Custom Website Design vs Template: Pros and Cons + How to Decide Which One Fits Your Business1/12/2022  Your website is an integral part of your business. Not only does it provide information about what you do, why you’re great at it, and your pricing, it also serves as an opportunity to establish yourself as an industry expert any time someone does an online search about what you have to offer. Business sites also enable efficiency, as your prospects get a sense of your brand and can browse at their leisure instead of having to call you several times any time they have a question. It also enables you to better promote your business, particularly if you’ve discovered the wonders of inbound marketing. Therefore, it behooves you to design a website that provides a good user experience (UX). But when you look at your options, you realize that there’s a wide range of options and prices. Specifically, it all hinges on whether you create a custom website or build it using templates. Let’s take a closer look at both options. What Is Custom Website Design? Whether it is a b2b website design or b2c, custom websites are built from scratch. This involves using code to create the customizable elements you want to include on your site. As a result, you have full control over how the site will look and function. Because of its complexity, you’ll need to either hire an in-house developer or hire a web design agency to design it for you. Pros of Building a Custom Website Building a custom website allows you to create exactly what you’re envisioning. You also won’t have any limitations regarding integrations with applications, functionalities, or scalability. Cons of Building a Custom Website Building a custom website is expensive and takes a long time to complete. While the timeframe may vary, you should expect it to take close to four to six months. You also need to look for a highly skilled team of web developers to do this for you, since it’s unlikely that the tech savvy go-to person on your team knows everything there is to know about coding (if they do, kudos to them — and give them a raise!) What Is a Website Template? Website templates are predesigned elements that you piece together to bring your website to life. You can browse through a platform’s template library to look for any that match what you’re looking for. You can then make slight modifications regarding layout and colors to align them with your brand identity. You can also add more personality by including visual elements, such as images, videos, and modules. Pros of Building a Website Using a Template Website templates are helpful if you are looking to design a simple website. There are hundreds of thousands of templates to choose from, so you don’t necessarily have to feel too limited by going with this option. Templates are also easy to use; and depending on the website builder you choose (such as HubSpot), they may come with drag-and-drop capabilities that require no coding knowledge. Cons of Building a Website Using a Template Although you don’t have to feel too limited by using a template, there are limits to what you can do with this type of website. Some templates may not be designed to enable some of the features you’d like to include; or implement a layout that makes sense for your business; or make it easy to modify as your business grows. When to Use a Website Template Design Just because custom websites can give you exactly what you want, it doesn’t mean that templates can’t provide you what you need. In fact, templates are an ideal solution if any of these circumstances apply to your business: Low Budget Maybe you’re a startup or there are bigger priorities for which you need to allocate your resources. Using templates can still allow you to design a beautiful website with all of the main functionalities you need, such as background banners, desired typography, and a responsive design. Simple Website Some websites don’t really need bells and whistles. This is especially the case for smaller businesses and solopreneurs. This doesn’t mean that your site has to look basic or cheap. You can purchase higher end templates or hire a web developer to make it look state-of-the-art. Tight Deadline Since templates don’t require complex coding (and many of the modules are already created), websites that are designed using them can be completed in a much shorter time frame. No Coding Knowledge Using premade modules, CTA builders, and drag-and-drop functionalities eliminates the need to have any coding knowledge. That being said, you still can implement code to achieve exactly what you want to achieve, but you can still create a functional website without it. When to Create a Custom Website Custom websites can be created around your specific needs and marketing strategies. This is the best solution for your business if any of the following considerations apply to you: Unique Requirements If the nature of your business requires that you incorporate a complicated website structure, a custom design will save you a lot of time going back and forth trying to get it right. In addition, since so many websites are created using templates, yours may end up looking similar to others. Complex Features Custom websites are also ideal for businesses who want to include a lot of graphics, interactive content, a modern storefront, quizzes, online scheduling, order status, or customer portals, for example. Scalability Concerns Custom websites can be modified whenever you want, and include whatever you want. This makes it much easier to include additional features and functionalities as you expand your products/service offerings. You Have Plenty of Time Building a website from scratch requires a lot of time and patience. You’ll be waiting several months before you can launch it, so even if you do have the money to pay for a big ticket website, make sure you aren’t constrained by a specific deadline. You Have a Larger Budget Custom websites cost tens of thousands of dollars. The bigger the website and the more features and functionalities you want to add, the more expensive it’ll become. You’re also paying for highly skilled professionals to do the job for you. More Control Over User Experience (UX) You want your website to be intuitive and easy to navigate. You want to create specific paths for website visitors, depending on where they are on their buyer’s journey. You may also want people who browse through their mobile phones to be able to do so by simply using their thumb to click around. While a lot of templates do allow for many of these functionalities, creating a custom website lets you incorporate every single requirement you have. Require Multiple Integrations A website’s ability to integrate with other software is crucial to provide a seamless customer experience. This is also necessary to make things easier for your team. For example, you may need your site to communicate with your CRM, email, customer service software, social media accounts, and any other critical tools your business relies on. The more add-ons you need, the more it makes sense to create a custom website that conforms to these requirements. Things to Consider If You Have a Lower Budget What happens if you would love to get a custom website, but it’s not possible to do so with your current budget? You can still create a visually appealing and effective website using templates. However, look for those that allow you to easily incorporate the following: Mobile Optimization Not all website templates are responsive to smaller screens. This is a problem, since most people conduct a significant amount of online searches from their phones; and if your site isn’t loading fast enough or they have to keep scrolling sideways to get your info, they’ll simply go look for a competitor that offers a better user experience. SEO Search engine optimization is what increases the likelihood of your website being found when your target audience does a Google search. There are many factors to consider to make this possible — such as page loading times, HTML tags, including appropriate headings, meta descriptions, alt text for images, URL format, etc… Some templates include HTML that makes it a lot easier for search engines to make sense of the content. Others don’t load fast enough, or (as mentioned in the point above) aren’t responsive to mobile devices. If you’re using templates, make sure they don’t interfere with any SEO elements. Whether Third-Party Applications Will Slow Down Page Speed Sometimes you need features that aren’t included with certain templates. This is solved by integrating third-party applications, which can enable things such as eCommerce, creating pop up forms, or getting SEO recommendations. While they are great ways to implement functionalities that the template alone doesn’t provide, some of them may cause your site to load slower. So if you choose to go the template route, make sure to work with developers who know how to address this issue. As you can see, there are many considerations that come into play when deciding whether you should build a custom site or use templates. But with the right web developers, the process can become as simple as possible. Source: business2community.com Image Credit: Photo by Monoar Rahman from Pexels
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 Every small business owner wants their professional bio to make a statement, but the task is sometimes easier said than done. How do you summarize your entire professional career in a few sentences? How do you highlight your professional skills and accomplishments in a way that quickly captures readers’ attention? One way to compose an outstanding professional bio is by referencing business bio examples from fellow professionals. Professional Bio Examples Professional bios come in all shapes and forms. Some are brief and to the point, while others tell lengthy stories. What do you want to tell profile visitors or a potential employer, nd what platform do you want to use? From an entrepreneur Instagram bio to a Twitter bio, you have more options than ever. The following professional bio examples will help you write a business bio that engages readers. 1. Chima Mmeje Bio Platform: LinkedIn Profile In her LinkedIn bio, freelance writer and content strategist Chima Mmeje impresses readers with a lengthy list of accomplishments. While many users’ LinkedIn Page looks more like traditional resume with lists of positions held, Mmeje’s LinkedIn summary focuses more on what she can do for clients and less on her every career move  2. Van Jones Bio Platform: Twitter Profile Because of its character limit, Twitter can be a difficult profile on which to build an effective business bio. When writing a Twitter bio, professionals should focus on the keywords they want other users to know about them. A catchy tagline can be used to grab ahold of readers’ attention. In his Twitter profile bio, CNN’s Van Jones clearly and succinctly tells users who he is, and what he’s done. 3. Lena Axelsson Bio Platform: Industry Website Many industry professionals know their professional bios are how many clients are introduced to them and their services. In her business bio at Psychology Today, marriage and family therapist Lena Axelsson introduced her practice with a core belief rather than a personal statement. She then explains how that belief impacts her passion for healing sufferers of trauma.  4. Rebecca Bollwitt Bio Platform: Instagram Like on Twitter, Instagram bios can be a challenge to write because the platform limits the number of characters that can be used. How do you write a short business bio that adequately interests readers? Author Rebecca Bollwitt expanded the ideas she could communicate in her brief Instagram bio by infusing emojis into her statements, each expressing ideas in a single character. 5. Chris Burkard Bio Platform: LinkedIn People are naturally drawn to stories, and storytelling is an effective tool for engaging readers with a business bio. In his LinkedIn bio, photographer Chris Burkard tells the story of his career and accomplishments rather than listing them in just another a monotonous wall of text.  6. Tim Cook Bio Platform: Company Website Apple CEO Tim Cook‘s professional bio on his company’s website is a great example of a traditional yet still effective business profile. Audiences can put a name to the face thanks to a large profile photo, and the brief bio clearly illustrates the history of Cook’s career. 7. Lisa Quine Bio Platform: Personal Website A business bio is an important component of any online portfolio. Whether it’s showcasing visual arts, written work or another craft, website visitors want to know the creator. Artist and creative consultant Lisa Quine‘s personal website features a portfolio of her work and an effective business bio that introduces her to audiences.  Professional Bio Template You don’t need to be a skilled writer to create an effective professional bio. Most business bios, even most of the best examples, follow a certain formula. The following can serve as a template for writing your own professional bio: (NAME) is a (JOB TITLE) at (COMPANY NAME), where (NAME) (VERB – include an action verb that describes what you do) (NOUN – include a noun that describes what you produce) for the past (NUMBER) years, including (TASK1), (TASK2) and (TASK3). Short Bio Examples Many platforms require professionals to list short bios, falling below a set number of characters. Other professionals opt for a shorter bio in order to most efficiently describe themselves to readers. The following short bio examples will help when writing your own brief professional synopsis. 8. Audra Simpson Bio Platform: Company website Professional bios are an important component of a company website. Who represents your organization? In her business bio for Columbia University, anthropology professor Audra Simpson clearly communicates her professional biography and research interests.  9. Corey Wainwright Bio Platform: Company Website It’s possible to capture readers’ attention and describe a professional career in just a couple of sentences. In her short business bio for Hubspot, blogger Corey Wainwright tells audiences the two most important things to know about her, covering personal interests and career accomplishments in just a few words. 10. Megan Gilmore Bio Platform: Instagram When you only have a few characters to compose your professional bio, it’s important to make every word count. Cookbook author Megan Gilmore effectively describes her career in just a few short words on her Instagram profile. She helps communicate ideas using emojis and strategically directs readers to her website, where they can learn more details. 11. Ann Handley Bio Platform: Personal Website Author and professional content marketer Ann Handley knows how to make a statement. Her professional bio, listed on her professional website, uses bold and colorful text to capture readers’ attention. Website visitors quickly can grasp her accomplishments and her personal interests.  12. Sarah Haskins Bio Platform: Twitter Sarah Haskins‘ Twitter profile boasts one of the shortest and sweetest business bios found on any platform. In just five words the writer lets users know who she is and what she does. You can’t get much clearer than that. Longer Bio Examples There are plenty of reasons to write short bios, but some situations call for greater detail. If a platform provides enough space, a longer business bio can include information about professional philosophy, personal life and professional accomplishments. The following longer bio examples demonstrate how a business profile can tell a greater story than simply writing resumes. 13. Mark Levy Bio Platform: Company Website Consultant Mark Levy lists his own bio twice on his company website, each version highlighting different aspects of his own business and his person. In the first entry, Levy lists his credentials in just a few short paragraphs. The second business bio on Levy’s website tells a more detailed and engaging story of the small business owner’s career, and it even employs elements of humor.  14. Wonbo Woo Bio Platform: Personal Website You might expect a unique personal brand and professional bio from a content producer, and WIRED’s Wonbo Woo doesn’t disappoint. He includes a longer bio on his personal website. In it, he tells the story of his impressive career, and he doesn’t fail to drop plenty of names of the celebrities with whom he’s worked.  Creative Business Bio Examples An effective business bio doesn’t have to come from a template. In fact, if you’re a skilled at creative writing, you can grab a reader’s attention and impress potential clients with a creative business bio on your company page or various social media platforms. The following creative business bio examples can serve as a guide. 15. DJ Nexus Bio Platform: Personal Website An effective bio can come in a variety of forms. On his website, DJ Nexus dedicates an entire page to the story of his career. The New England-based DJ doesn’t just list professional details, however, he also provides enough personal information to tell readers who he is.  16. Pei Jung Ho Bio Platform: Personal Website You might expect a unique and creative professional bio from an artist, and Pei Jung Ho definitely meets that expectation. The professional designer doesn’t simply boast a website with some accomplishments and job description. Ho’s personal website opens with an animated statement in colorful and bold lettering, before transitioning to a more traditional short bio and an engaging photo of the artist. 17. Nancy Twine Bio Platform: Company Website Briogeo Hair Care founder Nancy Twine‘s professional bio immediately grabs hold readers’ attention with her signature and photo, before telling Twine’s story. The entrepreneur’s business bio doesn’t end there. It also highlights a quote from Twine, which illustrates her professional philosophy, and it even features video content.  18. Trinity Mouzon Bio Platform: Personal Website Entrepreneur Trinity Mouzon‘s professional bio tells far more about her than her job title and primary responsibilities. Mouzon makes a strong personal statement in the first sentence of her bio, which she presents in first person, telling her own story. In just a couple of paragraphs, Mouzon captures her professional essence and offers unique insight into her success. 19. Alex Bishop Bio Platform: Company Website In his professional bio, guitar maker Alex Bishop exudes the passion he has for his craft. Beneath an artistic and engaging video, Bishop includes a business bio that speaks to his intended audience and provides more than mere professional experience. Bishop’s story make’s potential clients trust his passion for guitars, as well as his brand name and small business. Author Bio Examples Authors have been impressing their readers with professional bios centuries before anyone heard of the World Wide Web. Today, it’s not uncommon for authors to have websites and social media profiles promoting their works, complete with creative business bios that might or might not mirror the bios printed in their books. 20. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Bio Platform: Personal Website Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s personal website speaks to her target audience with a traditional business bio. In it, Adichie tells the story of her background, including her childhood in Nigeria and her educational journey. Her bio then goes on to describe her work and specific accomplishments.  21. Michael Siemsen Bio Platform: Amazon A common place to find online author’s bios is on Amazon, where a writer’s business bio can be found on pages featuring their books for sale from the eCommerce giant. In his professional author’s bio on Amazon, Michael Siemsen details his interests, accomplishments and popular works in a few brief sentences. What are the essential components of professional bios? While an effective professional bio is often more creative than a traditional resume, you can write a short bio using much of the same information, including work history, new skills and professional accomplishments. The following are six essential elements of an effective business bio:
How do you make your bio interesting? How do you make your professional bio more interesting? After all, no one is going to be impressed by yet another series of monotonous bullet points. You can add some extra pizzazz to your bio by including a more personal side, as well. Want to make your bio interesting by including information not found on your resume? Be sure to include features such as your professional philosophy or a personal statement about your professional passions. Make your bio unique by highlighting who you are outside of the workplace, and don’t forget to tell potential clients and potential employers what you can offer their companies. Should I write a bio in the third person? A professional bio can be written in first person or in third person. Professional and more formal bios are often written in third person, while personal and more casual bios typically use first person. It’s vital, however, that the chosen tense is consistent throughout the bio. For example, if the bio starts off in third person, referencing the subject by name and using pronouns such as “he,” “she” and “they,” then it’s important to continue using third person throughout the entire entry. If, however, you start your bio by referencing yourself as, “I,” or using first person, then that should remain consistent, as well. Source: smallbiztrends.com Images: Depositphotos  With the rolling over of the calendar, many people are taking a moment to reexamine their lives and make changes in the form of New Year’s resolutions. While some common resolutions involve personal health and well-being, they don’t have to be strictly personal. The new year can be an effective time to reevaluate what did and did not work for your business in the past year. If you didn’t meet the goals you hoped to achieve, it might be time to reexamine your business’s content marketing strategy. But before you start on your marketing vision board for 2022, it’s important to acknowledge some of the pitfalls that come with resolutions. After all, a staggering amount of these declarations end in failure. In this article, I review best practices for creating lasting changes in the coming year both for yourself and for your business. Building The Scaffold For An Effective Content Marketing Strategy When it comes to setting your goals, it is especially important to have accountability checks in place. It might be helpful to think of the changes you want to make to your content marketing strategy as constructing a building. Before you begin putting in the floors and walls, you must first have a blueprint for what you want to achieve. It can be tempting to start with the end goal first. Perhaps you want to grow your audience, sell a certain amount of product or sign a specific number of clients. But to follow the construction metaphor, this is like putting in wiring before setting up your foundation. Goals are an important part of making significant changes to your business, but those same goals need a framework on which to stand. If you want to build an effective content marketing strategy, my suggestion is to do away with the traditional resolution entirely. Instead, it might be helpful to consider a New Year’s theme. This idea was popularized by YouTube creator and podcaster, CGP Grey. A helpful video describing the topic can be found here. To summarize, a theme can act like a compass, pointing you in the direction in which you want to take your business. In contrast to a resolution, as long as you continue to move in the direction of your theme, you have not failed. This can be helpful because marketing for your business is a process that takes time. In fact, you may go months without seeing results. However, with a yearlong theme to guide you, you can be confident you are still making progress. So, what are some marketing themes that might work for your business?
But what if these three marketing themes aren’t the right fit for your business? Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you come up with your own theme.
Even if you do have a clear idea of what your theme will be for next year, taking some time to answer these questions can go a long way toward building up your content marketing strategy. Now that we’ve established a strong foundation on which to grow your business, we can address the topic of goals.  Crafting Effective Goals For Your Content Marketing Strategy By no means do I think that goals should be done away with entirely. If constructed in a mindful way, they can be effective tools for accessing motivation and acknowledging personal achievements. When marketing for your business, an objective can also ground and specify what might otherwise seem like a broad theme. Not all goals are created equally, however. To make sure your goals are in service to your content marketing strategy, it’s important that you be S.M.A.R.T. about it according to Indeed. S.M.A.R.T. stands for:
With this acronym to help guide your goals, you are much more likely to see them through to completion. Now that you have your theme and your goals, it’s time to get started!  Three Strategies For Your Content Marketing Strategy Theme Meet your audience where they are with your content creation and you will see results. Whatever theme you choose for 2022, here are a few strategies to keep in mind to help make this year the most successful one yet. 1. Keep your audience in mind throughout the content creation process. The kinds of content that will work for one audience may not work for another. As you move through the content creation process, ask yourself if the content you’re creating is something with which your audience will want to engage. It might be helpful to follow content creators that your audience follows. Immerse yourself in the topics and language that your potential audience uses. 2. Create content in a timely, consistent fashion. Even if your theme is not consistency, your content marketing strategy should include a consistent time that you will post your content. Having a regular schedule not only trains your potential audience when to expect content but also helps with search engine optimization and driving more traffic to your business. 3. Engage with your audience. Part of building a successful social media account involves showing your audience that you care. Ultimately, people don’t come to social media to make a purchase. People come to social media to pass the time, have fun and interact with like-minded individuals. If you want people to interact with the content you’ve created, you need to show them that you are there. When people do interact with your posts, take some time to respond back. Show them that you are more than just a business. Source: business2community.com  At its most basic, this is what I do for small businesses: I help them create a digital content strategy that will get them closer to their business goals. But before you’re ready to work with someone to create a digital content strategy for your business, you may have some questions about what it is and how we go about creating a strategy that’s customized for your business, your goals, and your ideal customers. What is a digital content strategy? So let’s start here: A digital content strategy is a group of tactics you’ve chosen strategically to help you reach a particular goal in your business. Tactics, in this case, include things like:
And so on. How to create a digital content strategy for your small business: For us at our agency, I define small businesses as being up to around $5 million a year in revenue; beyond that, businesses usually start to hire marketing people in-house. Specifically, my agency works with businesses earning anywhere between, say, $250k and $5mm a year because that’s our sweet spot, but the following information should be useful for even businesses at an earlier revenue stage. 1. Know your goals. So many articles will talk about KPIs and metrics in the same breath as goals, but for small businesses, it often comes down not so much to things like click-thru rates and website conversion rates, and more to: what do you want to achieve? That’s where I start with all my clients. What do you want to achieve in the next 6-12 months? Your answer will inform what kind of digital content strategy you want to put together and where you want to focus your efforts. For example: If a client comes to me and tells me that she wants to write a book proposal and sell a nonfiction book to a major publisher in the next year, the content strategy we create for her will be very different from someone who has a very high ticket program or service and only needs to fill, say, 15 spots in a year. So, start with the goal. If it’s a revenue goal, work backwards from there and determine how many sales you need (and of which products) to meet that revenue goal. If it’s a visibility goal, determine how many people you want to add to your audience. In our book proposal example above, it’s well known that publishers look to see if authors have an existing platform, so an aspiring author might want to shoot for 10,000 followers on social media to shore up their marketability with a publishing house. At its most basic, a digital content strategy is about building an audience of potential customers. To know what tactics you want to add to your digital content strategy, you need to have an idea of how many people you want to add to your audience. Some important numbers to know: If you’re selling something online with a sales page and a “buy now” button, you can expect a 1–3% conversion rate. That means, between 1–3% of the people who land on the page will decide to make a purchase. (This is average; you may have a better or worse conversion rate for any given offer.) If you’re selling something via a phone (or zoom) call, your average conversion rate will probably hang around 50%. It’s worth tracking to find out what your personal conversion rate is so you know how many people you need to speak to in order to reach your sales goals. But these numbers mean that the number of people you need to have in your audience is actually exponentially bigger than your sales goals. For example, email is still the best place to nurture your audience for most businesses, but the average click thru rate for emails is also 1–3%. That means, if you have 5,000 people who actually open an email, you can expect around 50 of them to click on a link to a sales page… …and of those 50, you might make 1 sale. This is not to make you feel bad about yourself, your business, or your numbers! (And remember: these are averages. Your conversion rates may be better or worse.) Rather, this is to help you get a more reasonable idea of how many people you need in your audience to meet your sales or growth goals and your digital content strategy. 2. Choose the discovery channel for your digital content strategy At this point, the vast majority of my clients realize they aren’t reaching enough people and that they need a digital content strategy that will grow their audience. And many realize they don’t even really have a clear way for new people to discover their business. I call this your discovery channel: the part of your digital content strategy focused on how new people will find your business. There are lots of different tactics that can be added to your digital content strategy here to fill the role of your discovery channel:
And so on. You want to define at least one strong discovery channel as part of your digital marketing strategy; and, depending on how quickly you want or need to grow, you may choose more than one. The metrics to track for this channel are essentially how many new audience members you’re adding per strategy, per month. 3. Define your nurture channels for your digital content strategy and choose your Power Platform The next part of your digital content strategy that you want to focus on is how you will nurture the audience you have and are growing to become leads and potential customers. Your nurture channels include anywhere that you’re having a conversation with your audience and leading them down the path to becoming a customer. Nurture channels might include:
And so on. Usually what I recommend is that small business owners choose one Power Platform where they will share their thought leadership, and then use other channels to drive their audience to that Power Platform. This is the backbone of your digital content strategy. How do you choose a Power Platform? Well, think about how you most like to communicate — what’s easiest for you. Is it writing? Speaking? Recording videos? The medium will often dictate the platform. For example, if you love to write, you might choose blog articles or email newsletters as your Power Platform. If you prefer speaking, a podcast might be best for you. And if you love to be on camera, video is the way to go whether it’s live or pre-recorded. (Quick note: some people love to verbally process their ideas, but don’t want to start a podcast or video series. In that case, I recommend finding a great writer who can take your verbal processing and turn it into articles, the way we do for our clients.) Once you know your Power Platform, you’ll want to focus most of your efforts on creating content for that platform, and let your other channels — like Instagram captions, Facebook posts, Tweets, etc. — point back to your Power Platform posts. 4. Choose your Power Platform content topics strategically Now, because we want to focus on quality over quantity, you’ll need to choose your content topics strategically. Essentially, we want each piece of content you create for your Power Platform to help move your audience a little bit closer towards a sale. In practice, there are practically infinite ways to accomplish this, but here are some pointers:
Once you’ve chosen your topics, you’ll want to organize them into some kind of editorial calendar for your digital marketing strategy. I offer a template of the same system we use with our clients here. 5. Create your distribution plan. As I mentioned, your Power Platform is where you’re going to share your deeper thought leadership — but you still need to promote and distribute it on your other nurture channels so that everyone in your audience gets to see it! Typically, for many of my clients, this means having an assistant create content for the other channels. And for a lot of people, this is where the process can start to break down. They find outsourcing this sort of content creation to be challenging and the results not up to their standards. There are three main things you need to successfully outsource content creation — whether that means an assistant who creates some Instagram and Facebook posts for you, or a full content production team:
As I said, whether you have one part-time assistant or an entire team, having these 3 pieces in place will make outsourcing any part of your digital content strategy that much easier. 6. Test, measure, and iterate The final piece of the puzzle when you’re thinking about how to create your digital content strategy is to simply test things out and see what works. The “see what works” part is key — which means you have to keep track of those metrics we were mentioning back in step 1. Of course, the metrics you want to track will vary based on your strategy, but some common ones include:
And so on. Get comfortable with your numbers and track what’s working — and what isn’t. There’s a popular piece of advice for writers: “Kill your darlings.” It means, be willing to cut things that don’t work — even if you love them. The same is true for marketing. You need to be willing and able to look at the different pieces of your digital content strategy and be able to tell whether or not they’re actually working to bring you closer to your goal. If the answer is yes: great! Do more of that. If the answer is no: you have to be willing to let those things go, even if you enjoy them, if they’re no longer a good use of your time and resources. For example, a business owner might love doing their podcast, but if the metrics show that it’s not meaningfully contributing to their business goals, they have to be willing to either try something different with the way they’re approaching the podcast, or let it go entirely. Source: business2community.com Image Credit: Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels |
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