content creation – IFTS, Inc. Blog

In 2023, creating content that is valuable and engaging to your audience will be key in achieving your business goals. Content creation should focus on building relationships with customers, providing accurate information about products or services, and providing a platform for customers to engage with your brand.

Let’s look at some common business goals and different types of content you can create to help you reach them.

1. Increase Brand Awareness:

Are you looking to boost your brand’s visibility? Crafting content that positions you as the expert in your field is an excellent way of achieving this goal.

Content marketing involves developing and sharing meaningful, valuable content with your target audience. Use your expertise and experience to create content that showcases your knowledge and provides your audience with insightful information about the industry such as:

Blog posts – create informative, helpful, and keyword-rich blog content that educates your readers and helps them solve their problems.
Infographics – create eye-catching infographic content that can be used to explain complex topics or to present data in an easily digestible format.
Videos – create engaging video content that can be used to showcase your products and services or to provide helpful tutorials and how-tos.
Social media posts – create shareable content that people will enjoy and engage with on social media.

This type of content should be creative, entertaining and informative. The key is to create content that resonates with your audience and provides them with valuable information. Additionally, you should also ensure that your content is optimized for search engines so it can be easily discovered.

Creating content that is easy for users to consume will help increase awareness about your business and drive more traffic to your website.

2. Generate Leads:

Creating content that will generate leads is an important part of any successful marketing strategy. If you want to generate more leads, you need to create content that encourages customers to take action.

A few strategies you may want to consider include:

Optimizing your content (seo)
Targeting specific keywords and topics
Leveraging social media to share your content with a wider audience
Writing content that is interesting and informative to your target audience

You may also want to consider creating content with a call-to-action to generate leads, such as offering a free download or providing a contact form for those interested in learning more about your product or service. With the right content strategy, you can create content that will help you generate leads and grow your business.

3. Build Customer Loyalty:

Creating content that will build customer loyalty can be a great way to increase customer retention and boost long-term customer engagement.

Here are some ideas on how to create content that will build customer loyalty:

Focus on providing quality content. Quality content can include helpful advice, tips, articles, videos, and more that are tailored to customer needs.
Show appreciation for customers. Create content that highlights customer achievements and thank customers for their support.
Offer exclusive content. Give customers early access to new products, discounts, and other special offers.
Ask customers for feedback. Encourage customer feedback by asking customers for their opinions, ideas, and suggestions.
Share customer stories. Highlight customer success stories in your content.

You should also consider creating customer loyalty programs that reward customers for their loyalty. Rewarding loyal customers with discounts, exclusive offers, or other promotional items can help increase customer engagement and satisfaction.

By following these tips, you can create content that will build customer loyalty and help strengthen relationships with your customers.

Remember This When Creating Your Content

Creating content that meets your business goals in 2023 will require a well thought-out content strategy.

It is important to ensure that your content is tailored to the needs of your target audience and is optimized for search engine rankings. Use creativity when creating your content to make it truly stand out. This will increase its visibility and attract more viewers. For maximum impact and engagement from your audience, it is essential to be consistent with your content – this will not only help you gain their trust but also keep them coming back for more. With careful and thoughtful content creation, your business can reach its goals and find success.

Prepare To Meet Your 2023 Goals

By focusing on creating content that is valuable and engaging for your customers, you can build relationships with them and increase brand awareness, generate leads, and build customer loyalty.

By following these tips and staying up-to-date with the latest trends in content marketing, you can ensure that your content creation efforts are successful in 2023.

If you need help creating a content strategy for your brand, contact us today at 412-715-6266.

They say that when it comes to SEO that “Content is King”, but how exactly does that apply to house painting businesses?

Well, you are about to find out!

Good website and blog content is a prerequisite for good online traffic, which should turn into leads. But, how do you know what to write about?

FINDING THE RIGHT TOPIC

There are many strategies for choosing a relevant topic to write about. We are going to cover 4 popular ones.

Strategy 1 for finding a topic - Check Answer The Public for popular topics

All you have to do is enter a keyword or phrase into their search box and it will return a bunch of popular ideas about your topic.

In the example below, we used “house painting” and look at all of the different subjects you could use:

Strategy 2 for finding a topic - Use Semrush

This is a tool (that has a free version) which will tell you how popular a search term is. It will also give you common questions that people Google about your search term.

Check out the example below. We used the same term “house painting” and these are the free results that Semrush gives us about our topic:

Feeling stuck or not sure what to write? The Semrush results also include the top 10 pages that rank for your keyword. Open them up and do a little “spying” on your competition to see what they are writing about.

Strategy 3 for finding a topic - Use Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a tool that is very similar to Semrush. You can find the popularity of a keyword, relevant questions that are on topic, competitor links and more.

Strategy 4 for finding a topic - BuzzSumo’s “evergreen score”

Buzzsumo’s evergreen score can show you popularity trends of a subject. You can see if the content is long lasting or if it was short lived. You may be able to grab some ideas from the longer lasting posts.

Once you have a topic chosen, you’ll need to decide how to present your information.

FINDING THE RIGHT BLOG TEMPLATE

There are many common blog templates that you can use.

Blog Template 1 - Expanded List Post

The list posts template consists of a compiled set of tips/tricks that readers can implement in a variety of settings. The only difference between a standard list post and an expanded list post is the adding of further information for each item on your list.

Here’s an example: Power Washing Tips & FAQ

Blog Template 2 - Case Study From Your Business

Your Case Study Post offers a solution to a challenge that the audience you are trying to reach frequently encounters. By showing that you can fix this problem, you are quickly regarded as a knowledgeable authority on the subject. There is just one caveat to this. You have to demonstrate that your solution is effective.

Here’s an example: Stain or Paint A Deck: Best Practices

Blog Template 3 - Tools We Use

This provides a rundown of several resources that can be utilized in a particular field. It is not restricted to tools; rather, it can be a strategy, a practice, or even a life hack in addition to a tool. As long as the list provides value to your user, you have latitude in what all in can encapsulate.

Here’s an example: Painting over and/or removing wallpaper: 3 Rules, 6 Steps

Blog Template 4 - The Ultimate Guide

It’s like having all of the answers for your reader in one place. This is the bible, the ultimate manual. The user may get all the data in one convenient location. These types of guides are often used to get backlinks to your website.

Here’s an example: Grow Your Painting Business by A Factor of 10 With These 5 Steps

Blog Template 5 - The Complete List

A complete list is comparable to an ultimate list in that you just compile all of the information—every suggestion, item, tool, technique, strategy, example, and case study—into a single article.

Here’s an example: The Complete Guide to Online Reputation for Small Businesses: How to Grow Your Business, Improve Your SEO & Get Found Online

The last thing that you need to choose is your headline.

CREATING THE RIGHT HEADLINE

Headlines are the most important part of your content because they get people to actually click and read the blog.

Some helpful tips for writing your headline:

make sure that it is no longer than 18 words long
include your main keyword in the headline
make it interesting by adding [brackets] or (parentheses) around a phrase
use “emotional” words to invoke a response (this includes things that will make the reader happy, sad, angry etc.)

Now that you have chosen your headline, topic, and template, it’s time to start writing that blog for your painting business!

Let’s start at the beginning, it’s a very good place to start (or so says Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music).

Your introduction should be short, catchy and to the point. Common ways to pull people in are:

ask a question
make a statement contrary to popular belief
state a fact with a weird number in it

You’ll want to keep your introduction around 4-7 sentences. Pull in the reader and tell them what they are going to learn. To see an example of this, look no further than the beginning of this article.

It starts with a question to draw you in and then tells you about what you are going to be reading about.

After your introduction, you will transition into the meat of your blog and cover your topic in depth. Most articles that rank well on Google have at least 1000 words and are formatted for SEO. For more on SEO, check out this IFTS article.

While you are writing, remember to keep these tips in mind:

use short paragraphs because people typically skim, so it’s best for your content not to appear as a wall of text
use section sub headers to divide the information into digestible chunks that are easier to read
use the active voice when writing (here’s a little info to help you remember active vs passive voice from middle school…don’t worry, I had to look it up too)
use a font about 14 pts so the text is easy to read on all devices
people are visual creatures, so any time you can include a picture, chart, infographic, screenshot, video – the better

The final paragraph will be your conclusion, which is your second most important section next to the introduction. The intro gets people to read, the conclusion gets people to stay on your site or buy your service.

A good strategy for writing the conclusion is called TAC.

T – Transition

A – Ask

C – Call to Action

The TRANSITION to the conclusion is how you want to end your blog information. Then, you’ll want to ASK your readers a question, normally about a problem that you can solve. It’s best if the problem relates to what the main blog text is about. Finally, you’ll want a CALL TO ACTION, where you tell them to get in touch about the problem. To see an example of this, check out the ending of this blog.

A really easy way for house painting businesses to create content is with the “Case Study” template. Use before and after pictures/videos from a job that you recently worked on. Talk about the issues that the owners were having and how you solved it with your services, using your visuals as proof.

A case study really lends itself to being local SEO-friendly because your keyword phrase would be “house painting in [location]” or “Cabinet Painting in [Location]”.

FINDING THE RIGHT HELP

If this sounds like something you would be interested in having someone else do, let us know! IFTS specializes in helping house painters create quality SEO-friendly content for their websites to get more leads. Call 412-715-6266 or send an email to si@iftsdesign.com to get started.