I feel the same way. I blog out of whim and see how much time I still have in addition to work and private life. But how can you plan that? This is possible with the help of agile elements.

Agile planning: in a nutshell

I understand agile planning to be a vision, target definition or the setting of framework conditions. So, depending on the meaningfulness of a project, you have to do the following:

• a vision e.g. we enable car sharing for customers,
• Goals, for example, we create a CarSharing app for iOS or
• Framework conditions, for example, we improve the car sharing offer in the company with this team for 3 months.

The planning often runs through rough milestones and what is measured at the end: What did we get done? But how can such elements of agility be incorporated into blog planning?

Reading tip :

• agile management
• OKRS – the management method

Agile content planning

For a blog, it is important to offer users meaningful content for a topic. I therefore recommend defining an overall topic or vision for the blog first. Mine is, for example: agility in digital transformation. So it combines the topics of agility and digitization.

Now, as with OKRS, certain sub-topics / goals must be defined on the basis of the vision. I recommend using categories for this. I have the main categories in the blog:

• digitalization
• Work 4.0
• Digital leadership
• Agile organization
• Articles for students
• Careers in IT

Now it is up to you as a content or marketing manager to fill them with articles. So you ask to write articles that fit into the categories.

Why should they do this? Readers want to be fully informed and Google will only rank you if you have a certain density of keywords on the page. For example, you only rank in Work 4.0 (search strength 12,000 per month) if you have written at least 30 articles on the topic. On the one hand, you have enough content so that Google assigns a keyword to your domain and, on the other hand, enough content so that a reader stays on your site for a long time.

Google digression: Google assigns global keywords to every page. At some point, Google will recognize from your articles that it is, for example, a blog for an aquarium. Your articles will then rank for aquarium keywords even though you don’t use the keyword at all. Google then defined you as an expert on this subject.

As a marketing manager, you would now simply have to communicate these categories in the company and guest authors and employees simply provide random articles that underpin the categories. In the end, you only measure: how much content I have per category. This means that your blog does not become too wide (too much content in all directions) and offers readers who want to find out more about a specific topic, e.g. digital leadership, enough content so that they stay on the page for a long time and even contact you at the end.

Digression: reader behavior: The best always wins on the Internet. For almost every keyword you will find a person who dominates it. I am always told that with Work 4.0 and related keywords you can always find my blog on page 1. So I seem to be dominating this keyword. Experience has shown that successful bloggers rely on 1-3 keywords and try to dominate them strongly. When you do that, you generate real leads.

It is also important that you link your articles internally. The reader should therefore have the opportunity to learn more about certain points that he would like to understand more precisely. So make sure that you also scatter the articles widely.

Example internal linking: You are writing an article about the use of software in the workplace. You describe that cloud-enabled applications are particularly useful for virtual teams. An article on virtual teams or cloud computing would be perfect as a reading tip. Another example is the impact of software use in the workplace, which leads the reader to another article on technostress and health in the workplace.

Conclusion

With the help of this planning, I don’t need an editorial plan or rely on schedules. I just write with the aim of filling my categories with as many good articles as possible and have clear topics in the blog. Whenever I write an article, I ask myself beforehand: Which category does it pay into? If not, then I’m just not writing to this one.

The advantage is that your blog has such a clear focus and is considered an expert blog for a keyword. This is usually how you generate the most leads. Of course, these are not all tips, just a rough overview. Of course there is still a lot to consider, such as

• Cluster articles sensibly,
• Overview / column articles,
• Keyword density of the articles and much more.

Image source: Flower photo created by rawpixel.com – de.freepik.com

Der Beitrag Company blog: How to plan content in an agile way erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

I’ve been blogging for some time now and I have regular meetings with some medium-sized companies to exchange ideas. The questions are often pretty much the same: online marketing should be digitized and online channels should offer new potential. In this article I want to share a few tips about what I have learned over the past two years.

Reading tip: Agile Marketing

Content Marketing and Blogging

Content marketing means that you passively advertise with exciting content. This can be, for example, a blog article about the GDPR in medium-sized businesses. Another example could be a blog article about designing the perfect resume. It is important that you offer exciting content that interests your target group (applicants and customers). I usually recommend writing articles on specialist topics on a company blog. I rarely experience that topics related to job applications lead to success in companies. Often, however, applicants become aware of your company through specialist articles.

Tip: I’ll be happy to help you Marketing for your company

The advantages of a blog are obvious: you present yourself as an expert. So choose a specific topic and blog many articles about it. It makes little sense to blog across the board, because then you hardly rank on Google and users love it when you can find all information on a topic in one place. It is important that you show your readers: That is my competence! I have a lot of expertise in this!

Reading tip: Corporate blog

With successful blogs, I almost always experience that the employees blog themselves and marketing helps with spelling and formulation. A busy senior consultant can at least provide key points that the marketing department can formulate for an article.

Examples :

• A software development consulting company blogs about Java, C ++ and agile methods
• A production company for automatives blogs about the latest automotive trends and Industry 4.0
• A data center service provider blogs about the use of the cloud

Social media

Social media is widespread and now every medium-sized company has at least one Facebook page. The process is very simple: you generate content and post it on the networks. You can do this by hand or with a tool.

I’ve also experimented with social media for a long time and believe that on each network, a specific target group will follow your company. I would therefore like to give you a breakdown per network. I picked out exactly 5 networks. I don’t find all the others particularly useful for companies. Companies like Follower24 support.

Examples :

• Facebook and Instagram: background information and presentation of the employer (company parties, etc.) – target group applicants
• Xing and LinkedIN: industry news and helpful articles – target group: business and customers
• Twitter: A mix of both with a focus on current industry news – target group: business

Performance marketing and lead generation

Lead generation means generating a measurable reaction from a user. For example, you have a special website that offers a 30 day trial version of a product. Alternatively, this can also be a page for generating applications, on which an applicant can upload a PDF résumé. So it’s a very simple site that has only one goal: to generate a lead (i.e. a reaction).

Usually you either advertise this particular page on social media or use Google Adwords (price per click). I’ve also seen some companies that optimize these sites for organic search SEO, but this often has little success with commercial offers.

Important : Unlike a blog, these sites are quite expensive because you pay per click. So make sure you have a clear, measurable goal, which is the number of clicks, and optimize the page from time to time.

Examples :

• A special page with upload function for resume (recruitment of skilled workers)
• A special page for a software test version (customer acquisition)
• a special page on a specific topic (e.g. data protection) with a chat window or button: contact us (customer acquisition)

Conclusion

In this article I have briefly summarized the impressions of the last few years and have dealt with three marketing methods. I think all three make sense and are worth a try for you too. Especially at the beginning, you can try it out yourself first and don’t have to go to an expensive service provider. It took me almost a year for my blog to have its first visitors and social media reach. So it means: persevere and don’t give up right away. At the end I will summarize the most important goals of the three methods for you again:

• Content Marketing: Show Expertise (Image)
• Social media: expertise or employer brand (image)
• Performance Marketing: Generate customer contacts (leads)

Der Beitrag Online marketing for medium-sized companies? Does that bring anything? erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

Search topic

First of all, it is important that the blog has a clear topic. The blog serves to present the company as an expert. So there should be few topics that are dealt with deeply and extensively. For example, I have chosen digital leadership, work 4.0 and agile organization as topics and have now produced 40 articles for each area. This has the advantage that a reader will find a lot of information in one place and you will also rank with the major keywords. For example, job 4.0 is searched over 25,000 times per month. It wasn’t until I had written around 30 articles about it that I was found on page 1.
In the following I give some examples of what topics could be for a blog. For the sake of simplicity, I recommend first taking the business areas your company has. For example, an IT consulting company can write about software development, agile methods and automation, or management consulting about organizational development, process digitization and leadership.

to write an article

Now all you have to do is write articles. It is important that these offer added value for the reader and convey technical expertise. I often find that agency articles lack the necessary practical experience. A silver bullet is for your experienced employees to write articles and formulate them in bullet points so that an agency can formulate them and bring the necessary journalistic flavor to the articles.
Reading tip: Write blog articles

SEO and traffic

Now you need to optimize your article SEO. Here you will find numerous guidelines on the Internet or you can have it done by an agency. It is important that every article has a special keyword. To do this, you do an analysis of keywords. It usually makes sense to choose a large keyword for the category (e.g. agile methods or digital leadership – from 10,000 search queries per month) and lots of smaller keywords (100 search queries per month) for the articles.
Reading tip: SEO tips
As an example, we take my category Digital Leadership, which has keywords such as e-leadership, leadership 4.0, generation management and many more, which more or less belong to the topic of digital leadership. Use the Google Keyword Planner for such research.
Reading tip: Find keywords
Now it’s time to stay tuned. Fill in their categories and you will rank up on a major keyword in some day. Once you have done that, you will be seen as an expert in relation to this term on the one hand, and you will have a large number of visitors on your site on the other. However, this can take up to a year and you should already have at least 100 articles on your blog.

Call to Action

Of course, a company should also benefit from a blog. For this to be the case, you should define a clear call to action for your blog. This could be, for example, that a customer contacts you. I’ll show you this using the structure of an article on SSL certificates.
In the first step you define SSL and show the different types of certificates. So they offer added value and underpin this with examples of application. Now you could end up saying: Do you need help with your SSL strategy? Then contact our expert XY in Munich.
This gives you a clear and measurable call to action. So from now on your blog will generate leads for you. You can do the other way around with recruiting by asking the applicant to send a message. It is important that the call to action is also demanding and not too soft. At the end you are welcome to advertise something. Remember, when someone finishes reading an article, most of the time they have found it valuable and you have won the reader’s trust.
Tip: I’ll be happy to help you Marketing for your company

Conclusion

In this article I have summarized my experiences with blogging and mixed it with my observations at medium-sized companies. I think that this guideline can be a first point of reference for setting up a company blog. In short, the tips are as follows: You look for a topic that you cover in detail, write articles, optimize SEO and incorporate a clear call to action.
Reading tip: Online marketing in medium-sized businesses
[werbung]
Verwendete Quellen anzeigen

Der Beitrag Tips for the company blog – this is how it works! erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

what is influencer marketing?

In influencer marketing, bloggers or youtubers, i.e. high-reach opinion makers, are used to strengthen a company or product through an article or targeted contribution. So it is primarily about using the trust of the influencer to send a brand message. Usually, companies pay a sum of money for this or the influencer receives the company’s products for free.
An influencer can be someone who runs a blog, Instagram or Youtube channel. Not every influencer makes sense for your company. For example, a Youtuber for cosmetics is probably not the first choice for an IT company or sporting goods manufacturer. Especially in B2B, influencers can also be book authors or keynote speakers. Companies also ask me regularly. For example, I often receive copies of books or requests for guest articles.
My tip: you can too turn your own employees into influencers

Examples of influencer marketing

Many companies now use so-called influencers. For example, Neckermann relies on BibisBeautyPalace, which has more than 4 million followers on YouTube. The influencer debated Neckermann’s offers in her videos and achieved more than 155,000 likes on Facebook for the company.
Levis also regularly uses influencers on Instagram and Snapchat. These post against free products, photos with the products (jeans, shirts, …) of the brand. After fans then ask: Where did the influencer get these great jeans from, the link is posted. In this way, the brand avoids negative criticism due to too much advertising or the abuse of the influencer. Adidas itself often makes use of celebrities or sports stars who visibly wear the Adidas brand.
Tip: I’ll be happy to help you Marketing for your company

Conclusion: influencer marketing for IT and medium-sized companies

The question now remains whether this type of marketing can also be worthwhile for an IT service provider or medium-sized company in the B2B area. To the extent that it is currently being done in the examples, I don’t think that’s particularly useful. However, I noticed something:
In fact, medium-sized companies have been doing influencer marketing for a long time. For example, companies report in large newspapers about guest articles from successful projects or have well-known book authors write about practical examples in their companies. The fact is that customers of B2B companies usually read books and newspapers and attend conferences. So it could target the following influencer marketing:

• Guest articles in newspapers
• Practical examples in books
• Mention of keynote speakers

Last but not least, the tip is to approach this type of marketing very carefully, as it is always a battle for credibility. Under no circumstances should it be too flashy, populist or even too utopian. Otherwise, as in many examples, it can have the opposite effect. Nevertheless, the use of such influencers can be a good building block in a company’s marketing mix. You can also read other articles that can also help you with your marketing.
Reading tip:

• Company blog in medium-sized businesses
• Social media for medium-sized companies

[werbung]
Verwendete Quellen anzeigen

Der Beitrag Influencer marketing for medium-sized IT companies – does that make sense? erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.