content marketing

Is AI Right for My Business?

Is AI Right for My Business?

AI is a popular buzzword right now in marketing and other aspects of business. AI is probably right for most businesses in some capacity, especially if protection is layered into the tools. Salesforce, for example, is building an AI environment on top of Open AI that allows its customers to use AI within the Salesforce ecosystem, while protecting their data and the data of their end users. Even without a protected environment, AI is being integrated into many of the tools we use at work every day. Google now uses Generative AI to render summarized search results. Creepy? Maybe? In the end, the search users get to decide and will tell Google if they’ve gone too far. If users begin to search using other platforms, that sends a clear message.

AI is capable of automating tasks quickly and with accuracy if the prompts you provide the tools are specific and accurate, but still relies on a human behind the keyboard to provide prompts and direction. To prove the point, I had ChatGPT write the following using the following prompt: “Write me a blog article about AI in marketing and the benefits and drawbacks of using AI”

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5 Ways to Find Topics for Your Blog

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5 Ways to Find Topics for Your Blog

Keeping a blog for your business can help you reach a wider audience and build stronger relationships with your current and potential customers. Keeping a blog can also help your business get found by search engines and improve your website's SEO and authority. You can keep a running list of topics that make sense for your business so that you always have ideas and information from which you can pull your blog posts, but you have to start that list somewhere, so...

How do you determine the best blog topics for your business?

Whether you blog weekly or monthly, there are several ways you can determine the best topics for your blog posts. Here's a list of five of our favorites that we use here at Silver Shade Group to create our own blog topic lists.

How Can I Use Digital Marketing to Promote My Business?

How Can I Use Digital Marketing to Promote My Business?

Whether you have an online business or a brick and mortar location, digital marketing can help drive revenue for your company. Digital marketing can help put your business in front of customers who would not otherwise find you. I typically recommend that clients spread out their marketing budget across various digital channels, but you can leverage digital in whatever ways make the most sense for your business. Detailed below are some of the options available as digital marketing channels. This is a quick guide to help you make decisions about where you spend your digital dollars.

Social Media Marketing 101: Part 6 - YouTube

Social Media Marketing 101: Part 6 - YouTube

The final installment in our social media marketing series is YouTube. YouTube is a fantastic channel for reaching your audience when your products require demonstrations, step-by-step instructions, or detailed explanations. YouTube is also great when you want to create personal connections with your audience or if you enjoy using video content. Your videos might feature a tailored message, a product demo, or a behind-the-scenes view of your workshop and process.

Social Media Marketing 101: Part 2 - Facebook

Social Media Marketing 101: Part 2 - Facebook

The first platform that we're going to cover in our social media marketing series is Facebook. This content portion is broken into two parts - one for service businesses and one for products companies. However, some things are universal between both service and product providers. No matter what kind of business you run, you'll probably want to create a page for your business and use it to share helpful information with your potential customers. You'll also need to identify who your audience is and determine how they use FB. Do they participate in groups? Do they follow brands? Or do they just check their feed for the latest posts from their friends and family? Once you understand how your ideal customer uses Facebook, you can create your platform strategy.

Social Media Marketing 101: Part 1 - Choose Your Platforms

Social Media Marketing 101: Part 1 - Choose Your Platforms

For the next few weeks, we'll run a series of posts that offer some basics for your social media marketing. If you follow along, you should be able to build a basic strategy for your overall social media marketing and pick up a few best practices and tactics for each of the platforms that we cover. This week, we cover how to choose the right platforms for your business. Starting next week, we'll go through a few of the platforms one-by-one and provide a few tips that will help you get the most out of each of your social accounts.

When you're selecting social media platforms for your account, it's important to consider three major factors.

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How Do I Help My Brand Stand out in a Noisy Market?

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How Do I Help My Brand Stand out in a Noisy Market?

Do you ever feel like you are screaming into a wind tunnel? No matter what market your brand and business are in, consumers are inundated with so many messages every day that it can be difficult to stand out. Even if your market isn't highly competitive, your customers are still seeing tons of messages from the many brands who sell them other products and services. You want your brand to be remembered. You want your audience to hear or see your messages and think, "Yeah, that's me! That product could really help me."

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How Do I Create a Consistent Content Strategy?

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How Do I Create a Consistent Content Strategy?

Consistency is more than doing or saying the same thing again and again. It's also showing up where and when your potential customers expect to find you. If you create consistency in your messages, presence (both online and off), and schedule, you can form long-term relationships with your clients and customers that will generate incremental business over time.

Consistency should start with your branding. Your message should be present throughout and solidified within your website and any physical presence that you have. Your topics and individual articles can branch a bit further with the messages that you create and share through your email communication and your other customer outreach, but the underlying message should be the same across all channels and customer touchpoints.

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How Do I Use Keywords on My Website?

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How Do I Use Keywords on My Website?

A couple of months ago, we talked about how to do keyword research. That post explains how to find your keywords yourself within the Google Keyword Planner. If you prefer, there are other tools available that will provide you with a list of basic keywords for your website for a fee. You enter your business into their tool and they provide a list of keywords that you can use on your site to increase overall traffic.

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Write a Better About Page

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Write a Better About Page

Your About page is probably the second most visited page on your website. Unfortunately, many professionals and entrepreneurs struggle to write their About page. Even product-based businesses need an About page that describes the roots of the company and the reason for being. No matter what kind of business you operate, you can follow a basic formula to write a better About page.

Your About page should feature the best features and qualification of your business. Why do you perform your services or sell your products? What was your best moment in business? Did you have a turning point that put you on the path to success that you're on today? We'll call those your highlights. Create a list of those company highlights that you want your customers and clients to know. The list can be as long as you want. You can pare it down as you write the content for the page and you can even create a timeline if it gets too long.

Design Your Content Writing Process

Design Your Content Writing Process

If you create consistent content for your website and social media posts, you know how time consuming it can be. If you design a process and develop a schedule, you can make copy writing and content creation easier and faster. Here are some suggestions that you can implement to streamline your content writing. Use these tips to design a process that works for you.

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Do I Need a Digital Marketing Strategy?

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Do I Need a Digital Marketing Strategy?

A digital marketing strategy is a plan to increase brand awareness or grow sales using digital channels. Digital channels include everything from your own website and email campaigns to social media and blogs. A good digital marketing strategy helps you reach your customers wherever they want to interact with you by providing several opportunities to learn about, interact with, and possibly even purchase from your business. You can hire a marketing pro to create your digital marketing strategy as part of a larger marketing plan or on its own. Either way, your professional will most likely provide you with a comprehensive plan that leverages your website, email list, social media, and outreach.

Research Keywords in Google Adwords: A Step-By-Step Guide For Beginners

Research Keywords in Google Adwords: A Step-By-Step Guide For Beginners

When you write content for your site, it's important to use the right keywords to help search engines and customers find your business. If you need more information about that you can read 'What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?' and 'Why Does Content Matter in Digital Marketing?' for details about how SEO works and the how your content can be used in other aspects of your marketing. A good SEO firm will provide very strong keywords for your business, but you can get most of the way there on your own if you're willing to put in the time and effort to learn how to research your keywords and do so often enough to implement changes to your site as needed.

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What Social Media Should I Use to Promote My Business?

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What Social Media Should I Use to Promote My Business?

Social Media planning is important for any entrepreneur or small business trying to build a following for their products and services. If you know how and where to spend your time and create a social media strategy around your business, you can leverage your social media presence to increase your brand awareness and grow your audience. If you operate without a strategy, you can waste valuable time and resources on a platform that does nothing for your business.

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Create a Content Calendar

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Create a Content Calendar

Creating content for your business on a regular basis is incredibly important for SEO and provides more choices for you marketing messages. Google and other search engines reward businesses that publish content on a consistent basis. Consistency helps these search engines understand that your business is an authority on your subject matter. Creating content on a regular basis also helps to establish your reliability as a content creator and as a business in general. If you begin publishing a newsletter every Thursday, your clients and customers will come to expect your newsletters on Thursdays. 

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Develop a Content Strategy for Your Marketing or Website Launch

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Develop a Content Strategy for Your Marketing or Website Launch

Planning content for your entire website during a launch or re-launch can seem daunting, but you can plan ahead to create great content that brings the right customers to your site and looks great in your social media, email marketing, and PR campaigns.

The first step to create quality content for your site is to research the keywords that are relevant for your business. You can research keywords in Google Adwords by searching for your business or product. 

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Why Does Content Matter in Digital Marketing?

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Why Does Content Matter in Digital Marketing?

Good content can help your website to become search engine optimization (SEO) friendly. Your content should reflect the products or services your business offers, articles or tips that are helpful to your audience, and information your customers use make a purchase decision.

Simply put, Google (and other search engines) aims to return the most helpful results for each search. Google wants each person conducting a search to find results that are helpful so that they go back to Google for their future searches. Each Google update changes their algorithm slightly to ensure that the best results are returned for each search.