Content Creation

Day One: A Lesson in Content Strategy with Arnie Kuenn of Vertical Measures

CopyPress

December 7, 2011 (Updated: March 27, 2023)

As a holiday gift to our CopyPress blog readers, we are providing a series titled “The Twelve Days of Marketing.” This series will feature 12 blog posts of lessons related to online marketing, content strategy and copywriting.

In each day of “The Twelve Days of Marketing” we will share insights alongside a featured industry blogger specializing in that day’s lesson.

This series is not just a gift of insights from CopyPress, it is also a gift of introduction to 12 other influential industy blogs offering information on increasing web influence and building better content marketing strategies. In the future, our readers can continue to read and reference each of these blogs for additional advice, examples of engaging content and further industry insight.

For ‘A Lesson In Content Strategy’ we are giving you this post on the importance of content, specifically blogs, as well as teaser for the entire series of gifts, lessons and blogs to come.

Via Chritmas Stock Images

Blogs themselves, are gifts that brands and writers provide year-round to their audience and readers free of charge. Information provided by bloggers is valuable and free – for an audience, what could be better than that?

Brands and businesses must acknowledge that there is a mass audience of information-hungry consumers out there looking for free information, and a blog is a great way to reach them.

To help us showcase the importance of having fresh and engaging blog content, we reached out to Arnie Kuenn of Vertical Measures to offer some insight into the importance of blogging and a few tips for building a better blog.

Featured Blogger: Arnie Kuenn

Blog: Vertical Measures

Arnie Kuenn is the president of Vertical Measures, a search, social & content marketing company helping their clients get more traffic, more leads, and more business.  Arnie has held executive positions in the world of new technologies and marketing for more than 20 years. He is a frequent speaker and author of Accelerate! Moving Your Business Forward Through the Convergence of Search, Social & Content Marketing available on Amazon.

1. Why should someone with no web presence invest in creating online content?

A recent study by GroupM indicates that 93% of all buyers online or in stores use search prior to making a purchase. To me this says you need to work at becoming the authority on your topic by creating interesting, engaging content online so that those searchers find you instead of your competitors.

2. When you sit down at your computer and become overwhelmed with a sudden case of writer’s block, how do you generate ideas?

Great question.  I believe this is where most people get hung up. We often hear from potential clients that they think their product or service is boring and no one wants to read about it. Yet we always find a way to create fun or insightful or engaging content for them.

This is where you really need to invest some time.  I dedicated an entire chapter on my book to researching content ideas. But my favorite is to go to question & answer sites like Yahoo! Answers. Search for your various keyword terms and see what people are asking about.

Then create content that answers those questions.  Keep in mind that helping potential customers make an informed buying decision is really the key to success. People by from trusted sources and you want to become that trusted source.

3. How do you plan on changing your web content to move forward with changing search engine algorithms?

Both for ourselves and our clients the emphasis is on engagement. Are you creating content that your potential clients will engage with?  Will they watch the entire video, read the entire article, and so on? We check analytics for both time on page and bounce rates. Of course the ultimate goal is to get a conversion, but you asked specifically about the search engines and we think engagement is the key factor for content.

4. How do you plan on taking your web presence to the next level in the upcoming year?

Our big emphasis for 2012 is going to be video. We already do a good job with producing various types of content like articles, how-to guides, and infographics, but we really want to get good at producing quality video for our clients.

5. How do you find motivation to keep blogging on a regular basis?

I truly believe in content marketing.  I see our own analytics and the positive effect it has had on our business, so I keep on creating.

Get social with Arnie on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the gift of Search Engine Love and tricks of the trade from Melissa Fach of SEO Aware and Search Engine Journal! Check out our 12 Days of Marketing calendar to see the entire series schedule. On day twelve we will have something you don’t want to miss – the CopyPress team singing along to the song of “The 12 Days of Marketing.”

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