Aug 25, 2020
And This Isn’t Just My Opinion …
In an era of autoresponders and impersonal replies, businesses sometimes make customers feel like a dime a dozen. But, all is not lost. Being relevant offers a path toward redemption. What’s a powerful way that businesses can be relevant while making connections that lead to an increase in revenue without the need for a hard sell?
The answer: Blogging.
Don’t believe blogging is a good fit for your business?
Consider this …
- Do you want to be relevant to your customers?
- Do you want to be seen as an expert in your field?
- Do you want to ramp up your rankings in organic search?
- Do you want to engage with customers and other industry thought leaders to share ideas?
If you said yes to any of these, here are a few stats to keep in mind for your business blogging:
- 36% of the Fortune 500 companies are using their blogs for thought leadership, product promotion and engagement.
- On average, companies with blogs produce 67% more leads per month than those without. (Source: DemandMetric)
- Each blog post that a business publishes takes about 3 hours and 16 minutes per piece to complete. (Source: OrbitMedia)
- Blogging is the third most common content marketing strategy after video and eBooks. (Source: HubSpot)
- 43% of blog readers only skim through the post; so use pullouts, factoids and graphics. (Source: HubSpot)
Set a Path And Work Your Plan
Blogging has to be a labor of love and that requires the right ingredients, including time, effort and a plan. Put these all together and you’ll generally yield favorable results.
While developing your content, it’s a good idea to consider the following:
- Is what I am about to share with my audience relevant to them?
- What is the main idea that I want to convey?
- How could I engage with readers?
- What is the strategy behind my blog? Add subscribers? SEO? Provide downloadable lead-generation material? To share product information?
From a marketing perspective, blogging is a powerful way for businesses to build long-term success.
First, blogging helps drive traffic to your website. Every time you publish a new article, you are essentially adding another opportunity for your business to be found by search engines and attract more page views. Plus, new visitors to your site offer the potential for new leads.
How can you capitalize on this? MAKE SURE TO CRAFT A STRONG CALL TO ACTION!
Give people something to do when they get there … after they’ve taken the time to read through your insightful, informative, entertaining and/or educational information.
Lead them to water … AND make them drink! Include a conversation that supports a business goal such as “download now,” “contact us for an appointment” or “request an estimate.” You got them to your site with your content; now bring it back to your business goals. Engage them!
Keep Them Coming Back
Another tip is to keep them coming back by making them want more. You could promote a three-part series on a specific topic or even teaser an upcoming blog article. A great way to entice repeat readers is to let them know there is more ahead and what they can expect to see or receive. Of course, this takes planning so you know what to promote and if you have a hot topic or potential popular download coming soon that you’d like to start sharing.
Now, not every person that visits a blog will become a lead … they may just be curious, passing through; but once they’ve read the information, a connection is created between your business and the reader, and that helps build your authority as a thought leader.
Becoming a Thought Leader
One key method to establishing authority as a business: helping answer questions or solve problems from your specific audience/customer segment. You’re helping your target audience by being a credible source for information, which is particularly beneficial as a sales tool. Having a prospect read your blog and find answers to their questions is a very powerful thing!
That’s not to say that you should avoid getting the opinions of experts within the industry – you absolutely should do this. In fact, by getting other experts involved, you will also be validating YOUR OWN expertise. Whether it’s with a short video or a series of Q&A with photos, there are a variety of creative ways to incorporate this into your content plan. Also, leverage social media – especially when you are discussing other brands or bringing in other experts. Social media can be used to promote your blog, gain insights on trending topics and to ask followers to share their thoughts for an upcoming post.
Continuous Growth
Honing in on the right social media channels that your potential customer follows is important; and sharing your blog content with followers will always increase your exposure.
Here’s an example of how effectively using social media can expand your blog’s reach – say you have 10 people on Facebook who actively follow your brand. Those 10 people also live on Twitter and retweet each other’s posts. Imagine if each of those 10 people have 500 followers. If they are actively promoting your content, your reach will exponentially grow each time something is shared. You can wager that your content is reaching the right people, because realistically, followers will be your target audience and will share with other like-minded members. In turn, increased page views and social reshares will affect how often a brand will pop up in Google searches as well. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
All It Takes Is An Idea
So, what are you waiting for? Businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don’t. (Source: HubSpot)
By prioritizing your business blogging efforts, you are guaranteed to receive more ROI than companies who don’t. The first step is simply coming up with an idea and getting started.
Our hope is that you use these facts and tips to change the conversation at your company from “Why bother with a blog” to “When can we start”.
Foster Marketing is here to help you create strong paths for you to connect with your audience, whether you are still in virtual-only mode, or back face-to-face. Call us today at 281-448-3435, contact us online or connect with us on LinkedIn.
Aug 30, 2019
By Anna Scordos-Brooke and Beau Robinson, PR Experts
Writing is not just an activity, it’s an art. However, for most people, it can be a challenging art to master. At Foster Marketing, we take your successfully completed groundbreaking project, innovative new technology or strategic new hire and effectively communicate the news to the global oil and gas industry.
However, an article doesn’t write itself. Once we have our hands on all the relevant information, actually writing compelling text requires self-discipline and an acute ability to separate important vs. frivolous details. This takes time, thought and above all, experience.
Here are a few secrets, accumulated from years of experience that can help craft a dull, unorganized and uninformative piece into a valuable technical industry resource. Following are basics to improve your writing!
Pre-planning
The foundations for writing a good article are laid before you even open a Word document.
Know Your Audience: First you need to make sure you know “what” you are writing about, “who” you are writing for and “why.” For your target audience to engage with your message, you must keep them in mind while writing every single word. Never forget “why” you wanted to communicate with them in the first place.
Gather the Information: Before you write, make sure you have all of the relevant information you need. This will prevent you from having to go back and forth to gather more. It’s okay to have blanks to fill in at a later date, but make sure all of the key ideas are in place, ready to build upon. One thing you do not want to lose when you start writing is your “creative flow.”
Create an Outline: Creating an outline is the best way to organize your ideas, including the main idea, subtitles and the body of your article. By creating an outline, you can have the foundation of your article finished before you begin the hard work of putting the words into sentences and the sentences into paragraphs.
Less is More …
… Especially when you have a word count to adhere to. It is important to eliminate any ideas or unnecessary words that do not add value to the article. Don’t force your readers to sift through a sea of words to find the important information – your main points should stand out.
Vary Sentence Structure: Paragraphs that do not flow well are hard to read. Vary your sentence structure with a variety of simple and complex sentences, so the text does not end up feeling too heavy or too light in tone.
Make it Visually Appealing: We are hard-wired to see text as shapes. Make sure that your paragraphs are visually appealing. Break up that super long paragraph into two smaller ones and people will be more inclined to continue reading without feeling like they need to stop to take a nap.
Proofing
Don’t Overlook the Large Text: Headlines and subheads are the largest text on the page, but easily overlooked from a proofing standpoint. Give them the attention they call for!
Read the Copy in Random Chunks: Reading the copy in a variety of disordered chunks stops you from getting lost in the content and helps you guard against the mistake of reading what you expect to see.
Look Out for Then, Than and That: Your spell-check sometimes doesn’t catch these. Misplaced but otherwise correctly spelled words have become one of the most frequent grammatical mistakes in typed documents.
The Bigger Picture
Avoid the Sales Pitch: An article represents your company and provides the opportunity to showcase the voice or personality of your company. Avoid writing articles with very little flair for language or an article containing “fluff.” Your article shouldn’t be a disguised form of advertising, instead, it should be a useful technical resource. Any story for external communication must have an interesting and relevant point to make, and must have significant value to offer to the industry.
Demonstrate Thought Leadership: The article must demonstrate the thought and intelligence of the company, and also stimulate the reader. You’ve probably heard the term “food for thought.” It should leave the reader thinking about the applications of the new technology for their particular company. A great article is created as a response to real needs, issues and developments in today’s oil and gas industry. We encourage clients to promote their most recent project work and to discuss current and future technical developments and their reasons behind pursuing them.
Make It Readable: Any writing should have a narrative that holds everything together and makes it readable. If you consider the vast amounts of media that are fighting for a reader’s attention, it is important for your article to be clear, concise and easy to read.
When writer’s block strikes, or if you just don’t have the time, contact our experts at Foster Marketing for your article writing needs! Call us today 337-235-1848 to set up a meeting with our experts!
Aug 15, 2019
Wild Well is the world’s leading provider of onshore and offshore well control emergency response, pressure control, relief well planning, engineering, environmental, and training services.
The company’s objective was to further build its relationship with the media, as well as increasing future opportunities for article features.
Foster Marketing provided a solution through their public relations efforts, which included a media advisory, a press release, in-booth interviews at a trade show and media tracking.
With combined efforts between our public relations services and follow ups, Wild Well received coverage and opportunities from major industry publications, including The American Oil & Gas Reporter, Drilling Contractor and the North American Shale. The press release resulted in 12 internet mentions and 3 print mentions.
Aug 14, 2019
Oilfield Helping Hands is a nonprofit organization that helps oilfield families with financial assistance in times of crisis. OHH is dedicated to raising funds to provide assistance for those in need.
As a nonprofit that relies on their fun events for funding, it is of utmost importance that OHH is active on social media platforms for adequate promotion and awareness.
Foster Marketing meets OHH’s needs by providing effective social media plans and campaigns for its media profiles The team puts together content and visuals, generally 2-3 posts per week for each platform.
Additionally it allows us to consistently keep OHH updated on follower demographics, efficiency of boosted posts, reach, engagement and impressions. The information is beneficial in order to track success.
Jul 1, 2019
Don’t be afraid, you have 365 days to turn your resolutions into a habit. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
As a new year begins, it gives us all an opportunity to look back on previous successes and stumbles and to set new goals for the year ahead.
With the closure of 2018, it also means that it is time for New Year’s resolutions. Don’t be afraid, you have 365 days to put your goals into action. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying: “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
You are not alone in taking on 2019! The experts at Foster Marketing are here with some tips to give you a jump start, and, quite possibly give you some ideas for resolutions for yourself to work toward.
George Foster, CEO
George Foster
Get organized! If you saw my desk, you’d think I’m anything but organized, but I pretty much know where everything is. January is a great time to thin down those folders, clean out those drawers, make to-do lists and a myriad of other things to get organized.
Some ideas: Lose what you don’t use. Empty your drawers and only put back in what you use. You’ll find lots of stuff you don’t use or access. Give it away, eliminate and concentrate.
Make it yours. There’s no single way to organize your life or stuff. Some people use Day-Timers, others their smartphone. Whatever works is what’s best.
Use the brown bag method. Take a brown paper grocery bag or box and fill it with all of the stacks of papers, magazines, mail – your basic clutter. The initial purpose is to get it out of the way and read/review it later. If you haven’t done so in 48 hours or so, throw the whole bag out.
Use the salami method. Think of your project as one big salami. No one eats a whole salami at one time. Take one bite at a time – one drawer, one file, one room.
And, good luck!
Tiffany Harris
A new year often brings with it the launch of new products and services that need to be branded, positioned and promoted. But it does not necessarily mean the budget has expanded to accommodate the launch initiatives and keep the marketing maintenance for existing offerings going.
As you develop your integrated marketing communications plan and determine the individual tasks within each marketing initiative, think about the below tips to help keep your task-method budget on budget. Know your go-to-market strategy before you take off running: Take the time to strategically identify “Who” you are as a company; “How” you want your company to be perceived; and “What” your short- and long-term goals and objectives are for your company, your products and your services. Then, you can develop a much more refined and targeted integrated marketing and implementation plan.
The best and most-effective marketing initiatives are the ones with legs: Incorporating projects that can be used in multiple ways is essential in maximizing the budget and will create a more cohesive integrated plan and message.
A project without a deadline is a wish: The longer a project takes, the more it usually costs you, be it in time or money. But remember to set feasible deadlines, “settling” just to hit the due date can cost you even more if you have to redo it later.
Kristy Bonner
For 2019, keeping a watchful eye on your website is even more imperative! Not just to be sure everything is accurate and to ensure you have a steady stream of new content going up, but also to see what is really happening – as in what users are doing on your website.
Diving into your web analytics beyond just the number of visits to your site can tell you a lot about what is working and where you need some help.
For example, take a look at what page(s) are ranking for specific terms you’d like to be found for in organic search. If a page on your site is ranking No. 10, with some content tweaks, you could likely push this up to the top 3 spots more quickly than starting over with a new page. Also, look for popular pages on your site and see if you can add calls to action that make sense for your business for an added layer of engagement in a very measurable way.
Also, in 2019, add paid social efforts to your plan. Many clients in the oil and gas sector are seeing an uptick in their numbers via paid Facebook boosts and LinkedIn sponsored-content campaigns for just a few hundred dollars. These options offer specific targeting capabilities to maximize your spend and achieve better results. Just make sure you are paying to promote your best content that your audience will really want!
Beau Robinson, PR Coordinator
Beau Robinson
Look for 2019 to be even more brand-focused than 2018. What does this mean for the PR world? It means that your brand has to stand out from the rest. Being seen the most only goes so far. People are looking for value, and you must deliver that value to be successful.
First, you must ask yourself “Who am I trying to reach?”. Know where they are, what they are reading and what they will find interesting. Ensure that you give yourself the best opportunity for the message to be seen and read, and, above all, make sure that the information delivers value.
There are three overall PR tips I can leave you with for 2019: Have consistent messaging as a part of your brand. The message is just as important as your name and logo. Thought leadership pieces are perfect for allowing the experts in your company to control the message.
If there is not a compelling reason for writing or readers won’t find it newsworthy, you might as well not write at all. Whether it is a press release, case study or technical article, it should be newsworthy and serve a purpose.
Digital platforms such as social media are at the forefront of communication for 2019. It gives you direct access to your audience. Use it to engage with your audience.
From our team at Foster Marketing, we wish you the best for 2019, and hope that you accomplish all the goals you have set out to achieve.
The Foster Marketing team is experienced in integrated marketing efforts for oil and gas companies. Contact our team at 337-235-1848 to set up a meeting to discuss how our expertise can benefit your company.
