My Story: How Facebook Advertising Performed vs. Google AdWords

Posted by KarenJames

In a 2014 study conducted by Neustar, social media advertising was found to be the most effective form of online paid advertising for increasing impressions, clicks and conversions at a low cost. As the popularity of social media advertising has increased, it is understood that most businesses now allocate around 28% of their marketing budget to social media advertising.

Is this the case?

As a digital marketing agency, we are asked about the differences between social media advertising and Google AdWords quite often. We are asked about the benefits, the costs and the likely outcomes for our clients. Our experience so far has shown us that, yes, some forms of social media advertising are far more cost effective than Google AdWords, and one of those is Facebook Advertising.

If you are operating in a business to consumer market, Facebook advertising could be the ideal cost effective solution for you. With many similar benefits to Google AdWords, Facebook Advertising also has a few other benefits which trump Google, the most important being a lower average cost per click.

Let’s start with the pros and cons.

Google AdWords

Pros

• Detailed measuring tool makes your campaign easy to track
• Large potential audience
• Immediate influx of traffic
• Complete control over your daily budget and maximum cost per click
• Instant return on investment (You can easily define a cost per conversion and understand at what point your profit is made)
• Targeting options, including regions, time of day, days of the week, and specific websites (if using Display Network)
• Different advertising options, including Display Network, Search Network, and Remarketing
• Targeting those who already have an interest and, therefore, are more likely to convert into sales

Cons

• If set up and managed incorrectly, it can be extremely costly
• Setup and management can be very time consuming
• Limited space within your ad (Three lines of text when you are using Search only)
• Unless you use other forms of Google advertising, such as Google Shopping and YouTube Advertising, you cannot include images or videos to sell products and services
• Depending on your industry, the cost per click (CPC) can be substantial (For example, one client paid between $9.90 and $22.84 per click)
• Depending on your target market, the majority of the large potential audience can turn out to be irrelevant

Facebook Advertising

Pros

• Campaigns are easy to track
• Immediate influx of traffic
• Complete control over your daily budget and maximum CPC
• Instant return on investment (You can easily define a cost per conversion and understand what your profit is)
• More targeting options, including, towns, regions, age, likes/interests, income bracket, and other demographics
• Easier to set up than Google AdWords
• The ability to reach people early on in the buying process, before they are aware of their need, whilst capturing those who are aware of the need in a subtle way
• You can use images and videos to capture the interest of your target market, helping you to sell your products and services
• CPC is relatively cheap, depending on your industry (On average, our clients have paid no more than $0.61 per click)

Cons

• If set up and managed incorrectly, it can be costly, but less so than Google AdWords
• Depending on your target market, the majority of the large potential audience can be irrelevant (For instance, we would not recommend Facebook Advertising if someone only served or supplied their products and services to one town)
• There is no option to target your ads at certain times within the day or on certain days of the week unless you choose a lifetime budget (Most of our clients request daily budgets)
• Only really suitable for those operating in B2C markets.
• Reaching people too early in the buying cycle could potentially reduce your goal conversion rate

The main con of Facebook Advertising is it is not recommended for B2B companies. However, we have tried LinkedIn with some of our clients, and have had similar results to Facebook Advertising.

Shall we take a look at some case studies?

Our first client provides tandem skydiving experiences from their airfield near Cambridge. They came to us wanting to use other forms of advertising to increase their sales conversions.

Because they were already using Google AdWords, we recommended Facebook Advertising.

We started with an image campaign attracting people within a two-hour radius of their airfield.

Targeting the ads to those who were interested in extreme sports and topics similar to skydiving within a suitable age range, North London Skydiving Centre was able to reach between 7,300 and 19,000 people.

We ran this ad for a month at first. Since the results were favorable, the client decided to increase their activity. We recommended trying a video views campaign. Providing us with the promotional video they wanted to include, we once again targeted this campaign to those who had an interest in extreme sports, lived within a two-hour radius, and were of the appropriate age.

Lifetime results of campaigns

Since February, NLSC has received over 14,000 website clicks, with an average click-through rate (CTR) of 1.25%. They have paid on average $0.58 per click, and have received a conversion rate of around 10%.

Since March, NLSC have received over 105,096 video views with an average result rate of 30.84%. They have paid on average $0.02 per video view.

In terms of website clicks, they have received over 6,000 website clicks, paying an average of $0.18 with a CTR of 1.79%. From the website clicks they have received within the video views campaign, they have achieved a goal conversion rate of around 3%.

Putting it all together

Since February, NLSC has received more than 20,000 website clicks with an average CTR of 1.52%, and has paid on average $0.38 per click for a conversion rate of around 6.5%. Also, NLSC has seen a sharp increase in the amount of group bookings and the size of those group bookings as people have commented, shared, and tagged their friends and family within the different adverts.

How do the different visitors behave?

We have found, via NLSC’s Google Analytics, that the visitors of each advertising channel behave in a very similar manner.

Those from Facebook visit on average 1.98 pages, with an average session duration of 86 seconds. Those from Google AdWords visit on average 2.21 pages, with an average session duration of 1 minute 51 seconds.

We also know from our data that 6.5% of people from Facebook Advertising convert into a booking. As you will see in the next paragraph, 10% of those coming from Google AdWords convert into a booking. Of course, with both of these methods, there is also the chance that people will look, research elsewhere, then come and book at a later stage due to the nature of the products and services being sold.

Comparing Facebook Advertising to Google AdWords

Since February, NLSC has received over 84,000 clicks, with an average CTR of 2.14%. They have paid on average $1.49 per click, and have received a conversion rate of around 10%.

Therefore, comparing Facebook Advertising to Google AdWords, NLSC has received more clicks using Google AdWords, but they have had to pay over $1.11 more per click. The overall goal conversion rate for Google AdWords was better, but they paid more per conversion, ultimately making less profit from it than Facebook Advertising.

We are not biased

We have also worked with other clients who have experienced significant success from Facebook Advertising when compared to Google AdWords.

Another client we have worked with, Country Boarding Kennels, provides boarding kennels for cats and dogs, as well as training and grooming from their location in Hertfordshire. They have received over 1,700 website clicks in a month from their Facebook Advertising campaign, paying on average $0.33 per click and receiving an average CTR of 1.84%.

Comparing this to their Google AdWords campaign, they received less than half the amount of clicks (just over 400) from a similar budget. They paid, on average, $1.03 per click, and received a CTR of 3.57%.

Their Facebook Advertising in this period contributed to 23.08% of their booking goal conversion, the same amount as their organic traffic. Comparing this to the amount Google AdWords contributed (7.69%), it is clear that Facebook Advertising is an extremely cost-effective solution for them.

Our logic

Although the case studies in this article show that Facebook Advertising is quite obviously the more cost-effective solution, we would not recommend relying solely on it for sales.

Like any marketing plan, there must be a variety of marketing tools and advertising channels. You want to capture your target audience at every stage of the buying process, whether that’s through Facebook Advertising, Google AdWords, PR, SEO, or print advertising.

What we would recommend is that instead of just relying on Google AdWords for online advertising, consider what other channels would probably work best for you, then test, test, test.

A few tips for writing a compelling campaign

As a helping hand, here are a few tips to get you started on the road to creating a successful Facebook Advertising campaign:

• Keep your information short
• Include an offer or price
• Include keywords
• Include persuasive or interesting imagery/video
• Include your URL above the image/video in the text section
• Use taglines and hooks to draw your potential customers in (i.e., “Make This a Year to Remember)

What have your experiences with Facebook Advertising been like? We’d very much enjoy reading of your experiences in the comments below.

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How to Build a Real-Time Listening Post for a Time-Sensitive Vertical

Posted by BradsDeals

When you’re working in a highly competitive, fast-moving niche, keeping up with the latest developments can be like trying to drink from a fire hose. Because of the volume and velocity, it’s necessary to be as streamlined as possible while diving deep into the material at the same time. Being able to react to the most important material as quickly as possible is critical.

As a white hat affiliate marketer operating at scale, I keep a close eye on more than a few topics. At Brad’s Deals, our most intense season in terms of the vigilance and responsiveness required is Black Friday, where our fans expect us to have the latest ads posted the moment they hit the Internet, and it’s rare that any merchant, even one we have a good partnership with, will think to send it our way.

Plus, these ads are so hotly sought after, that it’s not unusual to see them leak online ahead of their official publication, and that doesn’t always happen during business hours. We have to be able to catch and take action on time-sensitive ads, leaks, and news as it happens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for six to eight weeks at a time. Streamlining and automating the monitoring process as much as possible is essential, both for the sake of efficiency and maintaining one’s sanity.

Why digital listening?

The idea behind the digital listening concept is to pull articles, blog posts, news media, images, social media, and page updates that normally would be monitored in a number of different places into a single platform where everything can be watched simultaneously.

Additionally, the most critical information should trigger alerts so the team can react quickly outside of business hours without being chained 24/7 to a laptop.

How is all of this important to SEO?

Being the first to post content caters to Google’s taste for fresh material, especially if you can add fresh insight as you go. It also makes makes everything that comes after your article look like a copycat. The ability to react quickly to the latest news makes it more likely that you earn the click, you earn the share, you earn the citation, and you earn the link.

By the way, nearly everything I mention in here is free. Even the one paid tool I mention has a free alternative. (I have never found a paid tool that comes close to being as effective as the listening post I’ve built on my own using free tools.)

What I monitor and how

Let’s start with the things that are obvious. There are two main tactics that go in the “Easy” column: RSS feeds and email subscriptions. In the retail space, I’m interested not only in keeping tabs on our competitors, but also in what retailers are saying and doing.

Easy: The stuff you probably already know to do

Following blogs: So the first thing I do is add my competitors’ blogs to my RSS reader. I prefer Feedly, and I’ll get into why a bit later. Same with retailers’ blogs, but also their press rooms. Many corporations have RSS feeds of their press releases that you can subscribe to. Honestly, I find the press release feeds much more interesting since corporate blogs tend to be more oriented towards B2C sales. Press releases, on the other hand, are more for the media and include announcements like describing their plans for the holiday shopping season. They’re also a fantastic source of executive quotes.

Subscribing to newsletters: Next up, I’m signing up to the competition’s newsletters. This is always fairly simple, of course. You just visit the site and sign up. But why do this when you’re already watching their blogs and press releases in RSS?

Well, email is an intriguing channel. It’s most often a sales channel, but depending on the vertical, you might get something that’s somewhere in the middle, between sales and corporate news.

If there’s a signature, pay attention to who is signing to spot organizational changes. It’s always good to know when people at competing brands move on. I’ll dive into that a bit more later.

Particularly for competitors, pay attention to the delay between news hitting their blog or press release and when it shows up in email. Can you react to that same news? Can you get an email out to your own subscribers sooner?

Intermediate: More complex and less obvious

Monitoring specific pages for updates: But what do you do when your competitor’s blog or retailer’s press room doesn’t have an RSS feed? Or if all you want to know is when a particular page on their website is updated? My secret weapon for these situations is a Chrome extension called Page Monitor. Any time Page Monitor detects a change to the page you tell it to watch, you get an alert right in your browser, and it will even show you what the change was.

Even if you are following retailers and competitors via an RSS feed, using a tool like Page Monitor can be useful since site changes and soft launches often precede formal announcements. The only drawback is you can’t convert the alerts to an RSS feed.

Brand and keyword alerts: It would be negligent not to mention news alerts. Google Alerts is the best known, of course, but it actually misses a lot. My favorite alert tool is Talkwalker, which is useful even at the free level.

I’ve also recently added SocialMention to my tool box.

Note that both of these have RSS feeds available. One of the advantages of building a digital listening post is to have every listening channel in one place, so you want to grab these as feeds instead of email digests, which will allow you to add it to Feedly along with everything else.

Digging a little deeper into Talkwalker, think beyond your industry keywords and follow the people behind them. Get alerts on your competitors. Get alerts on their C-level executives and spokespeople to see where they’re getting quoted.

Follow your competitors’ execs and employees: Many of us will follow a competing company on Twitter, but that’s more often than not a marketing feed curated for the masses. You’ll likely learn nothing novel.

If you really want to know what’s coming up, what that competitor is struggling with, and who they’re reaching out to, then you need to figure out who runs their marketing, who builds their site, who writes for them, and so on, and watch those people, too. Add them to a private Twitter list called “Competitors.”

I don’t use RSS for these due to the sheer volume of noise they generate, but I keep a column open in Tweetdeck and they’re good for picking up hints about what they’re working on.

The key here is to stay under the radar and always assume your competitors are doing the same with you. Be super aware of what you are saying on your own personal channels; what could an outsider in your vertical infer? That sounds paranoid until a competitor starts openly tweeting taunts at your personal account. (Yes, that actually happened.)

Black Ops: Creating and automating snitches

While the techniques I’m using aren’t anything I developed on my own, I have never seen anyone else use them quite like this.

Turn Twitter into an RSS feed: You can turn any Twitter account into an RSS feed and follow it alongside blogs and press rooms and whatnot in your favorite feed aggregator. Check out Amit Agarwal’s excellent step-by-step instructions for the details.

This is what a Twitter list turned RSS feed looks like in Feedly:

I also dug up a pretty great post about turning an Instagram account into an RSS feed, which I’m planning to test out for the holiday season. I can’t make any testimonials about it yet, but if your competitor has a consistent presence there, it may make sense for you to give it a shot, too.

We used to be able to turn any Facebook page into a feed as well, but they killed RSS support sometime in June 2015, much to my chagrin. I’m on the hunt for a good alternative.

Use IFTTT recipes to kick it up a notch

Setting up a couple handy IFTTT recipes that push a notification to your phone anytime something noteworthy happens can also be hugely beneficial.

There are two basic IFTTT recipes that I rely on:

• Get a push notification when a competitor publishes a new blog post.

If a blog filed under a certain Feedly category publishes a new blog post, IFTTT pushes a notification to my phone. The drawback is you get everything they publish, so I keep this recipe off during the off-season and only reactivate it once things really start heating up.

Since the the Feedly-to-push-notification combo is only available if you’re using Feedly Pro, I use a slight variation of this technique.

Instead of pointing IFTTT at a Feedly category, you can build an RSS-to-push-notification recipe for each feed. It’s a little more work, but it costs nothing. Plus, using the RSS trigger opens the door to options you don’t have on the Feedly trigger.

• Get a push notification when someone I’m following tweets a particular keyword.

Given our focus on retail, I’m following a lot of merchants’ social accounts. I get these in a feed when I can, as I have already described; but during the intensity of Black Friday season, I want to know immediately when any of these merchants mention Black Friday on social media. With so many retailers dropping news and hints in social channels before any other medium, it’s a real advantage to be able to keep an eye on them using keyword-sensitive recipe triggers.

The basic steps are to convert a social feed to RSS, add the RSS to IFTTT, and choose the keyword trigger.

This entire process detailed above was built in an ad hoc fashion over the course of several years. I’m always excited to find a new way to listen in on the competition, so if you’ve got a piece to add, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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My Story: How We Build a Content Team for Our Agency

Posted by gmehrguth

The SEO industry is shifting. Link building, as a singular practice, is fading into the background and content marketing is roaring along.

Creating anything outside of exceptional content is yielding marginal results. The demand for quality content is vast and urgent.

Unfortunately, because of the difficulty in creating affordable content at scale, many SEOs are still saying “I know the articles we’re posting on your blog (from our outsourced writing team) are barely decent; but the blog posts are really just for search engines and keywords, so we’re not too worried about the quality.”

Frankly, the last thing the SEO space needs is more stale SEO content.

What the SEO space does need is more teams dedicated to producing high-quality content. But it’s difficult to build a team. Because the need for high-quality content persists, I have created a step-by-step guide to building a content team. It is based on what we have done for our own agency, Directive Consulting.

Step 1: Finding writers

For starters, let’s lay out the conundrum.

You have a particular retainer size and you want to keep your cost as low as possible. But you want to give your client the best results possible. You recognize that you need exceptional content to build brand affinity, reach new audiences, improve rankings, and increase the topical relevance of your website.

We solved this problem by hiring writers from the university that my partner and I attended. To save you some pain and heartache, this is the writer persona we used:

• Grade: Senior
• Major: Journalism or English
• On-Campus Involvement: Works at the Writing Center
• Pay: $12-15 per article; word count often doesn’t matter

Step 2: Managing the writers

If you have the time to manage the writers yourself, then go for it, but I highly recommend hiring someone.

Here is what we looked for in a content manager:

• Manage timing of posts
• Selecting topics for the writers
• Maintaining consistent level of quality
• Monitoring writer happiness
• Understanding when to hire due to content fatigue
• Formatting and designing the content
• Measuring the performance of the content and providing feedback to promotion team

Overall, there is far more that goes into creating quality content right than what one can hope to do on their own.

Step 3: Managing the content

Managing the entire process requires a content management system (CMS) of some sort. When we began our content department, we managed the entire process on Trello. (This post will go a long way toward providing you with different ways to set things up: http://ift.tt/1KTgWOv.)

After growing the department and adding more moving pieces, we began using DIVVY (http://divvyhq.com/).

The goal for whichever route you take is to make the process as simple as possible so that deadlines are met and the quality of content is high.

Step 4: Understanding interest-based targeting

Picking promotable topics for content is essential. For example, it is nearly impossible to promote a post about “How to Ride a Horse Without a Saddle.”

However, a post like the one we created below can perform tremendously well because you can properly leverage interest-based targeting and identify reachable audiences:

If you are curious about the targeting and budget, we spent $20 on this promotion and promoted it to autism centers and families with children who have disabilities.

The potential that shareable content holds for your clients is massive.

Step 5: Managing capacity

As mentioned above, we organized our content division with a director of content at the top and writers who report to her.

We have found that 10 to 20 articles a month is a manageable amount for a senior in college to produce. The last thing you want is to be hiring and onboarding writers every month due to content fatigue.Keep that in mind as you grow.

Currently, we deliver two to three pieces a month for our clients and find this to be a good flow of content that achieves many of our content goals.

Step 6: Creating goals for your content

Creating measurable goals for your content marketing beyond “increase traffic and rankings” is essential to building a terrific content team.

Our ultimate goal is to improve and build up branded traffic. We believe content has the power to build a brand and allows our clients to compete at a different level. Why try to be the plumber that ranks No. 1 if you could be the plumber that people search for when their toilet floods?

It’s a simple idea, but strategic content creation and promotion can help achieve this. More technical metrics that we also use to measure performance are:

• Increase assisted social conversions
• Improve last click or direct social conversions
• Improve social conversion rate

The focus on social conversion is primarily due to the promotion element of our content department. If you take a different focus for the purpose of your content, then make sure to modify and create metrics to gauge their performance by.

Step 7: Involve everyone, including your clients

T-E-A-M is in an important element in content marketing.

Your director of content isn’t going to be a walking encyclopedia, so putting everyone’s brainpower together can do wonders for your content. That being said, include your clients in the brainstorming process, too, especially the new ones. More than likely, they’ve been in their particular field of expertise for some time, and absorbing their knowledge can be vital to getting to know their target market.

We’d like to hear from others who have built content teams. Is your process similar to ours? Please share in the comments.

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My Story: How PSD2HTML Worked to Have a Manual Penalty Revoked

Posted by Anna_of_PSD2HTML

When I joined the PSD2HTML team in November 2014, the site had been suffering from a manual penalty related to spammy backlinks for over a year. They’d tried everything to promote a recovery, but nothing worked.

They were ready to admit defeat.

The penalty resulted in the loss of over 80% of their organic traffic.

The story of how this happened is very interesting. PSD2HTML was one of the first companies to market PSD to HTML conversions in 2005. At the peak of their success, they transitioned to an SEO company. In 2013, our relationship with a well-known agency resulted in a manual spam penalty.

The following is a screenshot of what this looked like:

Recovering from the penalty was a very painful process. There were two in-house marketing departments that hired several agencies to analyze over 2,500 linking domains. They spent a year and a half trying to remove the penalty, which included submitting numerous reconsideration requests that failed.

Since we finally had the penalty revoked, we wanted to share our experience with other companies, website owners, and SEOs that might be suffering from the same problem; and include some useful tactics for removing penalties.

It is also important to give credit to our outstanding consultant who helped us overcome the disaster.

The process

Step 1: Create a master penalty removal sheet

The first thing we did was to collect all incoming links pointing to PSD2HTML.com. We then created a master spreadsheet that we could work through to identify possible artificial links. The process involves the following steps:

• Download all links from Google Webmaster Tools (now known as Google Search Console), using the process described here
• Supplement with links from Majestic.com
• Sort them by root domain, using a simple Excel process from Distilled that can be found here

This may sound simple, but it’s not. It’s important to start with the right data. While it is helpful to have multiple link sources, Webmaster Tools data is key.

Step 2: Identify links that Google sees as artificial

Typical unnatural links can include articles, link directories, bookmarks, blog comments, malware, guest posts, and scrapers. They include anything where the content exists primarily to influence rankings more than offering genuine content. PSD2HTML.com had very few of these types of links. This is possibly one reason why the penalty had been around for so long. There were some possible unreliable link directories in their link profile. However, there were very few keyword-stuffed submissions or guest posts with links for rankings. It was important to identify the artificial links.

The theory of primary intention

Penalty write-ups typically list types of links that need to be removed. However, as link building methods continue to evolve, the potential types of unnatural links are unlimited. It is very helpful to identify the common denominator for all artificial links, which is the primary intention. If the primary intention of a link is to influence rankings, then it is artificial.

We went through all linking domains in order to develop a list of some interesting link types that fit this description. Despite our previous attempts, we could not access previous responses to reconsideration requests. As a result, no sample links from Google were available. Therefore, we had to start from scratch.

Giveaways

PSD2HTML had a number of links from giveaway promotions, where users could leave comments in return for a chance to win paid services. Paid reviews of services have a long history of being seen as unnatural by the Google Webspam Team. However, it is not necessarily artificial if a company wants to run a giveaway. Since these giveaways didn’t have the primary intention of gaining links to influence Google, we decided to keep them.

Again, it wasn’t that simple.

In the case of at least one giveaway, the page had a genuine intention and also contained specific links with artificial elements. For example, here are two links to PSD2HTML.com that appeared on the same page:

- “The world’s first and finest PSD to HTML conversion company, PSD2HTML®, is giving away $400, $300 and $200 worth of services!”
- The leading PSD to HTML slicing service has made outstanding changes to the way they do business and provide services.

These two links were colored, but not linked, because one of them was artificial. I am sure that you can guess which one. The first one was a genuine reference to the company name. The second one was a keyword phrase. Therefore, the giveaway was not artificial, but the keyword link was.

In order to deal with this situation, we kept all of the giveaway links and the domains they were featured on. We drilled down to any pages that also had artificial keyword links and disavowed them individually. When Google denied our first request, none of the sample links were giveaways. We, therefore, inferred that we’d gotten this one right.

Keyword footer links

PSD2HTML had some sites where they’d done conversion work and gained a keyword link at the footer of the site. This brought up the question to what degree design firms can legitimately place footer links on client sites. John Mueller talks about this here. The intention idea was useful.

In one instance we noticed, the actual brand wasn’t linked, but the keywords were linked, so they were assumed to be artificial.

Sponsor and advertisement links

Sponsor links were absolutely fine. We thought sponsor links (not quite sponsored links) could be artificial and wondered if they’d be identified as artificial. However, these were genuine sponsors, so we left them and that worked out fine.

We also found that image ads such were fine. However, they usually only showed up in Majestic data and not Webmaster Tools. Therefore, there wasn’t a problem.

Keyword articles, link directories, bookmarks, malware, and scrapers

There were some submission sites with keyword links and the sludge of scrapers that were added to the disavow file. However, the rest of their profile looked clean, so it was submitted.

Step 3: Submission and response from Google

Our penalty removal consultant had a proven record of eight penalties getting revoked on the first try.

Unfortunately, for us, after our submission the Webspam Team returned the following three sample links:

• http://ift.tt/1LnygN8
• http://ift.tt/1jAu5oc
• http://ift.tt/1LnygNa

Interpreting Google sample links

The sample links that Google provides in response to reconsideration requests aren’t just samples. The Webspam Team shows you specific link types that still need to be removed. If you can identify the underlying link types provided by Google, it is possible to look through the link data again and find those link types.

Step 4: Identify links that Google sees as artificial from sample links

We thought the three sample links from Google were unusual. This penalty was interesting because the Webspam Team seemed to be highlighting possible new variations of artificial links. These link types appeared regularly and it looked like they were here to stay.

Sample link type #1: Chinese duplicate translation links

The first such link was a Chinese news site. In the past, it had been possible to clear penalties without similar foreign sites causing problems. These sites were posting verbatim articles from SmashingHub. While the URL included the source (http://ift.tt/1LnygNcxhtmlcss.htm?utm_source=tuicool), Google had identified it as an artificial link. We again went through the links looking for duplicate Chinese pages. This was easy to do with the English ones. However, most of them were not duplicate translations.

This article was a duplicate of http://ift.tt/1jAu5og that was translated into Chinese. This made it more difficult to identify. Although it is tempting to judge a link only based on a language, countries with non-Western scripts form a massive part of the Web, and can also offer genuine links to a site. We wanted to keep any genuine links using the primary intention idea regardless of country or language. This is an example of a genuine link with no duplicate issues: http://ift.tt/1LnyeVA.

I identified duplicate Chinese links by searching for English keyword phrases. For example, most of the duplicates featured English website names. Therefore, by Googling “PSD2HTML" “CSS Chopper” “Direct Basing,” it was possible to identify the original English post.

Sample link type #2: Brand name used as keywords with genuine intention

Seeing http://ift.tt/1jAu5oc marked as artificial was frustrating. This is a forum post link that was given completely genuinely.

However, the link text was “PSD to HTML.” It was used legitimately as a brand name that was rewritten with the number 2 in PSD2HTML converted to the word “to.” There were some giveaway links above with some artificial links using “PSD to HTML” as a keyword phrase to influence Google. Those links were artificial. However, the use of “PSD to HTML” was not artificial since the underlying primary intention was completely genuine.

How do you deal with a genuine link that is marked as artificial due to brands listed as keywords? In order to solve this problem, we called Google out on artificial links. In our second reconsideration request message, we argued that while the link text consisted of keywords, they were used as a completely genuine reference to a brand. Therefore, the act of identifying the link as artificial was in itself artificial, since the link itself was entirely genuine.

The frustration of having a genuine link marked as artificial became a tool to add weight to our argument and conversation with the Webspam Team. They regularly respond with sample links that can be argued to be genuine, or are already in the disavow file. These sample links are very important. They can be used in your next presentation to the Webspam Team.

Sample link type #3: Financial offer to influence links

This link was very obscure. However, it could be seen as artificial. It was impressive how the Webspam Team isolated this one link type.

This link was in Spanish: http://ift.tt/1jAu5oh

The writer reported receiving an email offering a Christmas promotion. They would receive $50 off of their next order from “our friends P2H” (P2H.com redirects to PSD2HTM.com).

There was a subtle, but important, difference between this link and the giveaways. Although the giveaways were promotional, they did not appear to be directly created with the intention of gaining a link. PSD2HTML offered $50 on their next order to bloggers with whom they had no previous relationship, which raised questions about their motivation. The influenced recommendation tone became clearer as the post continued. This indicated that the emails were sent in order to gain links.

We searched for similar links and found one more. This type of task can be difficult when there are many easy to spot low-quality links. The standard artificial link types were largely irrelevant. The process of searching for the links that matched the exact link types implied by the Webspam Team’s three sample links took precision.

Step 5: Second submission and response from Google

We submitted this work with our explanation to Google and received a very quick response.

Image credit

Euphoria. Penalty revoked.

A note on emails and outreach

We didn’t send any emails to get the penalties removed.

There are a number of differences between only using the disavow tool and also using manual outreach. We had the following findings about the use of email outreach: Email outreach is not required to revoke a penalty. Clients and providers often feel they must use outreach to revoke a penalty. This can significantly add to the costs and timeframe.

It is possible to commit resources to email outreach. However, it is not true that both outreach and manual action removal are needed. Once you realize this, you can have more control and save time and money. Google penalties are a psychological phenomenon. Therefore, getting the “No manual webspam actions found” message showing quickly is very important.

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Branding Your Social Media Presence With Color: It Starts With Your Logo [Infographic]

Take for example the integrated marketing and branding agency HZDG, … Their orange logo has been so well integrated into their social presence …

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5 Hard Fought Lessons for Building a Social Media Following

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Social Media Expert, Jason McDonald, Releases Informational Post on Personal Branding

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5 Social Media Branding Strategies for Business [INFOGRAPHIC]

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Mzembi to attend UNWTO Ministers' Summit

Destination branding is becoming an even more complex challenge as … role of social media and consumers’ engagement in destination branding, …

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Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav cautions against parties relying on 'branding, marketing'

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Brown Box Branding Issues Tip Sheet, Advises Brands to Invest in Targeting Strategies Next Year

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Craft Winning CTAs with Four Simple Tips

Posted by ziamd19

A call to action (CTA) can essentially make or break a potential lead.

Don’t trust my word?

Take a look at the example below: All the viewer needs to do is click on that blue button, and voila! A lead is born.

Sounds easy enough, right? Not exactly. There are several elements that are critical to get right in order to make that click happen. I’ll be discussing the most important ones in this post.

They include:

• Wording
• Shape and size
• Color
• Position

Wording

“Some people have a way with words, and other people… oh, uh, not have way.” ― Steve Martin

The wording of your CTA is one of the most important, if not the most important, element of a CTA.

You cannot use something generic such as “submit” or ”read more” and expect readers to be impressed.

In a study carried out by Adchemy, a few words commonly used on CTAs were tested.

The hypothesis was that the higher the click-through rates (CTR) for these words, the higher the conversion rate.

As you can see, the hypothesis was proven to be false. The word “Buy” has the highest CTR, but “Order” has a higher conversion rate. The word “Shop” has the second highest conversion rate.

Why the variance for two seemingly similar words like “Buy” and “Shop”?

It has to do with what the words imply.

Most people are commitment averse in real life, and even more so when surfing the net. The word “Buy” implies you have to commit right now to buying the product. On the other hand, “Shop” sounds less final, and more fun.

My point is this: Words matter. A lot.

Say yes to verbs and no to adverbs: According to Hubspot’s social media scientist Dan Zarella, adverbs get the least number of shares on Twitter and verbs get the most.

Using verbs such as “start” or “discover” is definitely encouraged. It not only tells the reader what will happen when they click on the link, but it also makes them feel like they will get what they are looking for right away.

Consider the following example:

You would think starting a campaign would be more difficult than simply clicking a button. But the CTA above convinces you otherwise.

All you need to do is click that blue button to get started on starting your very own campaign right away.

It’s that easy.

Furthermore, the background picture connects to you on a personal level and the color combination also works really well. All in all, this is a great CTA for a homepage.

Give them what they want or tell them why they need it: An effective CTA should tell readers that clicking on it will get you them what they want or need. Visitors will not click on a link unless they think it is worth their time. Phrases such as “we have what you need" and “want to get more conversions?” communicate value to readers.

There are visitors who are not looking for anything in particular. In that case, you must create value for them. Give them a good enough reason to click on that button. You can do that by telling them “why” they are clicking on this link or what exactly they are getting (perhaps a free trial).

Gregory Ciotti, a marketing strategist at Help Scout, wrote an interesting article listing the five most persuasive words, with the word “free” being #2.

He outlined a study conducted by Dan Ariely, who gave customers two chocolates to choose from: 1) a Hershey Kiss costing 1 cent; or a Lindt truffle reduced to 15 cents (almost half of its actual value). The majority couldn’t pass up on such a sweet deal and chose the Lindt:

But then Dan tweaked the prices by reducing the Lindt to 14 cents and offering the Hershey’s for free. This changed the results dramatically:

So you see, as much as we like a good deal, we can never pass up free goodies.

But is that always true?

While reading the comments on Gregory’s article I came across an interesting exchange:

So you see it is important to know in what context to use these words. What purpose will the CTA be serving? Is it a long-term investment or a short-term investment?

You cannot just stamp a persuasive word on your CTA and expect sales to shoot up. Understanding the situation is crucial.

The use of a number is very convincing. For example, mentioning the number of users currently using the product or service gives the CTA more credibility. Following is a good example of this method:

Basecamp is clearly telling you what you will get if you click on the button, creating value that is built on by including the number of users they currently have.

It’s not just business, it’s personal: Try to design your CTAs in such a way that it makes the readers feel it’s all about them. You can do this by using words such as “you,“ "yours,” and “my.”

In Ciotti’s study “you” took the #1 spot. But what works even better than that is using a person’s name. Nothing relates better to people than seeing their own name in print.

Let’s go back to the Basecamp example.

Notice how they write “It’s on us”? This makes readers feel like the company really cares. Let’s look at another example:

Here they made a great use of the verb “claim” and the use of “my spot.“ It gives the reader a sense of entitlement and makes them think the spot is reserved just for them. It connects to them on a deeper level.

Now or never: A lot of CTAs use words and phrases such as “now” and “right away” to convey a sense of urgency. This makes the reader think they might miss out on a great deal they’ll later regret passing up later if they don’t take action.

“Instantly" occupies the fourth spot of the five most persuasive words in Ciotti’s article.

Two methods to incite urgency include highlighting a limited supply and making clear a time constraint.

The following page uses both of these tactics:

The page above was designed by Marcus Taylor. He was offering a package deal worth 1,000 pounds for only 47 pounds.

This amazing deal, combined with the sense of urgency he created, helped increase his conversion rates from 2.5% to 10.8%.

It increased his sales by 332%.

Need I say more?

Shape and size

John Hopkins conducted a study in 2010 highlighting how people are more attracted to gentle curves as opposed to sharp edges.

The study concluded that the possible reason for this as our brains are accustomed to relating curved surfaces to living organisms such as the human body itself. On the other hand, sharp or jagged edges reminds us off non-living objects such as rocks. One might argue that this is only true for men, as they relate to the female body to curved shapes. However, twice as many woman as men took part in the study.

So instead of using triangles or shapes with sharp edges, you might try using circles or other spherical shapes. Or you could just make the edges blunt, as in the example below:

Color me converted

Colors are important when it comes to CTAs. But it is not simply the color of the CTA that matters. In fact, there is no one universal color that will guarantee conversions. Hubspot tested the colors green and red to see which color was more successful in CTAs.

Here are the two pages tested:

Which one do you think did better? The red one beat the green one by a landslide.

So does this mean red is the color to go with?

Another joint study conducted by University of Rochester and University of Munich explored the effects of colors red, green, and grey on an IQ test. The test papers were identical except for the color of the cover. The results were as follows:

Red does significantly worse. Why? Perhaps because people relate red with “danger” or to “stop” according to traffic lights.

At this point, you must be thinking just tell me which one color will make my conversion rates go sky-high?

The answer is: none.

If we go back to the Hubspot survey and notice both the pages more closely, you will see that the first page has a constant color: green. The second page, however, has more contrast that causes the CTA to stand out. If we had used any other bright color apart from green, it’s likely we’d get similar results.

So the key is a good color combination or contrast that will make the CTA stand out as opposed to one single color.

The page above is an example of what you should not do. The color of the CTA “shop now” is the same as the color of the text. There are essentially three CTAs with the same message on the page.

Using a more contrasting color, increasing the size and, perhaps keeping only one CTA, would certainly improve the conversion rates on this page.

Putting it where it matters

The location of your CTA is critically important. It must be in a spot where it can be easily noticed. Let us take this Macy’s page for example:

This page puts the button “shop now” in the bottom left corner where you can barely see it. The viewer is also distracted by the sea of text.

Here is another bad example that I came across:

This was a really good article that I was very interested in reading, but it was too confusing to get across a cohesive message.

This is a prime example of how a badly placed CTA can completely ruin good content.

There are a few more things you need to account for before we make those conversion rates shoot up.

Know your audience: Marcus Taylor spent a significant amount of time finding out who his customers were. He found out guitarists are more likely to buy his products than drummers, and his conversion rates are highest in Australia and UK (which is why he put pounds instead of dollars on his page).

You can also create two CTAs and see which one performs best. This is known as A/B Testing.

Make sure it does what it says: A CTA that has “sign up” written on it, but if it takes you to a different page, your conversion rates will suffer.

Keep it simple: A lot of pages try to employ every single strategy they come across and end up going overboard. Take this page for example:

Here we have too many links and distractions that can leave the viewer dazed and confused. It is best to have not more than two CTAs per page.

In the end, it’s about finding the right combination of wording, size and shape, color, and position for your brand’s CTAs. And even when your conversions begin to climb, continue tweaking various elements of each CTA, one at a time, to attain the best results.

I wrote this piece to share what I’ve learned about writing CTAs with the YouMoz audience. I’m no expert, so I’d love to hear what others are doing with CTAs to enhance conversion rates. Please share in the comments below.

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Points North: Wayne Silver, managing director at One

He argues that in today’s social world, the branding process has changed beyond all recognition. “The world is a handkerchief” – well actually that’s a …

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10/15/15 - Royal Caribbean's New Branding Campaign 'Come Seek'

An integrated marketing campaign includes broadcast, digital and outdoor advertising, in addition to public relations, social media and direct …

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Guest column: How to earn more social media love

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10 Branding Techniques Derived From Link Building For SEO

That’s why nofollow links are great links for branding– while the Google … SEOs and bloggers use social media sharing to raise awareness of their …

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'Branding' impacts you

Controversy exists surrounding the legalities of employers using social media to make their hiring decisions. Personal branding has become …

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Here’s How to Write an Email That Throws off a Whole Room’s Productivity

Posted by katykatztx

Let me take a minute to usher you down the (totally worth it) rabbit hole I took recently. It all started with a favorite on Twitter.

I received a favorite on one of my tweets from a user called @hustlecon. If I’m being honest, most of the time favorites don’t fully capture my attention, but I was intrigued by the name of their conference. I took a quick look at their twitter feed and saw a ton of user conversation about an epic email they were sending out.

Sign up to the @HustleCon newsletter just so you can read their thanks for subscribing email. It’s worth it just for that.
— Jason Bagley (@JBagley) August 25, 2015

Now, I’m a curious person and I had to know more. What was so great about this email that had marketers and business owners alike raising their hands in praise? I mosied over to the website and found a clean site with clear punch and personality.

The website

They are a self-proclaimed “bunch of young’uns” that puts on an annual conference for startups, as the name would imply, with job titles like “Hustler” and “Creative.” And they undoubtedly have a grasp on content marketing basics.

Subscribing to their blog is easy. It’s clearly the primary call-to-action on the site. They seem to be using the email subscription list to generate leads for their conference, but the newsletter guarantees a weekly content nugget promised to brighten my week. It decide it’s worth a shot.

After all, once a week doesn’t seem too overwhelming of a commitment to find out how truly great this email is.

The email

Within seconds of subscribing, I receive an email with the subject line, “Look what you did, you little jerk…” Risky move.

But I grew up on Home Alone and I’m a sucker for a little inside humor. So the headline is great, but the email itself is the real gem.

It’s edgy and chock full of personality. They truly are going above and beyond in attempting to demonstrate their excitement in my joining the email list. I mean buzzers, pushups, and tequila?! I feel so loved!

Two of my team members have to come over to my computer to see what all of the commotion was about. I may not have been joining HustleCon with shots of tequila on top of my desk, but I was definitely enjoying my reading, loudly.

The follow-up

The email also has a challenge to hit reply if anything isn’t up to par. Challenge accepted.

Well, actually, at this point I’ve invested so much time, that I just want to give props. So I respond back with this:

What do you know, as promised, I receive a swift response with video proof attached, as well as a tweet with evidence of the pushups.

.@katykatztx http://t.co/cvitsqAVLI“>http://pic.twitter.com/cvitsqAVLI
— Hustle Con (@HustleCon) August 26, 2015

By now, I’ve invested a good 20 minutes into looking at and engaging with their brand. And I have my whole team talking about how great the email is and how we can adapt their idea for our own audience.

The most impressive part

That in and of itself is impressive since, just as Rand Fishkin recently mentioned in a Whiteboard Friday, I’ve been slowly falling out of love with email as a platform in general.

I know, I know. As a content marketer, I shouldn’t admit that out loud. But most of my subscriptions go straight to the trash can these days. Personally, I’ve been on the hunt for ways to spice up our own email campaigns so that they don’t suffer the same fate.

But the clever email wasn’t what impressed me most about this whole chain of events.

It was the follow-through. The brand took the time to interact with me personally. Now I feel invested with their brand and want to spread the love. They have truly mastered the ever-so-challenging art of showcasing a unique personality online that compels users to want to engage back.

I don’t know about you, but I am definitely going to be looking into this conference next year. I can’t wait to see what else they have to offer.

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The New World of Branding, Resumes and Interviews

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UNWTO/WTM Ministers Summit to address key issues facing destination branding

Destination management organisation are re-evaluating their structures and strategies to adapt to new market trends created by social media and new …

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New name and branding for Scottish Housing Best Value Network

New name and branding for Scottish Housing Best Value Network … as members covering two thirds of the social housing providers in Scotland.

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Submitting a Guest Post? Here Are 12 Things You Should Know About Editors

After having published quite a few guest blog posts, I’ve figured out a thing or two about editors.

While there are certain elements they love to see in a submission, there are also a number of factors that will land you a spot on their list of people they’d rather not work with. Knowing the difference between the two will make it easier for you to earn a spot on their blog. 

So if you want to experience the power of guest blogging, here’s what you need to know abotu working with editors. 

12 Things Guest Bloggers Should Know About Editors

1) They’re in a hurry.

Most people are in a rush, but it seems like editors are especially so. This isn’t to say that they do sloppy work. After all, an editor’s job demands that they be meticulous and detailed. 

In spite of their hawk-eye attention for the tiniest things, they sure can plow through things. They know when brevity is necessary, and they use it.

2) They want to trust you.

Most editors want to get into a trusting relationship with you. Why? Because reliable writers are hard to come by. It’s pretty easy to find someone who writes good copy. But to find someone who writes good copy and can produce on a consistent basis is very difficult.

If you’ve gotten an editor’s attention with a well-written piece of content, then you can be fairly certain that the editor wants to trust you to produce more.

3) They know their audience really well.

If there’s one thing that editors know really well, it’s their audience. A good editor can tell at glance if an article will be helpful for the site’s readers or a dud.

If you’re invited to produce more articles for a site, ask the editors if they have any advice about the kinds of content that their audience wants. Chances are, they’ll be happy to give you some insight and recommendations.

4) They don’t mind rejecting articles.

If your article gets rejected, don’t be offended. It’s all in a day’s work for an editor. Editors of prestigious websites may receive dozens of submissions a day. They simply can’t publish all of them.

Good editors must decide quickly whether they’re going to accept or reject an article. Often times, by necessity, they have to reject most new submissions.

5) They can spot weak articles in a flash.

I don’t have any official numbers, but I’d bet that an editor can tell if an article will work or not in ten seconds or less. Here’s what they might consider:

• A great article starts with a killer headline. If the headline is no good, then the article is gone.
• After the headline, the editor will read the lead sentence or paragraph. If the article doesn’t grab one’s attention from the very start, it’s a no-go.
• Finally, the editor might skim the outline. Many times, a shaky outline means a weak article, and the article is a goner.

If you have a strong title, cogent opening sentence, and solid outline, then your article merits the editor’s attention.

6) They might check your article for plagiarism.

How can an editor tell if your article is copied or an original work? They can run it through a plagiarism checker such as Copyscape.

A Copyscape analysis determines if your content has been published elsewhere on the web.
If you are stealing content, you will get nailed.

7) They aren’t afraid to ask for massive revisions.

Editors have a tough job. They have to please their audience, serve their writers, and adhere to a set of editorial guidelines.

If your article doesn’t 1) meet the audience’s need, or 2) match the editorial standards, then the editor may ask you to revise it. Hopefully, these will just be quick and easy revisions. Sometimes, however, the revisions are extensive, involving removing or adding huge sections of your article.

8) They will ask you for more if your content is good enough.

If you deliver up a great article, then editors will ask you for more. Remember, they’re constantly looking for good, reliable writers.

Editors are tired of having to chase down good writers, respond to inane inquiries, and field poorly-written articles. They want to get the best of the best producing content on their site. A good first article will get you noticed and producing in no time. 

9) They have to respond to a lot of people.

Be patient.

It may take time to get a response from an editor. They get a lot of emails, and may not be able to respond to you right away.

10) They might ignore you.

Don’t take it personally. With the massive amount of content that editors are receiving, they simply can’t respond to everyone’s inquiries or submissions.

The editor isn’t ignoring you, as much as she is managing workflow strategically. The job of an editor involves selectively responding to the emails and submissions that will be best for the site.

If you don’t hear back from an editor in a week or two, it’s okay to be persistent. Just recognize that they’ve got a tough job that makes it difficult for them to email you back.

11) They’re going to hunt down and root out link building.

If you think that guest posting is a quick way to build links, think again. Editors don’t play that game.

Thousands of would-be guest bloggers have been blacklisted from writing for certain websites. Why? Because they tried to make a buck selling links or gaming the system for some easy backlinks to their website.

Editors are trained to sniff it down and cut it out. After all, their jobs are on the line. Besides, they are trying to protect the legitimacy of their brand.

12) They don’t want to proofread your articles. 

Some bigger websites have full-time proofreaders. Their job is to hunt down typos and fix them.
Other websites just have an editor. This person is typically responsible for getting the best content published at the right time, coordinating teams of writers, and ensuring that it all gets pulled off without a hitch. (Typically, such an editor will have the title “managing editor.”)

Because this is true, they want to see grammatically impeccable and stylistically flawless articles. Don’t send your articles in, expecting them to be copyedited and proofread. Sure, editors have the know-how to correct your silly spelling mistakes, but that’s your job … not theirs. 

That said, go the extra mile and proofread your own work before you submit it to a publication. The editors will respect you for it. 

Conclusion

The best way to work with someone is to understand where they’re coming from. It’s helpful for you to try to see their challenges and understand their role.

Editors are a critical part of the web publishing process. The best way to become a guest blogger is to create great content and become a helpful partner to the editors you work with.

Are you an editor? What’s your perspective on guest blogging and working with contributors?

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3 Must-Read Stats on the State of Inbound Marketing in 2015 [New Research]

Every year, the marketing industry undergoes some serious changes. New technology emerges, people’s behaviors change, and as a result, marketers are often left with an entirely different playing field. 

To make better sense of these changes and trends, we did some research and collected insights from 4,000 marketers and salespeople. HubSpot’s new State of Inbound 2015 report is available today, and we have a ton of valuable industry data to share with you.

While the report dives deep into a number of different focus areas, we wanted to highlight a few quick takeaways that really stuck out. That said, check out these three revealing statistics that emerged from the research.

3 Must-Read Stats on the State of Inbound Marketing in 2015 

1)3 out of 4 marketers across the globe prioritize an inbound approach to marketing. 

Okay, so this statistic isn’t really a surprise to HubSpot, but we were extremely heartened to see how inbound has taken off globally.

Inbound is especially popular in smaller organizations, who are running lean and mean marketing teams and leveraging inbound concepts to attract visitors and leads to their brands on a limited budget. Larger organizations have more equally distributed their resources, focusing half their efforts on inbound tactics and half on traditional outbound campaigns like print ads and investment in events.

2) Inbound campaigns achieve higher ROI than outbound.

Marketers who track marketing ROI reported a clear payoff with inbound campaigns. This holds true across different company sizes, regions, and budgets. Inbound campaigns return more value than traditional paid tactics because content generated through inbound has the potential to attract visitors and shares long after the marketer has moved on to their next project. What’s more, marketers who could prove positive ROI are 2x more likely to get higher budgets in the next year compared to those who couldn’t.

The lesson from the data is clear: Inbound creates higher ROI. Tracking and proving ROI makes marketing teams more successful. And successful marketing teams often get more budget.

3) Outbound marketers think outbound marketing tactics are overrated.

Every year we ask marketers to identify the most overrated marketing tactic. We admit that inbound marketers tend to be biased and rate outbound tactics, like paid advertising, as the most overrated. We cut the data to compare the responses of inbound marketers and outbound marketers and got a big surprise. Outbound marketers seem to loathe outbound marketing tactics too.

Perhaps it’s because it’s really hard to measure the success of outbound campaigns, or because once you stop paying for an ad, the flow of leads and contacts immediately disappear. At any rate, this has a lot of interesting ramifications for marketing in general. As marketers move away from traditional marketing channels, what will crop up to fill the gap? Native advertising is now getting its stride, and many brands are further exploring social and interactive advertising. We’ll keep asking this question in future State of Inbound Surveys and track how sentiment changes over the years.

The full State of Inbound report contains even more fascinating insights about today’s sales landscape. Download the full study to discover:

• The #1 challenge marketing teams face globally               
• The #1 priority marketing teams are tackling
• How marketing budgets have changed since last year
• Who’s creating content for marketing teams
• Whether alignment with sales means success within marketing

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Double Your Publication’s Visits from Social In 10 Minutes a Day

You’ve heard it before: The web is a noisy, noisy place. People are inundated with content all day long, from every direction.

Did you know the average person around the world spends 490 minutes of their days consuming media, with 109 of those minutes taken up by the web? And, that every minute people process 4 million Google searches and post 1400 blog posts? For publishers in particular, this noise is increasing rapidly.

With over 800 digital magazines launched in the last year, standing apart isn’t a task for the faint of heart. Surfacing your content to new and existing readers can be exhausting, if not impossible, if you don’t have the right tools in place. 

Social media is one such tool. It’s long been touted as an efficient, easy way to reach both existing and new target audiences. With over 74% of online adults using social media, the sea of fresh eyes these networks provide is vast. While people may not subscribe to your publication because of one post they saw, social media is the ultimate low hanging fruit when it comes to increasing traffic to your website. 

Most publishers understand that social is a powerful resource, yet they still lack the time or resources to focus heavily on these channels. So how you can make the most of your time on social media? Here are several ways you use social media to increase traffic to your content in just ten minutes a day.

Seven Tips to Help Your Publication Increase Traffic From Social Media

1) Posting Something is Better than Posting Nothing

You don’t need to hire a consulting firm or have a dedicated social team. If you post something relevant and valuable to your readers, your audience will find you more so then if you didn’t post anything at all. Don’t spin your wheels for hours getting too hung up on a content strategy. You already know your audience and produce content they love. Draw inspiration for posts from articles in your archives, new features, sponsored content, or other industry publications that you have a relationship with… then get posting. 

2) Use Analytics to Your Advantage

Find out what your top performing content is on your site and reshare it on social channels. You likely already know which articles, videos or guides readers are consuming most frequently and for the longest amount of time. Get more social-specific metrics by using link tracking to see which site traffic or conversions on content offers most commonly result from your social activity. If you have content buckets or topics that you’re already pre-segmenting your content for on your site,  use these categories to track post category performance as well. You may find that one draws more traffic on social than others.

3) Streamline Your Process

Schedule daily posts in one short session that fits into your daily routine. Trying taking ten minutes in the morning to schedule posts for the rest of the day, or ten minutes at the end of the day to prepare for the next day (or week).

4) Repurpose Your Content

As a publisher, content is your greatest asset. You already have a wealth of content, so why not reuse it? If you have an ebook or article that your readers have been responding well to, find new ways to share it. Quotes, images, extra content, behind the scenes looks all make for great Tweets, Youtube videos, and more. One of the great things about social media is that shorter is usually better, so short soundbites often resonate best with your audiences and draw them in to consume more full-length content. 

5) Simplify Your Channels

Focus on executing well across three channels rather than struggling to keep fresh content up on ten. This list might be helpful in narrowing down your choices. Make sure you’re tracking performance, and that each network you consider is a strategic fit based on where your audience lives. While Periscope might be one of the hottest new social networks, as a publisher, you’re better off dedicating your time to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram.

6) Keep Your Marketing Hat On

Just because you are writing a Facebook post or Tweet, doesn’t mean the fundamentals of marketing no longer apply. Use language that tells your readers the benefit of clicking on a link or includes a clear call-to action. Social media is a lead generation tool, and should be treated as such. 

7) Check Results Often

With social media, 10 minutes of analytics every week can can be more helpful than 4 hours once every month. Driving engagement on social requires you to make swift adjustments, often. This doesn’t mean you have run full reports, but keep an eye on how much traffic each post and network is driving to your site on at least a weekly. Start by looking at clicks, shares, likes/favorites on the platform side, and sources of traffic to your site from your own web analytics.

(Bonus points if you can tie visitors who’s first touch came from social to net new subscribers or leads for advertisers.)

At the end of the day, getting readers to your site doesn’t need to be an overwhelming task. And neither does social media. By putting in a focused effort for a short amount of time each day, you’ll see the positive impact it has on your site traffic build over time. 

 

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Twitter Emoji Pizza Order: Hot or Half-Baked?

By now, you’ve probably seen the commercials filled with celebrities ordering Domino’s Pizza through various channels. There’s the smart watch order, the Twitter emoji order, the smart TV order, the text emoji order, and of course, the simple website order.

First of all: Wow. That kind of accessibility across a wide array of mobile and online channels is pretty stunning. It’s designed to grab attention, to impress, to rub other pizza delivery companies’ noses in the fact that Domino’s did it first. They did it first, and then they lined up a star-studded cast to introduce the technology to the world.

Now that we’re done being impressed, let’s decide if omnichannel ordering (and if ever there was an example of omnichannel, this is it) is the way of the future or the way to really irritate your consumers.

Who Benefits?

Aside from Domino’s, which has the world murmuring in muted, impressed tones right now, who really benefits from the ability to order pizza via Twitter emojis? Obviously, the first person that comes to mind is the buyer who loves instant gratification. Then there’s the teen who talks only in emojis and text-speak. Who’s left? Maybe families with weekly pizza nights that feature the same order over and over.

Let’s consider the consumer that’s jonesing for pizza without pomp and circumstance. Who really has the time to call in an order anymore, especially when call waiting and hold buttons are still so widely used? When you go online, you have to take the time to type in all your information, and no one really wants to do that, either. A simple emoji by text or directed @dominos should do the trick.

Those teens and college students who prefer to cut their communication down to smiley faces and other emojis also benefit from the new ordering options. But, setting up an account for easy ordering requires a credit card.

The reality is, creating an account, entering financial information, ordering your first pizza so you can set up your preferences—this all adds up to a kind of frustrating set-up situation, as one emoji-ordering customer discovered.

The Real Story

The set up process for ordering pizza is a bit of a pain, especially for new Domino’s customers. Those willing to go through the process for the instant gratification later might find they’re happy enough in the end. Beyond the initial setup, you must prefer to eat the same pizza over and over again. If you like to change things up, you have to go online or call in your order anyway—you know, the old-fashioned way.

Omnichannel is here to stay, but depending on what your ecommerce company sells, you may need a more robust ordering system than just an emoji. Seems there are a few more bugs to iron out before we get exactly what we need from emoji text and Twitter orders. Or maybe you’re already ordering your pizza of choice! 

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