By now, it’s safe to say that we all are aware of how crucial blogging is to one’s overall Internet Marketing strategy. Whether you publish content weekly, 3 times per week or even daily it’s likely that the time will come when you are struck with writers block. It’s not easy to create content that not only naturally incorporates your keywords but is also readable, entertaining and something your readers will want to share.

When you’re struggling for ideas, where do you turn? Perhaps you scour the office for industry-related updates or maybe you check your favorite news station’s website; whatever you do to dig up some blog-worthy ideas can easily be combined with these tips for creative content creation:

Behind-the-Scenes Insight

Your blog serves many purposes including the need to: to increase your overall SEO efforts, thus increasing traffic and generating leads – as well as highlighting your agency’s culture. The goal with any good Insurance Marketing strategy is to capture the attention of prospects, retain current clients and inevitably grow our business. To do so you have to position yourself at the forefront of your consumer’s mind; and how do you do that – by separating yourself from the competition.

When you think of insurance, what comes to mind? Most often you’ll envision accident scenarios, policies and claims. But there’s so much more to what you do and who you are, so showcase that on your blog. Do you celebrate employee birthdays with a giant cake? Maybe you volunteer with a local charity. Perhaps you have launched a friendly office-wide competition…take Astonish Results for example and our office’s RFM Weight Loss Challenge! By providing current clients and prospects with a sneak-peak into what life is like at your agency you are allowing them the opportunity to connect with you on a different level and build a relationship that goes beyond simply selling them an insurance policy.

Appeal to the Season

Changes in season are the perfect starting point for an informative, yet appealing blog post. You can coordinate your blogging efforts with the ever-changing weather patterns; think about including information about recent storms, local damages and how to best prepare for severe weather.

Seasonal posts can stretch farther than what may be falling from the sky. Think beyond weather and consider the activities that your consumers may participate in during any given period of time. Perhaps in the winter you talk about preparing your vehicle for the colder weather or in the summer you highlight the watercraft insurance policies your agency can offer its avid boaters. Nearly everything has its own season; weddings, back-to-school, holiday prep, etc. focus on providing useful, valuable information that can apply to your consumers’ everyday lives.

Tips & How-To’s

One of the most popular and well-received blogging styles is those that include tips and “how-to” information. Alongside your mission to gain a competitive edge, increase your agency’s visibility and strengthen your SEO, your blogging should also serve a greater purpose—providing value to the reader. You should strive to craft content that can positively impact your current and prospective clients, give them the facts, advice and general knowledge they both want and need.

These types of blogs can include general insurance tips, such as how to keep particular premiums low or can span across a variety of topics such as how to protect your home from burglars or fires safety tips for one’s home and office.

Current Events

Another aspect of your blogging strategy is using your content to brand your agency as a credible, knowledgeable expert – and better yet an active community leader. To do so you need to know what’s going on in the world around you and how it both applies to and affects the lives of your consumers. Developing a reputation for your agency which portrays you as a trusted resource for valuable information and news can help you both draw in readers (and prospects!) as well as keep them coming back for more.
When blogging about current events, make sure that they are either applicable to the industry or specific to your local community. Look for changes in legislation, new acts or regulations or even choose to stay up-to-date on the constantly evolving issues with health care. Perhaps a new driving-while-texting ban was passed in your state; that would serve as a quality blog post as well as provide you with the opportunity to incorporate some auto insurance information within the content. Or maybe flood damages reached a record high in your region, explain what this might mean for area homeowners and their insurance premiums.

Whatever you choose to write about, make sure your blogs are always valuable, interesting and portray your agency as a leading insurance resource. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box—do what you can to make your insurance content appealing and share-worthy.

Have any suggestions? Where do you go when your content has you stumped? Share your suggestions and comments with us below and feel free to check out our additional blogging tips for making the process more enjoyable!

Maybe it’s because I am a writer. Or maybe in general, I am just a bit biased—but if there’s one thing I have learned rather quickly about insurance marketing, and Internet Marketing as a whole, it’s that nothing can bring you genuine results quite like high-quality content can.

Over the course of one’s life it’s likely that they will dabble in blogging. It can also be assumed that at some point they will quit—throwing their hands up in defeat, unsure of why they even began in the first place.

It’s the same issue with many of today’s companies. Business owners hype themselves up over the prospect of blogging; beyond excited and enthused to start generating more leads through insightful, educated text. But like anything that is truly good for you – seeing progress and real results takes time.

Here’s an interesting statistic: according to Technorati, 95% of blogger abandon their blogs. But…why?

Is it because we simply can’t commit? Or maybe does the initial excitement of sharing one’s thoughts just fizzle out? Perhaps it’s our need and infatuation with immediate validation.

We tend to be a results-driven society, and rightfully so – we want to know our efforts are paying off. However, one of the major reasons for such low blog success is because the vast majority of us can’t seem to accurately predict exactly what our blogging efforts will achieve. We expect things to happen faster – and be easier for that matter. But in reality, to see real results from content marketing initiatives, like blogging, you need time and patience.

As the web continues to evolve so does the thought process within the marketing industry; more and more companies are making the digital switch and with that switch comes some serious revelations. The realization has been made that by creating unique, branded content you can spread the wealth across web-based platform.  Let’s face it – great content is effective everywhere – on Facebook, Twitter, within a blog post, an email and beyond.

So how do you create content that “gets clicked”? How do you tailor the perfect message that will engage your current consumers, while also drawing in prospects? How do you generate content that really drives traffic and conversions?

Try incorporating these 3 triggers in your content marketing messages:

Appealing to your consumers’ emotions is one of the most important aspects to consider while crafting your marketing messages and content. People are motivated by their emotions; whether it’s fear, happiness, guilt or passion. Get the gears moving by creating content that your consumer can easily relate to – that will cause them to develop an emotional response to what is being said. Once the seed is planted, they are engaged and thinking about your message, you have now paved the way for your agency to offer up a solution.

Time certainly is the next element that triggers people to take action in accordance with your carefully tailored marketing message. If you have found an outlet in which you can provide a solution to a problem within a specified amount of time – whether it’s an immediate quote or complete coverage review – people are likely to jump at the chance to take you up on your offer.

If there’s anything that can help transform content from text to conversion tool, it’s the act of using words to portray value. We live in a society that is always moving – addicted to the buzz of being busy – not to mention a society that constantly hits people with marketing messages all day long. From logos to commercial jingles, there is product promotion everywhere; and many of us have gotten used to tuning it all out. By including an element of value within your content you are separating your message from the masses.

The primary thing you need to think about when crafting quality content is what you can say that is valuable to your consumers and prospects. What can you say, or do, that will benefit their lives? What do they really want to know? What is the ultimate goal that they want to achieve when purchasing your product or service?

Overall, it’s clear that there is so much that can be accomplished through content marketing—but to really achieve you have to be dedicated and patient. You cannot expect to see yourself gain hundreds of new leads overnight, nor will you rise in the search rankings after just 2 blog posts. However, what you can expect is to achieve success overtime. Commit to producing quality, unique content in the form of Facebook status updates, tweets, blog posts, white papers, press releases and more – and you are bound to see positive results.

You’ve picked your keywords.  These are keywords that match what you sell and people are actually using them in their searches. But what do you do with them? How do you deploy these good keywords so they help drive relevant traffic to your site?

Well, to start, you want to write good content that uses your keywords throughout.  The trick here is not to overuse your keywords and look spammy.  Google is really working to cut the spammy pages from their results.   Try spreading your words out in the content.  Start with having the keyword you’re focusing on in the first sentence of the page.  Hopefully you have enough good content that your keywords can be mentioned a couple of times in the body without looking like spam.    Finally, it is good practice to close with the chosen keyword in the last sentence of the page.  I like to add it in to the call to action whenever possible.

In addition to placing them throughout the content, you should add the keywords to the on page title. This lets the search engines and potential clients know what the page is about.  Also, emphasizing or bolding your particular keywords tells your potential customers and the search engines that these are important and your page has what they want. “Hello! Look over here.  This is the keyword you’re looking for.”

Of course the most important place for your keywords is in the title tag.  The title tag labels your page in the browser, this appears at the very top of your browser window, and is what shows up as the title for your page in the search results. So it is important to write good title tags for both the search engines and the people searching for your specific keywords.  A bad title tag can be just as bad as not having one at all.

You now know that it is important not only to have good keywords, but to strategically place them throughout the pages of your site.  Your keywords will appear important enough to the search engines to rank your site and relevant enough to potential clients who see these results and will click on your page.  But alas, keywords are only one part of the picture. To move your site to the top of the results you still need more. But enough of my blibber blabbering…until next time…have an Astonishing day!

In this era of Internet Marketing and strategic Social Media—it’s crucial that we don’t forget our roots. It all began with the written word. Whether it was a 2-line slogan plastered across an Interstate billboard or a 3-inch testimonial in the local newspaper, marketers have been using content to spark curiosity and engage consumers.

Today, more than ever, content is STILL king—we’re just evolving our writing techniques and strategies.

No matter what industry you’re in, marketers are harvesting the power of genuine, unique content to drive traffic and inevitably increase revenues.

It’s true—content is constantly adapting to all outlets—easily tailored to fit the needs of a website, Facebook update, Tweet or blog post. Yet it’s critical to remember that the end goal is still the same—cultivate traffic, educate visitors and keep them coming back for more.

As the Blog and Content Manger at Astonish Results, I am frequently faced with the need to create custom content that will actually benefit others. The key to stellar content comes from within. You may not realize it, but the more genuine you are, the more relevant and your level of authenticity can be felt by the reader. Gaining their trust through your text is crucial to gaining their business.

Content is what will entice people to return to your site, or better yet sign up for your RSS feed. It’s what will motivate another industry professional or blogger to want to link to you and further share your work—and we all know that when you get those links, they are the priceless building blocks needed to improve your site’s rank within the search engines.

So how can you improve your content?
Quality content—that will perform better across various Social Media platforms and enhance your ability to convert—starts with research. It may seem unnecessary at first, but after a while, trying to come up with good content ideas will become a more trying task. And even if you have an incredible idea, putting in that extra time to research will only benefit you—strengthening the value and credibility of what you write.

Leave some things unsaid. Don’t exhaust your topics. Whether it’s content for your website, a social media update or an in-depth blog post—leave room for conversation. Provide a source for discussion and commentary. You want your readers to get involved in your content, helping it to grow.

When possible, integrate visuals. People love images, graphics and are especially fond of video. Adding multimedia to your content is a great way to give it some personality and life. When you are constantly publishing content that is solely text is can begin to appear mundane. The last thing you want is for your content to be unappealing to the reader. Break up your formatting—every once in a while it’s beneficial to separate extensive paragraphs with bulleted lists, graphics and powerful quotes or statistics.

Lastly, don’t forget to keep exploring, testing and investigating. There is no doubt that content is going to continue to influence Internet Marketing, Social Media and SEO—so don’t hesitate to try new things!