Picture this: you’ve been working hard on creating the perfect marketing campaign for your brand, you’ve come up with all the details, everything was organized perfectly, and the campaign was seemingly successfully launched. Instead of acquiring you many new customers, however, the campaign has resulted in public outrage and the loss of, up until then, many loyal customers. It is a sad fact that these kinds of grossly insensitive campaigns happen all too often.

Some recover from it, some don’t. To be on the safe side as much as it is possible, it’s useful (and fun) to learn about unsuccessful marketing campaigns, so that you can be prepared when it’s time to launch your own campaign.

With that in mind, here are some of the major marketing fails of 2018/19.

#01 Heineken’s Bar Commercial

The first fail that we’ll discuss happened to Heineken back in March 2018, when this company’s marketing division envisioned a commercial that had many viewers accusing it of being racist. Namely, the commercial takes place in a bar. The bartender notices a beautiful white woman entering. In an effort to woo this woman, the bartender opens a bottle of Heineken and slides it down the bar toward the woman.

Nothing wrong with that, right? Sure, except one little detail that made this commercial one of the major marketing fails of 2018. Namely, as the bottle slides along the bar, it passes right by no less than three people of colour and no people of other ethnicities! Soon after the commercial was originally broadcast, there was a reaction on social media, notably by Chance the Rapper, who called the commercial “terribly racist”. With many other people thinking the same, Heineken’s commercial was a spectacular failure.

#02 Dolce & Gabbana’s Chinese Controversy

Then, there’s Dolce & Gabbana’s campaign that backfired and caused a lot of bad publicity for this fashion giant. In the commercial for this campaign, a Chinese woman is shown trying to eat Italian food with chopsticks. While trying to do so, this woman constantly fails, resulting in humorous attempts to finally sate her hunger.

This only goes to show that even humorous (probably good-natured) attempts at marketing can lead to major marketing fails due to marketers’ ignorance. While the people working for Dolce & Gabbana have thought that this would be a hopefully fun and light commercial, in reality, it portrayed Chinese people as so culturally backward that they can’t even use a knife and fork. Even worse, inappropriate comments made by Stefano Gabbana on Instagram surfaced soon after, further damaging the company’s image. Of course, one of the rules of a solid social media strategy is – don’t slam the people of other nationalities (in this case Chinese) on social media if you don’t want your business to suffer because of it (or in any other case, for that matter).

#03 Estee Lauder’s Racist Line of Foundation

The next fail involves products in the line whose full name is Double Wear Nude Water Fresh Makeup SPF25. This is a line of foundation made by Estee Lauder. When a company releases 30 different versions of their product, one would expect that all women will be able to find something for themselves. Unfortunately for Estee Lauder and some of their customers, more than 15 of these versions were aimed at white women, specifically, the ones with very pale skin.

In the eyes of the buyers, when a company unnecessarily designs and markets their product in such a way, it clearly shows a backward way of thinking. It goes to show that they’re aiming their product specifically at white women (and very pale ones), while disregarding other ethnicities. And in 2018 (and 2019 as well), that way of thinking should have been discarded a long time ago.

#04 Dove’s “Unreal Beauty” Disaster

One of Dove’s more important missions, as seen in their marketing campaigns, is to present and reinforce the image of a woman as a beautiful human being. For ages, women have been taught how they should look. From successful models and actresses to other celebrities, women in media are skinny and extremely beautiful, painting the picture that this is how a woman should look if she wants to enjoy having a sense of self-worth. Diets, makeup, even plastic surgery – women have been taught that this is what they need if they want to keep their confidence intact.

With its long-running campaign entitled “Real Beauty”, Dove has been successfully fighting this damaging cultural stance. Up until 2018, that is, when their attempt to empower women turned into one of the major marketing fails of 2018. What happened is that Dove released their clothing in seven shapes, each shape in a packaging with a very abstract form that resembled soap bottles. Instead of promoting diversity, Dove accidentally made women more self-conscious about their bodies, as they were made to choose between one of the seven shapes that best matched the appropriate soap bottle.

#05 H&M’s Jungle Fail

In this case of digital marketing gone wrong, the people from H&M posted a highly controversial picture on this company’s official website. Similarly to some other fails on our list, this picture was also deemed to be racist. Namely, two kids were shown on the picture, both wearing H&M-designer sweatshirts. One kid (caucasian) wore a sweatshirt with the phrase “survival expert” written on it. The other one (black) wore a similar sweatshirt, but with the phrase “coolest monkey in the jungle”.

How could H&M’s marketers think that this was a good idea is beyond us. While there’s nothing wrong with jungle-themed marketing, calling a white person a “jungle survival expert”, while a black person is a monkey in that same jungle is obviously wrong and racist (no matter how cool the monkey is).

What Can We Learn From These Major Marketing Fails?

As you can see, major marketing fails to happen most often due to ignorance on part of the marketing dept. Of course, creating a strong online presence is important, but doing so with the help of qualified professionals who can help you avoid all the potential pitfalls is equally important. For example, if you were looking to make your moving company visible online, you’d need to do it with the assistance of experienced experts. The same goes for any other business.

However, while experts can help you, the trick perhaps is not so much in consciously trying to avoid marketing pitfalls, but rather in respecting all people no matter the race, gender, or sexual orientation. Many people believe that they do respect all people, but their actions (and thoughts) still may be offensive without them realizing it. Apart from avoiding major marketing fails, questioning your beliefs and making sure that your way of thinking isn’t harming other people will also make you a better human being. Win-win.

The post The Biggest Marketing Fails In Recent Years appeared first on SEMA.

Brand purpose is not a new word when it comes to marketing. In order for businesses to be more unique and impactful in a highly competitive world, they are changing their values and mode of operation. The purpose of a brand stands for more than a commitment to certain values and the mission statement. Rather, it defines the value that an organization has in society, which allows the organization to grow while creating a positive impact on the world.

For many marketing teams, this raises the question: How can you effectively communicate the purpose of a brand considering that you are dealing with many other contenting marketing objectives?

How important is a diverse content strategy? 

The options for formatting content, delivering it and methods of consumption are increasing on a daily basis. This provides marketers with a wide range of marketing tools. Over the years, content strategies have grown to be more sophisticated as they target different audiences, product lines, business goals and much more. Your core strategy can include plans to showcase the executive thought leadership in an organization, promote company products, reach different target markets and create a platform for future products.

One critical area that should not be overlooked when a content strategy mix is being created is the brand purpose of a business. Today’s customers care about the brand purpose regardless of the information that it may contain such as corporate social responsibility undertakings, the ethical policies followed by a business or how consumer goods are sourced.

How is your brand narrative being shaped by the market?

The dynamic and ever-changing market outlay is changing the way businesses handle these efforts. Today, they can actually form a foundation for connecting with existing and potential customers.

As a marketing professional, what plans do you have in place to articulate the larger vision of your company and the impact you are making?

The expectations of customers, business partners, prospective employees and the wants of the general public are now being evaluated on a different level.

All of a sudden, businesses are very open in discussing how they choose their core business values and what makes them the most original in the market. These considerations are very important when proposing the value of a business. Today people do not want an enterprise that talks about itself. Instead, when looking at the purpose and value of a business, what is considered is how the content you are providing advances with the interests of employees and customers. It is usually considered if there is a movement around the available value system in order for a dramatic impact to be achieved.

Is there such a thing as too much purpose-driven content?

With the background that I have in economic development, it was always important to tell stories that showed that there was an impact. It was clear that those kinds of stories increased the investment made in economic development projects. Most importantly, those stories gave people the courage to dare and dream, and further, to believe that it was possible to effect significant change.

How many individuals who focus on empowerment and development have been inspired to do great things such as launch a healthcare program or build a learning centre because of a success story, heartrending needs or because of stories they have heard or seen?

To tell the truth, many countries have increased their projections for economic growth or started working towards alleviating poverty because of examples and stories they have heard or by taking cues after getting insights from neighbouring countries that have exhibited similar progress.

However, when the same is applied to the private sector, it becomes harder. It is important to articulate your brand purpose while at the same time taking into account your other content. This makes digital marketing experts face tough choices. For example, if your budget allocation is 20 new pieces of content each month, how many units should be allocated.

Though there is no single approach that can be said to work best for organisations, the brand purpose should be made to reflect organisational goals. You can attract new customers to your business by exploring your brand purpose. Exploring the purpose of your enterprise can also assist you in improving and enhancing the larger content marketing objectives of your business.

Customer behaviour is changing…

The demands of customers are not the only thing that is changing the role of content that is purpose-driven in organizations. Another key consideration is the context in which content is being used in an organization; from the role, it is playing in corporate communications, the integration of marketing to its role in sales.

It is unlikely that many people will follow an individual channel on this topic unless they are addressing the needs of a specific audience. The client reinvented the coverage of this area and began making it an integral part of all organisational processes. Blogs that are product-specific began carrying pieces that are relevant to the target audience. Blogs designed for the corporate level now carry content that tackles issues that deal with executive and organizational areas. Internal communications and investor relations content carry similar stories though with a different spin.

By looking for ways in which different parts of the organization can support the story you are pushing, you can be able to present it in a more compelling manner to the desired target audience.

Organisations have different departments with different functions. For example, you might have a public relations team in charge of managing corporate social responsibility. There you will have a team in charge of creating content for social media platforms. In an organization, you can also have a product team with the responsibility of making a product more relevant to the target audience. In most organizations, these teams function independently. If the efforts of all the teams were pulled together, it would be really fascinating.

For example, consider a Tech company that wants content tackling the involvement of women and technology. The top part of the content can provide on the skill gap for women seeking to embrace technology and the ideal road-map for making this happen. The PR team in the organisation can then focus on investments, coding camps and other partnerships necessary to make this happen. The customer profiles used in the content can contain information on women in the tech industry who are making huge strides in this area.

By focusing on each individual part of an organisation, you can satisfy the functional needs of each part and then link them all together. In order to start making a big impact and headway in this area, you need to start questioning how a connection can be made across the whole organization.

Content strategists…it’s your turn!

Content strategists and marketing professionals have a bigger workload. Simply talking about the purpose of your brand is no longer enough of a deliverable. It is important to offer more than the occasional distant blog post and annual reports of an organisation. Instead, strategists and marketers have to look at how the brand purpose dictates the organisation function and the way different individual parts of the organisation can be used to highlight this.

Interconnecting the bigger content marketing strategy of an organization with the brand purpose helps in telling the story better to the audience. At the same time, it also helps in weaving the brand purpose more strongly into the narrative of your organization.

The post How To Make Brand Identity A Core Part Of Your Content Strategy appeared first on SEMA.

It is also well-known that, during the buying process, this content is used to motivate prospects in the following ways:

1. The awareness stage: this is where you identify the problems that potential buyers are having

2. The consideration stage: when a potential buyer will do research in order to solve the problem

3. The decision stage: the moment where the buyer finally decides to choose a solution that can help them

When doing a digital marketing strategy, there are several types of content that you should use that can help each person eventually commit when going through the buying process.

Blogs And Keyword Research

The awareness stage of content building utilizes blogs. Essentially, people reading your blog may not be at the buying stage yet, and this content will allow them to remember you.

If you can understand what is causing your audience pain, you must do keyword research that can identify keyword phrases that are related to this problem. You need to generate content on topics that will be focused on searcher intent. An example of this was recently creating a blog on the benefits of PR after identifying our target market (CEOs and c level execs of SMEs) which was looking for info on the benefits of PR. You must consider the challenges they may be facing, and subsequently create blog topics that they will be looking for on the web.

The content that you create must include these keywords, but you also need to make the content helpful and easy to read. Engaging content is what allows the audience to remember you, and should not be solely designed to rank on Google.

Develop Gated Content 

If you want to get leads, this type of content is what you want to create. For example, the top of the final leads can use this content because the potential buyers are at either consideration or awareness stage. Gated content may include explaining her videos, white papers, or even digital e-books.

To create best-gated content, it needs to be:

• Persona-driven – targeting specific people that will need your service
• Focused on one pain point – creating highly focused content for downloads
• Beautifully designed – developing appealing and friendly content

As you create this content, it must provide helpful advice for the audience highlighting your expertise in this area.

Engaging Video Content 

There is a saying that a picture can be expressive of a thousand words, and videos do an even better job. In fact, it is thought that the most engaging content for any brand your business is creating a high-quality video.

These can be used at any stage of the buying process you have set up. For example, if they are at the awareness stage, and they find this content on social media, it will definitely attract their attention. Explainer videos work perfectly with those that are at the consideration stage, giving them plenty of insight as to how to deal with their pain. If they are at the decision stage, case study videos work very well, representing what you know about the topic, and will help them develop a positive impression about you.

There are four things that video content should have (sometimes all of them together!) – Videos need to be shareable, engaging, memorable, and insightful. If you are aware of who your audience really is, and also how they consume content daily, you will know how to develop your videos so they can benefit from them.

Link Building

Content that is on your social channels, or even on your website, is not the totality of all you can produce. If you can create targeted digital content, that which will raise PR activity, you can help their awareness improve about your business, giving them content they can share and indirectly backlinks that can help with search engine optimization.

At this point, PR becomes a substantial component of any digital marketing strategy you are attempting to do. When you can secure links online on different websites and publications (preferably with high DA) you will see a definite boost in your search positioning and visibility.

When you create engaging content, this will help you get follow links, and at the same time, build your brand and your business profile.

As you can see, any digital marketing expert worth their salt will tell you that good content is essential with a successful digital marketing strategy. You must always consider each and every element of your content carefully – including knowing who your audience is, what information they are looking for, and what channels, if any, they are consuming daily so that you can produce the content they are looking for so they can make an informed decision.

The post Why Quality Content Is Key To A Successful Digital Marketing Strategy appeared first on SEMA.

Content marketing is a powerful tool which can make a business much more profitable. By posting materials related to the field you specialize in, you can attract the attention of prospective clients and turn them into actual customers.

But developing a content strategy is not an easy task, and there are many pitfalls which can make all your efforts fruitless.

It is especially true of those teams that cannot boast a professional content writer equipped with marketing knowledge. Here are some of the problems that may underlie the inefficiency of your content strategy.

Emphasis on High-Quality Content

The overwhelming majority of new businesses focus on advertising in order to reach a wider audience – and for good reason. Regardless of what your services are, your task is to make everyone knows what you provide. A comprehensive content strategy aims to help you achieve this goal, and once a website is set up, the flow of content should be constant.

New businesses invest a lot in content, but in many cases, this approach turns out to be ineffective, if not detrimental to a website’s popularity. But why?

The problem is that keywords – what industry experts see as the key to an advertising campaign’s success – are not the cornerstone of content. It is not without reason that content writers strive to include as many of them into their articles, but it is often the case that quality is sacrificed for quantity.

Imagine that you want to read up on language learning – and, perhaps, find a language school afterwards. Before setting out on a journey and trying one school after another (only to find that they are more or less the same on the face of it), you decide to do some research and find out what effective education entails.

Within a couple of clicks, you find a page with an article revolving around learning strategy efficiency – at least it’s what the title suggests.

But you keep scrolling…and you get to this: “Education has long been an indispensable part of our life. As far back as in the 6^th century BC…” Come on! This information is irrelevant! You scroll down and see the following: “How to make learning effective – this is the question many ask when…” Ugh.

Enough of that.

As seen from the example above, content should be useful to the reader – that’s what they are looking for. Do not write content for search engines, because marketing is not an end itself. It is your target audience’s needs that you should focus on.

So the three major problems with poorly written content are:

• Lack of informative content
• Trying to squeeze lots of keywords into an article and making it unreadable by doing so
• Prioritising content that is of little use to prospective customers.

Remember: if you manage to help your audience by providing them with advice, information or some other really informative content, chances are they will trust you and buy from you.

That’s what your visitors should not be like when reading your content

Focus on Your Customers-

The customers who are familiar with your service quality are already part of your customer base. If you want your business to expand, you should try to reach out to a wider audience by promoting your pages. Investing in links is not the only option. There are ways to attract new clients that are even better, given their effectiveness and affordability (if you are ready to take an active part in content development).

Social media is a great place to promote your products because people love sharing what they like. But posting bare links is unlikely to result in campaign success. Instead, consider presenting case studies, producing free samples of something you offer, and delving into the issues that your potential audience is interested in. Analyze the market and compile a list of things you can enrich your range of services with.

Failure to develop your content and constantly improving it so that it embraces a wide range of things can derail your content strategy.

Become Technical!

Even if your content is ultimately useful, ensuring access to it is key. Your website visitors are actually not that patient – the slower your pages load, the more likely they are to throw in the towel and go search elsewhere.

That is why investing in a high-quality website is worth every penny. The same is true of hosting services. Poorly written code can seriously affect loading times, but imperfect pages are not the only factor contributing to slow loading. Hosting providers vary in their quality of services, and even price tags are not necessarily indicative of reliability. Before entrusting a hosting provider with your pages – and content! – make sure its performance has been good recently. There are many tools for it available online, such as HRANK or NetCraft. It is more difficult to get rid of errors in code because it takes a professional to handle such things. Leaving slow websites as they are to save on maintenance bills can prove to be detrimental to website popularity, in the long run, so do not put it on the back burner.

Content strategy development is more difficult than that, but these pitfalls are what many new companies often fall victim to. The message here is that you should value your potential customers’ time: provide the content that is really interesting and do not forget to make user experience enjoyable and easy.

The post The Most Common Pitfalls in Content Marketing appeared first on SEMA.

During this time what I’ve found is that it isn’t the “words” that sell but the strategy hidden behind those words primes the sale.

In this article, I’m going to share with you 9 commonly-used tactics found inside million dollar articles including a link to an actual million dollar article that generated a million dollars in 48 hours using nothing but stone cold banner traffic.

1. Single Problem-Focused Headline
2. The Bribe
3. The Epiphany
4. The Predominant Idea
5. Chain Of Beliefs
6. The Unique Mechanism
7. The Spokesperson
8. The Solution
9. Irresistible Offer

1. Single Problem-Focused Headline

The closer someone is to making a purchase, the more specific the information they require.

For example, someone who has an awareness of their “foot problem” is very different to someone who has an awareness of their “plantar fasciitis” which is a specific type of foot pain.

The person who has a foot problem is still in the very early stages of awareness while the person who is completely aware of their ailment is highly attracted to content that promises to solve or give unique insights to help the person resolve the issue.

Your headline needs to speak directly to the specific pain point that the reader is currently experiencing.

This 60 Second Morning Tibetan Stretch Technique Instantly Relieves Plantar Fasciitis Pain

That would be interesting to anyone who suffers from PF because I know that the morning is a particular problem area because PF sufferers will typically spend 10-20 minutes stretching just to be able to hobble around the place.

The headline is curious (what is a Tibetan stretch?) it speaks to a specific pain point which is the morning ritual (they can sleep in an extra 20 minutes) and it offers instant relief.

Obviously, you would need to build out your buyer persona beforehand so you know which hot buttons to push.

2. The Bribe

The job of the headline is to get the reader into the first paragraph, the job of the bribe is to sell the reader on why they should spend the next few minutes reading your information.

Consumption is essential to sales content.

The bribe is as simple as saying “In this article you will learn A, B and C…”

You can have a list of items or give them one single high-value benefit, either way, the bribe needs to appear early in the piece.

3. The Epiphany

Did you know that when someone experiences an epiphany that it changes the physical nature of their brain?

Just by sharing an idea you can create an incredible amount of value because it has the potential to changes the readers’ perspective on their problem which then changes their perspective on what solution they need which if executed correctly will be your solution!

One of the easiest ways to produce this light-bulb moment is to unveil the root cause.

Most problems are really symptoms of a deeper issue and bringing that to the surface you can give new hope to even the most jaded reader who has “heard it all”.

And if a person has hope then we can advance them to our solution.

4. The Predominant Idea

Vegans do not wear or eat animal products because they have bought into a predominant idea regarding cruelty to animals and that plant-based nutrition is superior for overall health.

The predominant idea is the overarching or dominant belief that the reader must have in order for you to sell your solution.

For example,

Person B buys regular milk.
Predominant idea: “I just need milk for breakfast, milk is milk.”

Personal A buys organic milk.
Predominant idea: “Organic milk comes from healthy cows which makes me healthy.”

Given all options available, Person A will always reach for the organic milk.

The predominant idea is what ultimately guides the buying decision.

What overarching core idea does your reader need to have before they will buy your product?

5. The Chain Of Beliefs

Do you think the earth is flat?

Some people do.

But I’m willing to bet that person didn’t just buy into the predominant idea that the earth is flat.

Perhaps they have seen it on YouTube and began finding more information to the point that they had enough “evidence” to support this premise where it finally became the new predominant idea where an interesting phenomena thing happens.

They try to convince others and they stop listening to anyone who has an opposing belief (sound a little like religion?)

Like the flat-earther sometimes we need to build up the evidence to support our big idea and this is called the chain of beliefs.

What arguments does your reader need to accept before they will buy into the predominant idea?

List them out.

Imagine that you’re talking with one of your friends and you’re building a case for your core idea what point would you lead with? What would be the next point and so on.

Once you’ve finished your arguments should all line up to the predominant idea.

6. The Unique Mechanism

Infomercials generate a lot of revenue and one of the main strategies you’ll see is used is the unique mechanism.

The unique mechanism is a part of your solution or process that makes buying your solution essential.

This is most obvious in the diet supplement industry.

Look at the latest selling supplement, it’ll have a unique ingredient that is directly tied to solving either the root cause of a problem or the major pain point of the market.

Keep in mind that your unique mechanism is not your product or service.

If I have a new supplement to sell I’ll first make sure I’ve sold the reader on the unique ingredient before introducing my solution.

7. The Spokesperson

People want to know that they’re getting information from a real person so as early as it makes sense you’ll want to introduce your spokesperson.

This means sharing;

1. Name
2. Credentials i.e. what makes them qualified to speak on the subject?
3. Brief backstory
4. Photo

The spokesperson should be an authority on the subject matter meaning that they could be an insider/whistle-blower or was once where the reader is and has now where the reader desires to be typically seen them in weight loss and financial industries

8. The Solution

The biggest mistake that content creators make is that they introduce their solution too soon.

The best articles spend 75% of the article setting up the sale using the above strategies then they will present the solution which at this stage becomes the only viable option for the reader.

Here you would simply present your solution including relevant features and benefits.

9. An Irresistible Offer

All the hard work has been done so the job of the irresistible offer is to knock the reader off the fence and get them to make the final commitment.

The offer can be a discount on the first order, friendly payment terms etc.

There are 11 basic offer types:

1. Hard offer – full price up front
2. Soft offer – have no pay later
3. Continuity – pay ongoing until you cancel
4. Instalment offer – pay every month
5. Legacy offer – pay one fee and get service for life
6. Exclusive offer – available only to specific demographics
7. Limited offer – limited quantities
8. Limited time offer – time sensitive offer
9. One time offer – only available right now at this price
10. Qualified offer – fill out forms, jump through hoops and we decide whether you can have the offer
11. Bundle offer – packaged products at a friendly price

The post 9 Strategies Utilised In Highly Successful Articles To Boost Conversions appeared first on SEMA.

Seen by many as the last bastion of true human expression. Seen by some as a tool which can be used to *wreckkkk those who disagree with you about which of the ‘Transformers” movies was better, on social media and in online forums (Breathes deeply).

However you see language and its role in your life, one thing is for sure- there’s an objective standard for what is proper and improper.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly saying there’s no difference between the doodles I draw on post-it notes whilst on dreary 10 am phone calls, and a Renoir painting- of course, there’s a level of subjectivity when it comes to writing- it is after all, in its essence, a creative art form.

What I am saying, however, is that all this subjectivity does have its limits, and sometimes things can just be …well…bad!

But, those of you, like me, who have developed a love and appreciation for language and for proper expression, know all too well the heartache and frustration when reading the work of someone who has completely butchered a sentence or phrase. It’s a feeling that evokes a visceral sense of consternation, and you can feel James Joyce roll to his side and facepalm in his dusty, whiskey-soaked grave.

And with this strenuous (and no doubt, needless) metaphor, do I usher in the point of this article.

As the Editor of Search Marketing Australia (SEMA), I deal with, vet and edit all of the guest post submissions sent to us, of which there are …uh… many. And often, much of my week is spent combing through the piles of …(how do I put this nicely)…interesting (?) article pitches and guest post submissions sent to us. Many of which are fantastic! Some of which are downright mad.

So, if you want to be a guest blogger for Search Marketing Australia, it will mean paying attention to a few basic principles:

Firstly, try writing to our editorial team using the English Language, and not with the grammar and expression of a Tatooine native trying very hard to learn English (Star Wars guys!).

(N.B. The genius that wrote in with the above message to our editorial team now lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife and 4 beautiful children, and is finally ‘slepping eesy’. Maybe. No one actually knows.)

via GIPHY

Often, the submissions we receive are simply too well written, and thus, are rejected on the basis of being too brilliant and illuminating, not to mention the use of such in-vogue gender-inclusive greetings like; ‘Gooday Men’.

A submission sent to us (pictured below), was begrudgingly rejected on the basis that it was in fact too relevant to our readers- being an audience of avid digital marketing professionals. Rest assured- I took no pleasure in knocking back a guest post submission, detailing ‘How To Cook A Perfect Summer Salad’.

So, my most sincere apologies, dear readers…but I guess we’ll never know.

Thanks, Steven.

Another thing to avoid when sending guest-post submissions is the ‘quirky email sign-off’.

Known affectionately in the industry as: ‘Oh! My god! Lauren come and look at this LOL!’, these sign-offs do nothing to better your chances of your submission being accepted or published, despite what your 38-year old uncle who used a website once, will tell you.

A big shout out to Big Nelson and the Funky Bunch for this classic- needless to say, we did not let him ‘post on our blogs’.

…mate.

You may have guessed by now that this was less of an attempt to educate you, the reader, of what we’re looking for in a guest-post submission, and more of an opportunity to share with you some of the truly hilarious things that have ended up in our SEMA inbox- you’re welcome.

In any case, if you are interested in submitting article pitches to us, we’d love to hear from you! And, in the interest of providing our readers with the best, most relevant content out there, check our submission guidelines here before sending submissions through to us.

Stay classy guest-posters.

SEMA out.

The post So, You Want To Be A Guest Blogger? appeared first on SEMA.