Oluwanifise Olamuyiwa

Writing Sample 1 Disclaimer I structure content to be tailored towards a reader-focused and client-sensitive approach. I am a professional copywriter who detests plagiarism and believes in raw and high-quality original work. This writing sample is based on the subject matter and, most importantly, its perceived readership audience. This means, I am willing and able to write on any subject matter whatsoever and tailor it specifically to a particular niche, however, desired or specified. NB: This sample is designed specifically for freelancers, startups, or SMEs in a template format. How to Make or Break Your Content Marketing Strategy Or Why You Should Rethink or Recreate Your Content Marketing Strategy Or How to Get A Superb Content Marketing Strategy Right from Scratch We all know this; we hear it talked about by SEO gurus like Neil Patel or Ryan Robinson, content marketing is here to stay. But all that talk has made a lot more puzzled as ever, what truly is “content marketing” and some dare to ask, “why is it darn so important?”. Well, it’s being more about the surging increase in content creators and wannabe gurus and way less about developing or better, teaching the ultimate guide to a top-notch content marketing strategy. Fortunately, we don’t have to buttress the importance of quality content and why it’s such a significant investment to any business’s marketing but… it does take quite some time to see progress, and a lot of B2B/SaaS companies get into hot water because of this. It’s easier to throw money on paid advertising and lead generating channels. Quality content needs months, years to grow, and show progress, and if you’re ready to wait, you do need to have a content strategy as well. Developing A Good Content Marketing Strategy You need to have a blog, you know, how crucially important SEO is but a blog can only be an asset when its content is topnotch, and that’s only possible with a top-notch content strategy. I know you have questions (50 or more) but there’s no need to buy those stress balls, here’s a FAQ of some sort for you to get started on and continue with on your business journey. They are very essential to generating lead-fulfillment traffic and establishing evidence your company needs to ensure its investment is paying off well. 1. Who Exactly Are You Writing For? 2. What Do You Need to Write on For Them? 3. When Do They Get to See It? 4. How Will You Get Them to See/Find It? 5. How Do You Plan to Keep It Going? 6. What Content Marketing Tools/Software Will You Use? 1. Who Exactly Are You Writing For? It’s incredibly crucial for your business that the audience you’re targeting are real people interested in what you want to talk about and not imaginary personas made off common sense. Readers of your content should be targeted people that are aware and keenly interested in engaging and interacting with it. Please don’t create readership avatars based on your personal or contributor’s common sense simply because it affects your content creation. There’s a professional way of creating content for SaaS companies that’s very different from that for freelancers. Imaginary avatars reflect your opinions or perceptions which are average at best and not ideal nor realistically scalable. This simply means, your content will not be relevant for target readers due to misplaced demographics and psychographics. Think deeply before creating personas, don’t ever generalize. An effective content marketing strategy requires a focus on the following personas: Thought leaders; They hope to be trendsetters by being dynamic and revolutionary teachers, they need guidance on being responsible and humble learners. Executing managers; They are in charge of making sure SaaS tools/software is utilized for optimum growth and progress. Detailed researchers; They are responsible for crafting and interpreting analytical data from SaaS tools/software to find and detect opportunities for scalability or improvement. Now, from a down-to-earth approach, reaching readers in these brackets are quite hard and competitive but not impossible. This clearly shows the need for a content strategy that fits them nicely and superbly. Your content should have a short, specified range that tactfully aids their strategies. Strategies involve blueprints, models, principles, and frameworks. Tactics involve guides, A/B tests, instruction manuals, information, and the best methods/practices. What this means for your blog is that it must seamlessly provide content that educates readers interested in strategies and tactics that are easily understandable and comprehensible. Here (hyperlink) is the ultimate guide that breaks down how to write strategic and tactical reader-focused content completely. Always keep in mind that your targeted reader is ideally someone who will buy your service/product. A quick tip in B2B/SaaS blogging; your business is the product being sold to the buyer. Identify that buyer and treat them better than any competitor would care to. 2. What Do You Need to Write on For Them? Picking the right ideas for a topic or subject matter is a process or a system. Make mind maps that lay out your objectives and goals which can be developed into a framework that’s workably understandable to begin finding the best topic to choose for your blog posts. Let’s get one thing straight; a blog is not a publishing house. It’s a lot more like a gradually increasing collection of simply defined documentaries. It’s a progressive rather than regressive library, regressive in the sense that the information it contains are related and relevant to one another, Here’s why; Collection-like blogs are libraries or centers of familiar content. Their information can be made to repeatedly buttress a particular subject matter. Publication house-like blogs are section-filled hubs of divided and unitary content. The information in one post is much different from another. If your content marketing strategy is tailored towards readers interested in your content, it’s best to create content that is essentially related, and that helps SEO. SEO is all about making sure Google or Bing sees your blog to be relevant to readers, it’s a no-brainer hack used by 6-figure bloggers. Readers care more about finding what they need than keeping up with what you’re posting, even if it’s the same thing. Your subject matter or topics must be; i. Well researched in content relevance and long-tail keywords ii. Optimized for lead fulfillment and positive reviews Your content marketing strategy should involve finding long-tail keywords with low search difficulty and placed at the entry points and mid-points of your sales funnel, that is, finding readers who want to be informed and educated. The bottom of your sales funnel should be addressed to solve immediate needs or provide ample solutions to your leads, having been understood in detail by your sales and promotion teams as well as customer service responders. A sales funnel must be a systemic seamless process of lead generation to fulfillment, here’s a breakdown; Your funnel entry point must adequately utilize long-tail (buyer) keywords with low search difficulty and paid advertising (PPC) research intensely to form topics or subject matter that draw candid attention from prospective readers to become aware of your business. Your funnel midpoint must highlight and buttress how easily and perfectly your product/service solves that reader’s problem/pain point using content marketing and promotional strategies such as email marketing or membership forums. Your funnel endpoint must assuredly confirm the reader of their already convinced decision to purchase by showing positive reviews that address the reliability of the product/service and how-to content that broadens the learning curve as well as a quick-response customer service. Just relax, find a scalable subject matter to address from different perspectives, and fit the funnel to the size of that scalability. 3. When Do They Get to See It? You couldn’t ever possibly create ‘too much’ content as long as it’s progressive and not regressive. A good content marketing strategy isn’t bothered about running a publishing house but rather focused on allowing readers like, enjoy, share, and keep coming back for more. A publishing house has stricter deadlines that require undercooked content, this is a sacrifice on quality and scalability that though budget-wise seems ideal will eventually make you realize that no one will read it. Be progressive even with your publishing schedule, start small, and then increase the quota gradually while studying analytics and discovering what works and what doesn’t. Here’s a guide to building a schedule skyscraper; Ground floor: An eBook per quarter An article per week First floor: An eBook per month Two articles per week Second floor: Two eBooks per month Three articles per week Always keep in mind that good content marketing is about growth, the first floor might seem slower but building backlinks and social shares to a strategy that produces about 52 articles a year will result in massive progress, 4. How Will You Get Them to See/Find It? The ultimate guide to a good content marketing strategy begins with a focus on progress as it’s the primary goal. Investing unnecessary effort, money, and time in ineffective lead generation channels is regressive. Simply stick to good old SEO, building an asset of an email list, and a true fan base of a membership forum who trust you as a thought leader. SEO If you have not been living under a rock (literally), you’d know the vital importance of organic search and its benefits as well as the significance for your business. It’s a no-brainer that ranking on the first page of Google or Bing makes it some way easier to gain traffic. If you’re ready to start, here’s how: Backlinks & Internal Linking: You know how WikiHow has a lot of hyperlinks in one step-by-step guide? Well, that’s an SEO tactic that helps search engines discover how relevant and related your content is to one another as well as other content on similar blogs/websites. You want a low bounce rate which means it helps readers stay longer on your blog/website. SEO Analytics/Metrics: This is what most people learn about SEO first. The researched optimization of your meta descriptions, website design, and structure (for mobile responsiveness), user interface (for easy navigation), canonical backlinks. If it’s all overwhelming for you, just outsource the work to a professional. Content Concentration: We all feel the need to be in a hurry when it comes to content creation, but it’s much better to create good content one article at a time than to post articles that seem randomly selective to the reader. Remember that traffic is earned through having relevant content on your blog/website whether it’s new and fresh or old and refined. Extent & Depth of Content: Reliable research informs us that large volumes of content - words at least) to be ideal. It might seem like a lot but it helps with setting realistic publishing deadlines that don’t hinder creativity and relevance. Once again, if the work seems to be overwhelming, hire a professional (hyperlink). Email List Traffic from organic search helps your growth faster than email lists, but your email list is a vital tool of scalability for your business. Organic traffic is, of course, the primary focus of growth, but building an email list must be a part of your sales funnel as it’s a treasured asset because it allows you to reach out to repeat buyers over and over again. Understandably, it doesn’t get new leads, but reasonably, it’s much easier to get a previous buyer to buy again than a prospect to make a purchase. It scales your profit margins for your sales funnel midpoints and endpoints to be consistent and passive. These are SaaS company reliable templates you can use: Revenant emails: These are reminder emails that notify the user of their actions or inactions. It helps them feel involved and relevant to your business. Retentive Email Series: These emails are specifically targeted for those hard-to-get users who aren’t interacting with the product/service. Utilize a mixture of good content, simple questions, and guides to keep their minds constantly aware. These emails should be used quite often and early on from the start. Freemium Series: These are for users that have been aboard the email ship for quite a while. A mixture of guides and eBooks with good content that makes them feel inspired, motivated, and well-equipped is ideal. Routine Product/Service Updates: Inform people about your product/service and what it can do for them. Make them aware of the solution it offers and educate them on how to take advantage of it. Unpaid Email Course: This is a skillful yet underrated method of lead generation at funnel entry points. Your emails (3-5) should be so easily comprehensible and carefully reader-focused that your readers don’t bother trying to find alternatives (competitors) because they strongly believe and trust you due to your good content which enriches them. Serial Newsletter: Weekly emails that become a natural habit for your readers to engage with. Fresh Subscriber Welcoming Series: These inform new readers about your product/service, what it can do, and how that helps them. Here (hyperlink) is a breakdown of how to build and scale a membership forum. 5. How Do You Plan to Keep It Going? In B2B marketing, business objectives are paramount and institutional. Leading generating channels and email lists are wonderful but can be quite costly. Keep in mind that the only way to keep this up is by getting more fulfilled leads and even more repeat buyers. We all know by now how every wannabe guru out there is selling some so-called software or course that "guarantees" a passive 6-figure income without any work whatsoever, I suppose that’s how tech billionaires didn’t make it. The foundation of monetization is a realistically workable content marketing strategy. If you overlook these four things when you start to grow your blog then it suffices to say, you don’t have a blog to run at all. Product/Service Awareness Please don’t make the mistake of assuming that everyone has the time to go through your blog and realize you have a software product/consulting service. Most people have about 5-10 tabs (at least) open, social media notifications on their phone, calls to make, texts to reply to, a Zoom meeting in half an hour, and kids to feed. Make sure you let them know right on sight that this is not another ad but a B2B SaaS product/service official company website and not just another blog as well. Here’s how: Utilize an instant messaging tool for visitors to make quick inquiries while they’re on your website. Don’t force them to give you their email address or you’ll get a fake one which is counterproductive and makes them irritated. You want to seem less of a spammer and more of a genuinely concerned helper so instead, offer answers to simple questions or direct them to your FAQ page and then ask them to send an inquiry via email, let them know it’s for the inquiry. Make sure the reply email contains good content that focuses on the question and then inform the person of articles on your blog which might help, those articles should explain what your product/service does and how it can help them. Do keep your blog on your website in a sub-folder and not as a sub-domain, don’t keep it on another website like Medium or HubPages. The links to all your blog posts should contain the main site’s domain and the main site’s navigation menu should b easily accessible in their pages. It’s important to use author bios to let readers know who wrote the content, make it professional. Utilize proper product language and etiquette in the header, footer, and sidebar. Do not hesitate to show positive reviews, offer freemium plans, or use evidence on social media that reveals how much real people love your product/service. Do utilize CTAs in their proper context. Don’t misplace function for an action, if it’s an article on consulting, don’t use an eCommerce CTA. Building an Email List A lot of people aren’t ready to make a purchase right now, although they will need your product/service in the future. There are a lot of factors, and they’re all considerably reasonable, though this can be difficult to track and analyze. Nevertheless, it makes a clear candid winning argument that it’s better to have sent that email that not at all. This is going to be more of a dedicated and conscious relationship than a last-minute resort so that if and most definitely when the reader is ready to buy, they know exactly where to go, and in fact, you’ve already made it very easy for them. Newsletters are old-fashioned tried-and-true workable email list building strategies. They work best when your reader knows the exact days and frequency of emails they should be expecting. Courses are much better and easier strategies, especially for funnel entry points. Newsletter subscriptions are more than marriage certificates while courses are easier to commit to for people to opt-in. Afterward, they can be transferred to a newsletter with less frequency. Utilize content assets such as eBooks, whitepapers, CTAs, visualizations, case studies, blueprints, manuscripts to generate leads. You can offer them in articles on relevant subject matter/topics. Always Follow Up Your marketing team (if you have one) should have a way of acquiring emails. You should have an easy flowing array of campaigns put in place to nurture captured emails. There are several tools and software that make email marketing automated and seamlessly passive, so use them. Don’t lose any lead, let technology do the work for you. Sort Out Attribution Beforehand Interpreting analytical data and metrics for content marketing can be a hectic hassle, especially when stakeholders need to be held responsible for progress or regress. Revenue allocation based on profit or loss isn’t easy to decipher as people take time to make a purchase, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be done, and here’s how: Keep things simple; track a user’s engagement from the last 90 days leading to a purchase. Don’t try to detail it from when they read an article. To make it easier to attribute purchases, you should be running our blog in a sub-folder and not a sub-domain during Google Analytics analysis. Email list building is such a seamless way of tracking a user’s journey from prospect to buyer. Keep in mind that you should not be trying to provide substantial evidence that your blog is working but that it’s improving, progressing (growing) and overall, achieving desired aims and objectives but never get comfortable, content can and will always need to be refined or refreshed sooner or later. Stick to analyzing metrics and recording successful milestones. 6. What Content Marketing Tools/Software Will You Use? Now that you have that good content marketing strategy (finally right?), It’s important to note that you don’t have to do everything manually as that could be incredibly difficult. Here re a few of many content marketing tools/software that you could start using today: SEO & Research Alexa Siteinfo Blog Idea Generator BPlans Buzzsumo CoSchedule How to Start a Startup Typeform Website Grader Content Creation & Website/Blog Hosting Canva Content Idea Generator Flaticon Logaster Pablo by Buffer Unsplash WordPress Email Automation/List Building Mailchimp Sumo WeTransfer Conversion & Promotion Buffer Disqus Drift Facebook Ads Sample GrowthHackers Hotjar Promotehour Sniply Social Rank Submit Workflow Dropbox Enloop Evernote Gmail Google Drive Google Slide Google Webmaster Tools GoTo Meeting Grammarly Nomadict Product Hunt RainDrop Really Good Emails Signature Maker Slack Startup Equity Calculator Telegram Trello WhatsApp Business Analytics & Attribution Google Analytics Bitly XML Sitemaps Invoicing InvoiceApp Online Invoice Generator Waves App Good content marketing can be overwhelming but not impossible. 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