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New Year, New Team Members, New Services

January 8, 2021 By Charles Johnston Leave a Comment

new services, team members, service solutions, web agency, marketing, service offered

Since HeartWired’s inception in 2016, we have been known primarily as a web design agency. While we have offered others services and solutions all along, we did not market or promote them, until now. We have been holding this secret for a little while now. I am personally excited to announce we also are adding new team members and services.

Businesses and nonprofits each have different level of needs when creating their brand. While a website is a large portion of their identity, and we will continue to focus on that service, we recognize there is more involved. By providing more solutions, we are able to be your go to agency for all your brand needs in the New Year.

Creating a brand identity goes beyond simply a fancy logo and a pretty website.

While both are critical in our opinion. Part of developing the brand identity is to dive into the heart behind that brand. We have brought on a team member, our new ‘Graphic Wizard’, Lucy. Lucy will magically guide you through the branding process with mood boards and other tools of the trade. Guiding you in developing a logo and other assets that really amplify your brand.

About our Graphic Wizard (Graphic Designer) Lucy…

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Lucy Kates was born and raised in Jacksonville, FL, and has been a creative her entire life. She knew from a young age she wanted to be an artist, and has been aiming to be a professional doodler ever since. Lucy graduated from the University of North Florida with a Bachelor’s Degree in Graphic Design & Digital Media in 2019. Outside of graphic design and illustration, she’s dabbled in painting, digital photography, and various other artistic mediums. She’s happy she can work in a field she’s passionate about while helping small businesses grow and actively shape the community around us.

When you have a business or nonprofit, you have a story that is at the center of it’s existence. One way of sharing the compelling story comes in the shapes of words and content. We have found that many times this content can be the most difficult part of any project for the client. While you know what and why you do what you do best, sometimes telling others is quite difficult. We can now help create professionally written content for your website. Offering other opportunities as well, such as blog posts, press releases and more. We would like to introduce Heather, our new content creator or ‘Word Slayer’.

A tad bit about our Word Slayer (Content Writer), Heather…

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Heather is the trusty Swiss-army knife in the communication toolbox, capable of using multiple skills to perform multiple tasks in a wide variety of situations. Technical writing, creative writing, editing, marketing, and event planning are a few of her strongest skills. Military families, human trafficking victims, and homeschooling are a few of her greatest passions. From raising and homeschooling five exemplary children with her wounded warrior husband to graduating Summa Cum Laude from Arizona State University (Dec 2015), she has the consistent dedication necessary to see tasks through from beginning to end. Heather’s experience working with a variety of ministries and non-profit organizations combined with her heart for serving others makes her uniquely positioned to compassionately address many issues while using her knowledge base and skill set to accelerate results.

We also will be hosting an intern for the spring semester. Safiya Dewji is Marketing major with a minor in Digital Media at University of Central Florida. She will providing Social Media and Marketing expertise for the next few months as she works alongside our team of experts.

Won’t you join us in welcoming our two newest team members and part of the HeartWired family. We look forward to continuing to provide services that matter. One way to do that is to build a team of passionate people that truly love what they do. We are looking forward to the New Year, and opportunities to serve our clients.

If you or someone you know is interested in joining our growing team, we are always looking for creatives to join us. So if you are a web designer, developer, project manager, or other creative contact us and lets chat.

Filed Under: Web Design Tagged With: branding, content creation, content writer, graphic design, logo design, marketing, new services, social media marketing

How to Create a 2021 Content Calendar + 10 of Our Favorite Blog Post Ideas for the New Year

December 31, 2020 By Heather Tabers Leave a Comment

Create a content calendar, content, schedule content, blog posts, content creation

A new year means new goals, new strategies, and new opportunities. It also means new content for your blog which can seem overly daunting and time-consuming at first glance. Fortunately, we have some suggestions and methods for alleviating the stress and exhaustion of coming up with daily, weekly, or monthly content.

In this post, we show you the best way to organize content for the coming year using a simple tool – the content calendar.

What is a Content Calendar?

Before we show you a simple how-to guide on creating a content calendar, we should probably start with explaining what it is and why you need one. Simply put, a content calendar is a shareable tool that your team can use to visualize how content will be shared throughout the year, offering these great benefits:

  • Time saved during the creation and publishing processes
  • A centralized location for tracking blog content, social media, newsletters, etc.
  • Full team alignment, with all team members knowing what is being published, when and where it’s being published, and what is expected of team members
  • Ability to plan around holidays, events, and other occasions

3 Ways to Save Time with a Content Calendar

Batching Content: One of the greatest benefits of creating a content calendar is the time saved by planning ahead and batching content, whenever possible. For example, a bookstore may want to create a content calendar for their store’s blog, featuring a different genre of books for each month. By creating the calendar in advance, the store ensures that romance novels will be focused around Valentine’s Day, travel books will be featured over the summer travel months, and children’s books will be highlighted just before Christmas. 

Once the calendar is laid out, the bookstore’s blogging and social media teams will be able to save time by working on batches of posts, all at once. Graphics can be created for the theme of each month and reused across social media and the store’s blog. Not only does this save time, but it looks professional, polished, and reader-friendly, allowing a consistent flow of quality content from the store.

By batching their content, the bookstore is able to ensure that their posts look well thought out and planned rather than appearing to be someone’s last minute thought. (Face it, we’ve all been there.)

Repurposing Content:  Create more with less. Perhaps the greatest time-saving tip of all when it comes to creating content would be to repurpose your content. Do you have old blog articles that you published long before you had a large following? Dig them out and re-use them! Freshen them up and give them new life on your blog.

But don’t stop there. There are other ways to repurpose your content.

Let’s use that bookstore as an example, once again. During the month of February, the bookstore may want to highlight romance novels by interviewing a famous romance author. The interview can be recorded and shared as a video on social media or as an audio file on a podcast. An article can be written about the interview and shared on their blog. A quote from the book or from the interview can be made into a graphic and shared on social media. And just like that, one interview has been repurposed in several different ways. A content calendar makes this a seamless process.

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Publishing Content: Once your content has been created in batches and repurposed appropriately, it becomes much easier to schedule the publication of your content in advance. A number of online tools exist to help users schedule both social media and blog posts to be published at certain times on specific days. This eliminates the need for sticky note reminders and cell phone alarms that urge you not to forget to make a social media post or share your blog. Imagine the amount of stress that would roll off of you if you only had to think about your blog and/or social media once a week, a month, or even a quarter!

Spontaneous posters, have no fear! A content calendar does not prohibit you from impromptu posts or spur-of-the moment blogging. In fact, it frees you up to be more responsive to the world around you. There are times when our logically flowing media campaigns need to be interrupted and important world issues need to be addressed. Having a content calendar full of pre-batched media allows you to focus on what needs to be said in the moment, without losing your other content.

How To Create a Stellar Content Calendar

  1. Choose Your Format The world wide web offers everything from templates to apps to plugins for formatting your content calendar. You can open up an Excel spreadsheet, a Google Calendar, or any number of apps such as BaseCamp, Trello, or CoSchedule. There’s no right or wrong way. Use what works for you.
  2. Define Your Needs Do you need to be posting on social media every day? Twice a day? Twice a week? 
  3. Brainstorm Get out a piece of notebook paper or work collectively on a dry erase board and start brainstorming topics you want to cover. Can they be grouped together cohesively in a logical manner? (Think about the bookstore covering a different genre each month.) Don’t get stuck here. There’s no rule that says your topics must follow a logical order. Sometimes this just helps creatives plan and organize their material.
  4. Start Scheduling Take a look at the calendar and take note of seasons, holidays, events, etc. Start broad and then narrow in. (One genre a month, a different author each week, interviews on Mondays, videos on Wednesdays, podcasts on Fridays, etc.) Then start plugging in your topics where they fit best to you. 
  5. Decide How Often to Batch Do you or your teams need to sit down and batch out your content weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Even yearly? Every business is different and no one can answer this question except you and your team.
  6. Schedule Creative Time It’s easy to schedule the topics you want to cover each month, but it takes more thought and effort to schedule each piece of the creative process. Don’t forget to schedule time to record videos, podcasts, and live social media events, as well as time to write scripts, create graphics, reserve film spaces, and any other pieces of the process that may need to be scheduled.

Your time is valuable and implementing the use of a content calendar is sure to take your marketing strategy to the next level while saving you time, effort, and energy.

To get you started, here are ten of our favorite blog ideas for the new year:

  1. Make a Top 10 List
  2. Share Why You Started Your Business
  3. Disprove a Myth About Your Niche
  4. Take a Topic Seemingly Unrelated and Compare it to Your Vocation
  5. Do a “This Day in History” on a Day Related to Your Company
  6. Ask for Questions on Social Media and Write a Blog Post Answering Them
  7. Film a “How To” Video Post
  8. Invite a Guest Blogger to Post
  9. Share a Life Hack from Your Industry
  10. Share a Behind-the-Scenes Look at Your Life or Business

Filed Under: Web Design Tagged With: 2021 content calendar, blog post ideas, content calendar, content creation, content management system, content writer, create content

5 Holiday Lead Magnet Ideas to Grow Your Email List

December 21, 2020 By Charles Johnston Leave a Comment

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It doesn’t matter if you sell real estate, offer cleaning services, make homemade jellies, or write books for a living – if you have a business, you need email subscribers and the best way to grow that email list is to offer an effective lead magnet.

Lead magnets are downloadable and/or printable gifts given in exchange for a person’s contact information. A potential customer visits your website, a little pop-up box offers them the opportunity to download a free ebook, template, newsletter, etc, they enter their email address and BAM! They are now on your email list. 

What Makes a Lead Magnet Effective?

Think about what it would take for you to offer up your own personal email address. Sifting through junk mail and unsubscribing from companies who spam us definitely takes up too much of our time, so you want to be sure to offer your subscribers quality content that:

  • Solves a problem
  • Establishes you and your company as subject matter experts
  • Offers immediate access to the promised gift
  • Delivers high value content

If you can meet your customers’ needs, demonstrate your expertise, deliver on your promises promptly, and wow them with quality products and information, your web visitors will be well on their way to becoming lifelong customers. And it all starts with a simple lead magnet.

‘Tis the Season

The holiday season is the perfect time to stand out from your competitors by adding a personal touch to your business interactions. Here are a few ideas for adding a little holiday flare to some of the most effective lead magnet ideas in the world of marketing.

  1. New Year Calendar

This is the perfect time to offer a calendar of ideas for the new year. Are you a mom blogger? Offer a calendar of weekly date night ideas for staying connected to your spouse in the new year. Do you sell real estate? Create a calendar of upcoming events in your community. Do you run a non-profit? Provide a calendar of national days related to your cause, highlight upcoming events and service opportunities, and suggest ways families can support your cause throughout the year. The sky is the limit!

Calendars are also a great way to offer daily/weekly journal prompts, meal ideas, social media prompts, self-care ideas, educational activities, and more.

  1. Holiday Checklist

There are so many great possibilities here. Create a checklist for last minute Christmas gift ideas, people (beyond friends/family) to buy gifts for, cookie supplies, Christmas movies to watch, a family Christmas bucket list, etc…

You can also think of ways to incorporate your business in that checklist to establish yourself as an expert. If you work in the automotive industry, maybe you’ll want to offer a checklist for winterizing your car before travelling this holiday season. If you are a photographer, you can provide a list of do’s and don’ts for capturing the most magical holiday photos.

Checklists are the most popular and most effective lead magnets because they are quick for marketers to create and simple for consumers to use. Plus, they are easy to change up when seasons, products, and trends change throughout the year.

  1. Recipes

This isn’t just for the food bloggers out there! Everyone loves a good tried-and-true holiday recipe. Help your clientele feel like part of the family by offering a roundup of your employees’ favorite family recipes. Be sure to include the famous catchphrases “From our Family to Yours” or “From Our Kitchen to Yours”. The holidays really do bring people together and feeling like part of the family converts viewers/followers to loyal customers.

  1. Video Tutorial

Create a video tutorial showing how to do that exercise, bake those cookies, utilize that template, or download that software. Bonus points if you’re wearing a Santa hat, playing Jingle Bells in the background, or eating a candy cane throughout the video.

Your business and your brand are important, so give your clients a face to associate with that company they’ve come to know and trust. The holidays are the perfect time to make things personal and welcome your followers into your world.

  1. Give “One Free…”

Everyone loves to get something for free, especially at Christmas. So, give away your greatest holiday gifts such as the first chapter of your book, a free coaching session, a free consultation, or a free sample of something you sell. Give them a little taste for free and they’ll be coming back for more as a paying customer.

Filed Under: Web Design Tagged With: email list, email marketing, holidays, lead magnet, marketing, video tutorial

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