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Marketing Dos & Don’ts: The Rise and Fall of Blockbuster

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David Cook opened the first Blockbuster store opened in 1985 and immediately found marketing success. This isn’t a fairytale, however, as the company plummeted between 2013 and 2014. Many blame the plummet on the online movie and television services, such as Netflix or Hulu, but the reasons fall more upon a poor marketing strategy. Cook made some marketing and financial mistakes that easily could have been avoided. In the end, these mistakes ruined Blockbuster’s chances of finding success. The demise of Blockbuster is an important lesson for retailers, as they could easily make the same mistakes. 

What Blockbuster Did Right 

When speaking about Blockbuster, many want to focus on what the business did wrong. As understandable as that is (learning from mistakes is always a great idea), Blockbuster actually did some things right. In the beginning, Blockbuster took the right approach towards beating its competitors. Blockbuster stores were three times larger than competitors and held 8,000 VHS tapes. Other chain stores kept their movies behind the counter, but Blockbuster chose to display their VHS tapes on shelves. Blockbuster remained open far longer than its competitors and was one of the first to incorporate computer systems and scanners for check-outs. One of the biggest moves owner David Cook made was refusing to stock adult films, which gained the favor of many. 

Essentially, the best marketing strategy that Blockbuster followed was staying ahead of its competitors. By being bigger and up-to-date with technology, Blockbuster gained far more traction than its competitors. Staying a few steps ahead of your competition is never a bad thing, but it is important to focus on other things as well, such as customers and debt. 

What Blockbuster Did Wrong With Marketing

In comparison to what Blockbuster did right, the list of wrongs is far lengthier. For one, Blockbuster entered bankruptcy after struggling to refinance $1 billion dollars of debt. With such a little amount of money to invest in, Blockbuster had very little options when the time came to repay its debt. Not only that, but with such little money to spend, Blockbuster was unable to put money into its stores, prices, and technology. The lesson to learn here? Don’t let debt creep up on your business. Budget accordingly and ensure that you repay your business’s debts as soon as possible. 

Blockbuster had a plethora of valuable information on its customers but did next to nothing with it. With each rental, consumers gave their address, date of birth, and details about their taste in films. They could have used this information to mail out fliers and eventually, send out emails. Following this marketing strategy would have created a stronger relationship with the client and draw them back to continue renting from Blockbuster. That’s the thing, though. Blockbuster did not have a good understanding of their customers. Jim Porterfield, who ran one of the biggest franchises in Blockbuster, believed that the information Blockbuster had should have been used to put out movies that the consumers wanted. Instead, Blockbuster put out movies with little preference for the customers. 

Avoiding the Mistakes of Blockbuster

The scary truth of this story is that anyone could make the mistakes that Blockbuster made. The thing is, you could easily avoid them with the right help. Web Content Development offers a variety of tactical services, such as brand management, crisis management, marketing strategy, and more. If your company is stuck in a rut, we can help. Contact us today to learn more.

Three Ways a Ghost Blogging Platform Can Fall Short

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Blogging is one of the best ways to attract new consumers, all while connecting with your existing ones. There’s one problem, however. You’re really, really busy. Like, super busy! As a business owner, you have little time to manage a blog, let alone write posts for one. Ghost blogging is the solution for this. The purpose of a ghost blogging platform is to manage your blog for you. Your ghost blog will have consistent updates, new writing, and more. Even so, there are some shortcomings to your ghost blog that you can easily fix. 

  1. Your Ghost Blog Doesn’t Use SEO 

In 2020, it’s predicted that businesses will spend up to $81 billion dollars on SEO services. Why? SEO works. With SEO, you will find yourself attracting thousands to your web page instead of a meager few. SEO is one of the most important parts of a ghost blog. If your ghost blogger isn’t using SEO, they are doing things wrong. 

In 2019 alone, Google produced over 2.3 trillion searches. If your ghost blogger is conscious of SEO, it will work with an algorithm that is meant to push your web page up in the list of results. By using particular keywords or phrases, your ghost blog will bring more awareness to their writing. What does this mean for you? More consumers, more followers, and more brand awareness. On the first page of a search result, 67% of people will only click on the first five results. This is why it is important that your ghost blog incorporates SEO, otherwise that 67% may never even see your blog, to begin with. 

  1. You Are Not Taking Emails 

If your ghost blog isn’t being sent to clients via email, you’re missing the chance to keep a connection that will strengthen your relationship with your consumer. When you are interacting with consumers, ensure that you are taking their email to add them to a mailing list. Incorporate a pop-up on your ghost blog that asks the viewer for their email so that they can keep up with the blog. Building this list will control your business’s future. Each subscriber that you gain from your ghost blog is a potential customer. As for current consumers on your email list, you will only keep your relationship with them consistent and strong, meaning they could use your services again. Having a client’s email will also come in handy when if you host events, training, or webinars. 

  1. You Aren’t Using a Ghost Blogger 

One of the biggest downfalls of a ghost blogging platform is that it isn’t being used more regularly by businesses. Companies will see 67% more leads with a consistent blog, but running a blog is hectic for a business owner. A ghost blogger will provide your blog with high-quality writing that will compel your audience into using your services. Ghost bloggers will save you time to work on your business and will ensure that your blog is written up to your standards. Those in the field of ghost blogging understand that their job is to engage your consumers. With this in mind, their writing will be entirely engaging and persuasive.

Want to Start a Ghostwriting Platform? 

The ghost bloggers at Web Content Development are among some of the best in the business. We understand that the aim of your blog is to gain consumer attention, and we will, therefore, write you some of the best, persuasive articles to attract them to your services. With expert knowledge of SEO, we will use the keywords to pull in leads that will bring popularity to your business. When working with Web Content Development, you can rest easy knowing that you are in the best hands in the field.

Does Content Development Really Work? Here’s 3 Brand Studies that Show It Does

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In this modern age, it’s possible to attract thousands of consumers through social media. Web content development is meant to attract a larger audience for your business. Furthermore, it is meant to keep this audience engaged. While this sounds great, you may be wondering if it actually works. There are many great content development success stories. Here are three successes that particularly stand out. 

The Content Development at Buffer 

Buffer has attracted 400,000 users. Also, they have around one million followers across various social media websites. How? A three-pronged content development strategy. For its initial growth, this company used guest blogging. Guest blogging is a method used to increase web traffic. Guest bloggers help build brand awareness by attracting new audiences to a brand. With regular fresh content, published to popular sites, Buffer attracted 100,000 users. 

Working on their own blog has also helped Buffer find popularity. Buffer has four blogs where they share the victories and hardships they have experienced. Furthermore, they pass along their best, shareable content through email. 

Buffer is a great example of content development success. Their web content developer did things in a simple, yet efficient way. By inviting guests to write about the company, they easily raised visibility. Additionally, consistently updated blogs, shared via email, kept Buffer users engaged. These tactics seem simple right? They are, and they attracted around one million followers to Buffer. 

Hubspot’s Content Development

Hubspot is a prime example of content development success. Hubspot’s web content developer used four approaches. First, Hubspot maintained a detailed blog about the subjects that most interested their visitors. Furthermore, they added additional content upgrades to their blog posts, such as ebooks. 

Additionally, Hubspot created a separate educational source for content sharing. They call this Inbound. This attracts 321,000 individuals per month! This source promotes Hubspot’s certification and partnership programs. Finally, Hubspot’s content developer improved upon traffic from LinkedIn. They then utilized this traffic to increase their Facebook video views. These four tactics kept engagement at an all-time high. Thanks to their web content team, Hubspot is now a multi-million dollar company.

Rip Curl

Also known as the “ultimate surfing company,” Rip Curl kept audience engagement boosted through their online publication, The Search. This blog contains topics ranging from the best surfing spots to exciting surfing stories. Furthermore, Rip Curl has a Youtube channel. This alone attracts 100,00 subscribers. Rip Curl kept their audience engaged with relevant surfing content. Due to this, the company has over 2 million Facebook followers. 

Rip Curl recognized surfing’s large audience. Then, they promoted strictly towards those potential consumers. Surfers are eager to learn about new sweet spots. They also enjoy reading and sharing personal surf stories. This lead to Rip Curl’s successful YouTube channel. Their channel reaches a vast number of surfers and maintains a large audience. 

Looking For a Web Content Developer? 

These three stories have one thing in common: simplicity. Through blogs, email, and social media, each company reached its audience. Due to this, their followers engaged with their content. These simple tactics were done artfully. Also, they had the help of a web content developer. Thereby, they attracted hundreds of thousands of followers.

Are you running a company that could use more consumer attention? Are you also interested in developing your content in a way that will bring your business more customers? Web Content Development offers a variety of services. From web page design and copywriting, to refining and popularizing your brand, we offer it all. Our services will bring new customers and more attention to your business.  

Good Reads SEO Plan: How to Get YOUR Site Ranking

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Good Reads is, without a doubt, one of the most popular and recognizable online community for book lovers. Their brand recognition and SEO results is something many small and medium businesses can only envy.

You may not have been in the business for a long time just like Good Reads. But, it’s important to remember that their huge success started from humble beginnings. Since inception, back in 2007, Good Reads has focused on implementing a stellar SEO strategy, and that has helped them improve their site ranking. The good news is that their SEO plan can work for you too.

Improve your Website Usability to Improve SEO

Search engines like Google reward sites that demonstrate better user engagement. Websites that have high usability make it easy for visitors/users to view more pages, stay on your site longer, and make more repeat visits. This, in turn, improves site ranking.

Website usability is one thing that has been working in favor of Good Reads. The platform makes it possible for book lovers to review books, share recommendations, and track reading history and goals. Even better, its web design facilitates reader interactions with authors through profile information, interviews, giveaways, and authors’ blogs. As a result, the book review and recommendation platform has attracted over 90 million members.

Updating Content Regularly

Search engines favor sites that update their content often. Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site’s relevancy, and that’s one of the things that work for Good Reads. The book review platform itself publishes dozens of “best of” lists across several categories. Better yet, there’s an endless number of reading lists being posted daily by members.

Encourage Sharing On Social Media 

Every business with a website needs to have an active social media presence. That’s pretty much common knowledge. What most people don’t know is that making it easy for site users to share your content can improve your site ranking.

Good Reads is quite effective in this search engine optimization strategy. They include social sharing icons on all their content. On top of that, they also share links on their social media pages. With more than 1 million users on Facebook alone, Good Reads can encourage social sharing as a regular part of their SEO campaigns.

Mobile Optimization Improves SEO

Today, the use of mobile devices is on the rise. In fact, more than 60 percent of searches on Google come from mobile devices. Google takes mobile optimization seriously and ranks sites accordingly. The search engine penalizes websites that are not mobile optimized by bumping down their ranking.

Obviously, Good Reads recognizes this and has a mobile-friendly website design in place. Their app is available for android and iOS systems. In the same way, you need to test your site and make sure your website is mobile optimized. If it isn’t, it’ll affect the user experience, adversely affecting your ranking.

Have a Link-Worthy Site

Good Reads focuses on creating relevant links within the text. They understand that anchor text like “Click here” has no site ranking value beyond the attached URL. In their place, they write out the name of a book or page. This helps improve their search engine rankings as well as the ranking of the page/book they are linking to.

Similarly, you can use descriptive links by linking keywords. Doing this will not only improve SEO but also add value to your readers, including those who are using screen readers or with disabilities.

Need Help with SEO Ranking?

If you’re just getting started on your online business, and not sure what is SEO, the team at Web Content Development can help. Give us a call to learn more about our services.

Daily Mail Case Study: How to Recoup Lost Website Traffic From Google

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Daily Mail is arguably one of the most popular tabloid newspapers in the world today with great website traffic. It was first published in 1896 and is known for its independent editorial stance and coverage of international news. Today, the paper has garnered an online daily readership of tens of millions and enjoys an average daily circulation of more than one million.

The Daily Mail’s success is, however, not without challenges. As recently as Jan 2019, for instance, Daily Mail was said to have failed to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability, according to Microsoft Edge. In June 2019, the newspaper’s website was blocked in China and is still not accessible. These two tribulations alone have hit their website traffic in a significant way. Luckily, Daily Mail has managed to overturn these complications. And, we can draw three simple lessons on how to recoup lost organic traffic from Google.

Identifying the Drop in Your Website Traffic 

Before you even think of restoring your site to glory, the first step is to identify your traffic drop. That is, see when it took place, what pages it has hit, and who is affected. Did it occur more dramatically in a particular location or on a single device? Is it site-wide or just a single page that is fueling the loss in traffic?

The good news is that there are lots of website traffic checker tools to help you with that. Google Analytics, for example, can help you to quickly and effectively pinpoint website traffic drop.

Understanding the Drop

Now that you’ve identified the drop, you need to understand the culprit(s) behind the decline. That’s what helped Daily Mail to regain its basic standards of accuracy and accountability in less than one week.

If, for instance, the drop lasts several days and seems to be recovering on its own, that’s probably not something to worry about. It could be an issue with your web host or some update to a commonly used browser add-on that may be causing script errors. No matter what connectivity issue that was, it was fixed within a few days.

On the other hand, if the dip was sharp, sudden, and doesn’t seem to be recovering, there’s a possibility that you have been hit with a Google Penalty. Checking your Google Webmaster Tools account for a penalty notification will help you confirm that.

If you are still uncertain about what’s causing a site-wide decline in organic traffic, you may have to look at the changes in your audience’s engagement over time. A drop in engagement time may be an adverse effect of recent changes in your site speed or layout. 

Other possible causes that affect how you drive your website traffic include new or increased competition or a change in the Google algorithm.

Fix the Website Traffic Issue

Dips in organic traffic are never fun. If not addressed, they can be extremely damaging to your business. Fortunately, Google’s own Search Console can help you fix systemic search traffic issues and improve the searchability of your website.

If, for example, the CTR drops, but impressions remain constant over a specific period. You need to check and fix the recent changes you made to your title, meta, or structured data.

Other essential tasks the Search Console can help you perform include:

  • Index errors
  • Crawl errors
  • Have Google re-crawl (or just crawl) the entire site or individual pages
  • If you have experience violations from Google
  • If you have ad violations from Google
  • The number of clicks and impressions you get in Google (and on what pages)

Do You Want More Traffic?

If you’re looking to improve or regain your website traffic, the team at Web Content Development is here for you. Reach out to us today to learn more.

5 Ways White Label Copywriting Will Save You Time (and Money)

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Are you a marketing, design, development, or SEO agency? If your answer is positive, you want to offer your clients a full spectrum of digital marketing services to keep them satisfied, and beat the competition. Unfortunately, you are time-poor and spread thin. Also, writing may not be your thing. That means outsourcing white label copywriting services is the most viable option. It will help you create more time to focus on the many tasks you have to take care of on a day to day basis.

But how exactly does it save you time (and money)?

Allows you to Leverage Deep Marketing and Industry Expertise

Copywriting is a wide-ranging field. There are varied niches that cater to different audiences. And, you may not have the expertise to handle the specific project at hand. Luckily for you, many white label copywriting agencies have years of experience in creating all types of content for a wide variety of niches. That means outsourcing white label copywriting services is the most flexible option that helps you find the expertise you need for your specific project. This grants you the freedom to focus on only what matters while your partner agency handles your content writing needs.

White Label Copywriting Helps you Deliver Quality

Any digital marketing strategy needs original and high-quality copy to succeed. Good content does not only affect the kind of leads generated but also the number of users attracted. The good news is that you can reap these benefits by outsourcing your content needs to a white label agency.

Saves you Money

Modern-day copywriters make a median annual salary of $66,500. That means hiring a permanent in-house copywriter may be outrightly expensive. Perhaps, this is because they will be taking care of an aspect of digital marketing that you don’t already offer.

By working with a white label digital agency, you get a chance to cut down salary and other overhead costs. Even better, you can scale your budget in accordance with your needs. That is, you only reach out to your agency partner when a specific content writing project arises. This, in turn, helps you save money that would otherwise go to hiring a full-time copywriter.

Increased Productivity

When you make your employees wear multiple marketing hats and spend time doing what they’re not best at, both their morale and productivity goes down. If you outsource white label copywriting services, however, you get a chance to make the most of your situation. In other words, you can dedicate all the available resources to your agency’s specialty — whether that’s email marketing, web design and development, or automation. The result? Improved quality delivery, and happy employees who spend time focusing on their core competencies. That also translates to more delighted clients — and long-term contracts.

Turns You into a Full-Service Digital Marketing Agency

As a marketing agency that offers a limited menu of services, it’s not easy to handle every content writing request that comes in from your clients. You’re not staffed with copywriters, copy editors, SEO specialists, PPC specialists, marketing strategists, social media marketing experts, or PR wizards.

But, partnering with another agency that provides white label copywriting services turns you into the go-to digital marketing agency for a diverse range of clients. Even better, it helps you to establish lasting long term relationships with companies who can refer clients to you.

Web Content Development

Regardless of what your content needs are, Web Content Development will help you impress your clients with professional content. Whether they need standard blog posts, press releases, web content, email marketing content, or social media copy, count on us to help you out. Give us a call to help us learn about you.