We recently began writing blog posts about marketing, thought leadership development, writing, and other issues startups face when marketing themselves on the Aericon Blog. This is one of the best web design and marketing firms on the east coast, with offices in Boston and Miami, and being able to share knowledge with these guys is awesome.

Here's an excerpt from our latest post:
"A mistake many companies make after a website redesign or when beginning online marketing efforts, is assuming they can blog themselves all the time. It’s often far more cost effective to hire a good writer or social media professional than it is to take the time out of your day to learn about what your audience wants, research topics, and develop compelling material."

It's been a year since we formally began Bamboo Writing. Since then we've gone from writing basic website copy and blog articles to consulting with companies about overall content marketing and  thought leadership development, and even exploring untapped markets and opportunities by getting to know both your business and your target market better.

What we’ve learned over the past year:

1) Better ways of identifying the knowledge needs of your target market
2) More effectively fulfilling content needs which distinguishes your company as a thought leader
3) Stronger methods of crafting your image and conveying your offering and to your target market

We started working with Survey On The Spot a few months ago, writing industry-targeted, optimized website copy for their newly-designed website and beginning work on their blog. Survey On The Spot has created a very easy to use app which helps restaurants and other service businesses gain real-time insights into customer satisfaction, by enabling customers to submit survey results using a smartphone while they're in the place of business. In addition to giving restaurants invaluable actionable insights, this helps improve customer engagement and build an email marketing list, as well as employee motivation to improve service. They've taken a relatively simple concept, and have applied it to fix a previously archaic industry which involved tedious, costly, and often inaccurate traditional paper surveys. The blog topics we are writing include how to get the most out of surveys, ways surveys can be used to improve service, employee motivation, as well as pieces about consumer psychology and survey-taking.

A lot of people ask us how we are able to write authoritatively across multiple industries. We're of course not experts in everything, and don't think we need to be. You don't need to be an engineer to write about engineering, or a real estate agent to write about real estate. It's a matter of understanding the value, customer, using the right language, and not using the wrong language. Here's how we write with conviction across multiple industries:

1. Understand the value the business is built upon. Go beyond the value proposition, even try to re-write the value proposition. Ask a lot of questions about why anybody would want what the business is selling, and why the business can deliver it better than the competition.
2. Gain a profile of their ideal customer and learn what that customer responds to. This goes beyond demographics, you need to understand the state of mind the potential customer is in when they need what the business is selling, and why they're there, and how to get through to them personally.
3. Seek out bad writing in the industry you're working in and note their mistakes. There are a lot of really bad writers out there, and most marketers tend to be among the worst at sounding truly authentic. Read a bunch of website copy, blog posts, and articles you don't tust which pertain to your industry of choice, and take note of what not to do.
4. Especially in the early stages, frequent reviewing by the business owner or marketing director is essential to make sure you're using the right language. This is the best way to use the right wording, especially when it comes to writing with a more technical focus.

We felt inspired to make some cool-sounding acronyms to describe our methodologies. What do you think?

M.A.K.E. Website Copy Writing

1. Market – determine your target market profile and what you offer to them, especially what makes you special and how you stand out among the competition, as well as which keywords they’re searching for online
2. Attitude – discuss and consult with you on how to best write for your audience and what language they respond to
3. Knowledge – share useful knowledge which can help your website visitors and build trust with them
4. Evaluate and Evolve – As time goes on monitor which pages receive a lot of traffic, and which pages aren’t working out as well, and make constant improvements to your website copy and keywords over time

T.R.U.E. Blog Writing

1. Trends and Topics – determine trends in what your target market is looking for online, and topics which will help your potential customers find what they’re looking for online
2. Relevancy – content needs to be relevant to your target market and include keywords which will help drive traffic to your website
3. Useful – Content should be more than informative, it needs to truly be useful to your readers to establish trust and thought leadership
4. Evaluate and Evolve – your blog topics will evolve in terms of topics and style as we determine over time what is getting the most response

R.I.S.E. Thought Leadership Development

1. Research – what are your potential customers looking for online when they’re in a position where they need what you have? We will determine where your target market hangs out online and the type of things they’re searching for or reading when they’re in a position where you can help them. We will research websites, blogs, and articles you should be commenting on.
2. Intelligent Commenting - We will comment when necessary on these blogs, as well as contribute material to them in the form of helpful trust-building content which links to your website. We want to build both real-life goodwill and SEO backlinks.
3. Space – We will gauge the online space you’re marketing yourself in online and seek out additional online marketing and promotional opportunities.
4. Evaluate and Evolve – At the end of each reporting period, we will evaluate the progress we’ve made and tweak our practices accordingly.

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