But first, have you ever fallen for a scam ad on social media?
This is relevant to content marketing in the AI era as you'll discover later...
You’re not alone. With so many scam ads these days, particularly on Facebook, it’s too easy to fall for them.
Scam ads always try to pull at our heartstrings using a sob story along the lines of:
“It’s with deep sorrow that we have to close our store. Costs are too high … blah blah. We will miss our wonderful, loyal customers … blah blah. Take advantage of these huge price slashes and buy our beautiful jumpers/jewellery … blah blah. We close at the end of the month! Hurry!!”
These posts tend to be overly emblazoned with hearts and flowers emojis. Not that there’s anything wrong with emojis … in moderation!
Don’t fall for them. Do this first:
Google their company name
Look them up on Trustpilot (not that they’re infallible to fake reviews)
Look them up on Companies House and/or the Gov.UK website
Nine times out of ten, they’re fake. Reviewers often state they never received the goods, or that they did turn up but were tiny, broken, and useless. On complaining, they never hear from them again.
But the other week, I acted on a genuine ad after doing my due diligence above. I bought a ridiculously silly and fun balloon jousting game for Christmas! Can’t wait to play it. The only downside was that it came from China. If I’d realised, I wouldn’t have bought it for environmental reasons.
Authentic businesses don’t (usually) use sob stories in their social media posts
Most reputable businesses are intelligent with their marketing content, sharing genuinely interesting, valuable information that prospective customers can use or learn from.
I like to see well-written, grammatically correct content. If the post compels me enough, I'll visit their website to find out more, even if I’m unlikely to buy the product.
Being a content writer, I like to keep an eye on how businesses promote themselves and steer their content to attract their target audience. I'm nosy like that! Some are excellent and others make me want to get my red pen out.
Your website is where the real magic happens. From the content and imagery right through to UX (user experience).
Your website is where you can prove your authenticity and expertise, and attract more customers:
✅ When web content immediately grabs my attention with a good hook – a funny idea, a shocking scenario, or something relatable, I keep reading. Does your web content do that? Read its content again but from your customers’ point of view. Or get someone else to and ask for their feedback.
✅ Once hooked and interested, I’ll search your website for more details – how your products make me feel or solve my issues, why you developed them, and anything else that may help sway my buying decision.
✅ And if you’ve got a sign-up page for a newsletter, I might sign up for it! But make it clear what topics you write about, and whether you have special offers, money-off vouchers, etc. This will help build your audience, allows people to hear from you regularly directly from their inboxes, and eventually, they should buy from you.
➡️ Would you like a website review that covers all the above and more? I’ll check it over and send you my findings. Depending on how many pages you have, prices start at £80 for a 4-page review. Drop me a line with your URL and I’ll get back to you PDQ!
Authentic Content Marketing in the AI Era
Yes, sorry (not sorry), I’ve used that totally overused word: authentic. But it’s overused for a reason. Because it’s important. More so than ever in this AI era.
With AI fast becoming a fact of life, we must embrace it or fail. It’s already heavily impacting our marketing. AI means that SEO is becoming less important; instead, we need to double up on our online marketing efforts. Thanks to the speed of AI, we can! Just remember to fact-check it and edit it to sound like you.
In fact, a tip I heard during a HubSpot webinar on using AI in our marketing is that we need to use videos more in our social media posts. That’s something I’m not good at. I prefer hiding behind a screen, writing copy and content for you! But videos can be more than just us talking to camera. You could film a product demonstration, interview a client, or create slide shows with graphics.
It was HubSpot who emphasised the need to double our online marketing presence. Another webinar I was on earlier in the week said similarly. That was The Now, Next & Future of AI in Marketing hosted by Laura Hannan, talking to Kerry Robinson of Waterfield Technologies. Amongst other things, they reiterated what we should all know by now — the better the prompts to AI, the better the results.
So, you need a quality website to drive people to from your social media channels. And all that lovely content on your website – blog posts, case studies, testimonials and more – provides you with loads of material to use in your social media marketing.
Most importantly, you need to build an audience, a following, as the lovely people at HubSpot told us in their webinar.
Luckily, I already have a package that does just that – my Build a Following Content Package! Take a look and get in touch to discuss how I can help you increase your audience and win new customers.
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