Lauren Jefferson

Answering Your Top Questions About Blogging For Your Business

Content Marketing / By Lauren Jefferson / March 13, 2023 March 13, 2023

What’s the big deal with blogs?

Don’t worry! You’re not the first to ask.

However, you’re the next to learn about the power behind writing blogs for your business!

Not all blogs are the same. And not all are created with sales in mind. Some people simply utilize blogging platforms to share their thoughts and practice their own writing skills.

But blogging for your business, if done right, just may be the key to growing your brand awareness and increasing revenue. I’m not a betting woman, but I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that right about now you’re thinking that sounds like a pretty good plan for your business.

If you’ve read this far, you’re at least a little interested in what all the blog is about. So I’m going to break down the top FAQs for writing blogs for your business.

The Top 6 FAQs For Writing Blogs For Your Business

We’ve put together the most common questions we receive about blogging for your business into a neat little package – this blog.

If you’re ready to see real results from your marketing efforts, we should chat.

Schedule a time to talk so we can take your marketing impact to new heights!

1. How Does One Start Blogging? Is There A Secret Club & Initiation?

There’s no secret society of bloggers. I mean, there might be…But I wasn’t invited to it. Did it stop me from blogging? Nope!

The truth is, the trick to writing a blog, like so many other things in life, is to simply start. Pick up the pen, sit at the computer, and get rid of that blank page before you. Seriously, open up that dirty window. Then, let the sun illuminate the words that you cannot find. Okay…Sorry about The Hills reference.

Back to blogs…Whether or not you need a nostalgic song to kick-start your blog productivity to help grow your business, we’ve got you covered. The key is to truly get rid of the blinking white page on the screen. Simply start writing. Get your thoughts out. Go back and look at it with fresh eyes the next morning. Have a trusted confidant proofread and be receptive to their feedback.

Even the best of us suffer from writer’s block. But we’ve found that just getting started is the quickest way to make the hesitations and second-guessing disappear.

2. I’ve Read So Many Blogs With Different Formatting, Isn’t There A How-To Guide To Do It Right?

It’s great that so many people utilize blogging platforms to share their life. Does that mean all of them are doing it right?

Nope!

But we’re not judging anyone who’s doing their own thing. Everyone’s gotta start somewhere. However, if you want your blogs to make an impact on your business, it’s better to follow proven formatting methods.

For instance, Google (you know, the holy grail) uses an algorithm to rank websites on the search engine results page (SERP). The ranking is a direct result of search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. While yes, the algorithm constantly changes, professional writers like my team at FocusCopy keep up with the trends to help our clients achieve success.

However, there are some tried and true methods to the madness that will likely be sticking around. If you take a closer look at this blog you’re reading right now, you may notice our use of headers.

We usually start with a header 2 to re-emphasize the topic and keyword(s). Then the body of the blog is done in sections marked with header 3s. Any further differentiation in sections would happen in the next header down, and so on. It may seem silly, but Google cares about the difference in header sizes.

Moreover, the word count is also a biggie. So don’t go wild with a 4-thousand word blog. In fact, Google would prefer you keep it under 2-thousand words. The sweet spot is somewhere between 1200-1800 words. This excludes pillar posts.

Equally important is to keep the content between each header under 300 words. Yep, another surprising but factual point that can make a difference in your Google ranking.

Psst…We’re big fans of Yoast SEO to help keep our formatting, word count, and word usage in check.

3. Does The Number Of Blogs I Write & How Often I Post Them Matter?

Yup. But here’s the cool part…You don’t have to write more frequently than you want. It’s actually better that you remain consistent than spend your energy trying to reach unattainable goals. In the long run, setting unrealistic blog goals may even hurt your SEO efforts and, as a result, knock you down in the Google ranks.

Instead, you should focus on publishing blogs consistently. One a quarter, month, week – whatever works for you. Here’s another cool thing, you don’t have to wait until 3 days before your self-assigned publish date to start writing your blog for your business.

As professional copywriters, we prewrite many blogs for ourselves and our clients to have on hand to publish according to the schedule that works best for the respective company.

To get started, take a list of topics that:

You enjoy discussing
Facts you wish your target audience knew
Answers to the questions you receive most often

Then, schedule some time to sit down and write as much about each topic that you can. But don’t do your best and stash it away for 6 months. Schedule more time in the near future (like within the same week) to review your writing with fresh eyes. And finish it up! We recommend sending it to a friend, colleague, or family member to proofread. Trust me, you’d much rather your nearest and dearest point out your mistakes than hundreds of critics in the Reddit gallery.

Want a professional writer and editor to take a gander at your blog before you hit the big, shiny publish button? Well, you’re in luck because FocusCopy offers copyediting services for our entrepreneurs who enjoy writing for themselves. Schedule a discovery call with me today to learn how we can support your business’ marketing efforts.

4. With So Many Bloggers Out There, How Can I Make Mine Standout & Get Noticed?

SEO is the key to ranking high and getting noticed on the world wide web. With an estimated 7.5 million blogs posted every day, it may feel impossible to ever see your company at the very top of the SERP.

Don’t sell yourself short before you give it a try. We’ve proudly seen so many of our own clients rise through the ranks to the top spots with our blogging service.

The trick is to research, study, implement, and practice SEO. This means including keywords that your target audience is searching for online. And of course, sticking to the right formatting and word count. But it also goes so much further.

Google is smart enough to recognize AI-generated and poorly written content. Don’t expect to see those at the top. Instead, use power words and write like a human. Yes, the same writing style to engage your audience and convert them into paying customers also pays off in the SEO world. But with good SEO, that target market is more likely to actually see your brand messaging.

5. After Spending So Much Time Writing A Blog, Can I Make Further Use Of The Content?

Repurposing content is truly one of the tricks of the trade. We’ve also taught so many of our clients how to do this, too!

Say you have a blog. Does it focus on or mention any specific seasons or years? Are you referring to something that’s in the news right now? If so, that is a timely piece. Go ahead and publish it. Take out snippets to create social media posts to promote your blog. Then, re-work the same blog into an email newsletter to keep your best fan base in the know.

But if you’re not including time specific aspects…Congratulations – you have written an evergreen blog! This is a great asset to your marketing toolkit. You’ll be able to reshare, repurpose, and refer to this blog for years to come. Literally, evergreen content is such a blessing.

6. What If I Absolutely Despise Writing & The Thought Of Doing It Makes Me Cringe?

Then don’t ????????‍♀️ Work with a copywriter with a proven ability to enhance your business’ marketing for real growth.

At FocusCopy, we’ve created original content for over 100 businesses (let’s see where this number gets when we repurpose this blog in 7 years). This includes everything such as blogs, newsletters, grant proposals, social media posts, social media ads, LinkedIn articles, podcast scripts, promotional brochures, and so much more.

And we don’t blame you for hating writing. Because we love it. I mean, I created an entire business around it. Then, I hired copywriters who also love writing. Together we make up a team that supports our clients by taking on the task they either don’t want to do or don’t have time to do.

Leave Blogging To The Pros & Get Back To What Matters Most

If after reading this, you’re still not sold on writing your own blogs – that’s okay. But hopefully you’ve learned a few things about SERP, SEO, Google ranking, and are making plans to bolster your marketing plan.

We’re here to support you as a business partner by writing converting copy in your brand voice. Seriously, not even your sister will know someone else wrote it.

Schedule a discovery call with me and let’s get going on your blogging journey!

Focus Your Copy On Conversation & Conversion

Let’s Grab A Virtual Coffee With Us To Discover How To Boost Your Words

7 Reasons Why Blogging Is Important For Business

Content Marketing / By Lauren Jefferson / March 13, 2023 March 13, 2023

Are you a business owner with a blog you haven’t updated in a while?

Perhaps you’ve thought about launching a blog but aren’t completely sure why blogging is important for businesses.

As copywriters, one of the questions we receive most often includes whether businesses really need a blog or not. But, it’s a loaded question with a (somewhat) complicated answer.

You should first know that about 77% of people read blogs online regularly. That alone might not be enough to convince you to get going on your blogging journey, but you should also know that 61% of online users make a purchase after reading a blog.

See? You have much more of an influence than you might think.

Try to think of your business’s blog this way…

You don’t need to have an extra voice within your industry to be seen, heard, and understood. But wouldn’t it help if you did?

Interested in starting a blog for your business? Let’s talk about how a blog can help your profitability, brand awareness, and so much more.

1. Build Brand Awareness

Building brand awareness through your business’s blog makes customer interactions feel more like a friendly conversation instead of an outright sales pitch. If used the right way, your blog can be seen as a tool for your audience.

In fact, more than 40,000 Google searches occur every single second. Of these searches, many people turn directly to How To, DIY, and other blogs that teach them how to do something.

Whether it’s exactly what they were looking for or not, they increase engagement and web traffic for that business with every click. It’s like being able to walk down the street and pop into stores they’re interested in without feeling the immense pressure to purchase something.

If your audience likes what they see, they’re more likely to share it with friends, family, co-workers, and beyond. The more your message is spread, the more opportunities you have to make an impact with your business at the forefront.

2. Include Long-Tail Search Keywords

Long-tail keywords are essential for blog writing. This is because when most people perform an internet search for something, they usually type in a thought, phrase, or string of keywords that will give them the results they need.

For example, let’s say you’re a local bakery looking to drum up more business. Your audience could just search “sugar cookie” and end up with a few million results. But they’re much more likely to find exactly what they’re looking for by typing in more specific, long-tail keywords like “best classic sugar cookie recipe with butter” or something similar.

As your bakery’s blog creator, using the entire long-tail keyword within your heading, subheadings, and overall unique content pushes your blog to the top of a user’s search results. This means you’re more likely to be seen by your target audience.

Meanwhile, your target audience is more likely to click on your blog to find what they need and potentially explore other offerings like your products and services. They might even feel inclined to sign up for something – which leads us right into our next big benefit.

3. Construct A Larger Following

Use your blogs to attach powerful call-to-actions (CTAs) like:

Subscribe to our newsletter
Follow us on social media
Join our course
Download your free guide

And these are just to name a few!

Your CTA options are unlimited and serve as a great way to keep your audience engaged with your brand long after they’ve hit the little x button. Use your blog and a solid CTA to gain more followers interested in your brand.

4. Increase Crosslinking Opportunities

One of the best ways to create an authentic experience through your blogs is by crosslinking within them. Crosslinks in blogging are one of the best SEO tools you can use to improve your online presence. It boosts your SEO and gives you a chance to optimize the use of your owned domains to the best of your ability.

What Is Crosslinking?

Adding crosslinks to your blogs allows you to guide readers to other pages on your website that you want them to see. They also provide an opportunity to attach shared categories or tags to them. This way, you continue showing up higher in search results.

Crosslinking allows businesses like yours to increase exposure with minimal effort. So, even if you’re a marketing business discussing blogging for businesses, you can also pique the interest of your readers who might simultaneously be searching for copywriting for businesses (see what we did there?).

5. Widen Content Splintering Opportunities

Alright – you have long-tail search keywords to help you with blog topics, a few ideas for CTAs, and an understanding of how crosslinking can help.

It sounds exhausting! But you don’t need to create everything only to use it once.

Take the information you’ve given in your blog and splinter it into other marketing avenues for your business. Doing so means that you can avoid:

Retyping your thoughts
Spending more time on content creation
Skipping out on posting to your socials

Break everything down section by section, point by point, or however else you see fit.

Want to create a wealth of content starting with a blog for your business? Let’s get going!

6. Become An Authority Leader With Each Topic

This is a good one.

Blogging establishes your voice within your industry and community. By offering valuable information that readers can truly rely on, you become much more trustworthy and memorable moving forward.

And you know what we love to say about people who do business with others?

People do business with businesses they know and trust.

Offering your voice as an authority leader within your industry allows current and potential customers to feel as though they know you, can trust you, and can look to you for future insight – which brings us to our final reason for having a blog for your business.

7. Offer Valuable Answers & Advice

You are able to offer answers to many frequently asked questions that your customers continuously have. Answering them in a blog (or several blogs) gives your audience direct access to you and your expertise without wasting time on the phone or in your inbox going back and forth about the answer.

The truth is that there are certain things you know about your business that others might not know. This makes blogging about it the perfect way to bust any popular myths while providing tangible solutions through your products or services.

We Know Why Blogging Is Important For Businesses Of All Types

Our team knows how important it is for businesses to have a blog. We also know that entrepreneurs are usually strapped for time with no idea where to start (it’s part of our why).

FocusCopy is here to help.Need help launching your business’s blog? Chat with us to get started.

Focus Your Copy On Conversation & Conversion

Let’s Grab A Virtual Coffee With Us To Discover How To Boost Your Words

15 Ways To Improve Your Writing Skills As An Entrepreneur

Content Marketing, Copywriting / By Lauren Jefferson / March 10, 2023 March 13, 2023

Have you ever thought about finding quick ways to improve your writing skills as an entrepreneur?

Business owners tend to feel an immense amount of pressure to be able to do it all and do it all well. Writing for your business is one skill you must nail to feel successful.

However, we also understand that even the most high-achieving entrepreneurs can feel burnt out, against a wall, and just plain ol’ uninspired when writing for their business.

For some, it’s been a while since you’ve sat in a classroom fine-tuning your creative writing brain. And for others, writing anything is your worst nightmare – even with all of the coffee in the world to keep you going (we’ve been there, too).

But we’re not here to gatekeep the best ways to improve your writing skills as an entrepreneur, which is why we’ve created the list below.

Why Every Entrepreneur Should Improve Their Writing Skills

As an entrepreneur, you have many many many hats on your head. Writing is one of those hats that will continue to serve you over and over again.

Similar to accounting, you need to know how to do it. Whether you should do it – that’s an entirely different question.

But when it comes to your words, you need to have the skill sharpened. When you know how to communicate effectively through the written word, you are able to:

Close sales on the deals you actually want
Attract the right types of clients
Secure financing through traditional loans or investment
Motivate your team, vendors, and clients
Limit the back and forth in email because you got your point across clearly

The limits are endless when you know how to write well.

How To Improve Your Writing Skills

Yes, writing is a skill. This means you need to practice every now and then to avoid making mistakes while getting your message across clearly. Here are 15 ways to improve your writing skills as an entrepreneur.

1. Create A Daily Practice To Write

Again, writing is a skill much like swimming or cooking. You can excel at it, but it takes time and practice.

To clarify, you don’t need to sign up for another college course or set aside hours of your day. You can polish your general writing skills in as little as 15 minutes a day using quick writing quizzes from free sources like the Academic English Cafe.

If you’re looking for less structure, pick a fun prompt you can use to write a short story for yourself. Set the clock and write as much as possible in 15 minutes, then stop. Plug your story into software like Grammarly to check for spelling and grammar and see how to improve your style.

No extra time on your hands? We’re here to help. Let’s talk about what you want out of copywriting for your business.

2. Diversify Writing Styles

Go back to choosing a fun prompt. This time, take only a few minutes to write using 3 different styles. You can alter anything you want to make it sound…

Extra professional
Positive and lighthearted
Extremely emotional
Sales focused
Exciting
Straight forward

When you’re done, take a look at all 3 and read them aloud to yourself to get a better idea of which styles you excel at and which could use a bit more work. Believe us when we say there’s a big difference between writing styles depending on your voice and tone.

3. Time Yourself

There are 2 solid ways you can practice timing your writing in 15 minutes or less:

Answer an industry-based FAQ you definitely know everything about
Discuss an industry-related hot topic you wish you knew more about

The first will allow you to see how much and how well you can get your point across in those 15 minutes. The second will give you a short chance to research and write what you know with the same previous goal in mind.

Reread both finished prompts and try to pinpoint places where you could improve.

4. Select Your Favorite Passage Or Page To Copy

Have you ever read something that you truly admired?

Whether you were looking at another company’s website or e-blast, you can emulate a similar style in your own writing without being a complete copycat. Here’s how to do just that using a landing page like this one:

Find a landing page you admire
Break down the page line by line into clear sections like…
1. Headlines
2. Subheadings
3. Body copy
4. Call-to-actions (CTA buttons)
5. Final statement or header
Write about your own business following a similar style

Once you feel like you’re going in a good direction, take a step back, and admire your hard work.

Thinking about adding engaging landing pages for your business but don’t know where to start? We’ve got you covered!

5. Record Yourself, Then Transcribe

Let’s say you’ve been chosen to give a speech on a popular topic in your industry. Keep the speech under 5 minutes and simply speak on the topic while recording yourself.

As soon as you’re done, start transcribing what you’ve said. Chances are, you’ll notice right away the number of times you say things you would NEVER write. This includes words like…um, err, uh, like, and anything else that isn’t truly a full thought (Hint: Don’t include those). From there, you can write down everything else you’ve said and edit it to make it more concise and digestible to read.

Psst! If you do this, you can create a blog or social media post for yourself.

6. Edit Someone Else’s Writing

One of the best ways to hone your writing skills is to edit other people’s writing. This allows you to get used to various styles and personalities to see what fits where best. Don’t know where to look? Start with editing friends’ or family members’ social media posts or emails they’ve sent (just don’t be so quick to point out their errors ????).

If you’re comfortable, ask someone to write something for you to edit it for them. You never know, it might spark up some pretty interesting conversations about writing choices and preferences.

7. Let Someone Else Edit Your Writing

Whether you pick a friend, colleague, spouse, or whomever, this practice will require you to be open to criticism. Choose something you’ve written before or something you haven’t yet published. Pass it on and be patient. Allow your editor time to read, edit, and offer other feedback if necessary.

It’s important to be open here because making mistakes doesn’t need to feel like the end of the world. Try to see it as a learning experience so you don’t make the same mistakes moving forward.

8. Don’t Be Afraid To Travel Back To The Basics

Let’s talk about timing yourself to gauge your typing speed. Most people consider this the number of words you type per minute (WPM). You can use a free tool online like this one from LiveChat to see where you stand on the writing race track. This is a good tool to use every now and again to get a quick measure of your WPM and the number of errors made. Continue practicing until you reach a new higher WPM with zero errors.

9. Try Benefits > Features

Every business owner knows which cool, innovative, or unique features they offer. But knowing the difference between a feature and a benefit is even more important.

For example, if you run a dental clinic, described features usually look like:

Customer Parking Lot
Open Late On Tuesdays
Fast Service
Kids Dental

But here’s what they could look like when turned into true benefits to really entice your customers or potential customers:

No-Stress, Free Parking In Nearby Lot
No PTO Needed With Late Tuesday Appointments Available
Wait Time Is Always 10 Minutes Or Less
Quality Dental Services For Kids Ages 4+

So, what about your business? Write down your offered features and turn them into big benefits your audience can’t wait to learn more about.

10. Be Your Own Headline Hero

Take 10 minutes to jot down as many headline options you can think of for your business. Good, bad, and ugly – write them all down! Don’t overthink it or focus too hard on perfecting each one. This is a fantastic exercise to do when you feel uninspired, unfocused, or everything in between. Have fun with it! Use puns, wordplay (personal favorites), bold statements, and questions to spark your creativity.

11. Practice Punctuation.

We like to have fun here…But honestly, practice using the correct punctuation throughout your writing. You can use a simple spell-check tool to see if you got it right or to explore other options. For example, if you’ve never truly been strict about using the Oxford comma, give it a shot and see how it fits with your writing style. In addition to improving accuracy, practicing punctuation is also a good way to explore different writing styles.

12. Dear Diary Journal

You’re a working professional and entrepreneur, so we can go ahead and call it journaling now ????.

Make journaling a short practice that you do every day or even once a week using an actual notebook (just smell those fresh pages) or your laptop, phone, or tablet. You don’t need a prompt to journal. You don’t even have to think about anything in particular to start writing! Simply write what you feel for a few minutes before you start work.

Do you have night owl energy?

Journal late at night before going to bed and reread your thoughts in the morning!

13. Access A Writing Course

There are so many professional-quality writing courses for businesses available online. You just need to find the one that aligns with your goals. Courses like these don’t need to take up too much of your time and should be easy to follow. Courses like these also offer the most benefits as they allow you to chip away at their entirety on your own time. When you’re finished, you have a wealth of new knowledge you can use throughout all of your writing assets moving forward.

Join ours here: Launch Your Website Copy Academy

14. Explore Other Words

If you’ve done any of the above before, you can probably pick out words you might be overusing or repeating often. Put those words in a list and expand each one with 2 to 5 new words you can use in their place. Some commonly used words you should consider switching up include:

Great
Amazing
Different
Utilize
New
Hard
Change
Important

Do you use these words too often in your writing? Add some flair when necessary to spice it up for your readers.

15. Sleep On It

Seriously!

Once you’ve written something, taking a little break from it before hitting publish is okay. Give yourself the time to walk away from your writing and return to it with fresh eyes. You might find that you have a better way of saying what you’re trying to say when looking at it a second time.

No Time To Practice? Leave The Pen To The Pros!

Writing can feel overwhelming, and not everyone is comfortable writing for their business. But we are.

Contact FocusCopy for a hearty cup of copy for your business goals.

Focus Your Copy On Conversation & Conversion

Let’s Grab A Virtual Coffee With Us To Discover How To Boost Your Words

How To Use Networking Events To Convert Leads & Improve Your Business Writing

Business, Marketing / By Lauren Jefferson / March 6, 2023 March 6, 2023

Networking…We know it’s the key to a successful career. Small business owners know this more than anyone…And it’s a lot of pressure. You’re trying to grow an entire business, all while navigating crowded happy hours. The connections you make can lead to potential customers or profitable partnerships, but how do you take advantage of these opportunities?

While you might thrive in normal social situations, networking is a different sort of beast. How are you supposed to build a genuine connection with someone while you’re looking for the right opportunity to share your elevator pitch? Don’t worry! It’s not uncommon for confident speakers or even lively extroverts to struggle at networking events.

Building connections in your business life doesn’t have to feel like you’re a door-to-door salesman, endlessly reciting your memorized sales pitch. There are easy strategies you can implement that will allow you to make the most of your networking events, improve your business writing, and create potential leads.

In order to get the most out of your networking events to convert leads, you have to:

Take control of the conversation
Offer valuable advice
Get vulnerable
Identify new pain points

4 Steps To Making The Most Of Your Networking Events

Your networking events can help you grow your business – if you have the right conversations and follow up with those conversations after the fact.

Do you have strong, converting copy to send to your networking contacts? Schedule a call with the FocusCopy team to learn how we can help.

Take Control of the Conversation

Taking control of the conversation means asking questions and directing the conversation. In our experience, the more you get the person you’re chatting with talking, the better the outcome. After they talk enough, they’ll naturally flip the script and ask you questions – usually what do you do?

And you better be prepared to respond with an elevator pitch. No, we don’t want to hear a canned response. We want to hear a custom and succinct pitch that responds to everything you just heard from your networking partner.

Don’t Be Afraid To Get Vulnerable

Even as you take control of the conversation, it’s essential to dig deeper. Surface-level conversations are not going to do anyone any good. That’s why you need to express a little bit of vulnerability. Sharing some of your “scars” increases the likelihood of the other person becoming vulnerable.

And when there’s vulnerability, there’s a developing relationship.

Here are a couple of questions to dig deeper:

What is the biggest problem you’re facing in your business right now?
What are your biggest goals?
How does [insert what they are doing] drive you?

Make Yourself The Expert

As you’re listening to the other person, it’s important to find opportunities to insert lessons learned, resources, and/or contacts that would help that person find success quicker. Obviously, you don’t want to be a know-it-all, but it could look like this:

It’s amazing that you’re launching digital courses! How are you marketing those courses?
You have a great company name. If you haven’t already, I’d get that trademarked. Let me know if you need an introduction to a great trademark attorney.

When you offer help or support, you establish yourself as the expert. More often than not, you become known as the person who knows people. This is a very special place to be!

So what are the benefits of this strategy?

You have a boosted brand image as being a helper
The people you help will want to return the favor and help you
You feel good about serving without expecting anything in return

Need help positioning yourself as an authority in your industry? Contact FocusCopy to learn how to build credibility in your copy.

Identify Pain Points To Use In Your Business Writing

Of course, this wouldn’t be a FocusCopy blog if we didn’t touch on writing!

As you listen to people in your networking events, take note of the following:

Their pain points
The way they are phrasing their problems
What they actually want or need to solve that problem
The help they’ll actually accept

All of those points can be used and crafted into really effective copy!

And when you apply it to either written copy or another elevator pitch, you’ll be shocked at how people respond to it.

Transform Your Conversations Into Effective Copy

Networking events were actually how we discovered the core problems we solve. People weren’t that interested in improving conversions on their copy (shocking, I know). But what they were really interested in was how we could take the one marketing task they despised or took way too much time off their plate. If you’re ready to take what you’ve learned from your networking events, let’s have a conversation about how we can apply it to your messaging. Schedule a call with the FocusCopy team today.

Focus Your Copy On Conversation & Conversion

Let’s Grab A Virtual Coffee With Us To Discover How To Boost Your Words

11 Places You Should Share Your B2B Content

Content Marketing / By Lauren Jefferson / March 1, 2023 March 1, 2023

In an age of influencers and content creation, businesses are forced to participate in content marketing.

But what happens when you actually produce that content?

It’s a waste of time to create content and never repurpose, splinter, or repurpose what you’ve created. That’s why we created a list of different places you should share your B2B content.

So let’s stretch your content’s value as far as possible!

What Is B2B Content?

B2B content is content developed expressly to add value or develop authority with other businesses. While you may have consumers that read your content for whatever reason, the primary target audience is other businesses.

What Are The Places You Should Share Your B2B Content?

Here are 11 places you should share your B2B content.

Your Blog

First things first…Make sure that your content is optimized for search engines and is posted on your website. Do not neglect the power of SEO and organic traffic! For one brand that we posted weekly blogs for 2 years, we grew their organic traffic from a million hits a year to 7.5 million hits.

Need help writing SEO’d blogs? Let’s chat about your content marketing and traffic goals.

Medium

Medium is another great platform, similar to your blog, to post original content. Keep in mind that they do have pretty strict publishing guidelines here.

We love LinkedIn! It’s not only a great networking tool, but it’s also fantastic for building one’s brand. When you post your content, be sure to post it both on your personal page and business page. You can do this in the form of posts, articles, or newsletters.

Email

Email marketing is by far one of the most effective but underrated places to share your content. Not only does it have the highest marketing ROI out of any strategies, but it allows you to have a little more of an intimate conversation with your audience. And when you develop the relationship, you are more likely to convert that prospect into a paying client.

Facebook

Like LinkedIn, Facebook should not be underrated. While it may be a struggle for some to master the ever-changing algorithms, post on your personal page, business page, and any groups you’re part of. With Facebook Groups, make sure that you’re abiding by the rules or guidelines the admins have set for that community.

Twitter

If you have an audience on Twitter, it’s a great platform to splinter your content into bite-sized pieces of content. This is also a great platform for speakers or authors to create quoted content.

Quora

This forum platform is a fantastic way to not only answer questions you know your audience is asking, but also answer questions directly. And while you’re posting, you may as well get a few ideas of what you should create next.

Alignable

Alignable, meant to be a small business networking site similar to LinkedIn, is a great opportunity for you to either post your new content or slip your content into conversations with those in your network.

Instagram

From Reels to posts to stories, there are so many opportunities for you to share your content on Instagram. With almost 2 billion monthly active users (Hootsuite), there is so much potential for your target audience to get their eyes on your content. Give it a try!

Google Business Profile

Previously called Google My Business, your Google Business Profile is a fantastic way to prove your company’s legitimacy, boost SEO, garner testimonials, and update prospects with your information. But did you know that a weekly post on your Google Business Profile can help support your visibility in Google? Give it a try for a couple of weeks and let us know how it works out.

Pinterest is probably one of the most underutilized SEO platforms out there. It isn’t just a pretty virtual board. No ma’am, it’s a search and eCommerce beast. While we’re personally working on our Pinterest and finding out what drives traffic to FocusCopy, personalities like Jenna Kutcher have seen tremendous growth.

Start Boosting Your Content Marketing Impact

If you’re ready to boost your content marketing impact, it’s time to take a deeper look at your actual content. Is it supporting you well? Is it communicating what you need it to? Does your target audience actually care about the topic or want to read about it? Schedule a discovery call with us today to deep dive into your content marketing.

Focus Your Copy On Conversation & Conversion

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How To Create Content Pillars To Boost Your Authority

Content Marketing / By Lauren Jefferson / February 28, 2023 February 28, 2023

Ever wonder what you’re going to write about when it comes to your blogs, emails, and social media? It feels a little more like pulling out teeth. And if you’ve been thinking too long about it, you’re probably falling into writer’s block – the death sentence for writing.

That’s why we create content pillars – to make the content creation process so much easier.

Writing is difficult enough. Make the process simpler when you learn how to create content pillars.

What Are Content Pillars?

So what are content pillars? Content pillars are general topics of which you are an expert on, and they support your overall brand.

For example, I may be an expert in stand-up-paddleboarding or SUP (I’m not, by the way). But does SUP align with FocusCopy? No! In fact, you’d probably be really confused as to why I’m talking about SUP.

At FocusCopy, our content pillars are:

Copywriting and content writing
Marketing
Entrepreneurship

All of these support what we do as a brand and we can splinter them into many different subtopics.

When & How To Use Content Pillars

You’ll want to use your content pillars for just about anything product, marketing, sales, and content related. Content pillars are a great test to see that whatever you release into the marketplace aligns with your brand.

You won’t see FocusCopy releasing any SUP courses, but you may find various copywriting courses. You may also find future workshops that help you grow your revenue.

See below for an example of what your content pillars could look like. You see how there are multiple topics underneath each pillar that we can tap into.

Steps On How To Create Content Pillars

It’s one thing to show what content pillars are and how to use them, but it’s an entirely different thing to create them for your brand’s success.

Identify Your Target Audience

First, you need to know who your target audience is.

What are their pain points? What problems do they wish would disappear or resolve themselves? And what do they care about or need to know about?

Figure out what really drives your target audience to move forward.

Remind Yourself Of Your Expertise

Then you need to reconnect with yourself. What are you an expert in? What inspires you or interests you? Why do you care about what you’re interested in?

The best content pillars are those that you’re familiar with. You don’t need to do a whole lot of research when writing about those topics. You simply know.

Reflect Whether Your Expertise Matches Your Branding Statements

Take your newly (re)identified expertise and determine whether those topics align with your branding statements. Your branding statements may include your mission statement, vision statement, unique selling proposition, value proposition, and company description. Does your expertise align with your brand?

Summarize Your Expertise Into Big Topics

Take the topics that you claim to have expertise in and start to categorize them. For example, my expertise may lie in the following:

Email marketing
Marketing automation
Customer journey
Funnel building
Conversion copy
Website copy
Content marketing
Blogging
Content creation
Female entrepreneurs
Personal development
Perfectionism

All of that is great, but how can we group them together? It may look like the following:

Copywriting
- Conversion copy
- Website copy
- Content marketing
- Blogging
- Content creation
Marketing
- Email marketing
- Marketing automation
- Customer journey
- Funnel building
- Conversion copy
Entrepreneurship
- Female entrepreneurs
- Personal development
- Perfectionism

Test Your Content Pillars

Lastly, test your content pillars. Does your target audience care about them? Can you quickly create content around them? Do these pillars support and enhance your brand?

If the answer is no, then it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Ready To Create The Content For Your Content Marketing?

Creating the content pillars is the first big step to creating a strong content marketing strategy. But the execution of the strategy is where most fail to deliver. If you want to release valuable content that resonates with your target audience, let’s start the conversation. Schedule a discovery call with our team today.

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How To Increase Your KLT Factors In Your Business Without Investing Too Much

Business, Marketing / By Lauren Jefferson / February 28, 2023 February 28, 2023

Ever wonder how some start ups gain traction so quickly, seemingly without much effort? Or see a competitor who offers a slightly lesser quality offer than you and is more successful?

It can be frustrating, but when you look at the root of their success…

…Their success doesn’t stem from having the best product, most innovative delivery method, or even the most affordable price.

It’s because they show up with clear communications that are authentic, genuine, and human.

They’ve effectively built out their KLT factors better than you – for now – and you’re seeing that impact.

So what are KLT factors and why do you need them to grow your business?

What Are KLT Factors?

The KLT in KLT factors stands for Know, Like, Trust.

Have you ever heard the phrase, people only do business with people they know, like, and trust? That rings so true, even in today’s digital landscape. If you’re able to persuade a stranger on the Internet that they know you deeply, you are much more likely to get them to like and trust you.

Where companies go wrong in their marketing is when they take all their personality out of it. There’s nothing human about how they are showing up in the world. Instead, their audience is seeing a blob of technical terms and general communications. They aren’t able to make the connecting point between the solution and why they should invest in that company.

Why Do You Need To Consider Adding KLT Factors Into Your Marketing

As you look at or build your strategic plans, it’s important to view your marketing from the perspective of your target customer. Do they truly know you from what you’re putting out into the world? Is it easy to like you? Is there even something to like? What about you can they trust in?

When you don’t strategically add in any KLT factors into your marketing, you’re leaving big money on the table. You’re also not creating a reason for your existing customers to stick around. They are more likely to move to a different brand that resonates with them a lot more.

If you need a couple of examples of brands we love that display their KLT factors clearly, check these out:

H-E-B (the best grocery store)
Astros (check out their social media; it’s amazing!)
Chalene Johnson
Jenna Kutcher

7 Ways To Increase Your KLT Factors

Want to increase your KLT factors? Try to use at least one of these 7 methods.

Using Your Customer’s Words

Speak your target audience’s language. A lot of the business owners we come across struggle with their copy. Our question is usually, when was the last time you had a conversation with your audience and actually listened to their pain points?

Schedule a coffee with your favorite client and/or a prospect, and simply ask questions. Get them to talk about their business, their struggles, and what they wish they could fix in their business. Then use their exact words in your marketing copy.

We had a much different headline on our hero banner when we first launched our website. Surprise, surprise…The energy we put into it wasn’t working because we hadn’t listened to our target audience.

Very quickly, we came to the conclusion that almost every client either didn’t have time to write copy or struggled to write it (usually because they don’t like to write).

So what did we do?

Use their words in our marketing.

Hosting An Educational Type Event or Workshop

When you offer up yourself and provide content that your audience wants in an interactive environment, you are able to move much more quickly through the customer journey. That journey is taking a complete stranger and transforming them into an advocate for your business (the very last stage of the journey).

We’ve been educating on a one-on-one basis since the foundation of FocusCopy. But in 2023, we decided that it was time to break out boldly and teach.

That’s why we developed the How To Develop Your Workshop Content class in partnership with Go Savvy (February 2023) and are planning on several more workshop events throughout 2023.

Expressing Some Vulnerability

Vulnerability appears in many forms. But in its purest form, it’s expressing something that may put you in a weak position. And what can that do for you? Connect with your target audience on a human level.

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness. If it doesn’t feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive.”
– Brené Brown

Sharing Your Story

And speaking of vulnerability, one of the best ways to do that is by sharing your story. We all have a story. And the world needs to hear it.

No, it doesn’t need to be some dramatic story. So avoid comparing your story to others. It’s not a competition.

But what you do need to be is honest with your story.

How did you get here?

What changed that led you down this path?

What were some big or hard lessons you learned?

Showing Your Face Consistently

Another experiment that’s been conducted – especially on social media – is that when you show your face, you increase your engagement rates significantly. So post or share videos, images, photos, etc. of yourself on your marketing mediums.

And no, stock photos will not help you increase your KLT factors.

Knowing Your Values

Know your values and stick with them. A friend recently posted on LinkedIn that he was to announce his support for a few things that conflicted with his values in order to take part in a big event. He made the ultimate decision to pass on that event because he didn’t want to neglect his values. I already knew his value and trusted him as a referral source, but his stepping out like that increased his KLT factors dramatically.

Know your values and don’t compromise them for any reason. There is always enough business to go around.

Sharing Your Knowledge

Lastly, share your knowledge. That could be information, insights, strategies, resources, etc. Whatever it is, find how you can educate and inform your audience.

Ready To Increase Your KLT Factors?

To be in the know for our next workshop event, click here to join our email list.

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Email Marketing Mistakes To Avoid In 2023

Marketing / By Lauren Jefferson / February 27, 2023 February 27, 2023

Email marketing is one of those marketing topics that seems to be coming back into conversation, and there’s a reason for it.

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies for nurturing and converting prospects into clients. And when done well, it can boost your reputation, revenue, and retention of clients.

But there are a few email marketing mistakes that you want to avoid as you invest more time and money into it.

What Is Email Marketing?

First, what is email marketing actually?

It’s a form of direct marketing that helps you promote your offer. Now, it doesn’t have to be a hard sell. It could be more of a brand awareness tool, follow-up tool, or engagement tool for the in-between purchase phase.

Regardless of how you utilize your email marketing, it’s a powerful tool to add to your marketing toolkit.

Why Should Your Business Use Email Marketing?

In our professional opinion, there is a place for email marketing in every business’s marketing strategy. There is so much diversity in what you can use this strategy for. Here are a couple of examples:

Consulting → follow-up with referral partners
Health and wellness → educational newsletters
Marketing → long term nurture
Consumer products → awareness of new products and/or offers

8 Email Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

Here are 8 email marketing mistakes to avoid so that each marketing dollar is spent well.

1. Using Your Personal Email Over A Trusted Email Service Provider

When you can, use a trusted mass mailing service, like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Keap, Hubspot, or whatever email marketing software you prefer. This is your best bet because it establishes your professional reputation.

A trusted email service provider will make it easier for your subscribers to:

Opt-in and/or adjust their email marketing preferences
Unsubscribe
Receive your emails in their inbox
Provide email statistics to base your decisions on

And those are just a few of the technical reasons to use an email service provider over your personal email!

2. Not Spending Enough Time On Subject Lines & Preview Text

Your subject lines and preview text are the 2 things that convince your audience to click on your email (apart from your stellar reputation).

If you need help coming up with subject lines, take a look at the emails that you open. What about them attracts you? Why do you want to open those emails?

If you’re really not sure what type of subject lines your target audience likes, then it’s time to test. Here are a couple of the subject line A/B tests we’ve run recently for clients:

Dad joke vs. non-joke
Question vs. statement
Question that includes software name vs. question that avoids software name

3. Sending Bulk Emails To A Cold Audience

This is a biggie, and one that I made in my early email marketing experience. I sent an email to 27,000 people once but a good chunk of those individuals were a cold audience – those that hadn’t actively engaged with our previous efforts.

And I got blacklisted…

Email service provider locked me down. Domain was flagged. And all my big marketing tools for that company were restricted.

Let me tell you…It took hours to fix.

So if you’re going to send an email to a wide audience – especially a cold audience – break that audience down into smaller groups. It will save you a lot of time, stress, and heartache.

4. Falling Out Of Consistent Emailing

When you’re inconsistent with your emailing, your audience’s inbox isn’t going to treat your emails the same way as if you are consistent. While this may not be an exact science, we have learned from experience that consistency helps with the technical part of email marketing and with the customer engagement.

When you start to do email marketing, it’s important to find a frequency in which you can consistently email your audience. Whether that’s quarterly, monthly, bimonthly, or weekly…Whatever it is, find a frequency and stick with it.

Need help with consistency? We’ve created a guide that includes 52 email marketing prompts to get you through the rest of the year. Download that guide here.

5. Not Measuring Email Statistics

When you don’t use an email service provider or neglect to look at the email statistics, you are wasting a big opportunity to improve. We all know that marketing is a big experiment. Anyone that tells you one thing is certain in marketing isn’t someone you want to trust. So take the statistics (i.e. open rate, click through rate, opt-out rate, etc.) into consideration when determining which methods to focus your attention and others that may need to pivot.

6. Keeping Emails Impersonal & Vague

Your emails are a great opportunity to show some personality and build a relationship. Afterall, people do business with people they know, like, and trust. When you’re impersonal and vague in your email messaging, you lose the opportunity for people to know, like, and trust you.

Personalizations

Personalizations, such as their name, company name, and location, are great opportunities to break through the noise and personalize your messages. When people feel seen or heard, they are much more likely to engage.

Storytelling

Share the horror stories, lessons learned, big wins, and embarrassing moments. Share stories that will grab their attention and engage them. And since this isn’t a public platform like blogging, social media, podcasting, etc., it’s a more intimate environment to get vulnerable.

7. Sending Emails Without Testing Links

Another one of my email marketing mistakes include sending 25,000 emails with the wrong link. Facepalm. That’s why I’ve made it a professional rule, and even a standard, to always test links in emails. Depending on the software, send yourself a test email and click on every single link. You can also preview the email and do the same thing.

If you realize a link is bad after sending the mass email, send a quick follow-up email stating that you included a wrong link. This provides you an opportunity to remarket yourself. You don’t want to do this often because then it speaks to your lack of quality control (and you don’t want that).

8. Including Unclear Call To Actions

Lastly, be obvious with your call to actions. Be specific and focused. Avoid including a dozen different call to actions in your emails. Instead, choose one and focus on that one action.

It’s Time To Focus On The Right Things For Your Email Marketing

The first step to email marketing is demystifying that it’s some complicated marketing strategy. When in reality, it’s simply about having the right conversation at the right time. If you need inspiration about what to write in your email marketing, download these 52 prompts to get started.

Prospects Slipping Through The Cracks Of Your Sales Pipeline?

You may be leaving money on the table if you aren’t following up with them regularly and relationally.

The Ultimate Website Checklist For A Successful Launch

Copywriting / By Lauren Jefferson / January 24, 2023 February 28, 2023

Launching your business’s website is an exciting time!

Aside from the time it will save answering the same questions over and over (and over and over) again, your website can be your most effective sales tool. Plus, a good website can also elevate your business’s legitimacy and boost your own confidence as a business owner.

But before you hit the big, shiny launch button, go through our website launch checklist first.

Your Ultimate Website Launch Checklist

These 18 steps can make the difference between a meh website and a fully functioning site that makes your business stand out from the competition – for all the right reasons.

Need help writing copy for your web pages? Click here to schedule a discovery call to learn how FocusCopy can help!

1. Proofread All Copy

There’s nothing like a grammar or spelling error to get the wrong kind of attention. For instance, one marketing professional who worked for one of Houston’s biggest public parks to this day can’t publish anything without doing a word search for the word “pubic”. It was a lesson in overly trusting spell check learned the hard way. After all, just because something is spelled correctly, doesn’t mean it’s the right word. But it taught her to ask her most stringent proofreading friends and colleagues to read over everything once (or twice).

*Side tip – don’t ask people pleasers to proofread. You want the proofreaders who aren’t afraid to point out your mistakes before they’re out there for the world to see.

2. Test All Forms

Having a website is a great way to capture your audience’s contact information. However, make sure the forms work! Fill out the link yourself and make sure everything comes through. Then, send the link to a few close friends, family, or colleagues to test it further.

3. Set Up Google Analytics

Learning about your audience is one of the most critical parts of owning a business and website. Not only will it help you write copy that speaks to your target audience, but it will also help you adapt to their needs. For instance, with Google Analytics, you can monitor information about your audience that includes:

Their general profiles including age, gender, location, and more
The devices they are using
What of your pages, posts, and products are the most popular
How they are reacting to your marketing campaigns
Conversion rates
Website loading speed
And so, so much more!

Too busy running your business to dedicate time to writing compelling and converting copy? Contact FocusCopy to learn how we can take copy off your plate and help you meet your goals.

4. Check Each Page On A Desktop, Tablet & Smartphone

The world is literally at our fingertips with smartphones and other handheld devices. Which means, your website needs to be compatible with desktop computers, tablets, mobile phones, and any other devices that become widely used in the future.

This check box is two-fold. For one, you want your audience to have a great user experience. Otherwise, they’ll just skip on over to your competitor’s website. And secondly, it can help your Google ranking. Check out Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool here.

5. Run Compatibility Tests

Plugins can elevate a website and this may have you thinking they’re your best friends. The problem is that, as in life, sometimes your friends don’t get along so well together. And the same goes for plugins!

This compatibility checker is a great tool to double check that all your different plugins will get along and work efficiently together. If it’s not optimizing your website, the plugin may not be worth its hype.

6. Create 404 Page

Sometimes websites run into an error. What you don’t want to happen is the people looking for your website to run across a “Page Not Found” error message.

Instead, prepare now for issues that may come up in the future with your very own custom 404 page. This will help you prevent losing a visitor, improving user experience, and track errors. You can even set up email alerts to be notified of 404 errors so you can fix them as quickly as possible.

7. Index Site On Google Search Console

I’m going to go out on a limb to assume you want people to be able to find your website once it’s live. Properly indexing and rendering your website is key to attracting new visitors (i.e. potential customers) through search engine results.

If you were to forgo indexing your site prior to its launch, you will essentially be putting extra steps in your conversion funnel. Furthermore, it’s important to realize that it can take weeks to get a new website fully indexed. To ensure your website is fully optimized in its “newness” phase, make sure to index sooner than later.

8. Submit Sitemap

The sitemap is the collection of URLs on your website that you want Google to index on the search engine results page (SERP). Most SEO plugins will handle this for you.

However, don’t assume details like this will always be perfect. Instead, triple check that 1) you have a sitemap and 2) it contains the right content and that it works.

9. Test All Links

This is as simple as it sounds – make sure all the links work!

If there is a backlink on your website, click it. Did it direct you to the appropriate web page? Great! If not, address what went wrong to ensure all your links are working properly.

10. Test All Icons (Especially Social Media)

Linked icons are a great way to grow your social media following. As said above in #9, make sure the links work!

A well-designed marketing plan will point your target audience to your website. Many may find your website through your social media activity, newsletters, and so on. However, that doesn’t mean you don’t want your website visitors to try so hard to keep up with you on LinkedIn, Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, and any other social media platform you’re harnessing!

11. Add SSL Certificate

Are you familiar with SSL certificates? It’s the acronym for “Secure Sockets Layer” and it’s important for your security and reputation.

Without an SSL certificate, your audience may receive alerts that your website is not secure. That’s no good and will quickly send readers to your competitor’s website.

Plus, having an SSL certificate helps to increase Google ranking, essentially driving more traffic to your website. Additionally, SSL certificates indicate that you have taken the proper steps to protect your users’ private information – contributing to your credibility factors.

12. Include Terms of Service & Privacy Policy

There’s nothing like a legality issue to throw a would-be successful website launch off course.

Speak to your business attorney to ensure that you have the right licenses for images, fonts, plugins, and more.

Yes, the legal jargon is usually the “boring” part of any project. But it is so incredibly important!

13. Benchmark Your Previous Website’s Data

If this is a new version of an old website, it’s time for a little side-by-side comparison. Basically, you want to see how your new site compares to the old one. A few things you should look out for include:

Gaps that provide data-driven insights to help fine tune your new strategy
Confirm testing procedures
Ensure all components are working properly
Double check that you have a system in place to track bugs and enhancements

14. Check For Brand Consistency

You don’t want to confuse your audience with inconsistent brand messaging. So, make sure that your brand voice and branded images stay on point. Refer back to your core message that speaks directly to your target audience. Moreover, check that any logos or images are the most up to date and have the same filter, colors, etc.

15. Replace Placeholder Images With Final Images

When building a website, placeholders help keep the momentum going. However, don’t forget to go back through and replace all the placeholders with the final images. This will make your website appear polished, and your business professional and trustworthy.

16. Confirm The Copy Is The Latest Version

Especially when building a website, there are likely several renditions of web pages. If not labeled correctly, it can be easy to import the wrong version. Make sure that you are using the latest (and greatest) version of copy for your website. Don’t forget to have a few trusted friends give it a good proofreading before going live.

17. Check That Hosting Can Handle Your Bandwidth

The last thing you want when your website goes live is for it to immediately crash because it can’t handle the traffic or amount of content on your site. Talk with your website host or designer to evaluate the amount of bandwidth you need. Here’s a quick guide on why server bandwidth is critical.

18. Send An Email Announcement About Your New Website

Be sure to celebrate your launch and let your audience know that you have a new website! You never know when a cold prospect or even an inactive client will re-engage with you. Take the opportunity to show that you’ve invested in your brand.

P.S. Need a few prompts to make your website actually mean something to your cold prospects? Download this free guide for to answer the most important questions on your website.

Ready to Launch?

Launching is an exciting time! But if you’re still struggling with the copy side of your website, let’s chat.

Focus Your Copy On Conversation & Conversion

Let’s Grab A Virtual Coffee With Us To Discover How To Boost Your Words

Salesy Copy Is Out, Authentic Branding Is In

Copywriting / By Lauren Jefferson / November 10, 2022 February 20, 2023

Ever see an ad that makes you raise your eyebrows a bit?

You’re far from alone in that. In fact, today’s consumers are inundated with salesy marketing campaigns in every facet of their lives. You can’t open your email, social media accounts, watch a video, or even drive down the street without some type of marketing coming into your peripheral.

If something seems suspicious, the facts don’t really matter anymore. That potential customer is already lost and may forever affiliate that brand in a negative connotation.

This is why it’s time to ditch the salesy copy. Instead, focus your marketing efforts on authentic branding that will comfort your audience and help them remember you.

So how do you make your marketing stand out for the right reasons?

You need credibility to show that your brand messaging is authentic.

Otherwise, you’re just another fish in a pond of baseless sales tactics.

What is Authentic Branding?

Simply put, authentic branding and marketing is when you prioritize building your know/like/trust (KLT) factors with your audience over sales. It feels like you want to develop a relationship rather than a transaction.

Remember the phrase, people do business with people they know, like, and trust. This mindset is the starting point to create an authentic brand.

4 Tips To Ditch The Salesy Copy For Authentic Transparency

Getting the right message across isn’t as tricky as it seems. Sometimes all it takes is reevaluating your business’s mission and values.

Don’t have time or the confidence to write your own brand messaging? Leave it to the pros at FocusCopy. Schedule your discovery call with us today.

1. Keep Your Authentic Voice Consistent In Your Brand Messaging

Have you defined your brand voice?

If not, then it’s time to discover, document, and implement your business’s authentic voice.

Your business’s brand voice speaks to your target market. Furthermore, a consistent brand voice builds credibility and helps your audience feel comfortable with your brand.

On the other hand, an inconsistent brand voice can wreak havoc on your business’s marketing.

A few questions to ask yourself when honing in on your brand voice include:

How do you want people to feel about your brand?
What voice, tone, and words do you absolutely want to avoid affiliating with your brand?
Who is your ideal customer and audience?

FocusCopy has a whole workshop we go over with new clients. Sometimes, the questions are a little surprising – like which movie characters you relate to, how your friends describe you, and so much more. But I promise, there’s a method to the madness. Each question gets us closer to defining a business’s voice for the most effective brand messaging.

Once you identify your brand voice, use it genuinely, consistently, and transparently. Moreover, don’t be afraid to show the highs and the lows. People relate to real life problems, it doesn’t need to be all sunshine and daisies.

Additionally, if you make claims – back them up! Backlinking to reputable sources not only builds your own credibility, but can also improve your SEO efforts. (Psst…backlink to your own blogs and web pages, too!)

2. Show Your People, Products & Services With Authentic Photos – Not Stock

Sure, stock photos are great when you’re in a pinch. However, you may want to keep them in the last resort file.

This case study on Harrington Movers in New Jersey shows just how powerful authentic photos can be. When they decided to do away with the happy couple stock photo and get real, the results spoke for themselves.

In fact, they ran an A/B test with 2 new, yet authentic, photos. The first is a simple photo of their moving truck. The second is a photo of their actual team of movers in front of a moving truck. With both of the newer, authentic photos, Harrington Movers saw over a 45% increase in quote requests than with the stock photo.

Overall, marketing is a science. It’s why we love A/B tests! However, it’s important to not lose the human element. You can chase all the analytics and statistics, but you need to always remember that a real living person full of emotions and personal experiences is on the receiving end.

On another note, make sure your photos are true! Have you been introduced to a new skincare product complete with before and after pictures? But when you look at the photos, you realize the person in the “before” is raising their eyebrows to create forehead wrinkles. The lighting is different in both photos and you realize that if this is the best they can do – it’s not a worthy investment.

Investing in a brand photo shoot was one of my favorite marketing projects for FocusCopy. I now have a plethora of images that I own and use for featured images in blogs, newsletters, website copy, and more. Plus, it was fun! The trick is to hire a great photographer that makes you feel comfortable and that you trust (meet our favorite photographer).

3. Keep Your Marketing As Genuine As Can Be

On the same thread of using genuine and honest photos, your copy should follow suit. In other words, practice what you preach.

For instance, there’s been a lot of talk around the lack of regulations in the U.S.’s skincare and cosmetics industries. The facts can be quite shocking. Unsurprisingly, a lot of companies have jumped on the bandwagon to promote non-toxic products. However, are the people pushing these products concerned about all the toxins in their lives?

If not, how can you be sure they even care and that their products are as safe as they claim?

People in this particular niche industry can show their genuine care and interest by showing that they take the same approach to other parts of their lives. As an example, they may show that they use effective yet non-toxic household cleaners or are making an effort to replace plastic containers with glass.

The gist here is no matter your industry, your marketing will be most effective when it is genuine.

Do you know what you want to say but not sure how to say it? Writing is the most cumbersome task in marketing campaigns and FocusCopy will work with you to define your brand voice for the most effective messaging. Schedule a discovery call today to learn more!

4. Grow An Organic Following (AKA Don’t Pay For Followers Or Engagement)

Social media brings us into each other’s lives like never before. Whether you keep a crisp profile that only shows the positives or get into the nitty gritty behind the scenes real life chaos, it’s amazing what people want to see!

It’s called social proof. And if done right, it can tremendously increase your brand’s reach.

Having trouble getting started? Challenge yourself to show up on social media for a month straight. Yes, every day of an entire calendar month. I promise it’s not hard. Plus, you can have fun with it!

Been wanting to show off your dance or lip syncing skills? There’s no time like the present to pick a trending TikTok audio clip and go for it.

However, make sure to keep the content focused on your target audience.

Moreover, ask customers to send you or tag your company’s social media in their own photos using your product or service! There’s nothing like seeing real people enjoying what your business offers to instill social proof.

FocusCopy Writes Authentic Copy For Brands Worth Boosting

While writing comes easy to some, we’ve found the majority of people view it as their most cumbersome task. However, simple and direct communication is also very often the most persuasive and effective marketing tool.

Whether you simply don’t like to write or don’t have time to write, it still needs to get done. FocusCopy allows business owners like you to focus on running and growing your business while we handle the copy.

Ready to learn more about what FocusCopy can do for your business (and stress level)? Schedule your discovery call today!