Bridget Willard | SaaS Marketing Agency

Category: Content Marketing

  • Is Your Nonprofit Taking Advantage of GivingTuesday?

    Are you a nonprofit or a foundation? It’s time to start thinking about GivingTuesday. GivingTuesday is a “global movement for generosity,” and it happens the Tuesday after Cyber Monday.

    When is GivingTuesday?

    So it goes  American Thanksgiving, Black Friday, which is for in-person businesses. Then you have Small Business Saturday, the shop small movement, which is sponsored by American Express. Then you have Cyber Monday which is for online businesses and then GivingTuesday.

    The short answer is GivingTuesday is always the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. This year Giving Tuesday is November 30. Want a to-do list to get going? . 

    Focus Your Fundraising Campaigns on GivingTuesday

    GivingTuesday is a campaign in and of itself — separate from your general fund campaigns. It’s best if your organization starts working on that special campaign in the summer. Of course, now it’s already mid-September. But you still have time to ork on what one thing do you want to raise money for in November.

    What one thing do you want to raise money for on GivingTuesday? Write that copy. Make a landing page. Make a specific donation page only for that.

    This is where a plugin like GiveWP.com comes in handy. So that you can measure your campaigns against, um, one another. The funds can all go to the same bank account or to the same general fund, but you really want to see how your campaigns are going.

    Get Email Marketing Ready for GivingTuesday

    You’re going to want to make sure that you have a mailing list specifically for GivingTuesday. So you might want to start inviting people to just subscribe to that mailing list. You even may want to create swag for donors who specifically donate on GivingTuesday.

    GivingTuesday is a Good Opportunity for Co-Marketing 

    You might want to work with a branding partner or co-market with a for-profit business for #GivingTuesday. So start thinking about that in June. Get it all squared away by the 1st of August. Make those landing pages. They don’t have to be live but make sure that you have filled your calendar with all of the things that you need to do and to accomplish before that.

    Yes, We Wrote a Marketing Book for Your Nonprofit

    just to help your nonprofit focus its marketing efforts. More than my GivingTuesday worksheet, there is an entire chapter on GivingTuesday that you’ll want to read which includes optimizing your donation forms. But it also includes information on websites, landing pages, and marketing automation. 

    Table of contents screenshot for The Only Online Marketing Book You Need for Your Nonprofit.
    Screenshot of Look Inside at the Table of Contents for the Book

    What are you waiting for? People want to donate to your organization.

    Watch the My Video 

    The Only Online Marketing Book You Need for Your Nonprofit

    The Only Online Marketing Book You Need for Your Nonprofit is the second book in a series of three intended to help businesses, schools, and organisations get a grasp on the sometimes dizzying world of online marketing. This book will fuel your interest and excitement about what digital offers your nonprofit or foundation, and how you can use the internet to succeed. Your digital presence is an extension of all the things your business does online and offline. It’s an exciting time!

    Successful businesses and nonprofits have marketing campaigns. The only difference is that one campaign is to sell a product to fit a customer’s lifestyle and identity and the other sells a donation or way to give that fits that lifestyle and identity.

    This book also includes a chapter written by the founder of Groundhogg, Adrian Tobey called “Your nonprofit is bleeding money if you’re not leveraging CRM & Marketing Automation.”

    This is the second book in a three-book series for small businesses, nonprofits, and schools.

    Online marketing and communication is a way for you to make new connections and share with the world. It’s a foundational skill that you can apply to grow your organization for years to come, no matter how quickly technology changes and trends rise and fall. If you’re uncomfortable with tech, that’s okay. Communication, online or offline, is not a contest.

    Participate. Try. Fail. Learn. Try again. Succeed!

    Purchase the book on Amazon.com.

  • Why Service-Based Businesses Need to Care about Blogging

    Does it feel like your contractor website or service-based business doesn’t need a blog? Because it does. Let’s help you get started blogging.

    A Blog is a Website with Benefits

    We’re all manic about blogs. Everyone has one. It’s a little overwhelming at times but it needn’t be. It’s just a log. On the web. In fact, that’s where the term comes from. Weblog. Remember Captain Kirk at the start of every Star Trek episode? “Captain’s log stardate 31542.6. We are cautiously entering the Kappa Centauri star system on Federation business … “ Think of your blog as a public diary. A notebook of great ideas that you share. 

    It might be confusing. Is my blog a separate website? Is it a page on my website? Is it another system entirely? Why should I even have a blog? The answer to that last question is “benefits.” A blog is a website with benefits.

    What’s the difference between the two? Websites and blogs are essentially the same, right? Blogs are updated frequently. They are short and sweet. They are flexible. A website is mostly static and rarely changes. When was the last time you updated the mission statement on your website? 2015? A blog is updated daily, weekly, or monthly. Okay, let’s stick with weekly.

    Blogs also allow for a very important thing: user engagement. A blog allows conversation, comments, and sharing on social media. They make connections with our audience and with each other. They also help our website be found in that huge collection of content we call the Internet. 

    “The more you can publish, the more traffic you will have. It’s been studied time and again. Once a week is a minimum and four times a week seems aggressive but can be effective.” Bridget Willard

    What Makes a Great Blog?

    A blog post is not a journalistic article. People are used to seeing news articles and writing that way. A blog post is more like an infomercial. You want to have consumable, bite-sized chunks of content that people can scan (and tweet).

    • create relevant content for your reader — this is about them, not you
    • quality before quantity — better one filet steak than twelve frozen burgers
    • offer tips and tricks for added value — this is content marketing!
    • topical and current information — that people are looking for, that is trending
    • make it personal — write from the hip – develop trust

    7 Important Ways Your Business Profits from Blogging

    Improves Your Search Engine Presence

    Most blog posts don’t rank on the first page of Google and are, therefore, practically invisible. After all, who looks at the hit list after page 1? However, your SEO performance can be significantly increased through blog posts. More content, more updates to your website, more clicks, more shares. It’s a no-brainer. However, many companies make the mistake of setting up a corporate blog without previously set goals, content strategy, or topic-specific orientation. Don’t be that company.

    Blogging Creates New and Dynamic Content for Your Website

    If you manage a blog properly and integrate it with existing pages, your site can benefit from a steady stream of new, dynamic content. This can positively impact your SEO ranking and add value for visitors. This also has a positive impact on the perception of your business. Think in advance about how your channels mesh and how your blog interacts with your social channels. Consider how articles will be integrated into the content pages of your website, too.

    Makes Your Content more Accessible to Your Customers

    Need content for your social media channels? Meet your blog posts! Intelligent posting increases traffic to your website but also boosts your social media channels. Don’t simply spread the same content on different channels though. Your Twitter posts should be clearly different from your Facebook posts.

    “When you write a blog post it’s more than just an essay that you used to write for school projects. You need to write in a way that’s educational, informative, and slightly entertaining. This is marketing copy; it’s not a term paper.” Bridget Willard

    Blogging Gives Your Customers Access to Expert Content

    Do you want to position your company as an expert in a certain subject area? A blog can have a supporting effect. Let the experts behind your business have their say in your blog. This might just be you, but it’s your time to shine! Position yourself as a GoTo source of information. Become a Destination.

    Let’s Your Customers See the Personal Side of Your Business

    What works well on blogs are personal views that stimulate discussion on a particular topic. Customer experiences. Tips and Tricks. People want to feel comfortable, and they want to know you are talking with them – personally. Dare to show real opinions on matters people care about. Your blog offers a wonderful opportunity to show empathy with your customers. It’s about being real.

    It’s a Super Lead Generation Opportunity

    Blog posts can cover formats for awareness along the customer journey. A blog can serve both the superficial as well as the deeper knowledge transfer and can form an important pivot in content marketing. Once people have read your posts and developed trust in what you are saying, they will take the opportunity of signing up for your newsletter or filling out a contact form. Bazinga!  

    A Blog is Your Own(ed) Media

    Your blog has the advantage over social media of being your own. You control the content. You have the upper hand in everything from design, what is published, and how you use the content. More importantly, studies show that owned media, such as blogs and websites, are trusted more than social media channels.

    “I always say I put words on the internet. What I’m doing is writing an article to show people how to do something, and to tell them why to do it that way. Think reading Julia Child’s blog post so that you can go ahead and make a meal to impress the boss. Now you’re going to continue watching Julia Child’s blog for more interesting posts and you’re maybe going to buy her book.” Warren Laine-Naida 

    Wrapping it up

    Your blog is a long game. So is SEO. And your savings account. So is your entire business. Take a strategic approach, have a recognizable goal, know your target group, and regularly write about topics useful to your audience. It’s going to be time-consuming, sure, but it’s an investment. 

    Set time aside each week to write one post. You don’t need to pull a blog post out of thin air. What’s happened this week?

    • A lot of social media action
    • market news you have thought about
    • other blog posts you read
    • that podcast you listened to
    • your frequently asked questions page is filling up with customer queries over the last seven days …

    There’s your blog post! 

    Extra tip: Do you send newsletters to your clients? Send it to them, then a week later there’s your blog post in green!

    Even if you have social media, a blog is still very worthwhile. Why? It’s content on your website. Your owned media. Yours. Provided posts bring added value and fit into your content strategy. Approach blogging strategically and pursue it long-term. It’s to your customer’s benefit and your own!

    Not everyone is Ernest Hemingway. I get that. You probably could use some help, and help is out there. Grammarly will help you craft a post that will make your old high school English teacher swoon. The Hemingway app will make you feel like Papa. If that isn’t enough, there’s even a free WordPress plugin that will prompt you with twelve months of blog posts. That’s like an entire year!

    Launch With Words is a WordPress plugin that combines the experience of a small business writer with blogging prompts to encourage you to publish once a month.

    About the Author — Warren Laine-Naida

    Warren Laine-Naida is a Digital Consultant, Teacher, and Author currently working with schools, small businesses, and nonprofits in Germany, the UK, and the USA on their digital solutions.

  • How to Correctly Format a Blog Post

    When you write a blog post it’s more than just an essay that you used to write for school projects. You need to write in a way that’s educational, informative, and slightly entertaining. This is marketing copy; it’s not a term paper.

    A blog post is not a journalistic article. People are used to seeing news articles and writing that way. Marketing copy is more like an infomercial. You want to have consumable, bite-sized chunks of content that people can scan.

    The Video Tutorial

    Readability Matters

    Making sure the reading level isn’t above ninth grade is important. Newspapers aim for 5th grade, maybe the Wall Street Journal aims for 12th grade. Know your audience. For the most part, people come to your website from an article that you shared on social media. They scan it to see if it’s worth reading. This is why headings are so important. Also headings help with SEO which is how you’re found on the internet.

    Headings seem to confuse a lot of people because they think it’s a way of formatting their texts. Headings are for organizational structure and it falls under the category of Semantic HTML. This is important, not just for screen readers which is an accessibility issue, but also for SEO. People will scan your website; they don’t read the whole thing.

    Know Your Audience

    Understanding user behavior when reading articles is really important. In Google analytics, you can find out how many people are coming to your website from mobile vs. desktop. You can also find out how long they’re reading from each. This should inform you on how long your post should be.

    For SEO, you’ll want at least 300 words in your blog post. I generally write 300 to 500 words; sometimes 750 is my sweet spot but it really depends upon that article. I’ve gone as high as 1,200 to 1,800 words on it in a blog post on this site because it couldn’t be broken up. However, if you are writing that much, consider breaking it up into one or two parts — maybe even three.

    Short Content Brings People Back

    Breaking up your topics and to consumable pieces allows your reader to come to your site multiple times. Think about your blog as hors d’oeuvres at a party. You don’t want people sitting down and eating a meal and holding a plate. No. You want them to have a little snack, move around, keep talking, and enjoy the party.

    So in the same way, you want people to enjoy the atmosphere of your website. This means the content that’s on there should be fun; it should be funny; it should be useful.

    How Many Headings Do I Need?

    Headings should break up about 150-300 words. They should make sense in the context. It should be a heading then a paragraph; a heading then a paragraph, and so on.

    So, right now I’m typing this with voice typing in a Google doc. I’m going to make a video that shows you how to take text it’s already written edit it was Hemingwayapp.com. Then add in your headings and then paste it into your WordPress website with the classic editor enabled.

    Semantic HTML Matters

    You can write your blog post with semantic HTML. (Semantic is the grammar of HTML). Headings use semantic order which is H1, H2, H3, etc. H1 is the title. H2 should be all the headings and H3 would be a heading under an H2.

    This is similar to an outline. Roman numeral one and then the points on the Roman numeral one will be 1 to 3. Then the points under number 1 are a, b, c. That’s how headings work in websites.

    Embed Videos In Your Blog Posts

    One of the best parts about recording video is that you give people another way to see your content. They can see your expressions, they can hear your tone of voice, and that makes a huge difference. Remember, people do business with other people that they know like and trust. This is why having a video with captions and a transcript is so important.

    How Do You Get Captions?

    One of my favorite tools for adding subtitles and getting a transcript is Temi.com. You can upload the video to Temi.com or you can give them a URL or to a video on Facebook or YouTube. They will provide a transcript based on artificial intelligence (AI). This costs $0.15 a minute and is very accurate.

    Once the order is ready there are orange words in the transcript that you can change. It’s important to look over your transcript to make sure that any technical words are spelled correctly.

    Why Does Video Matter?

    Repurposing content, such as a video that you created, is a great way to add a blog post to your website. If your website is on WordPress you can embed the video right in the blog post by copying the URL or link from YouTube.

    What WordPress does is it renders that link into a video that people can play right there in the blog article. Don’t worry about views because YouTube counts embedded views just like views on your channel.

    Quickly Write and Publish

    You should be able to do this work with the writing, a quick edit, adding headings, your featured image, and publishing within an hour. The more you do it the better it’ll get. The cool thing is when you get a transcript from Temi.com, you can actually add the transcript at the very bottom of the blog post. As a bonus, you have more words for Google to read as they crawl your website.

    What Do I Do After the Post is Published?

    After you publish, submit the URL to Google Analytics to make sure that it indexes the page. Scrape it with Facebook’s Sharing Debugger and check it with Twitter’s Card Validator. This will ensure that it shows up correctly when the post is shared on social media.

    In my ebook called “If You Don’t Mind Your Business Who Will?” I give actionable tips on how to block your time, how to keep a journal of pain points, as well as affirmations and prompts for each month. Spending about two hours a month should give you one published article on your site.

    The more time you spend writing and Publishing, the better the more healthy your website will be.

  • Auditing Your Blog Posts – Keep, Delete, Revise

    As your website grows and you’ve been regularly publishing, there comes a time to audit your blog. What articles should you keep, delete, or revise?

    Auditing Your Site Is A Lot of Work

    So, when will you audit your site? You could do this every quarter or every year. It really depends upon your industry and how much it changes. If the things you write about change often (interest rates, for example), then you will want to audit posts of that type.

    Regardless of how you decide to do it, it should be done. By all means, don’t just willy nilly delete posts that are older than X years. These aren’t tax records you’re throwing out. It’s content. Content is easier to revise than create. So, be mindful.

    Of course, Yoast has extensive articles on this subject. You should definitely read their article on how to perform a SEO audit. My approach is less data-centric and more brand-centric. Is it true? Is it mostly true? Or is it total crap?

    Keep These Posts

    You read the post and you’re still proud of it. It resonates with your brand. The message is spot on. The facts are still true. Maybe this is an article you should post on Facebook and boost for $20. Get that bad boy some more traffic! It deserves attention.

    Delete These Posts

    When you’re writing about things that evolve, sometimes products and services die. There may be some parts of the article that ring true and could be salvaged, but unlikely. If you read it and feel completely embarrassed. Delete it. I’ve deleted articles about Blab.im and Google Plus. If you even know what those are. They died.

    If you have two articles that are similar they could be merged — then you revise them. Honestly, I think that’s more work.

    You can 301 these articles or not. It depends on the SEO professional that you listen to and your own business goals. If I didn’t like it, I’m doubtful people are also looking at it. But refer to your own Google Analytics. I’m not going to pretend I’m an SEO professional.

    Revise These Posts

    Revising posts can be a great way to keep content fresh. Maybe you’re writing about Twitter like I do. Twitter changes things — often. I am constantly having to edit posts for technical details that have changed.

    If the article still rings true to you and your brand, then keep it but update it. Maybe add in a video. Find quotes from your peers and their blog posts. Spruce it up. Spend maybe 30 minutes once a week on these.

    Questions to Ask Yourself

    • Has technical information changed but the premise is solid?
    • Does the feature image need to be updated to reflect my current branding?
    • Is the meta description there and/or can it be revised to look better?
    • Is the headline good?
    • Should the URL be changed? If yes, then be sure to put in a 301 redirect.

    After the Post is Revised

    Blog Audit: Start Somewhere

    For me, downloading some sitemap or looking at a giant spreadsheet of all of my articles would be so overwhelming, I would do nothing. My philosophy is that something is better than nothing.

    So, I use Revive Old Post on this website to cycle my content on Twitter. When people respond to those tweets, it comes to my attention. I make it a point to look at one of those articles once a week. It’s part of my block of time that I dedicate to my business on Friday afternoons.

    Oh yeah, have you downloaded my content planner yet? This might help you organize your writing and social posts!

  • How To Be A Good Podcast Guest

    Being a guest on a podcast is an important way to market yourself. As Warren Laine-Naida would say, being a podcast guest is great off-page SEO. You’re finally invited to be a guest. Easy right? Wait. Let’s talk about this a little bit.

    To get the best response to the podcast — and to be invited again — it’s important you’re a good guest. So, I bet you’re wondering how you can do it well? Is it easy to be a good podcast guest? You’d think it would be. But it isn’tI

    Aside from being on a few podcasts and interviews, I was the co-host of The Smart Marketing Show (WPblab) from 2015-2021. Believe me, you can be a bad guest on a podcast. I’ve also started my own series of interviews called “.”

    It’s important for podcast guests to get the tech right, be prepared, show up on time, not deliver a monologue, and actually listen to the podcast.

    A Good Podcast Guest Gets the Tech Right

    WPwatercooler, for example, has guest guidelines (which you can read here). If the podcast host or producer gives you guidelines, follow them.

    Suffice it to say that you should have the following:

    A Good Podcast Guest is a Prepared Guest

    Every host has their own style. Some of them like to ask specific questions and others riff. You may even receive critical questions ahead of time. Read through them the day or week before. Be a prepared guest. Unprepared guests aren’t invited back. And the podcasting world is very small. Hosts talk to each other about guests. So, if you’re not a good guest, you may hurt your reputation.

    A Good Podcast Guest Listens to the Podcast

    Listen to at least one episode of the podcast you’ll be on. Two may be better. You want to understand how you can fit into their podcast, not the other way around. Being a good guest means serving someone else’s audience. So, it’s not about you. If that bothers you, start your own podcast. And, don’t forget to promote your episode — before — and long after it’s been recorded. Even better; write a recap and include a link to the podcast. As an example, Scott Rogerson of UpContent did this when he was on my show.

    A Good Podcast Guest Is Concise

    It’s tempting to deliver a monologue but, remember it’s not your show. It’s also not about you. Allow the hosts to ask their questions. Give concise answers — soundbites. It’s good to elaborate but be mindful. Allow the hosts to ask follow-up questions. Try to stay on track. This is even more important if the podcast is edited. Take breaths. You don’t have to say everything that comes to your mind. I promise.

    A Good Podcast Shows Up Early

    Be on time. And when I say on time, I mean early. We all have bad days. All of us. But schedules are crazy for everyone. Do your best to plan for buffer time. Live podcasts may start at 9:00 AM for example but the pre-show is at 8:45 AM.

    Want More Podcasting and Speaking Tips?

    I’ve built a playlist on YouTube. This includes tips for podcasts that include video as well as in-person tips.