The Metric is the Message: Looking for Real Results

metrics

Last week we attended Search Engine Strategies New York, the online marketing conference and expo, and one theme that kept coming up in various contexts was the concept of real value. Different industries talk about it different way: in economics it’s “utility”, in customer relations it’s “satisfaction”, but the idea is the same: businesses and consumers alike are paying more attention to each dollar that they spend and how it benefits them.

Among consumers, that means brand loyalty is waning as people search for better deals, perhaps reevaluating and switching brands, or even going with generics. Among businesses, it means focusing more on ROI, and making sure your service providers are getting the right kind of results and giving you the metrics to back them up.

It’s a familiar concept at Blue Fountain Media; we’ve always held ourselves accountable for the success of our clients, focusing on your goals, and only recommending solutions that will yield a return on investment. We enjoy working with clients who feel the same way about their own customers. It was nice to have our strategy validated by others, like keynote speaker John Gerzema, who spoke about the erosion of trust, about the lack of permanence of institutions that used to appear untouchable, but ultimately about the opportunity that the crisis has created for smart companies. It’s a win for the consumer, and a win for businesses willing to take a step back, and make sure that they’re adding value that’s worth paying for.

How Microformats Can Make Your AdWords Campaign Stand Out

We’ve talked before both about making your paid search ads stand out from the crowd, and about using microformats to help organize content on your website. It appears that Google’s new “rich snippets” announcement has implications for paid search as well, giving advertisers the opportunity to leverage the new policy to differentiate their ads.

In this example, Google includes a plus-box below a Newegg.com ad, with product images and information pulled from microformatted tables on their product pages:
Products Plus Box

Much like the Google Checkout badge and the maps plus box, this isn’t something you can just turn on via AdWords; it’s a result of having your ad campaigns set up correctly, and Google crawling your website and determining that they’ll be providing users with a better experience by displaying additional content from your website (either letting users know that you support Google Checkout, or giving a preview of products related to your search).

This is yet another example of the importance of a holistic approach to online marketing; advertising should integrate not only searchability and online reputation, but site architecture as well. (For a more in-depth explanation of how Google uses information like microformats in the SERPS, check out their recent entry on the Google Webmaster Central Blog.)

7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design

I attended the session entitled “7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page of Design” presented by Tim Ash, President & CEO, SiteTuners.com (Twitter @tim_ash). Here the seven deadly sins of landing page design, outlined by Ash in a very humorous fashion:

1. Unclear call to action.

Focus your visitors on one thing. What it is that you want people to do on each of your pages? 1-800 Flowers is one of the big companies that was messing this up (on their product detail page).

Use Attention Wizard heatmap to find where people are looking on your page.

2. Too many options – steps.

Reduce the friction between the user and the product they are seeking. Show main categories that are most popular on your page – not every subcategory and product on each page.

3. Asking for too much information.

Require less information in your forms to increase conversions. Do not ask questions that are not absolutely unnecessary, or inappropriate. Read Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing.

4. Too much text.

Do not make your visitors to suffer. Do not write in paragraph form. Instead use headlines and bullet points.

5. Not keeping your promises.

Intent is the number one factor in conversion. If a user clicks on a pay-per-click ad that says “Best Digital Camera” then they expect to come across the best digital camera. If they land on a page that does not match that query and the promise of seeing reviews of the best digital cameras, then they will promptly leave.

6. Too many visual distractions.

Use visual hierarchy to organize information, just like in an outline. Only important things should be bright and bold. Use other colors/sizes to organize information. Do not make everything equally important or unimportant.

7. Lack of trust.

Provide trust symbols in visible places (top 2/3 of the area visible through a monitor). This can be a “McCaffee Secure” symbol, brands that you work with, mentions in the press – whatever will increase trust by association.

 

Beyond the Basics: 8 Tips for the Intermediate PPC Manager

A while back I went over the basics of search advertising, or pay-per-click. These are still the best place to start, and can be broken down into four areas:
  • Keywords: do keyword research, and use keyword groups to segment your audiences. Also use different match types to make sure you’re targeting the right users at the right times in their buying cycle, but not overpaying for lower-performance phrases.
  • Ad copy: Use keywords in your ad copy, and prioritize the relevance of what you’re advertising (in relation to the search terms) over branding or your company name.
  • Landing page: Make sure your landing page is relevant to your keywords, and ads.
  • Performance Tracking: Know what metrics are important to your business; monitor and improve your campaigns over time through controlled testing.

But what if you’re already doing all that? Here are the next 8 steps:

  1. Use negatives on your broad match keywords.

    If you don’t want to limit your options to specific phrases by using only exact match, because some of your keywords might be combined with an unpredictably long list of other keywords, most of which are relevant combinations, but a handful of which are irrelevant, set the main keyword to broad match, and enter the handful of irrelevant modifiers as negative matches, at the keyword level.

  2. Use dynamic keyword insertion.

    If you’re targeting a lot of similar products, or one product that comes in a lot of different colors (e.g. blue plaid shorts, red plaid shorts, etc.), you can improve the relevance of your ad copy quickly by using DKI to insert the user’s search terms into your copy (space permitting).

  3. Brand vs. Non-brand keywords and ads

    If you get traffic from people searching your brand name and also bid on brand-name keywords for SERP domination purposes (assuming you rank organically for your brand name), this is when you should test the inclusion of the brand in your ad copy. Similarly, if you sell another company’s brands on your website and it’s popular enough to get branded search traffic, monitor the performance of branded vs. non-branded keywords, as well as brand names in ad copy. (Note: Google has relaxed its restrictions on using brand names in ad copy in the US at least; if you are advertising in another country, please learn about local copyright law and Google’s country-specific policies.)

  4. Discounts and other selling points

    If you offer free shipping, online discount codes, guarantees or other differentiating points, test them against eachother in each keyword group. They might perform differently at different stages of the buying process. However, monitor the performance of discount codes carefully: they will most likely increase sales or orders, but they also erode margins, so make sure that you’re not increasing volume at the expense of profits. In other words, make sure your discount volume isn’t cannibalizing visitors who would be willing to pay full price anyway.

  5. Link AdWords with Analytics

    Even if you’re using the same Google Account login for both AdWords and Analytics, they might not be linked by default: check in the “Reports” tab or AdWords. Linking these two services allows Analytics to incorporate cost-per-click data, and allows AdWords to incorporate Analytics Goal data into keyword and ad performance reports. (Note: if you’ve just linked the two services, it might take a week or two for the latter option to become available.)

  6. Bid based on time of day

    Most search advertising programs now offer the option to schedule your ads for certain times of the day, and even increase or decrease bids. Monitor performance by time of day, and increase your budget at peak-converting times, not necessarily peak traffic times.

  7. Create separate campaigns for the content network

    There is too much variance in costs-per-click, ad performance, and keyword relevance between the Search network and the Content network to use the same campaigns across the two. If you’re currently advertising everywhere, stop. Disable content partners in your current campaigns. If you have gotten ROI out of the content network, duplicate these campaigns, and have these new copies target only the content network, and optimize your two sets of campaigns separately.

  8. Prioritize & Find New Opportunities

    There is a wealth of data about searcher behavior available, much of it for free if you know where to look. Two good places to start are Google Trends, and eBay Pulse. Google Trends provides great historical data on popular keywords, so you can identify seasonal keywords, outdated terms that aren’t worth pursuing anymore, or up-and-coming buzz words that should be on your radar. eBay Pulse is great for growing your keyword list, as it can help you identify the language that shopping searchers specifically are using.

 

7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design

I attended the session entitled “7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page of Design” presented by Tim Ash, President & CEO, SiteTuners.com (Twitter @tim_ash). Here the seven deadly sins of landing page design, outlined by Ash in a very humorous fashion:

1. Unclear call to action.

Focus your visitors on one thing. What it is that you want people to do on each of your pages? 1-800 Flowers is one of the big companies that was messing this up (on their product detail page).

Use Attention Wizard heatmap to find where people are looking on your page.

2. Too many options – steps.

Reduce the friction between the user and the product they are seeking. Show main categories that are most popular on your page – not every subcategory and product on each page.

3. Asking for too much information.

Require less information in your forms to increase conversions. Do not ask questions that are not absolutely unnecessary, or inappropriate. Read Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing.

4. Too much text.

Do not make your visitors to suffer. Do not write in paragraph form. Instead use headlines and bullet points.

5. Not keeping your promises.

Intent is the number one factor in conversion. If a user clicks on a pay-per-click ad that says “Best Digital Camera” then they expect to come across the best digital camera. If they land on a page that does not match that query and the promise of seeing reviews of the best digital cameras, then they will promptly leave.

6. Too many visual distractions.

Use visual hierarchy to organize information, just like in an outline. Only important things should be bright and bold. Use other colors/sizes to organize information. Do not make everything equally important or unimportant.

7. Lack of trust.

Provide trust symbols in visible places (top 2/3 of the area visible through a monitor). This can be a “McCaffee Secure” symbol, brands that you work with, mentions in the press – whatever will increase trust by association.

For real-time news from Affiliate Summit East 2009, follow me on Twitter!

 

How Microformats Can Make Your AdWords Campaign Stand Out

We’ve talked before both about making your paid search ads stand out from the crowd, and about using microformats to help organize content on your website. It appears that Google’s new “rich snippets” announcement has implications for paid search as well, giving advertisers the opportunity to leverage the new policy to differentiate their ads.

In this example, Google includes a plus-box below a Newegg.com ad, with product images and information pulled from microformatted tables on their product pages:
Products Plus Box

Much like the Google Checkout badge and the maps plus box, this isn’t something you can just turn on via AdWords; it’s a result of having your ad campaigns set up correctly, and Google crawling your website and determining that they’ll be providing users with a better experience by displaying additional content from your website (either letting users know that you support Google Checkout, or giving a preview of products related to your search).

This is yet another example of the importance of a holistic approach to online marketing; advertising should integrate not only searchability and online reputation, but site architecture as well. (For a more in-depth explanation of how Google uses information like microformats in the SERPS, check out their recent entry on the Google Webmaster Central Blog.)

 

The Metric is the Message: Looking for Real Results

metrics

Last week we attended Search Engine Strategies New York, the online marketing conference and expo, and one theme that kept coming up in various contexts was the concept of real value. Different industries talk about it different way: in economics it’s “utility”, in customer relations it’s “satisfaction”, but the idea is the same: businesses and consumers alike are paying more attention to each dollar that they spend and how it benefits them.

Among consumers, that means brand loyalty is waning as people search for better deals, perhaps reevaluating and switching brands, or even going with generics. Among businesses, it means focusing more on ROI, and making sure your service providers are getting the right kind of results and giving you the metrics to back them up.

It’s a familiar concept at Blue Fountain Media; we’ve always held ourselves accountable for the success of our clients, focusing on your goals, and only recommending solutions that will yield a return on investment. We enjoy working with clients who feel the same way about their own customers. It was nice to have our strategy validated by others, like keynote speaker John Gerzema, who spoke about the erosion of trust, about the lack of permanence of institutions that used to appear untouchable, but ultimately about the opportunity that the crisis has created for smart companies. It’s a win for the consumer, and a win for businesses willing to take a step back, and make sure that they’re adding value that’s worth paying for.

 

Avoiding job-seekers via search advertising

 Hi everyone,

Alhan and I just got back to the office after three days at the Search Engine Strategies New York Conference and Expo. We’ll be writing more about the takeaways from that experience a little later. But first I wanted to point out something I noticed this morning:

new-york-web-design-not-hiring

 

One technique to avoid unwanted clicks and the charges associated with them is to write ad copy which will “filter” unqualified users by discouraging them from clicking. Above, on our own AdWords creative, we use the filter “$5K+”, which gives users a clue about the level of our services.

Another New York firm, Avatar, has been doing the same thing (“$20,000 and up”), but now they’ve added a second filter on the same ad: “Currently NOT Hiring”.

When used properly, filters can be effective at reducing your overall pay-per-click cost. However, they can’t be your only strategy for targeting. First of all, they rely on users reading beyond the ad headline, which is sometimes a tall order. Secondly, they can lower your click-through rate, which lowers your AdWords Quality Score, which drives up your minimum cost-per-click. (Basically, if your ad shows a lot but doesn’t get clicked on, Google will see it as a low-quality ad; since they want to provide a quality experience for users, they discourage low-quality ads by making them more expensive.)

One way to reduce the number of unqualified impressions before you start filtering clicks is through negative keywords. If we’re bidding on the keyword phrase “new york web design”, but don’t want users to click our ad searching for “new york web design jobs”, we could just add “jobs” as a negative keyword.

Fortunately, we don’t have that problem; we are hiring.

 

The ROI of SEO is difficult to top

This is a quick post to exemplify why most methods of marketing, especially online, simply do not match the effectiveness and longevity of search engine optimization (SEO). The important factor to remember is that it is measurable, like pay-per-click advertising and banner ads, but unlike these, the effects of SEO last far beyond the length of the campaign and cost-per-conversion plummets with SEO as time goes by.

Exhibit A:

One of our clients, PriorTax.com, was spending $1.40 per visitor through Google AdWords to bring 13,024 visitors to their website in a period of 30 days.

During the same 30 day period, Blue Fountain Media brought the website 15,382 visitors for $0.43 per visitor through search engine optimization.

These numbers do not speak for themselves; we must consider whether or not these were qualified visitors or not. It is not enough to say that we brought X amount of traffic to a website, if they got zero sales out of it.  PriorTax.com not only had more visitors through SEO than from Google AdWords, but their conversion rate was also higher. Their AdWords conversion rate was 3.38% while their organic results gave them a slight edge at3.64%.

Conclusion: Not only did SEO bring more visitors at a lower price, but also had a higher conversion rate.

Exhibit B:

R.A.G. New York was able to take advantage of the SEO campaign that Blue Fountain Media performed long after the end of our work. Here are two screenshots from R.A.G. New York’s Analytics showing 1.) overall visitors and 2.) total conversions. Blue Fountain Media provided SEO services between April and September. Since then there has been no work done to promote the website.

It is clearly visible that the fruits of our labor truly paid off after our work was done. R.A.G. was able to take full advantage of the holiday season search frenzy and many of those same visitors came back to the website early this year. Personalized search results had a big role to play here.

rag-seo-effect

SEO-ROI

 

5 Social Media Lessons Jeremy Lin Can Teach Marketers

knicks

This article was updated on 10/12/2012.

The basketball loving world has gone crazy over Jeremy Lin, an Asian American, Harvard-educated and undrafted point guard, who has sparked a mini-winning streak for the previously hapless New York Knicks.

In China this week, Lin’s name was among the top 10 search terms on Sina Weibo, that nation’s equivalent to Twitter. And here in the United States’ Lin’s seemingly mundane exploits (he’s only started in four games!)  gave us ‘Linsanity’ – the top global trending topic on Twitter.

The kid is blowing up and his spin move from benchwarmer to phenom could only have happened in 2012 and beyond, where social media is more and more intertwined with everyday life.

Below are some social media lessons to be learned from all this Linsanity

1. Powerful forces are at work (old school media takes their cues from social media).

This Linsanity is not a new phenomena but rather a continuation of social media, digital publishing tools and smartphone forces continuing to converge, creating a tidal wave of instant information anywhere, anytime. Consider the similarity of these recent events:

  • The social storm stirred up online over the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Foundation flap.
  • Financial activists blow up Bank of America’s plan to charge a $5 fee for debit card use.
  • Organized through social media, the Occupy Wall Street movement gets its legs on Facebook and Twitter.
  • Imagine Tebow Tebowing pre-social media – nobody would notice.

What each has in common is an over-amplification cause by social media. This amplification strikes a  point where the mainstream media  adapts its coverage of events just because  it’s abuzz on social media.

– “Just want everyone to know that I wrote about #linsanity this morning long before it became “hip” this afternoon”: bit.ly/Apjdq4

Lin has only played in four games but in a world with 24-hour social networking accessed by just about everybody on the planet instantly, his exploits have been bounced about in realtime among people not even watching the game.

Lesson: If you do something good, share it. Your base will do the  marketing for you.  Also, make sure the message finds its way across numerous  platforms. The more locations it is seen in, the more likely it will spread. Maybe someone will make a video about your awesomeness.

2. Stick to your game plan.

When Jeremy Lin joined the Knicks a few short weeks ago, he’d already been cut by two different NBA teams. However, the 23-year-old remained true to his game and didn’t try to become anyone else. Once he was given an opportunity to play (because of several injuries to key players) he stuck with what he knew best – an unselfish style of play that included dishing the ball to teammates more often than heaving up poor percentage shots (Yes, I mean you Carmelo!) himself. Once this proved successful it opened up other, more dynamic aspects of his game. This sparked a solid, all-around team game the Knicks sorely lacked and a winning streak that led to all this Linsanity.

Lesson: Sure, you’ve got some wild ideas about how to make your brand go viral across the net, but chances are if you stick with what you know best and continue to execute your game plan, success will follow.

3. The Bounce effect (in this case the dribble effect).

In one 12 hour period, Lin’s on court heroics spawned more than 3,000 tweets, according to social media analytics tool Topsy.

In four days the number of people following @JLin7 surpassed 190,000 and is projected to net more than 400,000 within 15 days.

However, not every tweet was centered around his basketball prowess. Naturally, considering the Twitter community’s varied interests, the topics veered away from the Knicks toward Ivy League basketball, Harvard, stereotypes of Asian  males in American  society, and even Tawianese nationalism. In other words: the subject bounced around to almost every and any topic Jeremy Lin can be identified with.

Lesson: Just because it starts out as one thing doesn’t mean its going to end there. Sure, you may want to let the world know about your widgets, but there is a wide range of ancillary subjects that may also resonate within your organization and social media followers. Nurture this ‘bounce’ and help expand the dialogue about your company whether it is talking  up corporate culture, employee benefits or how your new environmental initiatives are helping your community. Your product or service isn’t the only story you have to tell.

4. Share the wealth.
Sure, Jeremy Lin was the one making all those buckets and fancy passes, but he understands that without teammates he’s not going to accomplish very much. Seemingly at every opportunity he takes time to  acknowledge their efforts and considerable skills.

Lesson: Let your partners and customers know how much they mean to your success. Share their stories with others and they in turn will pass your message along to another crowd you may not have known existed. That is practically is the definition of social media marketing.

5. Avoid the personal fouls.

Jeremy’s Twitter stats are impressive. A few weeks ago he was hovering around 4,000 followers and today’ he’s at 191,000 and counting.

However, he didn’t set out to conquer the social media universe for the sake of conquering it. He began by broadcasting small accomplishments – “Thankful to God for the opportunity to be a New York Knick!! Time to find my winter coats from college lol” –  that snowballed into bigger ones and ultimately lead to this huge following.

Lesson: Share your success stories with followers, but remember these netizines are a savvy bunch. They know when you are snowing them. Don’t start conversations for the sake of talking. Make sure you have something to say, and then share those thoughts, accomplishments and conversations with the world.

 

Super Social Super Bowl Commercials

SuperBowl

It’s not often 111 million people turn their attention to the same thing at once, but come Sunday a good chunk of America will tune in and watch the New York Giants smack down the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl for the second time in four years.

Of course, many will be more interested in the commercials than the actual game, and with 30 second slots costing an exorbitant $3.5 million, advertisers will be looking to make the most of their spend. And as any savvy marketing pro on Madison Avenue knows this means spreading the messages socially long after their the TV spot concludes.

This year the method will be particularly effective because 60 percent of viewers are expected to be connected to a “second screen,” a smartphone or tablet, where they’ll text or interact with friends on Twitter or Facebook.

More than 70 commercials will air during the Super Bowl making competition fierce, so many have already released their ads on YouTube sparking viral reactions. For the first time ever USA Today’s Ad Meter will allow viewers to vote for their favorite commercial via Facebook. As fans anxiously await the rematch between the Giants and Patriots, one thing that is certain – it’s expected to be a “second-screen” Super Bowl.

Coca-Cola 

This year Coca-Cola plans to introduce the world to their new brand ambassadors, computer animated polar bears. Following their ad, the bears will come to life on Twitter, Facebook and Coke’s own dedicated bear site CokePolarBowl.com. They’ll watch the game in real-time, comment on the half time show and even respond to fans via their Twitter hashtag #GameDayPolarBears. They’re also expected to remark on other advertisements it’ll be interesting to hear their responses to competitor’s commercials.

Pepsi

Not to be outdone by their polar bear counterparts, Pepsi has plans to prompt viewers to interact with their advertisements. The company’s commercials will feature a performance by “X Factor USA” winner Melanie Amaro. During it, viewers will be prompted to “Shazam” (capture audio from the commercial) her song for an opportunity to download the video for free.

Audi 

Perhaps feeling the pressure to answer Volkswagen’s celebrated Darth Vader themed spot from last year, Audi’s commercial for Super Bowl XLVI is Twilight inspired. The company will highlight the force of Audi’s LED headlight technology which has dire consequences on a pack of young partying vampires. The company hopes to keep the buzz alive through the unveiling of its Twitter hashtag #SoLongVampires.

Chevy

The release of Chevy’s smartphone Game Time app is already causing a social stir. Individuals can play on their phones, tablets or even through their site: chevy.com/gametime for a chance to win prizes courtesy of Chevy, Bridgestone and Motorola. Those who download and register before February 6 will receive a code; if it matches one of the license plates in Chevy’s ads during the game, they’ll win one of 20 vehicles being given away.

 

14 Trends Spotted at Social Media Week

Social Media WEek

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a trend as a line of general direction or movement; and as marketers, we are comfortable connecting ourselves to data, numbers and other mathematically related phenomena. When taking both of these facts into consideration, we know very well how important identifying trends is to success in any industry, so when we have an opportunity to get some “insider information,” we are truly pleased. Social Media Week  gave us our latest opportunity to spot online trends to which we should take heed when looking to communicate through what may very well be today’s most popular online channel.

1. FOMO: the Fear Of Missing Out

Born out of the old trend of Radical Transparency – the show all, tell all way of living life in the total open and subsequent one-upmanship – the fear of not remaining up-to-date on all that is new keeps people connected to their networks by using social media channels.

2. Life in Real-Time

 

The proliferation of smartphones has created a society where the stream of information is continually following us. As we create this stream of information, we are becoming hyper-documentarians—not only are we documenting the events, we’re helping drive them.

3. Social Good

Recent history has shown us that social protest, social causes and social activism have all found a communication channel in social media and there’s no sign in this trend stopping.

4. Collaborative Consumption

Social media’s culture of sharing has helped push this trend into the mainstream. Technology has made it where we now live in a Global Village where it’s easier and more acceptable to swap, borrow and share thoughts, goods and services.

5. Data in Droves

We have now reached a point where social media channels are looking to redefine how to use all of the data that they collect. The age of Big Data, Big Impact in social media has finally arrived.

6. Hyper-Personalization

Now that social media’s collected data is perceived by most as valuable and because these channels continue to collect more data, these channels should become more and more personal. Additionally, as the social graph is applied over this data the creation of the Curated Web, a web that provides people with the ideas and information they are looking for before they even know they are looking for it, is imminent.

7. Social Commerce

There are 845 million people now on Facebook. Forty-seven percent of Facebook users would like more shopping opportunities on Facebook. That’s approximately 397 million people. F-Commerce has been introduced for a reason.

8. Socializing Brick & Mortar

In a step before the proliferation of full Near Field Communications (NFC) adoption, physical stores such as Diesel have started to bring the “Like Button” into their stores.

9. Screened Interactions

If you’ve seen The Kinect Effect commercial you have seen an example of screened interactions—the opportunities to engage and entertain around goods and services. Because of social media’s natural need to engage and entertain, it was only a matter of time before this type of contact took place.

10. Radical Transparency Remorse

Somehow, even with documented cases and over exaggerated urban legends, some people still divulge entirely too much information without thought. Opening social media channels to more opportunity does also give people more opportunities to do things they shouldn’t.

11. Facebook Fatigue

Facebook’s going public can cause an issue because their greatest asset is the information gathered on its 845 million users. The potential problem arises if the shareholder demands do not match the company and, more importantly, the users’ desires—especially since the online culture has become opt-out instead of opt-in.

12. Reengineering Randomness

Although hyper-personalization helps organize the content consumed on social media channels, people are beginning to long for randomness. As with everything in life, people eventually want balance.

13. Serendipitous Socializing

This is the trend that has helped online entities such as Pinterest, Turntable.FM and Meetup succeed. By adding good fortune to the social media mix, people are bound to return to the channels that take advantage of this trend.

14. De-Teching

In the vein of balance in life, people looking to re-connect with real people again. Studies show that 66 percent of people wish they could spend more time face-to-face rather than “Facebook-to-Facebook.” This does not mean people are looking to leave the social media channels they constantly use; it simply means they need to see people in real life again.

The significance of recognizing these trends fully supports the necessity of something we marketers know must precede any campaign, but at times is overlooked—a strategy. By taking each applicable trend into account, it is easier to pinpoint which steps to take in your online communications.

 

How The GRAMMYs Broke Records and Paused the Social Web

Grammys

Large-scale events like Super Bowl XLVI –  where the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots – and the 54th Annual GRAMMYs always bring people together, and the popular social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter only serve to magnify this certainty.

Beverly Jackson, director of marketing/social media for The GRAMMYs, stopped by Social Media Week to give all who would listen the lowdown on how they received 13 million tweets on GRAMMY night.

I hope you’re listening too.

They Are Music

The GRAMMYs made sure to begin with a comprehensive plan of attack built around this year’s theme, We Are Music, and their first point of identification was based on this belief: when thinking of how viewers will be watching The GRAMMYs, remember that they are always viewing at least two screens. By realizing that their audience will have  eyes on at least the television and a computer, the ability increases to forge and organize a social media plan that would be sure to engage and communicate with the millions of viewers.

By understanding how the audience would view their program, they concluded  it was important to have multiple channels on which  people could consume the product online. The GRAMMY plan consisted of five hashtags and pages across the social Web. All instances were branded in some way to add consistency and clarity. Additionally, they sent the details of their plan to record labels and other music companies and organizations linked to the recording artists as possible. Knowing the artists would tweet during the GRAMMYs, they wanted to make sure that those artists were on board and in concert (no pun intended) with The GRAMMY plan.

Not only did this create a more robust conversation, it served its purpose of breeding engagement between the artists and the fans.

The connection did not end there. While the well-known, popular social media campaigns took place, GRAMMY Live –  designed for those who chose or had to watch the program on mobile devices –  was taking place. These correspondents covered the event in real time and also had open lines of communications with those viewers through Twitter and Facebook. GRAMMY Live was accompanied by other mobile apps containing segment countdowns as well as other engagement points.

Tweesults

We are now in a time where measuring many social media results is a matter of Twittermetrics, and although I don’t believe they will replace the Nielsen numbers anytime soon, these metrics represent the lion’s share of the measurement of success.

  • 3.9 Million explicit mentions of  The GRAMMYs. This does not include artist or presenter mentions.
  • According to Social People, Twitter traffic peaked at an incredible 65,000 tweets per second (TPS) during the live broadcast completely obliterating the 12,233 TPS peak at Super Bowl XLVI; and
  • 2.5 Million Twitter mentions of Adele – she won a lot of awards, quite possibly all of them.

The most overwhelming results may have come around the tragedy that took place the night before the live show.

The social media world arrived to all of the popular channels in droves after the announcement of Whitney Houston’s passing. Once people were able to see through their initial grief, Twitter’s hot button topic in particular was how would the GRAMMYs remember Whitney? Even though we do not have the official number of social media mentions regarding this question, we do have an idea of what people felt afterwards:

  • Buzz around the tribute to Whitney Houston, while diverse, was mostly favorable with 81 percent of people offering positive sentiment; and in what many found to be the absolutely most stunning statistic in the presentation;
  • When Jennifer Hudson hit the stage for her tribute performance, Twitter traffic around the GRAMMYs stopped. I’m not talking about a failwhale moment, I’m talking about a social media moment of silence.

What Have We Learned?

The GRAMMYs have shown us how a carefully laid out plan can drive content, conversation and, in terms of what they were searching for in their social media campaign, conversion. They’ve also shown us that it is indeed possible for people to eschew their computers and mobile devices, even if only for a minute or two, for a moment in real life. Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?

 

7 Big Features of Facebook Timeline for Brands

 

If your job has anything to do with social media and if you only woke up today, you’ve already heard about the new Facebook Pages roll out which may be better known as Brand Timeline. The redesign has had the business world all a-twitter already, but what we really need to know is how this new iteration is changing the way we use Facebook as a brand. Here are seven characteristics which should be highlighted when putting together your new Facebook campaign:

  1. The Cover Photo.This is your chance to express your brand’s identity. The phrase a picture is worth a thousand words may be cliché at times, however, in this situation it rings true. The visual power of this 850px x 315px space allows you to creatively showcase your product, service or even brand culture.
  2. The Profile Picture.This was once the area on the old Facebook Pages where we were able to show our creativity. We would, at times, use this image as an area to keep people interested and engaged with our “fans”—changing the visual with each sub-campaign. Now this is the suggested area for the logo. This is because this image is the one that will be shared across Facebook when it comes to Offers, Reach Generator and Premium services all of which have to do with the new way Facebook will serve their Stories and ads.
  3. Views and Apps.Nobody panic, your tabs have not completely gone away. They’ve changed the way users view them in this area of the new Facebook Pages. You have four (4) boxes that act as the first four tabs on your old page. From what we understand thus far, you can order the boxes and also create customized images to draw more attention to your Facebook App.
  4. The Mystical Floating Bar.While that may not be the actual name of it, when scrolling down the page, this bar will give the user the ability to have a handle on Views and Apps through the Timeline dropdown menu, shuffle through content by month and year with the Now dropdown and view Highlights without scrolling back up to the top.
  5. Friend Activity.Not only can users see how their friends are engaging with your brand page, they have a better idea of who likes your brand page lending more trust and more potential engagement on Facebook. People trust friends.
  6. Bigger Stories.The ability to have larger format pictures simply looks better. Users will appreciate this fact. Additionally, you can use the edit function in the upper right-hand corner of the post to Pin your post which anchors important stories to the top of a Page for seven days, or Star your story which gives your post in even larger exposure—doubling the width of said image.
  7. Milestones.Here’s your chance to identify key moments of time in your brand. If your brand has something nostalgic that you do not yet have on Facebook, simply go ahead and backdate it so it makes sense. If you have milestones already on Facebook that are not highlighted, go ahead and highlight it. Simply go ahead and use the Composer Bar when adding a post and right before posting it, select Milestone.

There’s one take away from all of this well-deserved hullabaloo. The new Facebook Pages is in no way a substitute for prudent strategy. Content still matters. Context still matters. The tool has changed and has added more visualization making it easier on the eye. Designers rejoice you have more room for creativity. Marketers take heed – you’re still needed just as you were before, your tool has been upgraded.

Why Community is Important in Social Media Marketing

 

Ninjas, gurus and other authorities in the arena of social media have been preaching about community and engagement since its inception, and rather than go into a discussion of Leonardo Di Caprio’s career or what the number 528491 means, I thought that, due to some news from a certain company based in Oregon, it would be apropos to give an example that any business can review, borrow or flat out use to its advantage.

The company being referenced is NIKE, Inc. – a company which has only recently adopted the technique of communicating with customers using the full suite of popular social media channels company-wide. While their lack of official presence in the social media world may have baffled some for a while, the one major understanding NIKE had (and has) is of the importance of community. Many of NIKE’s footwear have become must-have items in pop culture. Air Jordans, Dunks, Air Force Ones and the like have huge followings and when news of a new release is dropped, throngs of brand advocates show up to the nearest shoe store to become customers once again. Recent history has shown that the broadcast of such news has been through social media outlets by influencers, insiders and fans and now NIKE is positioned to distribute this knowledge directly.

To show off their newest digital presence in the U.S., NIKE has introduced Twitter RSVP to assist in the management of their product launches at physical, brick-and-mortar Nike Stores. Sneaker enthusiasts simply:

  • follow their nearest Nike (owned) Store on Twitter;
  • watch for the store to send an RSVP tweet on the designated RSVP day; and
  • respond via direct message with the product specific hashtag, last four digits of their ID number and shoe size.

Those who respond within sixty minutes of said tweet are eligible and the footwear is awarded on a “first respond, first serve” basis. Confirmed recipients, then pick up their kicks on the day of the store launch at the specified timeframe in person and with proof of ID.

Do you see what they did there?

They’ve engaged their community using a particular social media channel, added a contest/goal-oriented atmosphere in order to gather response from the audience ultimately concluding with a sale. No, that was not a random amalgam of business related buzz terms—this is the purpose of social media marketing.

While it is true that many companies may not be able to see the ROI of their social media campaign as immediately as a company such as Nike, what we must look at is the process and how it works. The strength of this community is what made this campaign possible and social media is a great way to build a group like this. Through social media you can be empathetic with your community; you can listen to the good and the bad to make your product and experience better; you can further engage with insiders, enthusiasts and advocates. All of these activities help build trust in your brand and that is the most effective way for the sales process to begin. Additionally, these digital activities, along with your direct mail, advertising, face-to-face and other forms of communication bring something even more important to the table when done correctly: lifetime customer value—and isn’t that what we ultimately want?

I know I do.

The Nike Swoosh is a registered trademark of, owned by and the property of NIKE, Inc.

 

5 Ways Brand Journalism Will Drive Your Social Media Strategy

 

There is plenty of chatter about brand journalism these days. If this is the first time you’re hearing the term, listen up because you’re about to hear it a whole lot more. Big names are already capitalizing and practicing this new style of content marketing, often so effectively you may not have even noticed.

Done well brand journalism leverages social media to build influence, improve search results and spread ideas and excitement about a particular industry. At its most basic level, brand journalism involves storytelling that invites audiences to participate through digital and social media channels.

Essentially brand journalism is the practice of covering your business and your industry like a reporter. It also means transforming your marketing department (even if that’s only you!) into a publishing team that can produce content for readers and reporters.

The future belongs to businesses that become media. The key to your success is producing and hosting unique content designed to engage and attract a new audience. And how you leverage social media to drive this new style of journalism can mean the difference between success and failure.

Below are five tips on how to get started.

#1 This Isn’t Your Boss’ PR Program
For decades consumers have been bombarded with very “me” oriented messaging: My product, my service, my company, my plan. In order to thrive in the evolving digital landscape, you must get out of the “me” business so popular and common in public relations efforts. Instead, become a storyteller to attract, engage, entertain and inform your targeted audience.

Produce great content – articles, videos, infographics – and they’ll come to you.

This storytelling process is a fantastic inbound public relations approach that will pull consumers, competitors and media towards your business’s content hubs – company website, blog and important social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

For example, wireless telecom-giant Qualcomm is leading the charge in brand journalism and its efforts are often followed with savvy social media strategies designed to pull in a larger audience.

They understand it’s not all about the “me” approach.

The company’s publication, QualcommSpark, often focuses on cool and interesting gadgets and games which their products “touch”, and it rarely speaks directly about any chipsets or processors they may have created for use in these platforms (see below). It’s about creating interest around subjects they are involved in.
While there aren’t many of us with the financial resources of Qualcomm, remember many people once also thought blogging was the prevue of the big players. If you follow Qualcomm’s storytelling lead and learn how to talk about your company without actually talking about it (or at least not talking about it too much), you’ll attract an audience you’d never reach with old-style press releases.

  • Start small with one or two posts a week about things that interest people in your industry.
  • Hone your storytelling efforts by requesting feedback (put a comment section at the bottom).
  • Share your story using social media channels (Twitter, Pinterest, Google+) to pull your audience toward you. Add social buttons on each content page to make it easier for readers to share.
  • Develop interesting content that will encourage readers to make an effort to learn more about you and your business.

#2 You Are the Media Now – Start Acting Like it!
Now that you’ve decided to become a storyteller in your space, you’re better off thinking like a newsperson.

“You are now the editor of an online publication dedicated to following news and trends in your industry.”

The first step in this phase involves listening: learn the questions and concerns of your target audience. Instead of relying on “push” communications, such as e-mail marketing, direct mail and advertising, content is moving toward “pull” – pulling people to your business as opposed to pushing out information – which is a better long-term strategy.

“Our goal is to lead the conversation, to spark engagement, to identify trends relevant to our business and the industry,” Karen Snell, social media communications manager at Cisco, wrote on her blog recently.

Cisco Systems recently launched The Network, a technology news website tied very closely with its social media engagement program.

How Building Communities Leads to Commerce

 

Social media remains a hot button issue, even hotter over the past couple of weeks with Facebook’s valuation and subsequent reactions to its IPO. Add to the mix an evolving public perception of Google+ and Foursquare’s very public push to be a large prescense at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, and you’ve got a lot of attention focused on one space.

In the midst of all of this media activity, Twitter took time out during Internet Week New York recently to showcase ways that partnerships with them can not only help brands build community but also provide avenues for that community to purchase goods and services. The theme of the event was The Conversation is the Canvas which further illustrates that, especially in social media, effective campaigns begin best with regular dialogue.

Here are a few highlights.

Social Media is as American as American Express

The highlight of the #Twitter4Brands presentation was provided by Leslie Berland, senior vice president of Digital Partnerships and Development at American Express. The credit card company famous for digital initiatives with Foursquare and Small Business Saturday has fully embraced the digital nature of their community which has been reinforced by their new partnership with Twitter.

The idea itself was obviously born in the old marketing and general life adage of K.I.S.S. and illustrated with the launch of this program at SXSW:

  1. Securely sync your credit card with Twitter.
  • Awareness of the program and launch was done in conjunction withGoGo Inflight Internet – a very smart move to connect with all of the people traveling into Austin for the tech part of SXSW.
  1. Tweet specialized hashtags from merchants to load the offer directly to your credit card.
  • Create tweets with#JayZSyncShow.
  1. You receive a tweet back from the American Express Sync Twitter account informing you that your discount has been loaded to your credit card;
  • Which is clear; and
  • Redeem your offer. The savings are already there.

American Express did not stop there. They also provided the hashtag #AmexAustin10 for use with any Austin-area merchant during the conference.

What AMEX did was very straightforward:

  • They pinpointed the merchant’s need – creating an easy, seamless service for a customer; and
  • Created a bridge between the merchant and customer so that an easy, seamless purchase can be made through an action the customer was very likely to already take.

By engaging in these two planning actions, they gave consumers no excuse or exit strategy to leave the offer. The consumer is (1) already active on Twitter; (2) engaged with the brand(s); and (3) doesn’t have to perform any “work” in saving. There’s no print coupon or print confirmation. There’s not even a coupon code which incidentally work pretty well. In this case, the consumer sees something they want to purchase, says they want to purchase the item(s) (which they would probably do due to FOMO) and makes the purchase: a truly organic user experience.

Allowing simple conversation—one of the most important aspects of social media—a brand is able to show their consumer that they are part of the process and, in turn, these consumers are more willing to naturally jump on the soapbox for the brand.

Please note:Twitter does not view community building with the help of hashtags and creating points of purchase as exclusive actions—there is a natural progression and purchasing is not forced. My colleagues in social media will appreciate that little disclaimer and you as a brand should surely appreciate and embrace this concept as well.

What do you think? Can you incorporate this type of community building in any of your campaigns? Let us know in the box below, we’d love to hear from you.

Facebook Marketing 101: Building Loyalty with Brand Pages

 

With 900 million users and counting, Facebook is a hotbed of opportunity for marketing. Most businesses can benefit from having a presence on this widely-used social network, but as with any other marketing channel, it’s important to go into it with realistic objectives.

  • Build a brand. Facebook offers an excellent outlet to build a brand that consumers can connect with beyond the often static nature of traditional marketing. On Facebook, customers can participate in brand activities and interact with your brand on a personal level.
  • Increase loyalty. By “Liking” a Facebook brand page, consumers are essentially opting in to receive your brand messaging. This is a powerful opportunity to connect with them and turn them into brand ambassadors and lifetime customers.
  • Communicate. Facebook marketing is not just pushing out brand messages. It has become common for customers to use a brand page to bring up inquiries or offer feedback. Handled correctly, this can be a fantastic way to communicate with customers and offer them exceptional customer service.

Once you’ve determined the goals your brand is looking to achieve through Facebook marketing, it’s time to set up your page.

Basic Steps
1. Use an existing Facebook account or create a new one.
2. Navigate to Pages and “Create a Page.”
3. Select a category.
4. Enter your brand name.
5. Agree to terms and “Get Started.”
6. Upload a profile picture (at least 180px).
7. Add basic info.
8. Select a URL – you will not be able to change this, so make sure you get it right the first time.
9. Add a cover image (850×315px).

Claim a Dedicated URL
The dedicated URL is referred to by Facebook as a username, although it is not a username in the traditional sense.
Admin Panel Manage Edit Page Basic Information Username
Choose a professional name that accurately reflects your brand. Capitalization is factored in, so use capital letters if it makes sense, for example check out this page.

Create Admins

  • If you’d like to have more than one person manage the page, you will need to give them administrative access.
  • Any team member who would like to be an admin should “like” the page.
  • Then go into Admin Panel Manage Edit Page Admin Roles and begin typing in the name of the person you’d like to add.
  • Select if you’d prefer to add them as a Manager, Content Creator, Moderator, Advertiser or Insights Analyst. See more information about Page admin roles.

Design Your Page
Design your Facebook page using strong branding that is well integrated with your other marketing channels. Often the Cover Image will mimic the design of a company’s website or current ad campaign and the Profile Pic will be the company logo. If you’re not sure what direction to take, these are solid practices to follow. The Facebook page design elements are outlined below, along with their recommended sizes:

  • Cover Image: 850×315px
  • Profile Pic: At least 180x180px
  • App Icons: 111x74px

Company Information Best Practices
As you’re filling out the informational content on your Facebook page, keep these best practices in mind:

  • Be specific and honest when you’re entering your profile information. Facebook is rumored to be hard at work improving their search functionality and when it (finally) does, you will want your brand profiles to be well-optimized.
  • Local pages can choose up to 3 subcategories. If your brand is local, do this!
  • The “start date” you choose will be the beginning of your Facebook timeline. If the brand is well-established or has a rich history, you may want to select the date the company was founded and then fill in company milestones.

That’s it! You’re now the proud owner of a Facebook Brand Page. Now that your page is set up, you’ll want to develop a smart content strategy and start a regular posting schedule. Stay tuned for tips on creating a killer Facebook content strategy…

Will Facebook Ads Overtake Google AdWords?

 

A little over a week ago Zynga’s stock price dropped below $5 for the first time. Now we are seeing Facebook ads and sponsored content popping up on Zynga.com, marking the first time these ads have appeared outside of the Facebook ecosystem.

So what you say? The move to utilize an existing partnership with the popular gaming company, Zynga, probably has many people thinking “Who cares if I see some ads for tractors while I’m trying to Farm my Ville?”

Don’t be fooled. It goes much deeper than that.

For starters, this is the first time Facebook Ads have been on another site, which likely means the start of a big advertisement push and expanding reach across the Web while answering critics’ questions about Facebook’s ability to generate actual revenue. This could mean a new round of challenges to Google and their online advertising business.

An interesting infographic  from Wordstream compares the two companies and examines their reach, revenue and performance.

A few interesting numbers to consider:

  • According to ComScore Data Mine: Google reached a billion unique visitors worldwide in May, while Facebook saw 713.6 million.
  • Facebook  generated $1.86 billion in ad revenue last year and sis expected to top $4 billion this year. Google reported $29.3 billion in overall revenues last year.
  • eMarketer estimates that Google had 38.5% of the online advertising market last year, compared to 4.6% for Facebook. The research firm also estimates that Facebook’s share will grow to 7% this year compared with 40.8% for Google.

Bottom line: Google is clearly the leader today in online advertising. Their ad creation tool is based on the keywords and match type that you select. As experts in knowing what users are searching, location and browsing history, Google takes advantage of this information by showing the most relevant ads to a user’s search query. But is your search query more important than who you are?

Facebook Ads focus in on the user. They have an endless supply of information from their users. Facebook’s ad creation tool asks for personal details about their users making it easy for marketers to target them through advertisements.

Of course, information like this may seem private and in-depth, but most of us have already forked over most of these details to them. For example, if I want to visit the Huffington Post website through their Facebook application just to read an article titled “Snooki’s Baby Bump,” I will have to give up valuable parts of my identity such such as my profile info, description, birthday, interests, likes…and my soul just for reading something about “Snooki.”

As marketers, it’s our job to figure out a strategy to create relevant ads for our clients and their products and services whether it’s using an advertising platform based on user intent or one based on user information.

Of course, ads are only going to generate money if they are relevant. And that is where Google thrives. It’s how we search for anything online, so its only logical Google’s definition of relevance matters.

However, on the flip side of things, ads are only relevant if they generate money. Confused?

Let’s put it this way, if marketers find Facebook ads more effective, they will not hesitate to use that over Google Adwords. Most businesses will try anything new and are not married to a particular method or strategy if they can find a better way to increase revenue and conversions while reducing costs.

A different approach to online advertising could be on the horizon with Facebook leading the way, if it can generate more ROI for businesses. If Facebook used this latest move with Zynga as a stepping stone into launching an off-site advertising network, would they be able to overcome Google’s hold in online advertising? For now, Google Adwords will maintain their dominance in the online advertising world but this could be the start of something big as Facebook extends its reach.

10 Advantages of Social Media Marketing for Your Business

Social media marketing is a highly valued element of any decent marketing strategy. The benefits of using social media marketing are so great, that anyone not implementing the cost-effective marketing resource is missing out on a phenomenal marketing opportunity.

According to Hubspot, 92% of all marketers claim that social media marketing is important for their business, with another 80% stating that their efforts increased traffic to their websites. It’s easy to see that social media marketing is definitely making waves in the marketing field and many marketers report realizing the potential for business growth, however they are unsure of the best method.

Social Media Examiner states that 97% of marketers are currently participating in social media, but 85% of participants aren’t sure what social media tools are the best to use. There seems to be some uncertainty when it comes to social media marketing. With our help, we will diminish the confusion by thoroughly explaining the best ways to use social media to market your business.

There are an immense amount of benefits of using social media to market your business. We’ve chosen 10 to highlight:

1. Increased Brand Recognition

Social media marketing is one of the most cost-efficient digital marketing methods to syndicate your content and increase your business visibility. Implementing a social media strategy will greatly increase your brand recognition because your business will be reaching such a broad audience of consumers. To get started, create social media profiles for your business and begin networking. Have employees, partner businesses, sponsors, your mother, anyone “like” and “share” your business content on social media. Simply having content “liked” and “shared” makes your business more visible to new consumers which will lead to retaining customers. The more people who know about your business, the better – and social media is a fantastic outlet for showing people what your business is about. Social media marketing increases any businesses’ ROI (return on investment).

2. Improved Brand Loyalty

According to a report by Texas Tech University, brands who engage on social media channels enjoy higher loyalty from their customers. Social media creates the perfect environment for brands to communicate with their consumers and create a bond of brand loyalty. The report proves that brands who communicate with their customers on social media obtain higher levels of customer loyalty.

The millennial consumer generation is known for being the most brand loyal generation of all. The millennial generation is the largest generation in US history – born between the early 1980’s and the early 2000’s – and will soon completely consume the market. Studies show that the millennial consumer generation is 80% more likely to use a brand again if they are pleased with their first purchase. With these technology natives requiring communication between themselves and their brands, businesses must implement social media marketing to catch the eye of the most influential consumer.

3. More Opportunities for Conversion

The more visibility your business has, the better. Every blog post, image, video, or comment may lead viewers to your company website, providing the opportunity for traffic conversion. Social media marketing allows your business to give a positive impression. If a viewer comes across your content and has no need for your products or services, the consumer is more likely to think of your business when the need arises.

4. Higher Conversion Rates

There are several ways social media marketing results in higher conversion rates, the most prominent is its humanization factor. When brands are interactive by sharing content, commenting, and posting statuses on social media, it personifies a brand. People prefer to do business with other people, rather than companies.

Studies have also shown that social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing. When a brand is interactive on social media, consumers who follow your brand’s social media accounts often gain more trust for your brand and view your business as more credible. People use social media platforms to stay connected to their friends, family, and communities. Since people are already talking, why not throw your brand into the mix? More likely than not, they’ll mention your brand to a friend when your products or services are needed, overall providing your business with social proof of its quality. Putting your brand in an atmosphere where people are sharing, liking, and talking, can only improve the conversion rates on your existing traffic.

5. More Brand Authority

When consumers see your business posting on social media – a marketing strategy that only top businesses use – it makes your business appear more credible. Interacting with your customers frequently demonstrates that your business cares about customer satisfaction, and is available to answer any questions that customers might pose. When a satisfied customer wants to spread the word about a great product or service they received from your business, they often turn to social media (especially if social media is the platform where they heard about your business in the first place). Having authentic customers mentioning your business on social media will advertise your business to an even broader audience. The average person has over 300 friends on Facebook, that’s 300 more people that will hear about your business if they scroll through their news feed.

6. Increased Inbound Traffic

Without marketing your business on social media, your inbound traffic is limited to your usual customers. The people familiar with your brand are likely searching for the same keywords you already rank for. You’ll have much more difficulty reaching anyone outside of your loyal customer circle (if you have loyal customers) without social media marketing. Every social media profile you add to your marketing mix (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, etc.) is a gateway to your website, and every piece of content you post is another opportunity to acquire a new customer. Social media is a melting pot of different types of people from different cultures and backgrounds, and no two people have the same profile. With different people come different needs and different ways of thinking. Perhaps someone in an older demographic of consumers will search your website for the same keywords, however a millennial generation consumer could think totally differently. By marketing on social media, you are opening your business to versatile consumers all over the world.

7. Cost-Effective

Social media marketing is the most cost-efficient advertising strategy. Once you obtain a few satisfied customers who are vocal about their positive purchase experience, you can sit back and let the advertising be done for you by actual customers who enjoyed your product or service.

According to Hubspot, 84% of marketers found that as little as 6 hours a week spent on social media marketing efforts saw a benefit of reduced marketing expenses. Even paid advertising through Facebook and Twitter is the cheapest form of marketing compared to other methods. If paid advertising on social media is the way you decide to go, you can always start small and watch your conversion rates rise, which will pay off the money you initially put in.

8. Better Search Engine Rankings (SEO)

Search engine ranking is very important for obtaining traffic to your business website. More than 58% of marketers who have been using social media for one year or longer improved search engine rankings. Ranking in the top positions in SEO for your keywords will revolutionize your traffic. Let’s face it, everyone uses Google to find information, and they likely won’t click “Next Page” because they don’t have to, they’ll find the answer within the first URLs they click on. If your business website isn’t ranked high in search engine results, you should probably adjust your marketing strategy.

Although posting on social media might get your business some site traffic, more is required to succeed at social media marketing. First, you must create high quality content. Content such as blogs, infographics, facts, advertising your products or services, employee photos and events, and much more will make your business’s social media profile intriguing and credible. Once you begin posting quality content, you’ll begin to build a social media community. Your followers will “like” and “share” your content, which will give your business more visibility, however it is about quality over quantity. An engaged community is more likely to link to you, which will make your website rank higher in search engine results. Social media can be used to publish your content in order to obtain more links to your webpages, which will rank you higher in search engine results.

9. Overall Better Customer Experience

Social media is a networking and communication platform. Every customer interaction with your business on social media is an opportunity to publicly demonstrate your compassion for your customers. Whether a customer has a complaint you can address, or a compliment to give, social media allows you to address the matter in an interpersonal dialogue. A brand devoted to customer satisfaction that takes the time to compose personal messages will inherently be viewed in a positive light, even if responding to a customer complaint.

10. Improved Customer Insights

Hubspot reported that 69% of marketers found social platforms provided market place insights. Social media also gives you an opportunity to gain valuable information about what your customers are interested in. By monitoring comments, you can see customers’ blunt opinions of your business that you might not be aware of if your business didn’t have social media presence.

Another insightful aspect of social media marketing is the ability to segment your content syndication lists based on topic and identify what types of content generate the most interest and then produce more of that type of content. With social media marketing you have the ability to measure conversions based on different posts on various social media platforms to find the perfect combination to generate revenue.

Now Get Started

Still don’t know where to start? First, create your business’s social media profiles, next, post engaging content, gain some links to your webpages (which will improve your keyword search engine optimization), and boom: you’ve got yourself a functioning social media marketing strategy.

There are virtually no reasons not to implement social media marketing into your marketing strategy. Your competition is most likely already on social media. Don’t let your competitors hog the playing field. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll see growth in your business. There is no reason not to market on social media when the potential losses are statistically insignificant.

How to Find Success Using Groupon

has gone from hardly known location-based deal service just over five years ago to widely used, but little understood international high riser.

While Groupon now operates in 18 countries – the Chicago-based business offers a daily deal service with deep discounts to shoppers on everything from travel to restaurants to spa treatments – it’s an online channel that many seem to have trouble figuring out how to use effectively.

However, before you abandon the idea altogether consider these stats:

  • Between 55% and 61% of businesses running daily deals make money on the promotions
  • 50% of U.S. consumers are aware of Groupon, and 20% regularly receive emails from the site
  • 15% of U.S. mobile phone owners are registered users of daily deals services such as Groupon and Living Social
  • There are more than 9 million users of Groupon’s mobile app80.2% of social media users who follow brands use Groupon

Ok, you get the idea. But just because there is plenty of activity on Groupon, doesn’t automatically mean you’ll find success. Groupon’s not for everyone and if you don’t create and then execute a strategy tailored for your business, you might wind up losing.

Here are three tips and four tools for Groupon success.

Tips:

  1. Stay connected. Don’t think of Groupon’s Daily Deal as just that: a daily deal. Effectively using Groupon means incorporating it as part of a long-term strategy.  Ask for feedback, encourage participants to connect via your social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. – and follow up with them after the sale. Once they’re in your web, you need to keep their attention.
  2. Estimate costs ratios.Not every business is ripe for Groupon. For example, if most of your items or services cost $5 a reduced offer might not make such a big ripple. Determine your costs and decide what percentage reduction you can live with. If you sell widgets and have 100 in stock, make sure you can live with ALL of them being sold at a discounted rate. It happens.

There is such a thing as using Groupon as a loss leader, but before you set out to lose money on the deal in order to raise awareness about your business, do some serious thinking, as well as calculations.

  1. Expect success.Sometimes too much success can be a bad thing. Be prepared for a large turnout. Make sure there are stipulations on Groupon deals. Try including an expiration date and put a limit on times of use.  Also, make sure you have enough people on the job to handle the increased traffic.

Tools:

  1. Merchant Center.Earlier this year Groupon launched an overhauled dashboard that provides businesses insights based on performance. This tool – Merchant Center – condenses information and simplifies features that provide merchants with a “snapshot” of their featured deals’ performance.

It also offers valuable data from of deals including age, sex, zip codes, as well as customer feedback. Use this information to stay connected and understand your clients.

  1. Groupon Scheduler.Thisonline scheduling application will help any business that requires appointments to accept online bookings through Groupon. Even if you don’t have your own online booking website, Groupon’s system will handle the process for you.
  2. Groupon Rewards.The rewards program is an ideal tool to help with that all-important repeat business. Use it and your customers  automatically earnRewards when making purchases with  major credit cards. The information is  saved in their Groupon profile and is then processed through merchants’ existing payment systems. This Groupon program saves smaller businesses the very high costs of a technology most cannot afford.
  3. Groupon Now!  Through the personalized dashboard merhcants can manage the customer stream coming into their businesses in real-time. This will allow you to analyze theROIof these efforts and help make future promotional decisions. In addition, customers can immediately redeem  offers sent to their mobile devices and computers, while merchants gain the flexibility to start and stop Groupon Now! deals.

How to Take Advantage of the New Twitter Profile

Back in May 2014 Twitter officially switched everyone over to the new profile page. While the most visible changes are how the new Twitter looks like the Facebook Timeline page, there are some other notable adjustments that you can use to tell the world and your followers more about yourself or your business/brand:

  • Larger profile picture (400 x 400 pi)
  • Wide background photo (1500 x 500 pi)
  • Pinned Tweets
  • Popular tweets have enlarged text
  • Filtering tweets by “Tweets” and “Tweets & replies”
  • Favorites Tab

Profile and Background Photos

Twitter has enlarged its profile photo to 400 x 400  pi, but what really has caught people’s attention is how the background photo has been enlarged and stretched out to 1500 x 500 pi. The similarities to Facebook’s Timeline page are very obvious, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

If there could be one possible downside of using Twitter as a business, brand, or even as an individual, it’s that it’s hard to display who or what you are through 160 character tweets. The new profile and background photos make up for that because your brand can be visually represented. Think of it as picking images for your homepage or landing page except simpler. What images are you going to put on your Twitter profile page to convey what your brand is, the products/services you provide, or to influence people to follow or tweet at you?

Here are some good examples of brands and celebrities who have effectively used the new photo layout of Twitter to promote or create awareness:

@FloydMayweather

  • The background photo of Floyd Mayweather is not just stating the date of his next fight. It includes a face shot of him and his opponent, along with details of WHEN and WHERE it will happen. A casual follower of Mayweather or someone who visits his page might pay to watch the fight.

 

@wbpictures

  • By presenting what is essentially a movie poster, Warner Bros. Pictures is engaging in a simple form of advertising for their upcoming films. Also, by switching out the background photo, Warner Bros. Pictures is routinely showing their followers and visitors new visual content that could help sway them towards watching the film.

 

@BFMweb

  • With 4 images (and accompanying text) Web designer vip is able to communicate exactly what they service and specialize in. By laying that out visually in their background photo, Web designer vip  could potentially get customers from Twitter. This is a great model professional businesses could employ on their own Twitter profiles.

Organizing and Emphasizing Tweets

Let’s say you are making a big announcement but want to continue your constant stream of tweets throughout the day. Or you really like this one tweet that encapsulates your brand, and when people visit your Twitter it’s imperative that they see this particular set of 160 characters. Introduce pinned tweets! By ‘pinning’ a tweet, it will remain at the top of your tweets feed until you unpin it or put another tweet in its place. The one negative of pinning is that you can only pin a single tweet at a time. However, it is still useful in ensuring that the most important tweet gets seen by those that visit your profile.

The tweets that gather the most engagement (retweets, favorites, etc.) will actually have enlarged texts in your tweet feed. This will let visitors know, as well as you, of your most popular tweets. For visitors, it will visually garner attention to what your best content is while you will get to see what content is working at getting engagement.

Twitter is also now segmenting your tweets between the ones that you tweet out to everyone and conversations you have with individuals. If you start out a tweet with someone’s handle, only you and the account you tweeted at will be able to see it. That particular tweet will not be included in the feed of your followers, and they can only view it if they click on your “Tweets & replies” tab. This is useful because it provides you with some discretion when you want it. However, say you are having a conversation and you want all your followers to see it. The customary practice, then, is to put a period before the handle of the other individual’s account. By putting a  period or any other text before their handle when starting off a tweet, it will show up in all your followers’ feeds.

In the Twitter of old, favoriting a tweet was a spur-of-the-moment, carefree click. With the new update, however, a “Favorites” tab is available so that visitors are able to see each and every tweet you have ever favorited. You can cultivate your brand/business by only favoriting certain tweets, especially if you are an industry leader in your field and looked upon by your followers as a source of knowledge and inspiration.

Optimizing your images and tweeting for different categories (in lieu of the new profile) is only the first step in building and maintaining your Twitter presence. Twitter has recently announced a new tool to track organic analytics. Besides doing research behind what tweets are getting engagement, it’s also useful to tweet content that is relevant to your target audience and offers a unique and different angle from your other social mediums and website.

2014 Ecommerce Holiday Shopping: Tis’ the Season for Online Business

Ecommerce Holiday Shopping - The Season for Online Shopping

Though 2014 is coming to a close, 9 of the best online shopping days of the year are still to come, and online retailers still have much to do before the year is over. More shoppers are avoiding the craziness of the Black Friday shopping experience by ordering online instead, and the brave ones that do go to brick-and-mortar stores will use their mobile devices while there to check prices, read reviews, and seek as much information as they can before making a purchase. This means that more than ever before, ecommerce storefronts should be just as ready for a massive influx of customers during the holiday season as any offline store.

Much has changed in the digital landscape since the 2013 online holiday shopping season, but this year’s online shopping season will be bigger in just about every way, and the importance of capturing as many sales as possible during this period is as important as ever. To help you out we’ve compiled an infographic that will show you the numbers behind the most popular eCommerce shopping days for this upcoming holiday season.

Ecommerce Holiday Shopping The Season for Online Shopping
With the best online shopping day of last year, Cyber Monday, right around the corner, now is the time for online retailers to make sure their website is optimized to handle the increased traffic and online sales that come with the holiday season. In particular, this means making sure that your online presence is able to cater to mobile users, whether through a responsive website or mobile app. With 19% of digital sales set to come from mobile devices in 2014, and 18.3% and 22.2% of all Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales projected to come from mobile devices respectively, not having an optimized mobile presence means that your business is missing out on key revenue generating opportunities.

If you have a business that has a brick and mortar location, a mobile presence, and a website, keep in mind that 90% of customers are expecting a consistent user experience across all channels and devices this holiday season – a 17% increase from last year. If your business doesn’t have consistent branding across online and offline channels, time is running out to get your brand presence properly prepared for the influx of digital holiday shoppers. Your online business should be structured to make it easy for potential customers to find what they are looking for across all channels, and if that isn’t currently the case your business could be losing customers to competitors who have taken the time to properly prepare for the 2014 holiday season.

Which statistics were the most surprising to you? Let us know in the comments section below.

How a Good PR Team Can Directly Influence Your SEO

How PR Helps Increase Organic Rankings

With today’s digital marketing landscape in a constant state of flux, businesses are tasked with finding newer, smarter ways of fostering and maintaining a strong online presence. Google’s most recent algorithm updates have shown that in order to succeed in today’s digital marketplace, websites need to shift their focus towards producing high quality content. This is exactly where the value of a skilled Public Relations team comes into play.

In the traditional sense of the phrase, “Public Relations” is a strategic communication process that sets out to build a mutually beneficial relationship between a brand, organization, or person, and an audience. In terms of digital marketing, PR professionals have a massive skillset that aligns perfectly with smart SEO tactics. From story creation to audience targeting and relationship building, PR is the next step for brands that want to increase organic traffic.

Crafting Relevant Content

In a world where content is rapidly becoming the go-to for SEO, PR professionals are perfect brand advocates and story tellers, capable of enhancing a site’s ranking by getting stellar, keyword-rich content the attention it deserves. Savvy PR professionals work with reporters, bloggers, and industry influencers on a daily basis, and know how to create unique stories for any audience.

PR Best Practices
Google’s more recent algorithm updates have brought PR practices to the forefront of SEO by emphasizing the meaning of quality onsite content. On the heels of these updates, pure link building is growing less and less viable and businesses need to shift their strategies from old link building tactics like submitting to directories to getting their brand mentioned in articles on highly authoritative sites.From a PR standpoint, the most effective content includes pieces that are timely, easily digestible, visually enticing, and available for consumption on multiple devices for the modern, on-the-go reader. Content with clear messaging and a strong call to action will convert audiences from a passive viewer to an engaged brand advocate.

Identifying Your Audience

A good PR team already knows the secret to effective content is creating what your audience is searching for. On top of spinning relevant stories, PR pros possess an additional advantage when it comes to successful content creation: knowing what audiences to target, and how.

Strategic research identifies new opportunities to target the various demographics of a brand’s audience, enabling a business to better determine what needs of their audience are not being met. Creating tailored content for these audiences will satisfy loyal brand ambassadors, while forging new relationships and creating new customers through viral content sharing.

Know Your Audience
Additionally, where a piece of content will see the most success needs to be considered before relevant outreach can begin. Understanding whether or not the content will be best consumed on Twitter, small but targeted blogs, or information-rich slide decks is an important first step to creating content that people will actually read and link to from their own sites. A good PR team knows that even if you have the most relevant piece of content for your target audience, if it’s not presented in the right medium it will go unnoticed.Social media, and Twitter in particular, is all about sustaining a relevant conversation with users and has become a key avenue for PR professionals to curate brand stories with bloggers, journalists, and everyone in-between, on a daily basis. Maintaining well-established relationships with key influencers enhances brand credibility with targeted audiences, and brings new viewers and potential clients to your website.

Building Strategic Relationships

PR professionals, similar to SEO experts, recognize the importance of building key relationships with relevant industry authorities. Such relationships, whether with reporters and bloggers, industry experts and tastemakers, or other businesses in the same field, help establish a brand as an authoritative source online. Once established as a credible source, links, whether permanent or temporary, are obtained with greater ease.

Building Strategic Relationships
Earning high-quality links and placements for relevant content helps your site gain link equity and increase keyword rankings while staying within SEO best practices. Implied links, otherwise known as brand mentions, are an equally important PR tactic in which a high authority domain links to your site without providing a link. Google’s so-called Panda Patent, filed in early 2014, assures that branded mentions are now being taken into account when Google determines how authoritative a website is on a certain topic. While they lack the same SEO value as an actual link to a site, they can help your business rank for keywords that are relevant and drive qualified traffic to your website from search engines. This is what PR professionals have been doing for decades in print, and it’s quickly gaining prominence in the digital world.By building links and placing stories with a diverse set of relevant and authoritative sites, a good PR team will help position a brand as an authority in its field. With the proper PR outreach, your site will experience measurable traffic and sales increases while gaining a new level of brand loyalty from audiences.

In Summary

Search engines are evolving away from old school SEO tactics like blog comment spam and directory submissions, and as a result the value that PR brings to increasing organic traffic is steadily growing. With focus shifting from haphazard link building to quality content creation, brands now have the potential to build authority in their fields, engage in meaningful conversations with their target audiences, and encourage content sharing through social media and more traditional PR tactics.

From knowing what audiences to target with the proper content, to effective link building and story placing, a seasoned PR team will enhance the quality of your website’s SEO, build your brand as an authority, and create awareness that generates new clients.

How does PR contribute to your SEO efforts? Let us know in the comments section below.

5 Reasons Your Competitors are Stealing Your Online Sales

 

There are very few things that are more frustrating for a business than to see your potential customers get stolen by a competitor. Many businesses know this is happening to them, but can’t identify precisely why they are losing sales to their competition.

More often than not, online businesses surrender potential customers to competitors because they don’t have an optimized conversion funnel that seamlessly leads users from the initial discovery of their brand all the way to an actual conversion goal. As a result, users look for other websites that have better online marketing visibility, a better understanding of what kind of content they are looking for, and a clearer navigation path to purchase a product or service.

While the specifics of addressing these issues on your website might sound too complicated to easily solve, more often than not, 1 of 5 issues is effecting your brand’s site in one way or another, and needs to be addressed to keep your competition from stealing away a piece of your online revenue.

1) Lack of Promotion Across Multiple Digital Marketing Channels

When it comes to properly promoting your brand online, using different digital marketing channels is an absolute necessity. While an online business should obviously take the time to identify which channels are going to provide the best ROI from their budget, effectively using a variety of different digital marketing channels can take an online marketing campaign from decent to truly great. This is particularly true if you are an ecommmerce brand, as there are many options that can get you great results:

One of the best examples of multiple online channels coming together to help a business achieve better results is the advantages pay-per-click marketing can provide when coupled together with search engine optimization. Both channels are extremely effective on their own, but when a business is able to lock down the #1 position for a keyword on both organic and paid channels, studies have found that organic click through rate go up substantially.

If your competitors have both the top paid and organic positions for a keyword you’re trying to rank for, potential customers are being siphoned away from your business. The reasons for this are pretty straightforward – users feel more comfortable converting with a competitor who has the brand legitimacy to rank well organically, but also has the budget to advertise. When combined, users see a brand with high paid and organic positions as an industry leader. Even if you rank in the first position for an organic keyword and a competitor ranks second, if they have paid ads and you don’t they could be stealing substantial amounts of potential customers from you.

2) Limited Content Optimization

In a time where content is playing an increasingly large role in SEO success, many businesses are getting their sales stolen because they are missing high quality content on their website that provides value to customers and builds loyalty. With 71% of marketers actively increasing their investment in content marketing during 2014, not creating effective content is no longer acceptable for an online business.

There was a time when it was acceptable to have a blog on a website that featured 250-word posts that provided little practical value to users, but helped SEO rankings. All that was required was a good understanding of what search engines were looking for, and the technical SEO knowledge to create posts that specifically targeted the keywords a business wanted. These tactics have become increasingly ineffective as Google has grown its algorithms to better understand and rank content like a real user would.

Content should be high quality, and should build lasting customer loyalty at the top of any conversion funnel so that users come back and eventually purchase a product or service after many interactions with your brand. For businesses that still aren’t doing this, traffic (as well as SEO rankings) are being squandered to competition that is willing to put in the time and effort it takes to create content users love. Don’t let your competition steal your customers. If you provide your users with content that keeps them engaged with your business, your can make sure that online sales aren’t being squandered.

3) Failure to Include Personalization

A trend that is quickly becoming common for online businesses is the idea of personalizing content for specific users based on their needs. Marketing personalization requires a better understanding of your customer’s wants and needs through demographics. Once you have a good idea of what they are looking for, you can tailor content to specifically for them.

With more than 32% of online retailers not using any sort of website personalization at all in 2014, there is a huge opportunity for brands to get ahead of the competition and win new customers at a competitor’s expense. Some great tools that can be used to do this are remarketing display and search ads, email newsletters, and even building out segments of your website that have specific segments of your audience in mind with unique customer names or welcome messages included, and then driving a target demographic to those pages. This makes it easier for your business to engage users and bring them content at all parts of your conversion funnel that is more tailored to the specific product or service that they might be looking to purchase.

If you aren’t personalizing content for your users you vould be giving them content they find uninteresting. This leaves the door wide open for competitors to more effectively get a user’s attention with content that is specifically tailored for them. This gives your competition an opportunity to come in and steal a potential customer from you.

4) Poor Mobile Presence

One of the most widely publicized ways that businesses are getting traffic and potential customers stolen from them by competitors is by not having an optimized mobile presence. 74% of marketers that are on mobile already are planning on scaling up their spending in the next two years, and if your business isn’t on mobile already not starting now will leave your brand even further behind the competition.

87% of US millennial smartphone users claim that: “My smartphone never leaves my side, night or day,” so it is little wonder that businesses need to take steps to optimize their brand on the devices their customers frequent. Particularly with Google’s recent mobile update that shows users in their mobile search results which websites will perform poorly on mobile devices, businesses need to take a serious look at optimizing their websites for mobile devices or risk losing large swathes of potential customers in both the short and long term.

If that isn’t enough of a reason to take mobile seriously, Google ranks websites for key search engine queries based on whether or not they are responsive. So even if your business doesn’t get many (or even any) sales from mobile devices, not having a mobile presence could still be hurting the amount of sales you’re closing by effectively gifting keywords you should be ranking for to competitors who have a website that can more effectively cater to mobile users.

5) Website Designs that Don’t Convert Traffic

One of the best ways to make sure that your competitors aren’t stealing your online sales is to make your online point of sale convert as much traffic as possible. This means creating a website that is visually stimulating to a user, but is primarily built to convert them into customers.

A great way to make sure users can convert easily is to map out your website’s navigation in a way that is logical to users and gets them from the initial point of entry on your website to your website’s conversion pages quickly and efficiently. This means that there should be a clear structure to your website that never leaves users stranded on pages they aren’t interested in. A great way to make sure everything is working as it should is to keep a close eye on your website’s analytics – particularly on metrics like bounce rate, exit rate, and time on page.

Straightforward navigation is important, but in order to make sure you’re converting as much traffic as possible, your business should always be testing new elements on your website to understand what gets people converting at the highest rate possible. They might seem like small, relatively innocuous pieces of a website, but things like color, size, CTA copy, and page layout can play huge roles in your website’s conversion rate, and only through testing can you find the right combination to get the highest possible amount of users converting.

Only 41% of digital marketing decision makers are currently using A/B testing tools to do this, so taking advantage of the benefits conversion rate optimization now is a great way to get ahead of your competition and pry some of your competitors’ customers towards your business.

Don’t Let Your Competition Rob You Blind

When you feel like your businesses is losing online sales to a competitor it is easy to think that your business is offering a product or service that isn’t measuring up to your competition. However, a lot of the time it has less to do with the quality of the product, and more to do with making sure that your online conversion funnel is set up to capture as much of your target customer base as possible.

The common issues that we’ve covered that lead to a competitor stealing your potential customers are often easily taken care of as long as your business has the proper time, knowledge, and resources to make sure that they are properly addressed. If you’ve seen your online revenue take a nosedive because a competitor is hijacking your potential customers, let our website design and online marketing experts take care of everything and get your business the sales and brand recognition it deserves.

Marketing Nation Roadshow: Innovation in the Nation

 

As a digital marketer, once in a while it’s wise to just take a break, sit back, and listen in on the advice of the top digital marketing leaders for a refreshing perspective. That’s exactly what I did last week (October 21, 2014) when I attended the Marketing Nation’s event at the Westin Times Square, which highlighted the importance of engagement marketing in today’s digital landscape. After enjoying snacks from Starbucks, we sat down to hear from Robin Bordoli, GM of Consumer Marketing at Marketo, an engagement marketing software company.

Bordoli began the presentation by outlining the best ways for marketers to engage with their audience, and highlighted Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food”, where Pollan dissects the food industry and summarizes it into 7 simple words: Eat food, mostly plants, not too much. He then applied this genius concept of simplistic thinking to the digital marketing world, and translated our world of fast-paced innovation into the following: Build long-term personalized relationships with your customers.

It is often difficult to think of relationships when working on such a large scale, but when looking at the relationships in your own life, you may realize the intensity and power associated with a relationship. So, how can we translate and incorporate the strength of a relationship into our digital marketing efforts?

Bordoli moved on to mention the famous quote from Albert Einstein who said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”, and then asked the crowd what they needed to do differently to elicit a change in their marketing efforts. This stress on growing a relationship with each individual user is the key to winning with engagement marketing.

The 7 principles of engagement marketing, according to Bordoli, were highlighted and extrapolated upon in the next portion of his presentation. They are as follows:

  1. As individuals: The frequency, time frame, devices used, and other factors may change in importance for each individual user. It is the responsibility of us as marketers to reach each user as an individual.
  2. Based on what they do: Find the relevance between what you want to say and what a user is interested in, also known as behavior-based marketing. Market to them based on what they do rather than who they are.
  3. Continuously over time: Compare a relationship with a current or potential customer to the strong relationships in your own life, and realize that you are not marketing a single campaign, but a long-term relationship.
  4. Wherever they are: Learn and understand the concept of omni-channel marketing. Customers are now engaging on 3 or more channels, and it is your job to engage with themwhenever they are, and understand the importance of each individual channel in the process.
  5. Always directed towards a goal: Measurability and accountability are key. Whatever the goal may be, whether to buy, advocate, renew, or any other conversion goal, make sure that you are explicit about your goal and the journey you are taking your audience through.
  6. With measurable impact: Demonstrate if you have met your goal. If you are unable to measure your marketing efforts, you are unsure if they are successful or not.
  7. At the speed of digital: How do you as a marketing team move at the speed of digital and keep up with the innovations to give your customer or audience what they want?

The Marketing Nation Roadshow event incorporated the experience of various industry professionals, including Tara-Nicholle Nelson, VP of Marketing at MyFitnessPal, and Julie Cottineau, Founder & CEO of BrandTwist and Brand School Online. Each speaker stressed the importance of engagement marketing in the industry today, and shared ways that a strong engagement marketing strategy will help you meet the demands of the dynamic marketplace.

Press Release Tips: Best Practices To Help Your Website

Press Release Best Practices Featured Image

An Overview of Press Releases

Press releases are a great way to bring your website extra traffic, improve your domain authority, and provide increased brand recognition, as long as they’re used appropriately. When press releases net any of these “bonuses,” it can be tempting to increase the frequency of distribution. After all, if one press release can bring in over thousands of pageviews, what could go wrong?

Unfortunately, press releases also can bring negative attention to your website, hurt your domain authority, and decrease trust when written on less newsworthy items. Below we’ll break down the reasons why press releases should be seen as “bonus content,” and not a dependable avenue for growing your website.

Press Release Best Practices

So, if press releases improve your website, how can they also harm it? Every negative aspect of press releases are manifested in three distinct ways: oversaturation, perceived value, and repetitive links. Let’s take a look at why this happens, and how we can work together to avoid them.

Oversaturation & Perceived Value

When the benefits of press releases become obvious to companies, it makes sense to release them more often. Shouldn’t this mean that potential clients, investors, journalists, and industry insiders will more often see your business as an essential resource?

Releasing press releases too often results in oversaturation, making it less likely that a reader will follow a link to the website. Consider press releases in the context of the exclamation point. When a sentence is followed by an exclamation point, it adds additional weight to the sentence, and makes it seem important. For example, “Blue Fountain Media publishes a new blog!” In this context, the exclamation point serves to make the reader excited about what Blue Fountain Media may have published.

However, consider this sentence: “Blue Fountain Media publishes a new blog!!!!!!!” Not only do the additional exclamation points undermine the authority of the statement, but each exclamation point also undermines each previous exclamation point, until the value has decreased to such a degree as to make each following exclamation point ineffectual.

The same is true of press releases. When released too often, no matter how newsworthy the press release is, each subsequent press release undermines not only the authority, but also the importance of the following release. This is reflected in both “Reads” and “Pickups” through measurement platforms like Vocus. For Blue Fountain Media, in months in which two press releases were published, the number of pickups on each release was noticeably lower than in months where only one release was published. In months where two press releases are sent out, our first press release of the month averages about 300 pickups:

First Press Release of the Month
Compared to about 250 pickups for the second press release of the month:

Second Press Release of the Month
The best practices for frequency are as follows:

  • Only release press releases for newsworthy events, such as new product offerings, new statistical information on your business, and relevant news in your industry directly affecting your business or products.
  • Release no more than two press releases a month, though one is preferable.

Repetitive Links

For a long time, Google viewed links from sites like PRWeb as valid links to your website, which increased your domain authority, page authority, and your website’s position in organic search results. This, however, is no longer the case. Google now views PRWeb releases as “paid links,” and while this doesn’t result in negative SEO when used appropriately, they’re best used in moderation for the following reasons.

  1. Google grants higher domain authority to websites with a varied backlink profile. This means that the sites Google sees as most important are the ones with few links from many sites, as opposed to many links from few sites.
  2. Press releases link to your website. If other inbound links aren’t present, this looks bad to search engines. It means that the only sites in your industry or otherwise willing to give you a link are the sites you’ve paid to link to you.

This doesn’t mean that press releases in moderation will negatively affect your SEO and organic search results for relevant keywords. In fact, press releases can bring limited SEO value when used appropriately, even though they’re no follow links. However, what’s most important is to also focus on creating great content, like infographics, blogs, and slideshares, which other resources and industry experts may link to, creating a varied backlink profile. This tells Google that you matter in your industry, and that you more than likely have information on your website that would be valued by users.

In Summary

As with almost every aspect of content, it’s important to remember that quality beats quantity. While publishing press releases regularly is essential to get your brand out there and receive additional traffic, your readers come first. Don’t simply publish something because you haven’t put out a press release in a while. Ensure it’s something that reflects your brand, ensure it’s well written, and, most importantly, ensure it’s newsworthy.

– See more at: http://www.bluefountainmedia.com/blog/press-release-tips/#sthash.aaHtMaq5.dpuf

Social Media Management: How to Measure Social Media ROI

Social Media Marketing ROI Featured Image

You’ve set up your social media profiles, created stellar design assets, and have an appealing, well-defined voice for your brand. But how do you truly measure social media marketing success? While making lasting connections and growing your fan base is important, knowing how to measure and capitalize on your brand’s social media ROI is vital to the success of your marketing campaign.

To help businesses tackle this challenge, we’ve assembled the following tips on how to understand and measure social media marketing ROI.

Define Your Social Goals

Many brands that report having difficulty measuring SMM ROI have not defined specific, tangible goals. Often, businesses just want to have a presence on social media because their competitors have one and they feel like they should too – but they don’t stop to consider how it is going to add real value to their business. A brand cannot measure success without an end game in mind – therefore the first step in measuring ROI is to establish the goals you would like to achieve through social media and build a strategy to compliment your efforts.

Goals should be specific, realistic, quantifiable, and have a set deadline by which goals should be met in order to effectively measure success. Whether you are just trying to generate brand awareness, drive new traffic to your webpage, generate more engagement, or increase your sales numbers, you need to understand what the goals are so you can build an appropriate strategy.

Tailor Your Metrics

A big part of meeting your goals is to understand what social metrics are the most important for your business. There are three key metrics to monitor – reach, engagement, and conversion.

Reach will define how many users were impacted by your social media content. If the entire world of social media is ignoring your message, your strategy is inefficient and you’ll fail to produce results. Reach gives brands a decent understanding of how appealing the message is to their target demographic. Businesses can measure reach by tracking metrics like number of followers, connections, page likes, and subscribers. Most networks like Facebook and Twitter have analytics reports to easily track these numbers.

Facebook-Total-Reach
Engagement is determined through clicks, retweets, mentions, shares, comments, and other elements that require a brand to actively engage with your business. An increase in engagement is obtained by creating valuable content that inspires your followers to involve themselves with your brand. If your engagement levels are low, your brand should consider reworking its strategy to improve the timing of posts as well as the message being delivered to potential customers. Engagement can be tracked organically, through most platforms but as with reach, there are a number of third-party services available to marketers as well. We highly recommend Sprout Social, Klout, and Radian6 as viable options to track your brand’s engagement levels.

Conversions can be the most difficult to track on social media, and pose the greatest problem for the inexperienced community manager. Conversions define which users took an action because of your message and entered the lead-generation funnel. Conversions can be tracked through registrations for webinars, content downloads, form completions, etc. It is essential to your tracking success to measure these values in Google Analytics or another analytics platform that you can add to a social media landing page on a website you have control over. Leverage this service by using the campaign tracking feature, creating traceable links, and determining a goal tracking strategy to identify your online conversions. Google Analytics offers an online course to users who are inexperienced with the platform. Check it out, here.

Understand Your Results

Success is subjective to circumstance, and whether you’re looking to expand your reach, drive high levels of engagement, or convert fans into customers, being able to understand which key performance indicators are right for your ROI is vital to the success of your campaign.

 

Facebook Emerges as a Key Player in Online Advertising

Look out Google, Facebook is here to play in the world of online advertising.

A competitor of Google’s well known ad platform, Adwords, has come into the fray with the release of a new ad network run by Facebook in the first few days of October. Facebook has made this possible through their recent acquisition of Microsoft’s Atlas, an ad network that lets them market to users when they’re on and off of the platform.

After a redesign, Facebook will launch their own version of Atlas that will quantify and implement the user data of the over 1.3 billion people on Facebook. Yes, your posts, statuses, likes, and other actions on Facebook will all be taken into account when displaying ads to specific demographics and target audiences, which could someday give Facebook a leg up over Google’s paid advertising options.

How will this make Facebook a viable competitor to Google, the king of online advertising?

Facebook’s online advertising strategy could go into much deeper detail compared to Google’s by providing advertisers with more information about their target audiences. Not only that, but Facebook is also reportedly giving marketers a better picture of where their ads will be displayed and providing them with predictions of how users will react to the ads they are being shown. Facebook could start a new and more thorough trend of analysis overview for online advertising.

Instead of just trying to generate clicks and explain user behaviors after the results of a campaign have been analyzed, Facebook’s ad network is said to provide more information about conversions, impressions, clicks, and other key performance indicators about users before a campaign even launches.

How will Facebook use user-collected data to their advantage to reach audiences at the right time?

Facebook will implement their understanding of all the collected data from their users over the years along with the new version of Atlas feature that has the bandwidth to track individuals without using cookies or sessions. With so much user data from the 1.3 billion people who have created a Facebook account, and with the ability to present offline ads, Facebook has the potential to grow as a leading player in online advertising in the near future.

Straying away from the typical strategy of showing advertisements to a specific target audience, Facebook’s online advertising platform will go deeper by displaying advertisements to a slice of a target audience that is more likely to convert. Facebook is also focusing in on displaying different ads depending on where in the buyer journey a user is. By giving more precise timing options to marketers on when they display their ads to users, Facebook’s advertising platform is giving marketers a better chance of success with their ads by serving them at points in the sales funnel that they were meant to be viewed by users. This is a smarter way of ad targeting that is beneficial not just for businesses and marketers, but for users as well.

Should your business consider using Facebook’s online advertising platform?

If Facebook’s online advertising platform is everything that it’s worked up to be, all businesses and industries should at least consider using Facebook’s new service in their overall digital marketing strategy. Besides the level of detail and increased insights that the new online advertising platform supposedly provides compared to Google Adwords, it might already be a no-brainer for businesses that have already established a brand presence on Facebook, and it can act as the next step for them to get users already liking their Facebook page and activity to actually become customers. The platform is still very new, but it might be worth checking out for businesses looking to drive more traffic to their website, generate more online sales, and grow their online presence both on and off of Facebook.

Who is currently on Facebook?

The number of Facebook users at 1.3 billion is astounding, and holds room for unlimited potential for businesses looking to implement the new online advertising platform. With more and more users expected to join Facebook every year, what target audience or demographic could you not find on the social media giant? Despite its enormous user size and expected growth, marketers must understand that Facebook’s ad platform is different from Google’s and also know that Facebook’s user-collected data defines who they can target with their ads. For example, of the current 1.3 billion people on Facebook, mobile users across the globe number over 1 billion.

The largest demographic on Facebook is between the ages of 25-34, but there are other large, active, demographics with different age groups too. Chances are, if you have a business and wish to utilize Facebook’s online advertising platform to reach your target audience, they are already there.

With Facebook’s acquisition of Atlas and years of stock-piled data collection on its users, expect to see a change towards more people-based marketing that advertises not on a target demographic level, but on an individual one.

 

Using Instagram for Business: Instagram Best Practices You Need to Know

Instagram Best Practices Featured Image

This post was originally published on 9/25/14 and has since been updated.

Companies have realized that Instagram is another opportunity to market their products in a visual and lifestyle-centric manner, and when you scroll through your Instagram feed nowadays, it usually doesn’t take a lot of swipes before you come upon branded or marketed posts. You have to wonder though, how are these businesses or companies making money by being on Instagram, and should my business be on it too? So before we go over some best practices that you can implement if you do decide to add Instagram to your social marketing plan, here are some positive and negative takeaways about the image-based platform that can help you make a decision.

Users are on Instagram to take and post photos of a myriad of different things, but one thing that remains constant is that they are centered on a user’s lifestyle. That’s what Instagram is, a consumer platform that has content based on the livelihood of consumers. You need product or service images with lifestyle themes that act as soft product pushes to attract your target audience. While a lot of these issues are easily resolved, a real downfall of Instagram for marketers is that it does not support hyperlinked URLs on posts and only in a profile’s bio. If you have to spend a lot of time trying to think of how to visually show your products or services on Instagram, then the platform is probably not for you. Simply put, a clothing store is going to have a much easier time marketing itself on Instagram than a law firm.

If you do decide that Instagram could work for your business or company, here are some realistic expectations that you should set when starting to implement it into your social media marketing strategy. When managing and posting on Instagram, you should think of the platform as a brand-centric avenue to connect with your target audience outside the realm of sales transactions. Show your customers your personality and make your brand memorable. If you do want to keep track of how much you’re getting out of investing in Instagram, start by monitoring your engagement level on your posts and the number of follows you are receiving on a weekly or monthly basis. Seeing a visible increase in your online ROI immediately after creating a branded Instagram account is very unlikely, and it could take some time before you see an actual uptick. It’s best to think of Instagram as atop of the funnel conversion tool that can grow your brand awareness and initially track potential customers.

Still interested in creating an Instagram account for your business or company? Here are some best practices that I took away from the best brands on Instagram that should help you get started:

1) Keep a Balanced Content Calendar

Instagram is a lifestyle-based consumer oriented platform, and your content calendar should also reflect that with an even amount of product and lifestyle-focused images. What does your ideal customer do in their free time? Post lifestyle photos that you think would interest them, but stay true to what you want your brand to represent. Kate Spade’s Instagram account is a great example of finding the right balance between product and lifestyle images photos with the seamless integration of products into their lifestyle shots. Not only is Kate Spade featuring their products on Instagram, they are showing their target audience who they are in terms of company culture.

Kate Spade Instagram

Kate Spade NY Instagram

2) Avoid Posting More Than Once per Day

You do not want to be the annoying brand that your followers see every single time they swipe through their feed. Instagram is not like Twitter in terms of sending out content or material every hour or so like clockwork. Images say a lot more than words, so put some time and thought into your Instagram posts to maximize their effect on your audience.

In order to garner the most attention from your posts, it’s essential to post when your followers and potential customers are active on Instagram. The most optimal time to post will vary depending on your business or industry, but anytime around regular business hours (8 AM – 9 PM) should be a good time to post content that your audience sees and engages with. Some weekend hours are also a good time to post on Instagram, seeing as there is less competition among other brands, but the ideal time to post on weekends is going to vary based on industry.

3) Show Your Product At Work

Compared to other platforms, Instagram is much more personal for your target audience because of the image-based nature of the channel. To really speak to them, your Instagram profile should feature images of your products in everyday use, or how a customer would interact with your products. The Skimm, a daily email newsletter for women, posts what look like natural photos of how their consumers might interact with their product. As a large majority of their target audience reads their email in the morning, you can see in the below image how the Skimm has incorporated a breakfast photo with their email newsletter opened on an iPhone.

The Skimm Instagram

4) Tell Your Followers On Other Social Media Platforms That You’re on Instagram

If you don’t tell your followers on your Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms that you’re on Instagram, it’s very unlikely that they will discover your Instagram account. Include the Instagram social button on your website and email newsletters. Cross promote your social media accounts with creative and fun promos and competitions to encourage your followers on Facebook or Twitter to follow you on Instagram as well. By successfully leveraging your audience from your other social media channels, you can gain more initial followers and engagement on Instagram.