority checker offered by Semrush also compares websites and pages with an eye toward generating metrics and analytics to improve SERP rankings.

And yes, there is a page authority (PA) analysis as well. While the DA measures a domain’s potential SERP ranking, the PA ranks each individual page against other pages.

If you plug your domain into the Moz or Semrush tracking tool, you’ll get back information about your domain and the pages within that domain.

Getting your DA score

Let’s take a look at what happens when you input your domain into Link Explorer. After some calculating, the result will return somewhere between 1 and 100 (with 100 at the ultimate end).

Your goal is to get that DA as high as you can. One way to do this is to include backlinks and internal links to other root domains.

Going further with this, a root domain is the combination of a domain name (your company’s name, for instance) and the top-level domain (think .com, .net, or .edu) that appears at the end of that name.

So, for example:

• clearvoice is the domain name
• .com is the top-level domain
• clearvoice.com is the root domain

Are you with us so far? Okay. Moving on…

The domain authority analysis considers your website’s backlinks to other root domains, especially the number of unique links. “Unique” means from different root domains, rather than different page links from the same root domain.

Let’s say you include the following links on your website:

• https://resources.clearvoice.com/blog/predictive-seo/
• https://resources.clearvoice.com/blog/what-is-domain-authority/

The resulting DA analysis counts both URLs as a single unique link. This is because these pages are part of one domain: clearvoice.com.

“Easy peasy,” you might be thinking. “All I need to do is find a bunch of root domains to link to, and I’ll be golden. Watch out, high domain authority. I’m coming for you!”

Well, not so much. Similar to content placement, the quality of your links is far superior to how many you have. If your website boasts business content, links to forbes.com or wsj.com will count more in the DA algorithms than your link to joesbusinessnews.com (which is not a real website, by the way).

Just linking for the sake of linking won’t win you DA brownie points.

What’s a good DA rank?

The answer to the question above is: It depends.

The chart below lists Moz’s top-10 DA web domains, including the number of root domains. And yes — these boast high DAs.

Before you panic and start thinking, “I’m nowhere near blogger.com’s or YouTube.com’s DA!” calm down. Let’s go back to the purpose of the domain authority.

It is a ranking of your domain, relative to that of your competition. If your website’s mission is to host trillions of blogs (like blogger.com) or offer a space for many vlogs and videos (YouTube.com), then yes. You want a DA of 100.

But the chances are pretty good that few domains in your industry or niche have that high of a DA. So, if the highest domain authority among your competitors’ websites is 58, your goal would be to generate a domain authority of 60 or higher.

4 ways to increase your domain authority

With the “what” and “why” behind us, let’s examine four ways to increase your domain authority.

1. Create compelling, relevant content

Content is the foundation of your domain authority success; it solves problems, and it answers questions. People look for it and share it. Content placement and development should align with your on-page SEO strategy.

With this in mind, focus on developing brilliant, well-formatted, and interesting blogs, ebooks, visuals, videos, and other content types that provide value to your audience. And make sure what you have is far superior to what your competition offers. Speaking of which …

2. Study your competition

Analyze their DA, and if it’s higher than yours, consider what they’re doing that you aren’t. Research how those businesses are boosting their domains’ visibility. Look into the origin of their backlinks. And yes, consider their content.

Then, after assessing everything your competition does, take the time and effort to do it better.

3. Get relevant backlinks

Repeat after me: Domain authority is determined, in part, by backlinks to quality root domains. Quality root domains, in turn, are those that provide information that is relevant to your content.

Create high-quality content that solves problems and include eye-catching visuals like infographics to encourage backlinks from quality domains.

4. Share your stories

As you develop content and include valuable backlinks, be sure to employ off-page SEO types to drive organic traffic to your site. Off-page optimization efforts, such as guest blogging on other sites, provide backlinks to your own website.

Posting responses to other articles or comments helps boost awareness of your brand. Use social media and newsletters to increase your online presence. All of these tasks — and others — can build and sustain your domain authority.

Incorporating domain authority efforts into SEO success

While you’re considering on-page versus off-page SEO strategies, keep in mind the ultimate goal. Specifically, a high rank on that search engine results page.

If someone asks the search engine a question about a particular topic that’s in your wheelhouse, you want your domain to be the first answer that user sees. This is where a high domain authority provides a great deal of value.

Taking the time to know what your competition is doing, then generating great content, complete with backlinks and other off-page SEO types in response can go a long way helping you increase your domain authority.

The higher your domain authority, the more success you’ll see in driving organic traffic to your website.

If you need help generating great content to align with your SEO strategy, tap into our content creation services at ClearVoice. Talk to a content specialist today to get started.

The post 4 Tactics to Increase Your Domain Authority appeared first on ClearVoice.