How Can Content Marketing Benefit My Business?

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Before I dive into the details, some of you might be wondering:

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the use of content – emails, tweets, landing pages, product descriptions, blog posts – to help meet a marketing goal for your organization or business. That marketing goal could be acquisition of potential customers, retention of existing customers, increasing brand awareness, increasing or improving product recognition, or nearly anything else.

How can content marketing benefit my business?

Some companies are reluctant to focus on content marketing because it can be difficult to understand the benefits of content marketing. In truth, however, there are many benefits of content marketing. After all, content is king, and there are both tangible and intangible benefits to content marketing.

The Intangible Benefits of Content Marketing

Strong brand awareness

Creating content gives your audience something to talk about. When they’re talking about your organization or company, they’re teaching each other about you or your company, passing referrals and recommendations and links around in the process. This is intangible marketing gold.

Respect and industry admiration

You’ll need to establish trust first, but once you have proven your knowledge, you can become the reliable source of information in your niche where your audience or prospects can turn to for clear advice or resources. The authority you gain then transfers to your products and services and makes it more likely that customers will choose you over your competition.

Indirect customer conversations

If you create content that targets potential customers or clients, you’re bridging the gap between those people and your products or services, making it more likely they will buy from you or hire you in the future.

The Tangible Benefits of Content Marketing

Site traffic

If you create great content, more people will come to your site, where they will hopefully also find information about your company and your products/services.

Improved SEO

Great content attracts editorial links which tell Google that you are important and authoritative. Google will also crawl your site more frequently and have a better idea of what you are about and what products and services you provide.

Direct customer conversions

Occasionally, great content actually yields a direct customer conversion.

 

How To Avoid Phishing and Spear Phishing

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Phishing is when someone sends you an email that looks like it came from a bank or service you trust. They try to get you to open an attachment that compromises your device or to click on a web link and to sign in on a malicious website.

Spear phishing is the same as phishing, except the email you receive is especially crafted just for you. The attacker has researched you well and knows who your friends, family and associates are. They may know who you work for and what you are working on. The phishing email received in a spear phishing campaign looks much more authentic, appears to come from someone you know and may refer to something you are working on. Spear phishing attacks have a much higher success rate.

Follow these two simple rules to avoid a phishing or spear phishing campaign:

  1. Never open an attachment unless you are 100% certain that someone you trust sent it to you. If you have any doubt at all, pick up the phone and call the person.
  2. Never click on a website link unless you are 100% certain that the person or organization that sent it to you is someone you trust. When you do open the link, check your browser location bar at the top for the following:
    • The location should start with https://
    • The part after https:// should be the domain name of an organization you trust. For example, it should say paypal.com and not paypal.com.badsite.com. Everything from the first forward slash to the final forward slash in the location should be a name that you trust.
    • The https:// part should be green if you are using Chrome and it should also say “Secure” to the left.

If you receive an email that looks suspicious in any way, just delete it. Then pick up the phone and call the person who sent it to you. They may not know their email account has been hacked.

How To Avoid Social Engineering

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Social Engineering is what happens when someone phones you and pretends to be an organization or individual that you trust. They will try to get sensitive information out of you including passwords, usernames and a description of systems that you have access to.

This kind of attack is common and is used to commit tax refund fraud. It is also used to gain access to your bank accounts. You will even find attackers trying to get access to your workstation by telling you that they have found something wrong and asking you to install their software to fix it.

You can use a simple technique to avoid social engineering scams. Usually the individual will claim they’re from a reputable company or organization. Simply hang up, find the organization’s central number, call back and ask for that individual or someone in the same role.

Using the callback method is an effective way to defeat social engineering.

Staying Safe Online: The Connect4 Cyber Security Survival Guide

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Today I’m publishing a guide that I hope will help improve your personal online security. This guide focuses on the basics – how to reduce the life-altering risks we face as we navigate the internet.

This is a Cyber Security survival guide. I’m going to start by giving you a clear picture of the current state of Cyber Security. Then I’m going to prioritize what you should be protecting. I’m going to focus on the biggest risks and I will explain how to reduce the risk for each category.

If you find this useful, please go ahead and share it extensively.

Current State of Cyber Security

Would you believe it if I told you that there’s a 66% chance that your data has already been stolen and will be stolen again and again? Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter whether you use secure passwords, two-factor authentication, are young or old, or which websites you visit or businesses you do business with. At various points in your life, your data will be stolen. And in all likelihood, it will be stolen repeatedly.

Today, 64% of Americans have already had their data stolen through data breaches. That is almost 2 out of three people.

In the past 3 years we saw the first data breach of more than 1 billion user accounts with the Yahoo breach. That breach affected 1 in 7 people on our planet! In the United States, the OPM breach included the data of our top spies, including their fingerprints and personal data. Even our intelligence services can’t protect highly confidential personnel data.

Data has been stolen from private companies, intelligence agencies and the military. Even cyber security companies have had their data stolen.

How Data Is Stolen

Even if you use a strong password, two factor authentication and best practices for security, your data will still be stolen because the companies whose services you use in some cases will fail to protect their own networks and systems.

How to Prioritize What to Protect

If data breaches are the new normal and if you accept the premise that they are inevitable and unavoidable, the problem we need to solve in our personal and business lives becomes “How do I reduce the risk and the impact of a breach?”

It’s helpful to start this conversation by trying to prioritize what we need to protect. I’m focusing on the really important, upper level things and this is my prioritized list so it’s possible your list could be in a different order.

  1. Information about us that could help criminals target us in the real world.
  2. Our financial means – savings accounts, ability to borrow, and our assets.
  3. Sensitive personal information – medical records, tax data and other private data.
  4. Our ability to earn an income through our reputation and our ability to provide products or services to people.

Preventing Criminals from Targeting Us in the Real World

In most of the developed countries, it is rare to hear stories of real-world targeting of individuals through information they have ‘leaked’ into the cyber realm. But in developing countries where there’s a greater disparity of wealth, or if you happen to be a superstar or athlete in a developed country, it might be good to:

  • Never show high value items (like jewelry or cars) online.
  • Share your location in general terms, and if you want to share a specific location, do it after you have left that location.
  • Don’t share information that may indicate when or how much you’ve been paid.
  • Consider making social profiles only available to people you have approved.
  • If you work for someone or some entity with access to highly confidential information, avoid disclosing who your employer is and what your job title is. This includes public websites like LinkedIn.

Protecting Your Financial Means

I’m not concerned with credit card fraud in this section. That risk falls on the vendor and transactions can be reversed. Instead, I’m focused on the kind of risk that can have a permanent impact on your financial well-being.

If an attacker is able to authorize a wire transfer from your savings account, they can empty your bank account and the funds may never be recoverable. This risk applies to savings accounts, checking accounts and investments like brokerage accounts and money market accounts.

If they are able to borrow in your name, it can permanently damage your credit score and your ability to borrow money to buy a home, for example.

I suggest taking the following steps to reduce the risk of large scale financial fraud:

  1. Make a list of savings and investment accounts. Audit each account to determine how you prove your identity when transferring funds and get a clear idea of what an attacker would need to do to commit fraud on each account.
  2. Implement any additional security provided by your banks or brokerages:
    1. callback to a predetermined number.
    2. authorization from multiple parties prior to transferring funds.
    3. two factor or hardware-based authentication.
    4. limiting transaction size when not in person.
    5. real-time alerts.
  3. Monitor account statements weekly. Make this a routine.
  4. Place a credit freeze on your credit report if you are in the U.S. This restricts access to your credit report and makes it difficult for thieves to open up accounts in your name.
  5. Place a fraud alert on your credit report – also if you are in the U.S. This lasts 90 days and forces businesses to verify your identity before issuing you credit.

In all of these cases above, if you are able to choose a password, choose one that is complex (more than 12 digits and including uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and other characters), and use a password manager.

Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Sensitive data that you need to protect includes your medical data, tax data, and social security number. There are two surprisingly easy ways of protecting this information.

First, try to avoid creating data about yourself. If it doesn’t exist, you don’t need to protect it. You will frequently find forms that ask for your social security number or equivalent. Most of the forms don’t actually require it. Don’t provide it if it’s not required.

Second, the best way to protect data is to delete it. Once again, if it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t need to be protected. Don’t hoard sensitive data. When you do need to store and protect your sensitive data, encrypt it and use strong device passwords.

Protecting Your Ability to Earn an Income and Protecting Your Reputation

Most of us rely on some type of IT infrastructure to earn a living. Whether you are an architect, photographer or computer programmer, it is important that you secure the systems you use. Here are a few tips to secure your own systems and the services you use:

  • If you have a WordPress website, make sure that you have a malware scanner and firewall in place, and look into upgrading your security by using SSL.
  • Use a password manager like Last Pass to automatically store and generate long complex passwords that are different for each system you access.
  • Secure your phones, tablets, laptops, and PCs by using disc encryption when available and use complex passwords for device access.
  • Avoid adding data to systems that you need or use.
  • Enable two-factor authentication on all systems or services you use.
  • Keep backup drives in a secure place and destroy sensitive data that you don’t need. Never simply throw backup devices in the trash without either using a secure wiping software or physically destroying them with a large hammer.
Protecting Your Online Reputation

If you use social media, never simply ‘Share’ or retweet someone else’s post until you have fully read it, understood it and also understand any context around it. If you accidentally share something that is highly controversial without fully understanding what you’re sharing, you may find your professional reputation severely damaged.

Secure any social media accounts that you own. If your account is hacked, it may be used for spam which could damage your online reputation.

Secure any websites that you own. If your website is hacked, it will damage your search engine ranking and infuriate your customers if their data is stolen. This can have a severe impact on your reputation. If you use WordPress, install Wordfence which will help prevent a hack.

When installing apps on your smartphone, avoid apps that are aggressively viral. Some apps gain access to your contacts list and can SMS, private message or email your contacts a message from you that suggests they also sign up for the service.

How to do SEO for Small Websites

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I hear it all the time: “My website or budget is too small for SEO.” “We don’t have the traffic…no one ever visits our site.” Believe it or not but you should spend time on SEO especially if no one visits your site. SEO for small websites is even more important than SEO for big websites.

The whole point of SEO is to make your website more visible. If you’re not doing SEO, your visibility isn’t increasing. Think about it – doing just a little SEO could mean the difference between having 0 visitors and having a few warm leads from your site.

Here’s how to do SEO for small websites with little to no traffic.

  1. Develop a content strategy – most small sites hesitate to create a content strategy because they think it’s too much work. It takes some work and advance planning, but it’s well worth it. In today’s world, people want answers – people are seeking authoritative answers to their questions. Do you ever turn to Siri for the answer to a question? Where do you think these answers come from? They come from people who create website content. Research long tail keywords. Plan ahead of time and try to publish two blog posts a week. Branch out to different content types. Share your content on all the big social networks like Facebook and Twitter. If you’re part of a niche group – like therapists – consider smaller social networks and niche sites.
  2. Nurture a following – marketing is interactive. Brands engage customers through social media and many top bloggers have ongoing conversations in the comments section. You need to identify your audience, build a solid value proposition, and then build your audience through guest posting and paid advertising.
  3. Optimize your site for mobile – truly optimizing a website for mobile devices is more than creating a mobile version. You have to change a lot but start with page speed.

Conclusion

You don’t need a huge website to get some of the best SEO results. Follow my tips for how to do SEO for small websites and your website will become more visible. The lesson is that it’s never too early or too late to learn the basics.

Avoid Local SEO Mistakes

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As you start the new year for your business or non-profit organization, one very important thing you need to address is your local SEO. Here are a few key local SEO facts you should know:

  • The Google 2-pack (which is Google’s organic listing of two local businesses) appears at the top of 93 percent of all searches with local intent.
  • 60 percent of American adults search for local product and service information.
  • 50 percent of people who conduct a local search on their Smartphone, and 34 percent of people who conduct a search on their computer/tablet, will visit a store within a day.
  • A whopping 46 percent of all searches on Google are local.

Local SEO is so significant that almost half of all Google searches are local, and this will become even more significant in 2017. The following local SEO mistakes will completely jeopardize your local SEO efforts. Make sure to fix these immediately if you find that you or your organization has made any of these mistakes:

  • Unavailable, inconsistent, or inaccurate Name Address Phone Number information
  • Claim your Google My Business page
  • Get local reviews
  • Don’t ignore normal SEO ranking factors
  • Don’t ignore negative local SEO ranking factors

Unavailable, Inconsistent, or Inaccurate NAP information

NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. NAP information is one of the core metrics Google uses to rank local businesses in its search results. Not only is it important to have your NAP information publicly and prominently displayed on your website, but it is also important that this information is consistent. Several sources agree that Google and other search engines cross check your NAP information with several other sites — this includes on your Google My Business page, Yelp, Internet Yellow Pages, and local directories. This tool from Moz can help analyze your website to see if you will have any issues.

Claim Your Google My Business Page

One of the most important things you can do when trying to rank well in local SEO, specifically with the Google search engine, is to claim your Google My Business page.

When it comes to local SEO, the information Google uses to rank your website — and that  it displays to people in local results — mainly comes from your My Business page, not from your website. You can set up your My Business page directly with Google, but it is important to verify your listing so that nobody else is able to edit your page in the future.

Once you set up your My Business page, it is important to ensure it includes a proper and unique description of your business, that your business is properly categorized, that there are a local phone number and address accompanying your listing and that is consistent elsewhere online, and that you upload as many relevant photos for your business.

Get Local Reviews

The more high quality, high quantity and high diversity reviews you get, the better for your local SEO.

For a start, once your My Business page has been created, reach out to existing customers and friends, reach out to people on your email list, reach out to people through your blog, who have experience with your business and ask them to leave a genuine review — you could even give them the incentive to leave a review.

Don’t Ignore Normal SEO Ranking Factors

A lot of factors that influence Normal SEO influence Local SEO. Don’t forget about the following:

  • Domain authority
  • Backlinks
  • Search Results in CTR

Don’t Ignore Negative Local SEO Ranking Factors

You don’t want to ignore these factors, too:

  • Having your business listed in an incorrect category in your My Business page can have a negative impact on your local SEO.
  • Having a false business address, incorrect phone number or an address and phone number inconsistent with that found elsewhere online can seriously, negatively affect your rankings.
  • Having malware on your site can damage your local SEO.
  • It is also important to avoid using PO Boxes, UPS Mail Store addresses, and other similar addresses. Google and other search engines will only recognize real addresses.