Content Ideas for Your Next Business Blog

If you’re in marketing or are a business owner, you know how important it is to have up-to-date content throughout your website and related online networks. Content marketing is the way of the world, and reaching out to potential clients on topics they can relate to helps build your customer base.  

Whether your business already has a blog or it’s still in the works, generating content keeps it current and interesting. No matter where you are, here are content ideas for your next blog post.

4 Tips about Marketing to Generation Z

Now that you've nailed down your marketing strategy to millennial's, brands and companies need to turn attention towards the rising demographic, Generation Z. Gen Z are teenagers 19 and younger. They've grown up in a fully digital world with full access to the Internet. This group is comprised of digital natives, but it is important to note that they are not naive. They respond well to genuine brands. 

Negative Online Reviews

12 Steps For Dealing With Bad Online Reviews

For small businesses, online reviews can be a very scary thing. Though they are useful tools for consumers, they also give customers the power to take down a brand. Even just one bad review can cast a shadow over your reputation and deter potential clients.

It might feel like you have no control over what is said about your brand online, but you do have the opportunity to display your excellent customer service and diffuse the effects of any inflammatory comments. Keep these steps in mind when you come across a bad online review of your business:

Content is King

What To Do When Your Content Marketing Consistently Flops.

It’s the painful truth. Your content marketing is more likely to fail than it is to succeed.

As disappointing as that may be, developing content marketing is still a necessary part of your business’s success. But why is no one reading your content even when you pour your heart and soul into creating it?

Social Media Waves

How to Surf the Changing Tides of Social Media

It is a confusing time for social media. It seems like every day, new and conflicting reports come out about the future of different platforms. Is Facebook a sinking ship? Or is it simply being used by a new demographic? Is Instagram the new thing? Or should you be using Snapchat?

In addition to all of the ever-changing buzz, Facebook has recently switched up their algorithms. If you've been watching your business’s page, you've probably noticed a big decline in the number of people your posts are reaching.

Design a Logo

4 Key Questions to Ask Yourself When Developing a Logo

For logistically minded folks, a logo might not really seem all that important. You’ve got a great business plan and excellent customer service, so why worry about a silly little graphic, right? Wrong.

Think of your logo as the first thing that greets a potential customer. It’s supposed to encompass your brand and plays a huge role in whether or not people feel an instant connection to your business. If your logo looks almost exactly the same as your competition’s, you’ve lost your first shot at standing out. Think about it. When most people are shopping for new wine, what’s the deciding factor? The label. Your logo functions in the exact same way. It gives customers something to judge your company on before they really know what you’re capable of.

The Right Way To Do Real-Time Marketing

5 keys to making your real-time marketing work for your company.

Since Oreo’s outrageously successful “You can still dunk in the dark” tweet during the Super Bowl XLVII power outage, several brands have attempted to adopt the quick-and-witty tactic of real-time marketing. 

Unfortunately, there are many more examples of RTM failures than successes. Take U.S. Cellular, for example. Following Adele’s big win for the “Skyfall” theme song in 2013, the company tweeted “What if her lyrics come true?” with a picture that said “The sky may fall, but we won’t drop your call. Punny? Yes. Funny? No.

Want to Succeed in Marketing? Act Like a Kid

3 lessons we can learn from children to make us better marketers.

Look to the kids. They have all the answers. When it comes to thinking differently about your marketing, consider these lessons we've learned from how children act.

Curry Wins “Best of Business” Award

Peter (middle) and Joe (right) Gardner, Curry's Owners,
being presented the award at the celebration by Peter
Stanton (left), Publisher at the Worcester Business Journal.

Curry Printing was honored by being named the regions “Best Commercial Printer” at the Worcester Business Journal’s 2014 Best of Business (BOB) Awards. The awards celebration was held on Wednesday, January 29th at Coral Seafood on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester. Attendees included over 300 professionals from businesses who were also selected for excellence in their individual industry or category.

Assabet Students Visit Curry

Design students go behind the scenes and see the latest print processes in the industry.

Students pose for a picture to commemorate their visit.

On Tuesday, December 3, 2013, students from Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School (AVRTHS) came to visit Curry Printing for a tour of our 17,000 square foot, main production facility in Westborough, Massachusetts.  These students are part of the Design and Visual Communications
program at AVRTHS and are studying the latest techniques in both the digital and print world.  Their visit to Curry helps give them practical, real world examples of how print communications works.

Tell a Story With Your Marketing in 2014

Use story telling as a way to engage your clients at a higher level.

“Tell me a story!” This typical refrain heard from children at bedtime also applies to your customers. When it comes to marketing, they don’t just want information. They want a story too. Scientific studies have shown that our brain activity increases and we become more engaged when there’s a narrative involved. As you go into 2014, be thinking of how you can make your business’s marketing all about storytelling. Here are a just a few ways to create an intriguing narrative for your customers.

Narrow Your Focus

Are you aiming to own a single idea in your client's mind?

Being in the business world is difficult because you have endless options of what you might focus on. You could choose to spend more on your marketing, launch a new campaign or even introduce a new product or feature to your existing line.

The possibilities can be exhilarating and you usually end up with more good ideas than you can possibly implement effectively. We’re usually reluctant to abandon good ideas, even when the result would be having one GREAT one.

Tri-County Design Students Visit Curry

Bob Gardner explains digital printing
to one of the tour's sub-groups.

On Friday, April 5th, graphic design students who attend Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School (RVTHS) took a field trip to Curry Printing in Westborough to see first-hand how design skills can be utilized in the business world.  There were 41 teens who participated in the visit which was the first stop in a two-part field trip that concluded with a visit to the Worcester Art Museum.

Every Day You're Marketing

There's more to marketing than just what comes out of your marketing department.

When we think about our businesses, we tend to think of marketing as just one department among our neatly segmented workplace.

But marketing isn’t some abstract thing you relegate to the writers and advertising dorks. Pretty much everything you do as a business is part of the greater marketing process.

Don’t believe it?  Let's break down the various ways you’re marketing, every day–whether you realize it or not.

Market Benefits, Not Features

Are you effectively communicating the benefits of your product or service? 

Ultimately, the reason you are in business is to help your clients solve a problem.  Whether you are part of a small business that helps its clients by repairing their automobiles or you are on a team operating a multi-million dollar company that manufactures medical devices, your clients come to you because they have something they need to accomplish and are counting on you to help them.

The Campaign Effect

Use design, layout and presentation to create brand recognition.

Have you ever seen an IBM commercial?  They’re the commercials with the blue bars running across the top and bottom of the television screen.  Have you ever wondered why they include those in every commercial they produce?  Why do they put those two, rather plain and seemingly useless bars on the screen?  Why?… brand recognition

Smartphone Mania

Is your website optimized for the mobile platform?

Smartphones are quickly becoming the preferred means people on the go are using to access content online.  These devices are convenient mainly because they are with us all the time.

Check out this video to learn "the problem" smartphones pose for your clients and prospects when they visit your company's website.
 


Check out Curry's mobile website on your smartphone by visiting www.CurryPrinting.com.

Mobile Marketing

Is your business connecting with its clients and prospects through the channels they prefer most?

Smartphone sales have exploded.  In January of 2012, Google announced it is activating over 700,000 new smartphones per day.  That’s right, PER DAY!  Apple announced in the 4th quarter of 2011 it sold over 11.8 million iPhones.  Analyst from Morgan Stanley predict based on current patterns that mobile internet use will increase by 4000% by 2014.  Smartphones are here to stay and they are changing the way we communicate.