Category: Pro Content

We invited SEO Expert, Chris Richard to review our new RI website! We don’t know exactly what ideas Chris will come up with but he always has insightful advice to improve our search ranking through his proven methods.

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This webinar is ideal for those who are looking to tighten up page titles, tweak meta descriptions and trim the sitemap. It also fits neatly between our other webinars #6 SEO Strategy and #17 Google Search Console (GSC) walkthrough.

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We have invited social media trainer, Jonathan Pollinger to introduce us to TikTok and share how it can build awareness of your business, help you to attract more customers, as well as boost sales and profits.

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During this session we will look at a selection of different landing pages and check to see whether they are giving the right message, are user friendly and share some advice on how to improve them.

It’s important to take that step back and see your homepage through your customers eyes to make sure it is working in a way you intended.

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Ben revisits LinkedIn Essentials to discuss some of the key ways people use it to get new business. This is an updated version of the 2019 presentation ‘Get more out of LinkedIn’.

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In this episode we are joined by IMC Club Member Dave Hargest from Selmach Machinery. During this episode he shares how he used 360 Matterport to create his own 3D Virtual Tour to showcase the companies showroom and boost audience engagement.

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Ben and I will revisit the importance on gathering Five Star Reviews and discuss the best ways to get feedback for your business.

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In this episode we take stock of our marketing, discussing the importance of evaluating the year before and why you should set goals for the year ahead.

Ben is joined by Club Member Nicky Ayers from Ecl-ips as they both dive into their marketing strategies and share what went well, what is still a work in progress, what goals we’re working towards and how we’re going to tackle them.

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Ben is joined by Tom Balmont and Sirco to discuss why video is important in video marketing.

How to improve your websites usability to appeal to the widest possible audience.

Notes

Related content

• Every design has the potential to include and exclude customers
• Dieter Ram’s 10 Commandments of Good Design

From logging in to editing a page and posting a blog article Ben takes you step by step through setting up your WordPress website.

Notes

Related content

• #25 WooCommerce walkthrough – Inventive Marketing Club (GROUP) for Members
• #9 Blogging & Content Strategy – Inventive Marketing Club (GROUP) for Members

Why WordPress?

• Can get started for free on WordPress.com
• Completely flexible when self managed
• Plugins give it flexibility
• Best control over SEO
• Powers over 40% of the worlds websites
• Used by global brands
• Active community

I take you through some key strategies to to build your perfect ecommerce sales funnel, from first contact to getting the sale. You’ll be able to apply the strategies in this video to almost any business even if you don’t sell online.

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How to use Instagram in your business, grow your audience and track progress.

Notes

Why are small businesses using photo sharing apps in marketing?

• Increasingly in popularity
• Businesses of all sizes and sectors are using it
• A great way to bring a visual element to your social media activity
• Reaching new audiences easier and quicker
• Sell products or services through the platform

Instagram as Marketing tool

• Who should use Instagram?

How to post

• Can only post using app
• Photos
• Video
• Importance of Stories & Reels
• Hashtag research

Planning Content

• Use your social media strategy for inspiration
• Variety is essential
• Post regularly
• Find inspiration from other accounts
• Consider including video

Tracking Progress

• Set Objectives to monitor progress
• Audience growth – size & quality
• Interaction – likes, comments, reach
• Performance on paid ads
• Sales of products
• Traffic to your website

Commit to action

What one action will you achieve over the next 30 days?

How to use Facebook in your business, grow your audience and win customers.

Notes

Introduction to Facebook

• Used by people in their personal lives to communicate with family and friends
• Use as a news source
• Community and common interest groups – keep up-to-date with what’s going on in a local area or share information / experience related to interests

Why should you use Facebook?

• You use should Facebook if you are a B2C business
• It provides you with access to your target audience
• Enables both current and potential customers to communicate directly with you
• Helps to build brand awareness and increase sales

Setting up a Business page

• Business pages are created within a personal page
• Add at least 1 other person as an administrator
• Ensure all key pieces of business information are present and updated
• Make it easy for people to find and recognise you
• Profile photos and cover photos need to be the correct size.
• Make use of the Call to Action button – Learn more, Buy now

Planning Content

• Posts need to be interesting and eye catching
• Sharing posts about a variety of topics related to your business is essential
• Plan and prepare your posts in advance – ideally 2 weeks
• Consider the photos, imagery and video you need to create / gather
• Encourage your audience to comment and interact – questions, opinions

What to share

• Inform your audience about your products and services
• Don’t share “salesy” posts
• Share what you have been up to – creating a product or delivering a service
• Document your journey and bring people to the forefront
• Develop campaigns – social calendar, seasons of the year, specific to your sector
• Blogs and articles
• Video

Publishing Content

• Sharing posts regularly is important to build momentum & be visible
• Be careful not to over share!
• Schedule posts using Facebook’s scheduling tool
• Review the best times of day and days of the week to publish content
• A visual element is essential – photo, infographic, link, video
• Add video files if possible – better performance

Review Performance

• Analyse performance of the page and posts once a month
• Identify any trends to factor into future posts
• What are you aiming for?
• Audience growth
• Increased reach
• Link clicks
• Google Analytics – clicks, journeys and enquiries/ sales

Top Tips

• Make it easy for people to find you – signpost in other marketing activities
• Encourage customers to leave Reviews and recommend you on Facebook
• Consider Ads – awareness or sales focused.
• Add Jobs to your page

Ben chairs a discussion with Nicky Ayers (Ecl-ips CCTV), Catherine Every (Pippin Copywriting) and Jon Johnson (Mountain Perspective) looking at how future trends and challenges could impact on our strategies for lead generation.

Notes

What could the future of marketing look like?

You don’t own the platform

• Rely on social and ads for new customers
• The sales funnel is out of your control
• No direct access to audience
• What happens if their policies change?

People prefer to buy/work online

• People prefer digital experiences – Easier, quicker.
• Remote working reduces town centre visitors
• How do they find out about you?

Search is voice only

• In the car, jogging, cooking
• Voice assistants only surface the first few results
• How do you get found in a sea of a thousand results?

Tracking is dead

• Browser tracking cookies are being blocked
• Email is hiding your opens and clicks
• How can we target them on other platforms?
• Do we need to collect so much data?

What you can do about it

Build a strong brand

• Trusted and consistent
• Meet people where they are then invite them back to your place – your website

Tribe Marketing

• Work with partners or as a group
• Make use of their audience
• Refer often

Use Video

• Focus on personality (brand)
• Make it useful, share something of value, have fun
• Great audio/lighting

Use structured data

• Answer questions, add FAQ schema
• Be the ultimate answer on Google 
• https://soundcloud.com/rather-inventive/interview-duane-forrester-yexts-vp-industry-insights

Be remarkable
Create email and social posts people really want to read, watch or be part of

Ben is joined by Benjamin Catley-Richardson (Brand Clear) to share how to be clear on your business brand. We walk through how to be easier noticed, easier to remember and easier to choose.

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I share three ideas that could help grow or even kick start your social media engagement. I’ve been developing the ideas over the years so you may already have heard a few of them but it’s always good to have a refresher.

Notes

Be Remarkable

How to create remarkable content that spreads further by working with others 

• Choose a social network you like 
• Where your audience hangs out 
• Reach out to your audience 
• Be remarkable 
• Be consistent
• Connect on a personal level 

Be the First to Follow

Understand how to attract people and create a movement 

Start a Social Tribe

Local businesses promoting local businesses on the web and through social media 

• Find your tribe 
• Follow your tribe
• Spend 15 a day minutes engaging 
• Recommend what you love 
• Feedback to improve 
• Don’t talk about yourself 

I’m joined by Jack McCaughtrie (Core Tree) and Clare Harris to discuss the current state of social as well as tips and advice.

Notes

Social Media Round Table

• We look at social media accounts by activity
• Has social media use changed during 2020 lockdown? Has it brought us together?
• What kind of content works best?
• Does it pay to create personalised content and making the effort?
• Does social media work for customer service?
• How can I get more followers on social media?

Commit to action

What one action will you achieve over the next 30 days?

My recommendations and advice for people regularly promoting their businesses who have completed the Foundation and Pro levels.

Notes

Marketing Fundamentals walkthrough (Expert)

Audience & Planning

• Review progress against business objectives
• Watch IMC #1 Planning your marketing strategy
• Ask customers why they made their decision to buy from you
• Watch IMC #14 How to make fab client testimonial videos
• Refine your customer persona

Stats & Analytics

• Identify two actions to increase website visits
• Review your stats on YouTube
• Watch IMC #3 YouTube Engagement
• Review stats on website landing pages and goals
• Review email clicks, which campaigns are working the best?

Web Design & Development

• Watch IMC #10 WordPress walkthrough
• Add the benefits of your product to your landing pages 
• Offer a free trial or consultation
• Add customer case studies
• Add an interests drop down to enquiry form or newsletter sign up
• Begin to add CTAs to blog / news content
• Watch IMC #25 WooCommerce walkthrough

SEO & Content

• Register your business on 5 high quality online directories
• Perform deeper competitor research
• Search for the keyword on Google
• Review the first three organic result snippets (ignore the ads)
• Visit each of the first three results
• Compile your results
• Conduct a review of your landing pages
• Watch IMC #20: Blog Content Consolidation
• Arrange guest blogging to build credibility & backlinks
• Add additional topic related words to your landing page or blog content
• Write another two blog posts

Social Media

• Develop a sharing strategy for social
• Make your social posts remarkable
• Show awareness of ideal clients sector
• Introduce video into marketing activites
• Turn your what you learn into content
• Watch IMC #15 How we make our podcast
• Setup a pretty Facebook URL
• Setup YouTube channel linked to Google +
• Watch IMC 21: Mining LinkedIn to find prospects
• Create your Social Tribe
  

Email Marketing

• Collect visitors data with a compelling offer
• Design a follow up email with extra information
• Optimise your email layout for clicks
• Experiment with animated graphics or videos in your email
• Design a specific email newsletter targeted at your ideal client
• Test your emails to make sure they aren’t going into SPAM

Business

• Review your customers in terms of price, profitability, ease of conversion, previous business
• Raise your prices by 10%
• Focus on your best prospects first
• Use CRM to track the nuturing process

Everything from setting up the plugin to products, discount vouchers and shipping and order processing.

Notes

Woocommerce is a full featured ecommerce system which allows you to sell a wide variety of physical products and digital products along with a wide range of extenstions for subscriptions and mentions amongst other things. 

When you install Woocommerce for the first time

You need to access the Plugin tab on the dashboard at the back end of your wordpress website. Add new, then search for ‘Woocommerce’. It should be the top hit, press install now button and then activate to install.
Once it is installed you will get a little Wizard setup screen, going through some of the basic information.

Example site: https://staging.ratherinventive.com/shop/

WooCommerce Key Tax Setup Tips

• Choose whether prices will be inclusive of VAT or not. Only shows it you enable taxes in General tab
• Chose whethere your customer base is business to business or business to consumer on which tax option you opt for.
• Calculate your tax based on your address. If your company is based within the UK, regardless of where the customer is located they will pay UK tax. There are lots of options available if you ship abroad and can rank your tax to correlate with different states and regions.

WooCommerce Key Shipping Setup Tips

• Shipping zones allow different options for each country or area you define

If you have any specific shipping issues, that I haven’t covered within the run through best to get in touch and run through these as shipping options are bespoke and taylored to each business differently.

Example site: https://campagnacollections.com/furniture/ where they have lots of different items and ship to different locations.

WordPress Payment

• By default Woocommerce comes with default payment details i.e Bank Transfer, Cheques, Cash on Delivery or Paypal.
• With each option you will follow the form to input your information and requirements.
• When setting up Paypal payments you will need to put in some details to activate this option. Ensure you capture the identity token so you can capture the payment and send the order details back to your website.
• We recommend Stripe highly for taking credits. You will need to add this as a plugin. It is free, there are lots of other free plugins for different payments method if you would like to chose something else.

Other payment providers: https://woocommerce.com/product-category/woocommerce-extensions/payment-gateways/

WordPress Privacy

• Options available that allow you to give access for guest orders or enforce customers to have an account to process the order. 
• Information here to allow ppl to remove their data correctly through the woocommerce system.

WordPress Emails

• Get creative and customise your email communications that get shown to people
• Run through the settings to customise the look of your email
• Include company logo from your media library
• By default, the email settings are quite basic. There are other ways of customising that in code or find plugins to allow you to customise emails. 

Products

• Highly recommend categorising your products so you are able to show targeted products on particular web pages of your site.
• You can also add thumbails for each category
• By default it will show related products in the same category but it possible to create upsell / cross sell items

Coupons

• Setup a Coupon under the Woocommerce menu tab
• Click Add Coupon which will allow you incentivise your customers by adding a discount off the final basket value.
• You have the option of percentage discount or fixed price discounts
• You are able to tailor the coupon to specific emails or products, limit the amount of time it can be used, set an expiry date etc

Processing orders

• Admin and customers get order emails (processed)
• Back payments will be put on hold until it is processed
• Once shipped or finished, orders will be marked as completed. Customer will get a final email to confirm the order
• In this page you can also refund orders from this screen

My advice for business getting serious about their marketing. These tasks follow a similar format to my Foundation level but will be suited to business already doing a bit of marketing.

Notes

Marketing Fundamentals walkthrough (Pro)

You’ve graduated to the pro level well done. These tasks follow a similar format but will be suited to business already doing a bit of marketing or those who’ve completed my Foundation level. 

Audience & Planning Section Highlights

• Review progress against business objectives
• Watch IMC #11 on understanding your customer
• Compare your customer needs to your product fit
• Write down your customer needs for each of the three buying stages:
  • 1. Awareness (social activity, adverts etc)
  • 2. Consideration (help articles, FAQs)
  • 3. Decision (product details, checkout)
• Build a customer persona: Download Persona Template
• Write a customer pain list of questions that you can help with
• Invite clients to take an online survey to get feedback

Helpful Links:

#11 Understanding your customer – Inventive Marketing Club (GROUP) for Members
3 simple steps to find your ideal clientAsk an expert to help you with this
How to Use Customer Satisfaction Surveys the Right Way
Create simple surveys in Google Forms

Stats & Analytics Section Highlights

• Watch IMC #7 on how best to use Google Analytics
• Check out your stats in GA
• Decide which GA stats you need to measure to reach your objectives
• Setup GA Goals to track activity on your website
• Identify one action to increase website visits

Helpful Links

#7 Google Analytics – Inventive Marketing Club (GROUP) for Members
About Goals in Google Analytics

Website Design & Development Section Highlights

• Grade your website and marketing (again)
• Watch IMC #8 to learn why image optimisation is important
• Reduce image size
• Remove unused plugins or add-ons
• Ensure your website navigation is clear and simple
• Audit your page content to ensure information is current
• Make sure your website has a Call To Action

Top Tip: Don’t delete plugins straight away, leave them deactivated for a couple of weeks just to make sure you don’t need them. If you have had the site developed by a web developer ask them to double it check to ensure that ones you are not using aren’t slowing down your site.

Helpful Links

IMC #8 Image EditingInformation on Optimising Imagescompressnow.comtinypng.comImageOptimSafe SVG plugin
Speed up your WordPress website

SEO & Content Section Highlights

• Watch IMC #6 on SEO tips and strategy
• Research competitor sites on Google
• Write a blog article that answers a question from your customer pain list
• Check that your site’s page titles clearly relate to the page content
• Create unique descriptions for each page
• Watch IMC #16 on Improve landing page SEO
• Create a landing page for each keyword
• Listen to Greg talk about SEO and affiliate marketing
• Write two blog posts
• Get listed on Yell.com

Helpful Links

IMC #6 SEO Strategy
Get an expert to write an article for you
IMC #16 Improve landing page SEO
On-Page SEO, a beginners guide
How to write for business – cutting out the waffle

Social Media Section Highlights

• Watch IMC #4 on reviewing your LinkedIn profile
• Add business website links to your LinkedIn profile
• Endorse 3 people on LinkedIn
• Send LinkedIn connection invites to people you met recently
• Watch IMC #12 for tips and advice on Google My Business
• Optimise your Google My Business profile
• Ask customers to write a Google review
• Connect with target clients on LinkedIn
• Set up a business Twitter account
• Participate in a local networking hour on Twitter
• Set up a business Facebook Page

Helpful Links

IMC #4 Get more out of LinkedIn
LinkedIn Skill Endorsements – Overview
Watch IMC #12 Google My Business walkthrough
IMC #5 How to get Five Star Reviews
A Complete Guide To Twitter Networking Hours

Email Section Highlights

• Watch IMC #2 Using email marketing effectively
• Setup an email newsletter service
• Collect email addresses from visitors to your site
• Review your email strategy

Helpful Links

IMC #2 Using email marketing effectively
8 Small Business Email Marketing Tips for 2020
Add a Signup Form to Your Website5 simple steps to your email marketing MOT

Business Highlight Section

• Create a spreadsheet to track your leads
• Listen to Rocky Romanella business leadership development
• Watch IMC #13 Productivity at work
• Review your sales process from initial lead enquiry to final invoice

Helpful Links

Example Google Lead Sheet
Watch IMC #13 Productivity at work

My recommendations and advice for a startup or business new to marketing.

Notes

Marketing Fundamentals walkthrough (Foundation)

https://ratherinventive.com/blog/marketing-strategy-foundation/
My recommendations and advice that I have gained from working with over 500 companies in the last 10years. This is the Foundation level out of the series which is targeted at startups and businesses that are new to marketing.

Planning Section Highlights

• Write down three things you’d like your business to achieve over the next 12 months
• Take each objective and note down how you’ll achieve them
• Try writing your company strap line in 20 words
• Describe your ideal customer in 5 words
• Listen to how Gina Geoghegan started her drinks business Wild Fizz Kombucha
  https://soundcloud.com/rather-inventive/wild-fizz-kombucha-interview 

Top Tip: Spend more time on your planning than anything else as every hour you spend planning will save you so much time in the long run.

Analytics Section Highlights

Start setting things up as when you advance to the other marketing levels you will have something useful to work with.

• Set up a Google Analytics profile for your website
• Read beginners guide to Google analytics
• Set up a monthly Google Analytics email report
  

Website Section Highlights

I am assuming you have sort of website, if you don’t skip this section but for now we want to see where you are:

• Grade your website performance
• Make a backup of your website
• Check your website has no page errors
• Update your website content manager and any plugins to the latest version
• Add a cookie policy to your website to be GDPR compliant

Helpful Links:
https://ratherinventive.com/blog/imc-podcast-10-what-your-website-needs-to-be-legal/
https://ratherinventive.com/blog/boiling-essentials-gdpr-first-step-navigating-new-regulation/

SEO Section Highlights

• Check you have a Google friendly site
• Localise your primary keyword
• Research your primary keyword
• Find out the Google position for your primary keyword
• Check home page title and description are eye catching and interesting

Helpful Links:

https://ratherinventive.com/blog/imc-podcast-1-creating-an-seo-strategy/
https://ratherinventive.com/blog/imc-podcast-2-building-on-your-seo-strategy/

Social Section Highlights

A couple of simple things to cover but we go into more depth on the Pro Level:

• Set up a personal LinkedIn profile
• Set up a Google My Business page
• Get Local with Facebook and Google My Business
  

Helpful Links:

https://support.google.com/business/answer/2911778?hl=en-GB
https://public.3.basecamp.com/p/tTQrpkkRZjz1K98PiAvjtiEj

Business Section Highlights

This is everything else, all the admin but all useful stuff

• Understand basic marketing and accounting terms
• Set up a spreadsheet to log your business numbers

This webinar is a screen share walkthrough of how to create text ad on Google. I share some of the tips I’ve learned along the way and my process for planning and creating ads on Google.

Notes

Where possible try to do inbound marketing put information out there for people to find. However, advertising and outbound marketing can help kick things off to start with. It can be good to combine the two. 

Inbound – You put out information i.e. a how to guide, a video, give and share information. Your customer will find it online and share it for you.

Outbound – Pushing information at your customer; disrupting what they are doing i.e. a phone call, advert.

Planning

Advertising comes down to planning:

• Goal – What do you want to happen?
• Audience – Who is it for? What are their needs?
• Benefits – Why does your product matter?
• Budget – Guess at first, quickly learn acquisition costs (£ ads / # orders)

Review and monitor your adverts regularly.

We’ll be using CCTV Logbook from Ecl-ips as an example. This web app helps people audit their CCTV system hardware.

Campaign 1

• Goal: Signup for a trial walkthrough webinar
• Audience: Security Managers who need to know when assets where maintained as they are responsible for site security and cannot have any cameras or recording
  equipment out of order. Saving time for staff or external engineers
• Benefits: Detailed CCTV camera asset log, Maintains full audit history, Easy to use, Save time on engineering audits
• Budget: £600/mo (£20/day)

Campaign 2

• Goal: Watch video ‘How to manage GDPR and privacy for CCTV’
• Audience: Business Owners who need to comply with legal obligations of data protection enforced by ICO. Don’t want to risk fine.
• Benefits: GCPR compliant and secure. Reduce risk of fine from ICO
• Budget: £300/mo (£10/day)

Recommend video IMC11 Understanding your customer

Research

Quick research

1. Search keyword in Google, note the main phrases used
2. Scroll to bottom and look at related searches
3. Build phrase lists for each campaign

Detailed research

1. Tools / Keyword Planner
2. Discover new keywords
3. Add keywords from campaign phrase list
4. Find more keywords, look for ones with higher searches and low competition
5. If low search volume then might need broader range of keywords
6. Check out the competition, what other ads/organic results are there? What are they offering?

Create keyword list
cctv logbook, cctv audit, cctv audit template, cctv audit report, cctv camera inspection checklist, cctv asset manager, cctv maintenance report, cctv audit system, audit software, cctv audit software

Split into two ad campaigns

CCTV Log Book
cctv logbook, cctv log book
CCTV Audit Template (or CCTV Audit Checklist log)cctv audit, cctv audit template, cctv audit report, cctv camera inspection checklist, cctv asset manager, cctv maintenance report, cctv audit system, audit software, cctv audit software

Forecast the cost

1. Tools / Keyword Planner
2. Get search volume and forecasts
3. Experiment with different initial click costs
4. Use to explore price to per per click

Creating a new campaign

1. New campaign / Leads / Search / Website visits
2. Website: https://cctvlogbook.com/
3. Add main keyword to campaign name: cctv logbook
4. Don’t include display partners. Dilutes traffic
5. Expand more settings
6. Add end date. To prevent leaving active. 30 days to start.
7. Add schedule to run between 07:00-22:00. Separate for week day and week ends to make easier to review and disable
8. Target to location. UK in this case as low searches but may wish to target locally
9. Add a budget: £20
10. And focus on conversions
11. Add site links, extra links to specific pages
12. Add call extension if relevant

Setup ad group

1. Name as primary keyword
2. Add keywords. BMM, Phrase and Exact. Allows easier review later

+cctv +logbook+cctv +log +book”cctv logbook””cctv log book”[cctv logbook][cctv log book]

Create ads

1. Start with Google defaults and amend
2. Create multiple adds with different wording. You can review and pause.

Google Ads Walkthrough Tips

• Never use broad keywords. This will waste your budget
• Analyse best keywords to use in tool like Google Keyword planner
• Search main keywords in Google to make sure expected results are returned and the keywords mean the same to you and Google
• Look at competitor adverts. Find out who is number one
• Limit number of ad group keywords to five and keep to same topic
• Use exact match [my keyword], phrase match “my keyword” and Broad Match Modified (BMM) +my
• +keyword to capture broadest range of traffic and help review process
• Use bid stacking e.g. Pay more for exact match (most expensive), phrase match (next), then BMM (next)
• Check devices: and change bid adj if want to exclude device types such as mobile
• Setup ad schedule 7am-10pm for general viewing and removing time waster clicks
• Ideally link to dedicated landing pages on website with text that mirrors the ad

Swipe-Worthy – Marketing, Ad and Copywriting examples

Learn more about mining LinkedIn to find prospects and then how best to engage with them.To help me explore this topic I’ll be joined by social media and blog writer Jack McCaughtrie from (Core Tree).

Notes

Guest Jack McCaughtrie from Core Tree

Why mine Linkedin for prospects

• Remote networking
• Local, national or global reach
• Connect with difficult to reach individuals
• Build awareness of your company and how to help people

There is less noise in the channel, because it is a business to business platform it has a more professional mentality to it and people are more diligent in their approach
Jack McCaughtrie

Case Study – Witley Jones

Bespoke school furniture manufacturer, based in Worcestershire.

• They wanted to build their awareness and engagement in education
• Trying to get an in, in a busy market
• Approach of not hard selling but one of trying to support and align partnerships

Understand, Engage and Convert

Building an Audience

• Quality not quantity
• Reconnect with contacts, clients and colleagues
• Use market intelligence to identify new companies and people
• Connect with new people you have (or going to) meet
• Digitising your network

…you have 100% control who is in your audience and have control in targeting the right people. It is important you connect to the right kind of audience, a target client or prospect who have some value to you or you to them. 
Jack McCaughtrie

Search

• Use Company Pages to find best contacts
• Search for Job Titles,
• Location and industry
• Set up ‘Search Alert’ for weekly email

Who to connect with

• Connect with people who are directly relevant to you
• Associated with markets you work with
• People who would be interested in content you can share
• People you can help with
• Don’t simply collect connections
• Connect with people that interact with your posts

Start a conversation

• Personalise your connection invitation
• Soft intro message once connected. Not sales focused
• Ask questions to encourage a response
• Follow 2/3 days after invite accepted
• Be patient

Breaking the ice

• Be inquisitive about their business or sector
• Make an opportunity to send more information – relevant blog or video
• Refer to a post they have shared recently or something you have seen on their website
• Ask a favour (Benjamin Franklin effect)

Nurture & Follow-up

• Sow the seeds that will grow over time
• Be patient. Building relationships take times
• Have regular content to share within your network
• Ask who the best person to contact
• Ask if you can share more information
• Don’t be afraid to follow up once, twice, three times

Review your profile

• Must be up to date and accurate
• First impression counts
• Make it relevant to your audience
• Answer the questions your new connections will have
• Add link to website and videos
• Consider the posts you share and engage with.

IMC4 – Get more from Linkedin

I’m joined by Guest Copywriter, Catherine Every (Hello Pippin) to discuss how to review your blog to find the best-performing articles and which ones need cutting away.

Notes

Guest Copywriter, Catherine Every (Hello Pippin)

What is a blog review and why do we do one?

• Remove thin content / consolidate articles 
• Aim: to focuson content quality, improve search visibility, build traffic 

Casestudy
Communion Architects www. communionarchitects.com 
They have built up a lot of posts over 8 years some with good traffic but could be improved.

Collecting the data

• Collect data over a full two year period 
• Export article pages from WordPress 
• Marry up article pages, GA, GSC data into Google sheet Compare which pages most visited from search 
• Find low performing pages and review

Blog Review

• Start with the low performers (<10 visits) 
• Then tackle pages with >50 unique visits 
• Make notes on pages actions to take

Review Process

• September 2019 and January 2020 
• Review all posts, make notes 
• Start with the easy stuff: delete or fix broken links, images 
• Combine posts: Read, outline new content, collate, rewrite 
• Review in a day or with Alex (client) 
• Key challenges

Review Checklist

• Can content be deleted and redirected? 
• Can content be merged with other articles? 
• Should the article be split up and extended? 
• Can URL, title be improved? Keywords added 
• Can content be improved 
• Is it in the correct category? 
• Any missing images or broken links? 
• Can any relevant images or videos be added? 
• Does it have a link to a landing page? 
• Are there any content gaps?

Tidying Up

• Site audit to make sure everything works 
• All deleted posts are redirected to new ones 
• All internal links point to new articles 
• Note content ideas for future articles
• Be careful not to change URLs for key pages

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