Category: Writing

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I’ve had a restful break to think about the direction of my work and what’s next for me in the coming year. One observation is that I’ve had a somewhat negative tone to many posts from the past two years. I’ve been a consistent purveryor of tech fear.

For example, on this blog and in my Marketing Companion podcast, I’ve fretted about

• Abuses of our privacy
• The urgent need for regulation
• Amount of power consolidated in the tech giants
• Fake news and democracy
• Smartphone spying
• Social media addiction
• Data breaches
• Marketing technology that spams and annoys people

… well, you get the idea.

I don’t regret creating any of this content, but I decided that I need to have a more balanced tone in my work. Overall, I’m an optimist when it comes to the intersection of technology, marketing, and humanity. With the dawn of a new decade, optimism is in short supply and I aim to do better.

The persistence of tech fear

Fear of our technological future has been with us since the dawn of the Industrial Age. I remember reading how the train companies were against telephones because they were afraid people would stop traveling!

The advent of the automobile created concerns about congestion and accidents.

When the early portable photographic cameras came out, there was a disgusted revolt by people who said taking pictures in a public park invaded their privacy.

Concerns that humanity has taken a technological wrong turn, or that particular technologies might be doing more harm than good, have been with us for centuries. For any new technology, its drawbacks initially seem to outweigh its benefits. When this happens with several technologies at once, the result is a wider sense of techno-pessimism.

However, that pessimism can be overdone.

Benefits and risks

There was a recent article in The Economist which pointed out that we take many benefits of technology for granted and dwell on the possibilities of unintended consequences. For example, the article points out:

• Worries about screen time should be weighed against the much more substantial benefits of ubiquitous communication and the instant access to information and entertainment that smartphones make possible.
• Fears that robots will steal people’s jobs may prompt politicians to tax them, for example, to discourage their use. Yet in the long run, countries that wish to maintain their standard of living as their workforce ages and shrinks will need more robots, not fewer.
• The remedy to technology-related problems very often involves more technology. AI is being applied as part of the effort to stem the flow of extremist material on social media. The ultimate example is climate change. It is hard to imagine any solution that does not depend in part on innovations in clean energy, carbon capture, and energy storage.

I’m not saying that the debates spawned by “techlash” aren’t important. We must think through the possible consequences of technology … in fact, we need to have more of these broad debates at the highest levels of our policy-making organizations.

That should be a necessary (required?) step in the adoption of important new technologies.

The Economist article suggests that “perhaps the real source of anxiety is not the technology itself, but growing doubts about the ability of societies to hold this debate, and come up with good answers.”

Choosing optimism over tech fear

History still argues, on the whole, for optimism. The technological transformation since the Industrial Revolution has helped curb ancient evils, from child mortality to hunger, thirst, and ignorance.

Yes, the planet is warming and antibiotic resistance is spreading. But the solution to such problems calls for the deployment of more technology, not less. So as the decade turns, I’m trying put aside the gloom — at least a little — and try to be an advocate for the good.

To be alive in the tech-enabled 2020s is to be among the luckiest people who have ever lived. Technology brought me to you!

The tech fear in me and others will persist, but I can also choose to dispense hope.

If you’d like to hear more about tech fear/optimism, practical ideas about machine learning, and a surprising new retail trend, please tune in to the new episode of The Marketing Companion. It’s so easy. Just click here and tune in!

Click here to dive into Episode 180

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Article on the new retail trend of used clothes online

Examples of machine learning initiatives from Britney Muller

• ImageNet
• Google CodeLabs
• Lumen5
• Amazon Transcribe
• X.ai

Book mentioned in the show > The Inevitable by Kevin kelly

Other ways to enjoy our podcast

• Try this! “Alexa, play the latest episode of The Marketing Companion.”
• Click here to download the latest episode or subscribe in iTunes
• Listen to us on iHeart Radio
• Find us on Google Play
• Find the podcast on Stitcher
• Complete Marketing Companion Episode Guide
• The Marketing Companion YouTube channel

 

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Nimble plugs into your email inbox and has a browser extension you can use on any website, including social media platforms and third-party apps. You’ll never have to leave the place you’re currently working on to access and update your existing contacts, as well as to create new contact records. Claim 30 percent off an annual license by going to nimble.com/companion and entering the promo code: COMPANION.

Mark Schaefer is the chief blogger for this site, executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, and the author of several best-selling digital marketing books. He is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

The post Putting tech fear in its place appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

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Building consistent organic search traffic is every digital publisher’s dream. But what does it really take to make your content SEO friendly?

The good news is it is not a rocket science.

On top of that, despite what many people think, it has nothing to do with “tricking” Google into thinking your content is high-quality or SEO friendly.

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”, which basically means making sure a search algorithm can easily access and understand your content. There’s no dark art involved.

Here are the steps you should take to make your content SEO friendly:

1. Match Your Content Idea to a Searchable Phrase (Search Query)

So you have an idea in mind which you feel like writing about. This is where any content creation starts: “I have something to say on this topic, and I feel like it will be interesting and/or useful”.

Is anyone searching for this topic?

Chances are, if you have come up with the topic, there should be other people who may feel intrigued enough to research it in Google.

But how exactly are people searching for it?

This is the key question you should ask if you want to generate organic search engine traffic to your future content.

You need to know what people type in a search box when trying to find answers to questions you are covering in your content.

So your first step is to find those actual search queries.

This exercise is also useful because it helps research. Knowing what people are typing in Google’s search box will likely help you discover interesting angles, narrow your initial idea down to make it more specific and even structure your future article to make it more useful.

So even if you don’t really care about organic search positions, keyword research is useful to do.

But how?

The keyword research process — at its core — hasn’t changed much over the years. We do have much more data to work with, but the actual process is the same.

These days, we have a variety of tools that help you identify a keyword to focus on. Here are a few tools and approaches you can try:

1.1. Type Your Terms into Ahrefs

Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer is a great tool for that because it offers “All keyword ideas” tab that broadens your initial idea to related and synonymous terms.

So if you were to type [grow tomatoes] and click through to that section, you’d find both phrases containing the term (e.g. “how to grow tomatoes”) and related concepts (e.g. “when to plant tomatoes“):

This broadens your outlook and helps you come up with more words to include in your copy.

1.2. Discover What Your Future Competitor is Ranking For

If you’ve done at least some research on your content idea, you may have found some resources that are on the same or similar topic. So use those URLs to discover what they are ranking for.

Serpstats’ URL Analysis section is great for that:

Notice that Serpstat is also showing all “extra” search elements that show up for each query in Google, so you get a good idea of what your future target SERPs (search engine result pages) may look like.

Note that both of these platforms offer “keyword difficulty” metric signaling of the level of your future organic competition. Obviously, the lower the keyword difficulty is, the better.

On the other hand, the higher the search volume, the more clicks each SERP may drive. So you want to try and pick a keyword that has high search volume and low keyword difficulty.

Here’s a more detailed guide on keyword research for you to become better at it. And here are even more keyword research questions answered.

2. Put Those Keywords in Prominent Places

While the process of researching keywords hasn’t changed much, the way we use keywords within content has.

These days, we don’t sacrifice the quality or flow of our copy for the sake of keyword density. In fact, we don’t pay attention to how many times we have used those keywords on-page.

We do use those keywords in prominent places on the page to make both Google and our human visitors more comfortable and confident there.

To put it simply, upon landing on your page, your users should clearly see terms they initially typed in the search box. That will put them more at ease and prompt them to linger a bit longer.

Keyword prominence means making your keywords visible on the page. It helps both search engine optimization and user-retention. Both of these help rankings.

Basically, you want those keywords to appear in:

1. Page title
2. Page URL slug (which in WordPress will be transferred from your title anyway)
3. First paragraph
4. Page subheading(s)
5. Image alt text (Do make those alt text descriptive as it helps accessibility)

Many SEO plugins (like Yoast and SEO Editor) can handle a lot of these SEO elements, so it is a good idea to pick one.

3. Use Semantic Analysis to Match Google’s Expectations and Make Your Content More Indepth

As I have already stated before, Google has moved away from matching the exact query to the pages in its index. Ever since its Hummingbird update, Google has slowly but surely become better and better at understanding each query context and searcher’s intent behind it.

To match that context better and optimize for the intent, use semantic analysis, which is basically about clustering each query into underlying and related concepts and covering you in your content.

Text Optimizer is a tool that takes Google’s search snippets for any query and applies semantic analysis to identify areas of improvement. Text Optimizer can be used for writing new content from scratch:

You can also use the tool to analyze your existing content to identify areas of improvements:

As you can see, Text Optimizer also helps analyze whether your content meets the query intent.

To increase your score at Text Optimizer:

• Choose the most suitable words for your content and include them naturally into your article. Avoid keyword stuffing. Only choose terms that you find fitting your current context.
• You may modify sentences or write new ones until you reach at least 80%

4. Diversify Your Content Formats

Google loves textual content, but the Internet in general and Google in particular has moved beyond text-only. Web users expect to see more formats, including videos and images. And Google recognizes that demand for content diversity, so it will feature all of those content formats.

In my previous article for Convince and Convert I described how videos improve SEO on many levels, including more exposure in search engine result pages and better on-page engagement.

With that in mind, any time you work on your article, think which other content assets can be created to enhance its value and improve SEO.

Luckily, creating videos doesn’t require any budget or skills. With tools like InVideo you can turn your articles into videos in a matter of seconds:

• Select “I want to convert article into video” option
• Paste in a maximum of 50 sentences (I usually use the tool to turn my article takeaways or subheadings into a video)
• Pick the template and let the tool do the job
• You can upload your own images (screenshots), tweak the subtitles and select the music

You are done! Now, upload the video to Youtube, add a keyword-rich title and description and embed it to your article.

For images, you can use Venngage or Visme to create nice visual takeaways or flowcharts (in case you have instructions to follow).

5. Set up an On-Page SEO Monitoring Routine

Finally, there’s always room for improvement, so monitoring your organic traffic is an important step here.

The must-have tool for that is Google’s own Search Console, which will show you which queries are sending you traffic. Just check your “Performance” tab regularly:

Another useful tool to have is Finteza, which shows your organic traffic performance allowing you to dig deeper to see whether your organic traffic clicks engage with your ads.

… or whether each search query sends traffic that brings conversions.

6. Don’t Forget External (Off-Site) Signals

Obviously, it is more to Google position than on-page optimization. You still need those backlinks that would help Google assign some authority to your content. But that’s a topic outside of the scope of this article. Besides, there’s a lot of content already written on that. And here’s another collection of tips on how to build links.

Finally, the above steps apply to any kind of optimization, whether it’s a blog, product pages or lead-generating landing pages.

I hope this guide will help you optimize your content to make it easier for Google to understand and hence help the search giant’s algorithm assign search positions it truly deserves.

The post How to Make Content SEO Friendly appeared first on Convince and Convert: Social Media Consulting and Content Marketing Consulting.

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Speaking is part of being human. The idea of being able to communicate is essential to our day-to-day life.

If we’re so good at communicating, why is it so hard to write dialogue in a story?

Our latest interviewee stopped by to give some great tips on how to write great dialogue in a story.

Writing Dialogue in a Story Isn’t That Tricky

According to Evelyn Puerto (and pretty much every writing blog out there) writing dialogue boils down to one big rule: Make it sound realistic.

You not only communicate every day (unless you’re on a really heavy writing binge), but you hear other people communicating. Dialogue is all around us. Constantly. Sometimes too constantly. The TV blares it. Your favorite novel is full of it. Your family squawks it over dinner.

Inherently, you know how to write dialogue. Sometimes you just have to get out of your own way in order to get it on paper. Luckily, Evelyn was kind enough to give us some quick tips on how to get your dialogue just right.

Evelyn Puerto reads just about anything and writes in multiple genres. Her first book, Beyond the Rapids, won a Reader’s Favorite award. When she married, she inherited three stepdaughters, a pair of step-grandsons, and a psychotic cat. Currently, she writes from northeastern Wisconsin but soon will be heading south for shorter winters.

You can catch up with Evelyn on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or her website.

Meet Evelyn Puerto

Flight of the Spark sounds amazing! Tell me a little about the book and how you came to write it. 

Flight of the Spark is a dystopian fantasy in a medieval setting. Duty, desire, and destiny collide when fifteen-year-old Iskra’s betrayal causes her friend to disappear. Iskra’s quest to discover what happened to her friend entangles her fate with a cryptic, half-forgotten myth and a young man from an outcast group who ensnares her heart.

After I wrote Beyond the Rapids (a true story about one family’s triumph over religious persecution in Communist Ukraine), I started to think I could actually write a novel. Who knew it would take me six years? But it was a switch to go from non-fiction to fiction, and I wanted to take the time to learn to write fiction well.

Planning a Book Series

This is book one of a series, correct? How many are you planning? 

This is the first book of the Outlawed Myth series. I’m planning three more, plus a have prequel novella that I hope to publish this spring or summer. 

I get quite a few questions about how to plan a book series. How did you go about planning this one? Any tips and tricks for keeping things straight?

First, I figured out the basic story for the four books, how the story got started and how it ended. Over the years, I drafted all the books, three of them through NaNoWriMo. While that was a lot of work, it helped me clarify the main storyline in my mind.

The key for me is not just having the overall storyline, but a story within each novel. I don’t like series that just end on cliffhangers without some major plot resolution. So as I planned the series, I gave each book in the series a complete story arc of its own.

Scrivener has been my best friend in keeping things straight. I have all my world-building, character, and setting notes all in one place, so I can find easily what I called the days of the week or what color people’s eyes are.

Make Your Dialogue Realistic

Another question I get frequently, and something a lot of authors can improve upon, is dialogue. What’s your number one rule when writing dialogue?

Make it realistic. Early on I submitted a short story to a writing forum, and they told me my dialogue was on the nose. I had to look that up to see what they meant. In other words, my characters were telling each other things they already knew or were painfully obvious.

For example, if someone is explaining to her mother that she’s going to visit her brother, she wouldn’t say to her mother, “As you know, he’s a junior at the University of Kansas studying agriculture. He’s really hoping to own a farm someday.”

Mom knows all that. Dumping backstory into dialogue is a great way to make it sound unnatural and forced. And it’s dialogue that lets the writer tell the reader information, but it doesn’t serve the needs of the character. 

Also, people don’t always say what they mean, or what they are thinking. Or they evade the main issue under discussion. These are all things to think about when writing realistic dialogue.

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When I’m writing dialogue in a story, sometimes I act out the scenes. Do you do anything similar? 

I often say it out loud, to hear if it sounds realistic. 

Dialogue Isn’t For Long Info Dumps

You touched on this a moment ago, but I’d like to dive in a little further. Sometimes I see an author try to use dialogue in a story as an info dump and the character goes on and on for pages explaining the world or giving detailed backstory. Do you have any tricks to avoid this or how to tell what to cut when editing?

In Flight of the Spark, I used a device to give some backstory through dialogue. The main character was in that world’s equivalent of school, and they had a history lesson. Different members of the class shared different facts. In between, the teacher made comments, and the main character gave the reader her own internal critical commentary.

Nobody gave a lecture, the reader got a little background, and a glimpse into the main character’s opinion of the world she lived in.

The important thing is to decide if the reader needs to know that information right at that moment. If not, cut it out and maybe share it later.

Spice It Up with Action

Action beats are a great way to spice up a conversation. How frequently do you write in action beats? How do you keep them fresh and avoid overused action beats?

I try to use action beats as much as I can, partly to avoid dialogue tags. 

This is when I start acting out my dialogue. As I say the words, I pay attention to what I’m starting to do. Am I sighing? Clenching my fist? Waving my hand in the air? This is one way I can think of new action beats.

Another way to avoid overusing them is to think about the direction the conversation is going. If the people involved are getting more angry the longer they talk, then the action beats should intensify along with their emotions. So the first beat might be a clenched jaw, the second a clenched fist, the third throwing a glass against the wall. 

To keep mixing up the beats, I rely heavily on The Emotion Thesaurus. This is a great resource that suggests many ways to show a particular emotion, and I’ve found it to be priceless for coming up with a variety of beats.

“Asked” is Best

When you’re reading, do you have any dialogue pet peeves or “no-nos” you see other writers doing? 

One big pet peeve has to do with dialogue tags. Some writers like to use all kinds of words, like shouted, yelled, orated, guessed, stated, the list just goes on. They are distracting, and it should be obvious from the dialogue or the action surrounding the conversation if someone is yelling or not. “Said” is all you need, with the occasional “asked.” 

A Few More Writing Tips from Evelyn

What’s the worst thing about writing for you? How do you push past that?

Probably the fear that no one will like my work. It’s that fear that fuels my procrastination. Yes, that’s part of why it took me six years to produce my novel. 

Getting feedback was extremely helpful, because it told me that at least some people enjoyed my work. That gave me the will to overcome the fear and to keep writing.

Any advice to give to novice writers out there?

Stick with it, and get your work out there. Now that Flight of the Spark has been published, I’m so much more motivated to finish the rest of the series.

When in doubt, act it out!

There’s a simple truth to dialogue in a story: It has to sound natural coming out of someone’s mouth.

The best way to make sure your dialogue sounds natural? Act it out!

You’ll feel a bit silly, perhaps, but feeling silly is much better than a reader rolling their eyes at your dialogue. Or worse, putting your book down altogether!

Get a buddy if you want and playact it like you’re table reading for a TV show. Or just go all out and act it out alone in your writing space, looking like a crazy person. (This is my preference, by the way.)

Thanks to Evelyn for agreeing to give some dialogue tips! Here’s where you can find Flight of the Spark, and don’t forget to check out Evelyn’s website!

Do you read your dialogue aloud? Let me know in the comments!

The post Evelyn Puerto on How to Write Great Dialogue in a Story appeared first on The Write Practice.

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Speaking is part of being human. The idea of being able to communicate is essential to our day-to-day life.

If we’re so good at communicating, why is it so hard to write dialogue in a story?

Our latest interviewee stopped by to give some great tips on how to write great dialogue in a story.

Writing Dialogue in a Story Isn’t That Tricky

According to Evelyn Puerto (and pretty much every writing blog out there) writing dialogue boils down to one big rule: Make it sound realistic.

You not only communicate every day (unless you’re on a really heavy writing binge), but you hear other people communicating. Dialogue is all around us. Constantly. Sometimes too constantly. The TV blares it. Your favorite novel is full of it. Your family squawks it over dinner.

Inherently, you know how to write dialogue. Sometimes you just have to get out of your own way in order to get it on paper. Luckily, Evelyn was kind enough to give us some quick tips on how to get your dialogue just right.

Evelyn Puerto reads just about anything and writes in multiple genres. Her first book, Beyond the Rapids, won a Reader’s Favorite award. When she married, she inherited three stepdaughters, a pair of step-grandsons, and a psychotic cat. Currently, she writes from northeastern Wisconsin but soon will be heading south for shorter winters.

You can catch up with Evelyn on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or her website.

Meet Evelyn Puerto

Flight of the Spark sounds amazing! Tell me a little about the book and how you came to write it. 

Flight of the Spark is a dystopian fantasy in a medieval setting. Duty, desire, and destiny collide when fifteen-year-old Iskra’s betrayal causes her friend to disappear. Iskra’s quest to discover what happened to her friend entangles her fate with a cryptic, half-forgotten myth and a young man from an outcast group who ensnares her heart.

After I wrote Beyond the Rapids (a true story about one family’s triumph over religious persecution in Communist Ukraine), I started to think I could actually write a novel. Who knew it would take me six years? But it was a switch to go from non-fiction to fiction, and I wanted to take the time to learn to write fiction well.

Planning a Book Series

This is book one of a series, correct? How many are you planning? 

This is the first book of the Outlawed Myth series. I’m planning three more, plus a have prequel novella that I hope to publish this spring or summer. 

I get quite a few questions about how to plan a book series. How did you go about planning this one? Any tips and tricks for keeping things straight?

First, I figured out the basic story for the four books, how the story got started and how it ended. Over the years, I drafted all the books, three of them through NaNoWriMo. While that was a lot of work, it helped me clarify the main storyline in my mind.

The key for me is not just having the overall storyline, but a story within each novel. I don’t like series that just end on cliffhangers without some major plot resolution. So as I planned the series, I gave each book in the series a complete story arc of its own.

Scrivener has been my best friend in keeping things straight. I have all my world-building, character, and setting notes all in one place, so I can find easily what I called the days of the week or what color people’s eyes are.

Make Your Dialogue Realistic

Another question I get frequently, and something a lot of authors can improve upon, is dialogue. What’s your number one rule when writing dialogue?

Make it realistic. Early on I submitted a short story to a writing forum, and they told me my dialogue was on the nose. I had to look that up to see what they meant. In other words, my characters were telling each other things they already knew or were painfully obvious.

For example, if someone is explaining to her mother that she’s going to visit her brother, she wouldn’t say to her mother, “As you know, he’s a junior at the University of Kansas studying agriculture. He’s really hoping to own a farm someday.”

Mom knows all that. Dumping backstory into dialogue is a great way to make it sound unnatural and forced. And it’s dialogue that lets the writer tell the reader information, but it doesn’t serve the needs of the character. 

Also, people don’t always say what they mean, or what they are thinking. Or they evade the main issue under discussion. These are all things to think about when writing realistic dialogue.

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When I’m writing dialogue in a story, sometimes I act out the scenes. Do you do anything similar? 

I often say it out loud, to hear if it sounds realistic. 

Dialogue Isn’t For Long Info Dumps

You touched on this a moment ago, but I’d like to dive in a little further. Sometimes I see an author try to use dialogue in a story as an info dump and the character goes on and on for pages explaining the world or giving detailed backstory. Do you have any tricks to avoid this or how to tell what to cut when editing?

In Flight of the Spark, I used a device to give some backstory through dialogue. The main character was in that world’s equivalent of school, and they had a history lesson. Different members of the class shared different facts. In between, the teacher made comments, and the main character gave the reader her own internal critical commentary.

Nobody gave a lecture, the reader got a little background, and a glimpse into the main character’s opinion of the world she lived in.

The important thing is to decide if the reader needs to know that information right at that moment. If not, cut it out and maybe share it later.

Spice It Up with Action

Action beats are a great way to spice up a conversation. How frequently do you write in action beats? How do you keep them fresh and avoid overused action beats?

I try to use action beats as much as I can, partly to avoid dialogue tags. 

This is when I start acting out my dialogue. As I say the words, I pay attention to what I’m starting to do. Am I sighing? Clenching my fist? Waving my hand in the air? This is one way I can think of new action beats.

Another way to avoid overusing them is to think about the direction the conversation is going. If the people involved are getting more angry the longer they talk, then the action beats should intensify along with their emotions. So the first beat might be a clenched jaw, the second a clenched fist, the third throwing a glass against the wall. 

To keep mixing up the beats, I rely heavily on The Emotion Thesaurus. This is a great resource that suggests many ways to show a particular emotion, and I’ve found it to be priceless for coming up with a variety of beats.

“Asked” is Best

When you’re reading, do you have any dialogue pet peeves or “no-nos” you see other writers doing? 

One big pet peeve has to do with dialogue tags. Some writers like to use all kinds of words, like shouted, yelled, orated, guessed, stated, the list just goes on. They are distracting, and it should be obvious from the dialogue or the action surrounding the conversation if someone is yelling or not. “Said” is all you need, with the occasional “asked.” 

A Few More Writing Tips from Evelyn

What’s the worst thing about writing for you? How do you push past that?

Probably the fear that no one will like my work. It’s that fear that fuels my procrastination. Yes, that’s part of why it took me six years to produce my novel. 

Getting feedback was extremely helpful, because it told me that at least some people enjoyed my work. That gave me the will to overcome the fear and to keep writing.

Any advice to give to novice writers out there?

Stick with it, and get your work out there. Now that Flight of the Spark has been published, I’m so much more motivated to finish the rest of the series.

When in doubt, act it out!

There’s a simple truth to dialogue in a story: It has to sound natural coming out of someone’s mouth.

The best way to make sure your dialogue sounds natural? Act it out!

You’ll feel a bit silly, perhaps, but feeling silly is much better than a reader rolling their eyes at your dialogue. Or worse, putting your book down altogether!

Get a buddy if you want and playact it like you’re table reading for a TV show. Or just go all out and act it out alone in your writing space, looking like a crazy person. (This is my preference, by the way.)

Thanks to Evelyn for agreeing to give some dialogue tips! Here’s where you can find Flight of the Spark, and don’t forget to check out Evelyn’s website!

Do you read your dialogue aloud? Let me know in the comments!

The post Evelyn Puerto on How to Write Great Dialogue in a Story appeared first on The Write Practice.

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Trust is the linchpin of modern marketing. It plays a crucial role in every vertical, industry, or niche. But nowhere is trust a more essential crux than in health care, where the personal stakes are immense.

“We’re in an industry where, you know, it’s serious,” says Emily Thompson in her interview for Break Free B2B. “This is about people’s health and well being, and a lot of times people get very nervous — they’re scared, they’re sick.”

As a Boston-based freelance writer and content strategist who primarily focuses on the health care sector, where she has worked with a wide variety of clients ranging from startups to enterprise, Emily acutely understands the impactful nuances of messaging. She says seeing things from the other side — as a first-time mother who frequently sought information online — helped her develop a more empathetic view.

She incorporates this into her craft, creating patient-focused copy designed to build trust and confidence, and offers valuable insight for B2B marketers everywhere. In the interview, she shares some tactics and techniques that are being used effectively in her industry to achieve this rapport, from smartphone apps to user-generated content to data-driven personalization and beyond. 

[bctt tweet="Research says that 93 million Americans have searched for a health-related topic online. So If we know people are going online, we have to be there too. @BosCreativeCopy #HealthcareMarketing #BreakFreeB2B" username="toprank"]

Watch my conversation with Emily below, and let her experiences and perspectives help guide you toward building healthier relationships with your B2B customers. 

Break Free B2B Interview with Emily Thompson

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDZEDtOQ7rQ]

If you’re interested in checking out a particular portion of the discussion, you can find a quick general outline below, as well as a few excerpts that stood out to us.

• 03:46 – The emerging focus of content marketing in health care
• 07:05 – Big data in health care marketing
• 09:42 – Responsible data usage and personalization in health care marketing
• 12:35 – Leveraging traditional and emerging channels in health care marketing
• 13:42 – Counterproductive mindsets in health care marketing
• 16:14 – User generated content in health care
• 19:55 – Challenges that span across industries
• 22:17 – Rising demands from patients for digital 24/7 access

Nick: Can content marketing build trust in the patient care continuum?

Emily: That’s really what, to me, content marketing is all about. It’s building trust with the consumer, whether that’s a patient or a referring physician. And, I think that … when an organization can deliver strong content that helps inform people, it only builds that trust. And if you think about the patients that are watching, often they’re frightened, they’re overwhelmed, they don’t know where to go. And so there’s just a lot of opportunity in health care for marketers to really rely on content to help them build that trust.

When an organization can deliver strong content that helps inform people, it only builds that trust. @BosCreativeCopy #BreakFreeB2B #ContentMarketing #healthcare

Nick: Transparency is key in managing health care data. How else can marketers benefit the health care system? 

Emily: I think it comes down to messaging too, and if you make sure that your content is ultimately really helpful to the consumer. So, for example, I was on these apps [after giving birth to my son], and I was being served up a toy that might work for my son in his age and developmentally where he was at. Or food — we were struggling with a type of formula or milk that would be good for him. 

Ultimately, people just want information that’s helpful to them. It helps calm them down whether they’re nervous about their health information or they’re, you know, a new mom. It’s hard to be frustrated when an app is using information about myself that is ultimately benefiting me, helping me out.

Nick: Is there anything that stands out to you as a real opportunity for marketers, and specifically those who are working in the B2B space, to break free of something that might be inhibiting them?

Emily: Yeah. Break free from fear. I think that health care can be a very conservative market. And, you know, to be fair, there are reasons for that. We’re in an industry where, you know, it’s serious. This is about people’s health and well being, and a lot of times people get very nervous — they’re scared, they’re sick.

But I think that isn’t a reason to hold back from trying new things. I think that especially with digital, it’s very easy today to try a new type of message, or a new type of way of communicating to someone. Let’s say you never blogged before, why not try a blog? Let’s say you never did email marketing, why not try it? Or a new type of message? 

The worst that can happen is you measure it, you learn from it, and you try something new. I think that often, as health care marketers, we can get stuck in the same way of doing things. And, a lot of times it’s a little too safe.

[bctt tweet="As health care marketers, we can get stuck in the same way of doing things. The worst that can happen is you measure it, you learn from it, and you try something new. @BosCreativeCopy #BreakFreeB2B #ContentMarketing #healthcare" username="toprank"]

Stay tuned to the TopRank Marketing Blog and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Break Free B2B interviews. Here are a few interviews to whet your appetite:

• Break Free B2B Series: Amanda Todorovich on Creating Content that Pays Off
• Break Free B2B Series: Hal Werner on the Intersection of Marketing Creativity and Analytics
• Break Free B2B Series: Adi Bachar-Reske on Taking the Lead in the Evolution of B2B Content Marketing

If you’re hungry for more insight and advice on the state of trust in marketing, check out our Trust Factors series:

• Trust Begins Within: The Vital Importance of Building Internal Trust in Marketing
• Trust Factors: Why Your Brand Should Take a Stand with Its Marketing Strategy
• The B2B Marketing Funnel is Dead: Say Hello to the Trust Funnel
• Trust Factors: The (In)Credible Impact of B2B Influencer Marketing
• Trust Factors: How Best Answer Content Fuels Brand Credibility
• Tip of the Iceberg: A Story of Trust in Marketing as Told by Statistics
• Be Like Honest Abe: How Content Marketers Can Build Trust Through Storytelling
• Trust in Marketing is at Risk. These CMOs and Marketing Influencers Share How to Fix

The post Break Free B2B Series: Emily Thompson on the Power of Content Marketing in Health Care appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.