Create Authority Content for Your Business

Creating authority content raises your “expertise profile” and helps grow your business. Authority content shows rather than tells. It demonstrates expertise through valuable content without your having to shout: “We’re Number One!”

Demonstrate world-class expertise with authority content

The essentials of creating authority content for your business are to:

1. Pick a topic that’s at the core of your business — one that you can legitimately claim expertise in. This should be an area you feel comfortable expounding on, and one your customers would benefit from knowing more about. A real estate firm might have an angle on rental investing. A law firm might know a legal strategy that gives clients an edge.
2. Break the topic out into five preliminary subtopics — begin addressing each topic in substantial, in-depth articles of perhaps 750-1,000 words — each one a mini-chapter of a future e-book. Incorporate attractive elements in your content, such as surveys, statistics, lists, and maybe a few “downloadable assets” — case studies, white papers, etc. Nail the SEO.
3. Post articles at your blog on a regular schedule — maybe one or two per week, mirror posting to your social media platforms — LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ — getting notifications out to the others. Trigger tweets to your business account, and to all the individual ones you can legitimately co-opt for this purpose. 

Now you're ready to gather what you've done into an authority asset.

Create a PDF file of your first five article/chapters

With the first five articles create a PDF file including all the content you’ve generated on the topic to this point. Offer this out as a way of increasing traffic to your site, gaining subscribers, or simply gathering email addresses.

Create your next five article/chapters

Move through in like manner with the remaining five mini-chapters of your book. Create the individual blog articles, post them to your blog, and promote them everywhere.

Create a cornerstone content page

Once you’ve got your ten-part series completed, published, and promoted, use your articles to create what’s known as a cornerstone content page. This is a dedicated page that:

Lists links to the article/chapters of the book you’ve generated — like a linkable table of contents.
Add introductory material (“intro”) at the beginning, and summary material (“outro”) at the end.
Include your “call to action”.
You want them to call you for more information? That’s you call to action. Want them to join your mailing list? There you go.

Packaging your content in this authoritative way will motivate people to find it, share it, and link back to it.

Generate another PDF plus e-book

Gather up your next five articles into a second PDF and use it the way you did the first: to generate interest, traffic, and subscribers. Now take all ten of your chapter-articles and create an e-book to add to your authority — and reach broader markets.

Blast off with authority content

Authority content attracts high-quality links to your site — links from “authoritative sites” that draw major traffic. Your company website starts appearing higher in search engine results increasing traffic to your site. Authority plus attraction adds heavy-duty value, attracting further links and increasing shares of your content with others.

Watch your business blast off with authority content.

Ask Michael J. Farrand about creating authority content for your business.

SOURCE: "Authority Content: Build an Audience that Builds Your Business", copyblogger.

Create Video Content for Your Business

You’ve known that video is the biggest thing in online marketing for some time, but you just don’t know how to get in. The good news is it’s becoming easier and easier for your business to tap into this massively growing opportunity.

If you thought video was big in 2016, just wait till you see 2017!!

Think what video can do for your business

Creating video content offers so many advantages for your business it’s worth overcoming whatever barriers — psychological, mechanical, economic, talent — you envision that are keeping you from this pot of gold. Experts agree that video:

• Increases organic traffic from search engines by 157%.
• Keeps visitors at your site 88% longer.
• Makes consumers 85% more likely to buy.

The venerable Dr. James McQuivey, in fact, tells us a 1-minute video is worth 1.8 million words.

Creating online video content presents an opportunity so huge for your business — in terms of adding value to your brand, increasing conversions, or demonstrating empathy — you can no longer responsibly avoid jumping on the bandwagon.

Types of video content to create

You can create valuable video content for your business in a variety of types, e.g.:

1. Culture: employee interviews, game day at the office, parties, etc.; show the human fabric of your brand; working hand in hand with HR, these can be used to attract the best and brightest.
2. Interviews: inject authority into your online content, build relationships with experts in your field; let your subject do the talking (for a change).
3. Events: cover a company event in a shareable fashion, perhaps sharing snippets in montage form; enhance your online presence more than a live event ever could.
4. Presentations: combine the excitement of an event with the usefulness of a webinar to create compelling and shareable content.
5. Webinars: like live events that offer valuable, interactive insights to participants.
6. Product instruction: make using your company products seem easy; help your customers avoid misusing them (or wasting their time learning how to).
7. Testimonials: used as a review of your company, these can be recorded at an event you throw at your business premises, or captured from customers in other ways.

For an exciting style of video to create, animation is perfect for your company if you have products and services that are difficult to explain. Those whiteboard animations are affordable, popular, and trending.

Overcome the barriers to creating valuable video content

You’ve got the resources already to start creating video content for your business. Various free apps reduce the cost, as do the recording capabilities of today’s smartphones. You’ve got a list of types of video to create. Now all you need is to marshal the creative and technical forces in your organization to make it happen.

Ask Michael J. Farrand about creating video content for your company or organization.

SOURCES: "The Quick-and-Simple Guide to Getting Started With Video Content Marketing" Buffer; "A Video Marketing Guide On Creating Epic Content for Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and More" by Brian Peters on Buffer; "6 Tools to Help Create Video Content for Your Business" by Lilach Bullock on SocialMediaToday; "10 Useful Types of Video Content Viewers Love" by Eric Siu in Single Grain.

MDG Advertising

Create a Wikipedia Page for Your Company or Organization

". . if your company is in Wikipedia, it's not a fly-by-night, or dime-a-dozen kind of company." John Broughton

Creating a Wikipedia page for your company or organization makes you exist for some, while raising your online profile for all. Putting a page together may be just the group effort project you need to bond internally as a team. And it’s a good opportunity to research what people are saying about you — and what they aren’t.

A Wikipedia page means you exist

“If it’s not on Wikipedia, it doesn’t exist.”

Having a Wikipedia page grants your business or organization online credibility. Without one you may not even exist to your target audience. Potential customers who research buying opportunities online before buying might disbelieve your special offers or discounts. It may take a Wikipedia page to convince them you’re not just another online scam.

The first big roadblock to having a Wikipedia article is something called "notability". The very existence of a Wikipedia article announces your business has achieved this much sought after quality. If you don’t have a Wikipedia page people might wonder if you have something to hide — beyond not being notable enough to warrant one. Younger generations start at Wikipedia when doing research on almost anything online.

Make sure you have a page there for them to find.

A Wikipedia page raises your profile online

Having a Wikipedia page for your business or organization enhances your visibility online, giving you a reliably top-ranked search result. Ideally you want visitors to be presented with link to your organization home page, but having a link to the Wikipedia page immediately below it can’t hurt.

A Wikipedia page is a group-effort opportunity (but it needs to be done right)

Creating a good Wikipedia article requires research of online sources, gathering of related media (images, video, etc.), and writing skills — all excellent opportunities to come together as a team and assigning tasks while uniting around a common goal.

It also requires an understanding of Wikipedia policy and tools and techniques. Wikipedia has fairly strict guidelines on content inclusion and revision. Just writing about your own company or organization can raise a flag.

Learning the related skills and guidelines can be a valuable business (or personal) skill helpful to any organization (or individual). Or you might want to hire someone already experienced in Wikipedia article creation — so you can focus on other important matters.

Ask Michael J. Farrand about creating a Wikipedia for your company or organization.

SOURCES: Paul Wilkinson, Quora; "Should You Consider a Wikipedia Page for Your Business?" SEOPressor; "How Using Wiki Writers Can Help Grow Your Business: The Benefits of Employing Wikipedia Writers for Hire" by Jordan Taylor, Project Eve

Make Regular Content and Newsletter Happen

Your ability to succeed as an organization or company these days may depend on your ability — and willingness — to engage people on social media. That means getting everyone on your team active in creating fresh and interesting content, then picking the best of it to enhance your regular newsletter.

Put out a newsletter people actually read

Once your organization or company has determined that it could benefit from having a monthly electronic newsletter (e-letter) — you want more "leads" or donations, or you want to engage better with your customers or patrons — you need to create one that people will actually read.

Focus

First, rather than employ the scattershot approach — describing random events, interviewing the nearest staffer, restating your organizational mission in its entirety — focus your content each issue. Decide whether your current missive will emphasis events, products, people, your company — or the future. Schedule a rotating set of themes you can cycle through (the easier approach), or come up with a focus for each release (a little more difficult).

Balance

"Buy, buy, buy!" all the time just won't work. Best to mix in big doses of educational (or entertaining) content. Experts say your e-letter content should be 90% educational and only 10% promotional. That's so you keep people reading each issue — a major plus.

Unless you really do have some big, exciting news about your product or service, go lightly on the promo. Give 'em interesting, relevant, timely information with a light sprinkling of selling words.

Creativity

Make your email subject lines new and interesting each month; bring them in and make them click. Give your readers incentive to open each specific issue that very moment. The same old subject headings arriving in their inbox each month bores them silly.

Wake them up with a BANG!

Make Content Creation Everybody's Job

The best way to get creative, and give your e-letter editor quality content to pick from for each issue, is for everyone in your organization or company to get involved in creating exciting content. Your very success, individually and organizationally, depends on being engaging and relevant online.

You have a range of talents and commitment levels where you work, with differing levels of interest in creating content regularly. To succeed, everybody in your organization needs to be focused on creating content. It's just a fact of the age we live in.

Your first trick, apart from outlining the array of content types you want to create, is to match types with individuals in your group. Figure out who might best create . .

• Blog articles
• Tweets
• Memes
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Surveys, quizzes, contests

Some may not enjoy writing so much; are they good with a camera? or recording audio? Those who have the least time or energy to commit might offer to provide regular surveys or quizzes for your social media visitors. Somebody might spend all month dreaming up next month's contest. The results of these make excellent newsletter material.

Schedule a content creation workshop

Get everybody involved in content creation. Call you team together and outline what's involved. Create a “content calendar”. Become a regular engine of fresh and fun content for your organization. Then pick the very best content from the regular stream to use in your monthly newsletter.

Ask Michael J. Farrand about organizing regular content creation and publishing a newsletter.

SOURCES: "10 Tips for Creating an E-Newsletter People Actually Read" Hubspot; "Why Content Creation Is Everyone’s Job" by John Jantsch.

Health Care for Uninsured Musicians

Dave Van Ronk

The Central Virginia Health Alliance for Musicians* helps provide low-cost primary healthcare, basic dental care, and mental health counseling to uninsured professional working musicians in the Central Virginia area. They've partnered with the Charlottesville Free Clinic to make it happen.

Anyone who remembers how Dave Van Ronk spent his last months on earth might hope this sort of solution spreads to other regions.

Click here to apply . .

*just received their 501(c)(3) non-profit status determination letter.