Month: June 2017

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Uncategorized

News Feeds vs. Stories: What Marketers and Business Owners Should Focus On

When it comes to marketing, the only thing that’s certain is that the future waits for no one. Just when you were starting to get used to the status quo, something comes along that completely uproots all your established tactics and techniques.

If you’ve been a part of the marketing world for any amount of time, you’ve probably noticed just how quickly the rules of engagement can change. Evolution is the name of the game, and the argument could be made that your ability to update your marketing strategies will directly correlate to how successful your marketing efforts will be in the long run.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of social media. Despite social media’s status as one of the pillars of most small business marketing strategies, there’s no getting around the fact that the social media landscape is still shifting every day.

Case and point: the relationship between users, News Feeds and Stories. The way your audience is consuming information is changing as we speak. And the longer you wait to recognize this shift in culture, the more money you and your business are leaving on the table.

News Feeds

Before we decide whether or not the News Feed is still worth investing time and money into in 2017, it’s important that we understand exactly what role the News Feed plays in our current social media ecosystem.

Right off the bat, it’s important to recognize that the News Feed wasn’t built for the mobile. The News Feed was originally designed for the desktop, and its inspiration can be seen in every manifestation.

As a desktop experience, the News Feed was designed as a place where users could share text-oriented statuses, links to other websites and even entire photo albums. As far as it pertains to social media, it’s no wonder that this was such a success. Having unprecedented access to an ever-expanding central hub like this sounds pretty appealing.

No matter what you’re building content for, the strategy ends up being pretty simple. Anticipate how users are used to consuming content on a particular platform. Then, figure out how much time the user will be willing to dedicate to the consumption of your content. The arena in which you’re marketing matters just as much as what kind of content you’re promoting.

If you were building content for a News Feed, you had quite a bit of freedom. Visual media was always an option, with both photos and videos performing well, but you could just as easily dive into text-based marketing. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter were built with this in mind, and the right text-based content could perform even better than visual media, depending on your audience.

But that was then. Now, the social media industry has taken a turn. For example, Facebook counts 1.28 billion daily users, with over 1 billion of those users on mobile. Guided by the changing needs of the average user, social media has embraced the mobile movement and has redefined what it means to operate via social.

The mobile generation has taken over. And with that change in regime comes a new focus for social media users. Text-based sharing is still being used, but the mobile user seems to have a different set of priorities.

But don’t take our word for it. All you have to do is consider the trends in UGC (user-generated content) and you’ll notice a pretty obvious pattern. Platforms like Facebook? They’ve noticed a significant drop in UGC, likely due to the fact that their entire platform was initially designed with a desktop (and text) in mind.

The future is here, whether we like it or not. Acknowledging this shift in culture is likely to be the only way that platforms like Facebook can get back on track with users, something that Facebook themselves clearly noticed. With the launch of Facebook Stories, it became clear that no platform was safe from this inevitable shift.

None of this is to say that the beloved News Feed has become obsolete. The vertical feed is how most people are used to consuming content, and Instagram certainly hasn’t strayed too far from that. When it comes to long form, in-depth content, vertical feeds are still dominating. It’s just that Stories give social a new dimension that doesn’t just feel fresh – it feels truly engaging.

Stories

At this point, some of you might be looking at this and thinking that the popularity of stories has been greatly exaggerated. Sure, some people are using stories now, but it’s hardly a ‘shift in culture’, right?

The reality of the situation is that this shift isn’t just going to happen down the line. Stories are becoming some of the most impactful forms of content out today. Remember how we said that Facebook’s UGC had dropped in the last year? Well, platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, which focus on visual media (and more specifically, stories) are experiencing growth in that same sector. Why do you think Facebook created Facebook Stories in the first place?

And it makes sense that platforms choosing to focus on visual media experience the growth in UGC. Visual content simplifies the consumption process for users in a massive way. Consider what users have to do to consume and create content through a News Feed. Creating the content is easy enough, but consumption? That’s much less engaging.

The content they’re after has to be hunted down. Finding content you like means scrolling down into the unknown. Which would be great if every single piece of content was engaging, but that’s not the case. Users usually have to plow through quite a posts to get what they’re after. Plus, the experience rarely feels ‘integrated’. Having to double tap or visit another page slows down the consumption process, something that most consumers don’t want to deal with 24/7.

Stories bring something new to the social media experience. For starters, they make visual media the priority. The camera is a long way away from replacing keyboards (something that’s unlikely to ever happen), but stories ensure that content will always be easy to consume. Photos and videos take seconds to witness, and yet they can tell our followers everything they need to know. Sometimes even more effectively than a text-based post can.

And that’s where the real appeal of stories lies. Creation and consumption have never been easier. Within seconds, you can document anything from a major event to the behind-the-scenes of your business. Followers don’t have to sift through hours of content to find yours either. They can scroll over and find you within seconds. But it get’s better. Checking out stories is the equivalent of users clicking on your profile. They’ll have access to everything you’ve posted that day and be able to consume it instantly.

Of course, all of this presents a glaring issue: if you’ve struggled to produce regular content before, how are you supposed to create brand new, engaging content every single day? Plus, now you have to deal with it disappearing afterward?

Forget about the fact that the 24 hour time limit is likely helping your content by giving it a sense of urgency that it’s never had before. There’s actually a simple solution to the issue of creating new content, all it demands a bit of guess-and-check.

Let’s consider Instagram, for now. The most important thing to keep in mind is that stories give you the freedom to be more candid with your marketing efforts. Authenticity is a valuable commodity here, and shouldn’t be something you shy away from. Use this time to experiment with different ideas and see what people are responding to.

If you’re still not excited about the prospect of disposable content, here’s a quick fix. Essentially, you save every piece of content you create for your story. Then anything that performs exceptionally well (or you deem worth saving) gets reposted on the actual profile, where everyone can enjoy it forever.

Stories aren’t the end of new feeds… they’re the beginning of the mobile-social revolution.

Categories
Digital Marketing

Why Social Proof, Word of Mouth, and Influencers Are the Future of Digital Marketing Strategy

We get it: it’s hard to admit that your industry is changing.

Despite how cutting-edge we can feel as marketing experts and small business owners, the reality of existing in this space is that once you’ve found one way to make money and develop your business, it can be tough to move onto the next thing.

And yet, change is the order of the day. The digital marketing landscape is shifting under our feet every day, whether we like it or not. The more you’re willing to embrace that, the more effective your marketing efforts can be and the easier they’ll be to implement.

Fortunately for us, the future of digital media marketing strategy seems like it’ll reflect the core principles of effective marketing (but more on that later). What’s important to keep in mind now is that your digital marketing strategy needs to move forward, and there are some tangible steps you can take today to keep up with the times.

So, let’s start from the ground up. If you had no digital marketing strategy in place right now, how would you build one for the future?

Social Proof

The first (and arguably most important) pillar of any digital marketing strategy that intends to survive this new digital media landscape is going to be an emphasis on building social proof. To be fair, social proof itself is far from a new, revolutionary concept. Entire advertising campaigns revolved around building social proof and hoping that translated into sales.

But things have changed. It’s harder than ever to build that social proof, but accurately tracking it has never been easier. Once you break through the barrier to entry when it comes to social proof, you’re likely to enjoy higher consumer engagement and an uptick in sales because of it.

Social proof has a lot more to do with the effectiveness of a digital marketing strategy than people might care to admit, but it’s not difficult to see why. The modern consumer lives and dies by social proof A) because that’s the way the internet was set up and B) because of the chronic lack of trust modern consumers have for businesses that feel to ‘clinical’ and ‘corporate’.

Over the years, the internet has proven to be an interactive hub, which people use to both consume and provide others with information. The internet was made for social media sites, places where the average person could express their opinion and have it be respected solely on its merit as either valuable or worthless. The highly selective, well-educated modern consumer has come to expect more than a catchy jingle that says that your company is the best. Other people need to think it’s the best too, if you want that idea to gain any traction.

Which leads us to our second issue: the lack of humanity in social media and digital marketing strategies overall. If we’re being fair, it’s important to acknowledge that yes, marketing is an aspect of your business and because of that, it needs to be taken seriously.

But being serious about helping your consumers and taking yourself too seriously aren’t the same thing.

The easiest way of developing social proof is by connecting with people and hoping that your positive interaction and overall willingness to engage will convince them that your business is worth their time. All of this is very hard to do when you refuse to appear accessible or approachable on social media, like so many businesses still do today.

So, what exactly can you do to make sure you’re building social proof? Focus on creating positive interactions via engagement. If a customer loved your product/service enough to leave a comment or message, respond to them. It might seem meaningless and appear to have no traceable ROI, but it actually accomplishes a few things.

It ensures that your social media presence is something you’re in control of (something that many small business owners struggle with) when they first get started. Your social media presence should be proactive and constantly on the offensive.

Beyond that, it helps to improve the quality of the environment on your social media sites. Your community, the people who willingly choose to follow you, rely on a healthy environment. That’s what can turn an audience into a community in the first place.

Take the time to engage with your community. Whether it’s a positive comment or a negative one, what’s important is that you’re constantly engaged in some way and that you show a willingness to create a positive experience for them.

Word of Mouth

Some of you who aren’t familiar with these terms may respond to this sub-header by asking what on earth is the difference between social proof and word of mouth?

Well, while social proof is the overall presence of your business as it relates to social media, word of mouth is specifically about one method of sharing: person to person. With actual person to person marketing efforts being so effective, is it any wonder that digital word of mouth efforts have become such an important part of the digital media landscape?

Digital word of mouth is a lot easier to track, but much harder to get. The go-to method for this is the online review, which offers unbiased opinions to other fellow modern consumers. The online review may not be the sexiest aspect of social media marketing, but it’s certainly easy to see why this was the next step in the right direction.

Influencers

The general consensus on influencers is divided among both marketing experts and small business owners. On one hand, there are the marketers who believe that anything modern and underutilized should be considered as an acceptable part of the marketing strategy. On the other hand we have the traditionalists, who seem convinced that this fad will fade.

The reality, of course, lies somewhere in the middle. Businesses shouldn’t rely exclusively on micro-celebrities for buzz. But they also can’t afford to miss out on the benefits of having a reliable advocate, championing your brand. If you’ve never worked with any influencers, there are a variety of sites you can visit to start chatting with a microcelebrity quickly and easily.

What’s important to understand about all of this is that these three principles make up fundamentals of an effective digital marketing strategy today. Whether you agree with the direction the industry is headed in doesn’t matter at this point. The only question left is: how much money are you willing to lose due to stubbornness?

Categories
SEO

Google Owl: What You Need to Know About the Latest Update

At the end of April 2017, Google announced it was doing its part to combat fake news with an algorithm update and a procedure change for managing the results for fake news content. Google refers to this type of content as “offensive or clearly misleading content.” Like any other algorithmic update, Google is aiming to improve results quality for their customers – searchers like you and me.

Feedback Form

With the new feedback form that appears underneath Google’s suggested searches, users will now have the ability to report any information they believe to be inaccurate, inappropriate, or offensive. Users will also be able to find the link to a feedback form under “Featured Snippets.”

When users see a search suggestion they believe shouldn’t be there, they can fill out the feedback form to let Google know what the issue is. If it’s a prediction issue, you’ll be asked to mark which predictions were inappropriate. Then, you’ll be asked to describe the predictions as either:

  • Hateful
  • Sexually Explicit
  • Violent
  • Dangerous and other harmful activity
  • Other

And you’ll have the option to leave additional comments if you feel it necessary to do so.

If the issue is with the search results, rather than the search suggestions, there’s an option to report inappropriate results at the bottom. You’ll get a form similar to the one used to report inappropriate search suggestions.

A New Kind of Quality Issue

The changes were implemented because of some quality issues with search results. For example, in December 2016, a pro-Nazi website was the first result for “did the Holocaust happen“. In addition, Breitbart was featured as a top site for a query about the Great Barrier Reef. Clearly, these were not isolated incidents, or we wouldn’t have seen Google take such swift action to correct it.

Because of these changes, this is no longer the case – results now show information from credible sources, with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum being the number one result. Now, instead of getting a bunch of results suggesting the events never actually happened, users can find answers to the most common questions about the Holocaust. The snippet even reads, “Hitler did not make the Holocaust happen by himself.”

Google is dealing with a series of queries it’s not necessarily had to deal with before – where people are searching for content that reaffirms their point of view, regardless of whether or not that content aligns with actual facts.

Add to the fact that people are searching for rumors, racial slurs, urban myths, and other derogatory content with enough volume to influence the search suggestions Google offers, and in many cases, they’re influenced in offensive and potentially dangerous ways.

These searches are a problem because they don’t fall into the areas where Google has taken action – they’ve been dealing with spam for a long time. Google has also dealt with poor quality content showing up in popular searches, and it has also had to do deal with piracy. But these particular problematic queries aren’t any of that.

They are fake news and heavily biased content. People have completely made things up, bought into rumors, spread conspiracy theories, and perpetuate myths. They can include offensive or shocking information, and thus, presents Google with an entirely new quality issue.

Though it represents only a small portion of their overall query volume, it’s worth addressing, and I for one, am glad to see the changes being made. Google says the issue affects ¼ of a percent of searches, but when you consider they handle nearly 6 billion searches per day, that’s quite a bit of misinformation they have the potential of spreading.

Placing More Emphasis on Authoritative Content

Google already places weight on site authority when it determines rank in the search engine results. With the Google Owl algorithm update in place, additional weight will be placed on authority, but the specifics are unclear as to how it will work.

Search quality ratters have also been instructed to start flagging content they consider offensive or upsetting. Quality raters and the Google employees who are monitoring the forms are using the feedback to strengthen the algorithm to prevent further issues like this from happening in the future.

What Does This Mean for Brands?

Right now, there’s not much of anything this update has done for brands. If you’re a brand that’s producing content that Google considers inappropriate or controversial, you’ll see a change, of course. But if you’re not, you probably won’t notice much, if anything at all.

Does that mean you should ignore what’s going on? As much as I wish I could say yes, I can’t. As the program expands and gets more feedback from users, there could be more implications for brands.

Given the current feedback form, there’s nothing to stop marketers from flooding Google to push for their version of correct information. Right now it doesn’t seem there’s a way for the feedback forms to distinguish between feedback advertisers or marketers and between traditional users.

Google hasn’t clearly stated what it considers to be “authoritative”, so it’s possible branded content may not be considered such. While branded content isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it could mean it shifts to a lower priority in the search results than informational-based websites.

If your brand already has high ranking authoritative content, you may see a boost in ranking because you’ve become more relevant. Because it seems Google is pushing for more information-based (facts, rather than opinion) content, you could bring in more interested leads organically.

If you’ve already shifted away from a promotional-based content strategy to a more informational/educational-based approach, you’re on the right track, but if you’re using this update as the motivation to make the change, you may see a boost in your ranks.

If you get the increase rank, you in theory would see more qualified traffic arriving on your website, making it easier to market to them and possibly convert them after the initial site visit.

Ultimately, this change will hold all content creators more accountable to keep their content as accurate as possible. Information changes quickly these days, and to keep authority for ranking purposes, marketers will likely need to make more effort to provide reliable information.

Customers are already researching your brand, products, and services well before they ever contact you, so the brands that are providing the most current and reliable information will more than likely be those that rank higher – simply because they’re providing a better user experience.

This could also translate to pushing old and outdated content down the ranks – giving marketers the incentive they need to keep things fresh.

What Does This Mean for New Websites?

Basically nothing – unless you’re building a new conspiracy theory website, or satire site with tons of fake news. New websites should not have a harder time ranking, and larger brands won’t be at an advantage over small businesses in terms of ‘authority’.

If you’re building a brand new website, build it with principles of providing a good user experience in mind. Follow current SEO guidelines for good on-page SEO. When building backlinks and working on off-page SEO signals, make sure you’re reaching out to high quality websites. Keep an eye on your backlink profiles to make sure you’re not falling victim to a negative SEO attack that involves building a backlink profile full of spam.

For Now – It’s a Waiting Game

The changes were first made in December to address the immediate issues, but didn’t go into effect full force until just last month. As such, it’s really too soon to tell how this will affect marketing efforts. The most important, and best thing to do, is to focus on creating quality, factual content. When you do this, you’re likely to avoid falling victim to any kind of Google penalty, because you’re acting with the user’s best interests in mind.

Chances are you’ve not really seen an impact on your sites because of Google Owl, but if you have, let me know what you think in the comments. Feel free to share your thoughts on this update as a Google user, too.

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Uncategorized

What Your Competitors Can Teach You About SEO

The competition isn’t all bad. Of course you want to do better than they are doing, but the competition is a wealth of valuable information. When you know what to do with it, you can get your business started off on the right foot. And even if you’ve been in business for a long time, keeping an eye on what the competition is doing is necessary to ensure you don’t lose your edge. New businesses pop up all the time, and any of of them could be either a direct or indirect competitor for you.

Finding Your Real Competition

Your competition includes any website or organization that you’re competing with for traffic and visibility. It doesn’t necessarily mean your products and services are exactly the same, or even similar.

I know you’ve got at least one competitor you can name right now off the top of your head, but ideally your list should contain five to 10. They should be in your industry and serve the same geographical rea.

A great place to start is Google itself. Search using the keywords you’re hoping to rank for, and see which results come up on the first page. Then, do it again in other major search engines like Yahoo and Bing. Compare the results.

Setup Google Alerts to get updates on any competing products and services, and get notifications when people are mentioning your business online. They can also help you keep up with industry news.

Turn to industry association directories to find other businesses in your niche.

Once you have your list of competitors, it’s time to dig in. If you really want to go into detail, you could perform an in-depth competitive analysis.

Which Websites to Target for Backlinks

Search engines pay attention to which sites are linking to yours – and the more high quality relevant sites you have linking to yours, the better your rank tends to be. When you’re just starting out, it can be hard to know where to go for the right links to really boost your ranking, right? Wrong. With a backlink analysis, you can find out exactly which sites are linking to your competition. If you can get links from those sites, too, you’ll stand a better chance competing against them. Though having links from the same sites as your competitor is a good place to start, it won’t always be enough to outrank them, since several other factors are part of where a site ranks in Google. That means you’ll have to develop a plan to get more backlinks than the competition.

Start by running a report on each of the competitors you want to learn from. Ahrefs is a good backlink checker, but it’s not the only one out there. Other options include: SEMRush, Majestic, and Open Site Explorer.

When you run your competitor’s domain through any of these tools, you’ll get a list of the domains that are linking to them. Save the list, so you can approach each website with a request for a backlink. A word of caution, however. If you want them to link to you – you need to be sure you have quality content for them to link to.

The Kind of Content That’s Resonating with Your Audience

This of course only works if you’re targeting the same audience, but chances are you will be. Reading your competition’s website and blog can be a wonderful way to see what the audience is responding to.

What topics are they writing about that are getting them engagement? Look at the number of likes and comments – because people are taking the time to say or do something in response to the content.

Though it is never a guarantee that taking what you learn from your competition will be effective with your approach, it is better than starting from nowhere. Learning from their mistakes can help make your website more successful from the start.

You can also use a tool like BuzzSumo to see the most popular content on any domain – or in any niche. Search the competition, one URL at a time, to see what is doing well with their readership. You can also search the niche to get some new topic ideas to cover on your own blog.

Which Keywords are Working

Once you’ve determined the keywords that are most relevant to your business, you can start looking at who else is ranking for those terms. Use SEMRush to see which keywords your competition’s website is ranking for organically.

Compare this to your list of keywords you want to try to target, because you may find other opportunities you weren’t aware of before. Knowing which keywords are bringing in the traffic help you know which ones you need to go after first. Sometimes, you’ll find the competition is so stiff on a phrase that you need to shift your efforts

How Large Your Website Needs to Be

The size of your website matters. The more pages you have with useful content, the more there is to earn links to, and the more chances you have to end up in the search results. Typically, the larger a website is, the better, but of course this only holds true if your pages are providing some kind of value to the audience. If you don’t really need the pages, don’t add them simply for the sake of inflating the size of your website.

But, think about the size of your website relative to the size of your competition. If your site is much smaller than your competitors, you will have trouble ranking as well as they do. So, take time to look at their sitemaps and learn about the total number of pages they have, so you can get an idea of how large your site needs to be.

Keep in mind, if they’ve been up and running longer and posting on their blog regularly, they’ll naturally have a larger site because each post is its own page. This means you’ll need to come up with a plan to do the same.

What Your Blog Strategy Should Be

Does the competition have a blog? How often are they posting? How long has it been since they published the last time? You’ll want to craft a strategy that gives your audience a steady flow of useful content, but that your business can sustain.

How to Compete Against Their Social Strategy

It’s tough work to create an effective social media strategy, especially if you’re brand new and the competition’s been busy at work for a while. That’s exactly why you have to stalk them to see what they’ve been doing, and learn what works for them. They at least share one common goal with you – driving traffic from their social activity to their website.

Pay attention to what they are doing and learn from their mistakes as you build your strategy. As long as you’re not copying their strategy and content, you can mimic their behaviors to improve your own social signals, and by extension, your SEO efforts.

How Much Attention to Pay to Your Website

Okay so, maybe they can’t teach you exactly how often you should be checking on your website, but they can at least give you an idea of how long its been since they’ve done something to theirs. Google is in the business of pleasing their users (searchers) so they’re always looking for the freshest (newest) and most relevant content for any phrase. If your competition hasn’t posted to their blog in six months, or has a slew of broken links, then they’re obviously not paying as much attention to their website as they need to be.

But if you notice your competition doesn’t have a single broken link, and has routinely posted on their blog at least once a week for the last year, you know you’ll need to do a bit more to stay on top of your website. You’ll need to factor regularly posting on your blog (which you should be doing anyway!) into your strategy, because if your competition is blogging all the time and you’re not – they’re ahead of you in the game.

This doesn’t mean if they’re posting three times a week you have to post five, necessarily. You can, of course, if you want, but if you’re posting stuff that your audience won’t find valuable, or just churning out content for the sake of content, that’s not going to get the job done. You must make your content better than what the competition has to offer in some shape or form, if you truly want to compete.

Take a subject and go into more detail. Add more visuals. Offer the information in multiple formats. Take one of those in-depth blog posts and convert into an eBook with even more detail. If you’re not sure about how to do this – I’ve written about how you can repurpose content so you’re not working yourself to death all the time.

Research and Learn – Don’t Be Afraid

Yes, you’re working against the competition, hoping to entice their customers over to you. Yes, there’s a chance they will out do you. But, that’s no reason to be afraid of your competition. They are a wealth of information about what to do and what not to do, and you should use it to your advantage.

As long as you’re making an effort to keep things different somehow – as in not stealing their assets to run the same campaigns – you’ll be okay, and with time, be able to put yourself in a truly competitive position.

What has your competition taught you about your current SEO strategy? Tell me in the comments!

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