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Beyond .COM, .ORG & .NET: A Beginner's Guide to Brand Top-Level Domains

For marketers, the domain name system (DNS) can be a little tricky to navigate.

If you’ve ever been tasked with buying a domain name, you’ve probably heard of terms like hyper text transfer protocol, subdomains, top-level domains, and more. Now, whether or not you remember the function of each part is an entirely different story …

So before we dive into anything technical, let’s start with a quick deconstruction.

Example: www.hubspot.com

This address is made up of three main parts: before, between, and after the dot. Before the dot, you’ll find the subdomain (www). Between the two dots, you’ll find the domain name (HubSpot). But what we’re going to dive into below concerns the text that comes after the dot: the top-level domain (TLD).

Back in the 1980s, the internet was introduced to a handful of generic TLDs: .com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov, .int, and .mil. Since then, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has expanded the domain name system, and introduced a new wave of TLDs known as Brand TLDs.

What’s a Brand TLD? Who has one? And how are they using them? Keep reading.

What Are Brand TLDs?

A Brand TLD is like any other TLD (think: .com, .org, or .net), but instead of a generic term, it is the brand’s trademark (think: .bmw, .apple, or .google).

A Brand TLD is proprietary, meaning only the brand can register second level domains such as drive.bmw, mac.apple, or search.google.

In terms of security and innovation opportunities, there are many considerations. It starts with understanding that the DNS is the very foundation of the internet. Without the DNS there is no Internet. Everything runs on the DNS. Owning a proprietary space at the root of the DNS offers opportunities for innovation, security, trust, and control that are entirely new. Never before have brands been able to own a proprietary slice of the Internet at the root level.

In terms of SEO, “early use cases indicate no negative search impact, and even potential benefits,” according to Neustar. “New TLD holders should (as now) focus on building highly relevant content on their .brand and .generic to earn search visibility,” they went on to explain.

However, it’s important that marketers that are considering a switch continue to monitor the impact that these new TLDs have on the brands currently employing them, as it’s too soon to determine the long-term effects.

Why Now?

ICANN is the governing body that sets rules for the internet. In 2008, ICANN approved a program to radically expand the domain name space with the introduction of new TLDs. In 2011, ICANN began accepting new TLD applications from entities across the globe. Any entity could apply to own and operate a new TLD, however, the application fee was a steep $185K.

In 2012, ICANN announced they received 1,930 new TLD applications of which approximately 1,400 were unique, separated into five categories: Generic, Geographic, Community, Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), and Brand. Just over 600 brands applied in Round 1. (You can check out the complete list of brands here.)

What does the program status look like today?

By February 2014, new TLDs began to rollout. As of May 1, 2016, there were 17.2 million new domain names registered across 978 delegated new TLDs. In comparison, this represents approximately 13.5% of the entire .com population (around 125 million), which took 30 years to reach.

As of December 2015, there were a total of 314 million domains registered. As 2016 progresses, we expect to see the remaining 300 to 350 new TLDs delegated to the internet. In fact, ICANN just recently announced the program’s 1,000th delegation, stating that there are nearly 50 times as many generic TLDs now as there were in 2013. It’s expected that the pace of change will accelerate as public awareness and usage grows.

ICANN has committed to future rounds to allow brands and other entities to apply for additional new TLDs. Industry insiders expect Round 2 to be heavily participated by Geographic and Brand TLD applications.

Why Many Big Brands Are Making the Move

According to Neustar’s FAQs of New TLDs list, “new Brand TLDs offer a unique and significant opportunity to drive brand affinity, build trust, enhance security, and engage customers.” And that’s largely why we are starting to witness leading brands deploying initial use cases.

Business leaders are engaging and beginning to understand the new Brand TLD capabilities that can improve business performance. To help illustrate these benefits, let’s take a look at a couple of key selling points:

1) Cost Benefit

Naysayers about these new TLDs complain that applying for and operating a Brand TLD will add significant cost burden to the business, and offers little benefit. And they’re partially right: the initial investment is up there. However, it’s important to consider what it means for the future of brand digital identity management.

For this reason, you should quickly unpack the relative value of a Brand TLD compared to current domain market conditions and status quo domain portfolio practices.

What are domain names worth?

Due to scarcity and the power of language, one word domains can be valued in the millions of dollars. On Wikipedia’s list of most expensive domains, you will find market values ranging from $35 million for insurance.com to $3 million for loans.com.

One-word domains – also referred to in the industry as “category killers” – are extremely valuable. Why? Because they are short, memorable, and mean something to audiences.

Now compare that to the cost to acquire and operate a Brand TLD priced at a few hundred thousand dollars and offering an unlimited number of one-word branded properties that are authentic and trusted. The comparative cost vs. benefit to acquire and operate a Brand TLD is nominal.

What does it cost to protect a brand?

It’s not uncommon for a brand to hold multiple domains for defensive purposes. However, doing so results in significant costs – including registrar outside counsel and internal administrative costs. Layer on legal fees to monitor, file, and administer rights protection such as UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) to recover infringing domain names, and the cost of brand protection is massive.

Then, consider the efficacy of defensive domain activity spend today – and in the future with thousands of TLDs to guard your brand against. It becomes unsustainable from a cost and efficacy point of view.

Brands who own a Brand TLD will educate audiences to trust websites using their Brand TLD. As this education permeates the market, the active use of a Brand TLDs will begin to reduce the expenditure required to protect your brand.

2) New Capabilities

When it comes to Brand TLDs, there are as many use cases as there are business problems. For brands choosing to make the investment, it’s important that they are designing and deploying use cases that specifically address their unique priorities and objectives.

To give you a better sense of how brands are benefiting from the variety of use cases, let’s check out three potential initiatives.

“customer.brand”

“customer.brand” is a customer-centric initiative that can help brands create advocacy-generating experiences.

Brands can leverage new Brand TLD technology to power customer engagement, motivate peer influence, and harness customer intelligence data. For example: An affinity brand like Nike could permit their best fans to use, under certain terms and conditions, a “customername.nike” web presence.

Here brands can harness user-generated content and capture customer data to better serve that customer. Brands could even reward customers with points accumulated by the traffic they generate through social influence.

“channel.brand”

“channel.brand" is a channel initiative to leverage Brand TLD technology to distribute consistent content experiences across their points of sale with the intent to lift channel performance.

For example: Insurance firms use brokers to sell and service customers. If each of those brokers had their own “brokername.amfam” domain, it’s likely that they would not only feel supported by the organization, but they’d also be able to encourage trust from their clients.

“marcom.brand”

“marcom.brand” is a use case for marketers to create simple, elegant, memorable campaign messages, and deliver engaging web experiences that fulfill the message and brand promise.

This is the simplest use case to implement – and the easiest to measure ROI for. To determine the success rate of a campaign on http://ift.tt/1TZuMG4 vs. one using prius.toyota, you’d simply compare campaign KPIs such as response, engagement, and conversion rates.

Considering the Brand TLD is easy to communicate and remember, it presents an excellent opportunity for brands to see increased campaign performance.

(Note: Marcom is an all-encompassing abbreviation for “marketing communications.”)

5 Examples of Brands Getting Involved

In the first quarter of 2016, we saw a big jump in the number of brands deploying use cases for Brand TLDs. Most brands are undertaking simple test-and-learn initiatives, but several are more aggressive with full digital transformations.

Here are a few examples:

1) America Automobile Association: aaa.aaa

AAA launched a Brand TLD site to help website visitors find a club in their area.

2) Bloomberg: bba.bloomberg

Bloomberg is using bba.bloomberg to forward visitors to their login portal for Bloomberg Anywhere – a digital service to keep financial professionals current with the latest business news, data, and analytics.

3) BMW: next100.bmw

BMW designed a website using its Brand TLD to celebrate its 100th anniversary.

4) SEAT: ondinauto.seat

SEAT – a Spanish automobile manufacturer – has set aside nearly one hundred Brand TLD domains to represent its various car dealers. This serves as a great example of the “channel.brand” use case we mentioned above.

5) Canon: global.canon

Canon has begun redirecting traffic from their original domain canon.com to global.canon.

(For even more brand TLD examples, check out brandTLDs.news.)

Should Everyone Make the Switch?

A digital paradigm shift is underway with the expansion of the domain name space. And it’s important to remember that we are in the very early days of this. As the next round is processed, the domain name space will only continue to expand.

A Brand TLD serves as an effective way to secure a brand’s place in this increasingly complex digital ecosystem, where consumers demand authentic and trusted web properties to transact with businesses.

A Brand TLD is not just another domain like your current flagship URL. It is also not just another tool to build a website and engage with audiences. Brand TLDs provide a platform to increase digital trust and innovation at the root of the internet’s infrastructure.

But is a Brand TLD right for your business? Is it really worth the investment? Is it necessary for businesses in every industry? In short: It all depends. And it’s probably too soon to make a definitive determination.

Here’s what we do know: 41% of Brand TLDs were applied for by Fortune 500 companies – mostly financial services, retails, technology, and transportation. For a more detailed look at the current Brand TLD landscape, check out the following chart.

Image Credit: Neustar

Regardless of whether or not your brand falls into one of these verticals, it’s important that you’re (at the very least) aware of the changes going on. At Authentic Web, we recommend you take the following steps to help you begin thinking about the shift:

1. Dig in to understand the market activity and digital implications.
2. Set up a small and empowered working team.
3. Seek out advice from industry experts.
4. Learn from early use cases and ideate on your own.
5. Audit and grade your own domain name lifecycle change management processes.
6. Develop a plan to differentiate and lead in your market.

What do you think about Brand TLDs? How have you seen them used? Do you think it’s the right move? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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4 Techniques to Optimize Your Nonprofit Newsletter

The monthly or bimonthly newsletter is a well-known pillar of nonprofit communications. Organizations use this content piece to educate supporters about their latest achievements and projects, keep donors engaged over time, and lead them to deeper levels of support.

With the outrageous number of messages that the average person receives online, organizations need to optimize their emails or risk ending up in the trash folder. Here are several tips to make sure your nonprofit newsletter reaches supporters and keeps them engaged.

1) Establish the Right Frequency

The frequency of your nonprofit newsletter can make all the difference between staying in subscribers’ inboxes and ending up in their trash—or, worse yet, being unsubscribed from altogether. The key is to send consistent, relevant content often enough to stay top of mind without annoying readers.

Unfortunately, there’s no single correct frequency for all newsletters. Every organization’s subscriber lists have different makeups, so you’ll need to perform tests to understand how often to communicate with your audience. A good starting point is to send an email at least once a month, or once every two weeks. You can then continue to conduct tests on samples from your subscriber list to determine an emailing frequency that generates the highest open and click-through rates.

2) Focus on Subject Lines

Without a great subject line, all of the hard work you put into crafting a fantastic email can go to waste. A generic “January/February/March Newsletter” likely won’t cut it; it’s crucial to invest the time and effort to come up with an intriguing subject line for each of your emails that will make readers want to click.

Your subject lines should be clear, descriptive, and tell readers exactly what they need to know and why it matters. Brevity is also key. Always aim for under 50 characters, but given that the majority of email opens occur on mobile, you may want to focus on subject lines that are 20 characters or less to account for smaller screens. 

In any case, you want to deliver the most important information at the beginning of your subject line so that it can’t be missed. With such little real estate, make sure to cut out any words that don’t add value or let readers know why your email is worth their time. Also consider playing with subject lines that create a knowledge gap, intriguing readers to click through to learn more.

Here’s a snapshot of three nonprofit emails that all play with some of these tactics. The first and third emails listed here create a knowledge gap in their subject lines that makes readers want to find out what they’re talking about. The second email’s subject line is succinct while delivering the most important information right away.

Also notice how these emails all approach their “from” name differently. Whether you use your organization’s name, throw in the word “team” or “staff,” or use the name of a staff member, test different sender names to see which performs best.

3) Prioritize Attractive Design

Your email design should be clean, simple, and easy to read. Its design should guide the reader’s eye linearly from top to bottom, and it should be easy to quickly scroll and read through on a mobile device. For this reason, opt for a single-column layout. This will keep smartphone users happier, since readers on smaller screens would have to scroll horizontally to see a full multi-column email. In any case, you should be delivering responsive emails that adapt beautifully to any screen size in order to accommodate readers who are on the go.

All of your nonprofit newsletters should reiterate your visual branding elements, such as fonts, logo, and signature colors. When you keep these elements consistent across your communications, you reinforce your brand identity, boost your professionalism, and help readers recognize your messages.

Check out how Shining Hope for Communities begins their newsletter with a header image displaying their logo. A high-quality header image is also a great way to quickly capture your reader’s attention as soon as they open your email.  

4) Make It Scannable 

Your readers are typically on the move, especially if they’re reading from their mobile device. Combine this with the fact that the average attention span maxes out at eight seconds, and this means that most people will only spend a few moments reading your email. To sustain their attention and increase your chances of readers clicking through to your website, your messages need to be scannable.

Here are a few tips:

Use bullet points and subheadings where possible. This visually organizes your information and helps readers quickly scan and pick up the main topics. Also determine which information is most important to include in this email. Remember that you can link out to more details and facts with a “Learn More” button, so avoid packing your nonprofit newsletter with unnecessary text.

Use enlarged font sizes. Your text should be legible across mobile devices. To accommodate for small screens, HubSpot recommends using 14 px as a minimum font size for body copy, and 22 px for headlines.

Weave images throughout your newsletter. Not only do high-quality images enhance the overall look of your email and keep readers engaged, they also help break up walls of text and make your newsletter easier to skim. Consider using images of your donors, fundraisers, volunteers, beneficiaries, or photos from the field to delineate each section of your email. 

Keep in mind that some desktop clients and mobile email apps block images by default. To get around this issue, make sure to add alt text, or alternative text, to your images. When images are disabled, the alt text appears in their place, giving readers context that would otherwise be lost.

Balance your text-to-image ratio. Emails with a lot of images may trigger some of your donors’ spam filters, so be sure to balance your images with live text (rather than only using images that display the text). Opt for a 1:1 ratio.

Use whitespace. Whitespace is the blank space between graphics, text, images, and other visual elements on a page. It’s a key component of effective design that draws readers’ eyes to important items in your email—like your CTAs, key text, or images—as well as keeps your newsletter from feeling cluttered. Think of it as giving your readers’ eyes some “breathing room” between your different content pieces.

A well-crafted, beautifully designed newsletter can be a powerful tool to keep supporters engaged with your work. As you optimize different elements of your email, it’s important that you continue to run tests to find what content, delivery schedule, and design work best with your subscriber list. Some extra attention can improve the overall open and engagement rates of your nonprofit newsletter and ultimately power your success.  

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The Essential Guide to Sales & Marketing Alignment [Free Kit + Templates]

Back in 2011, the Aberdeen Group released a study that claimed highly-aligned organizations achieved an average of 32% year-over-year revenue growth, while their less aligned competitors saw a 7% decrease. Today, smarketing continues to serve as one of the largest opportunities for improving business performance.

While aligning your sales and marketing teams sounds like a no brainer, it’s not something that’s going to happen overnight. It’s likely that both sides realize the need to work together to meet their demand and revenue goals, but the two teams are notorious for their complex, and sometimes even contentious, relationship.

To help you navigate this complex relationship, HubSpot has teamed up with Prezi to bring you The Essential Sales and Marketing Alignment Kit. The hope is that as you get closer and closer to total alignment, you’ll find dramatic improvements in your marketing ROI, sales productivity, and overall growth.

In this three-part kit, you’ll get everything you need to align your sales and marketing teams each month, quarter, and year. More specifically, you’ll receive:

• An agenda template for monthly “smarketing” alignment meetings to ensure effective communication.
• A template for service-level agreements (SLA) between marketing and sales.
• Four foundational tips on working and communicating better with your sales team.
• Tips on how to promote collaboration between teams to improve ROI and sales productivity.
• Information on how to open up the right lines of communication to promote healthy, regular teamwork.

Download your copy of The Essential Sales and Marketing Alignment Kit now.

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Is Quora Skirting the Edge of ‘Spammy’ When it Comes to SEO?

Posted by plenipotentiary

Is Quora skirting the edge of spammy SEO? This question came up in a discussion with an SEO colleague recently. Once upon a time, CSS obscured everything on Quora’s questions beyond the first answer to users (even on mobile) while allowing crawlers to read the entire page. A lot of time has since passed since then, so now seems like a good time to revisit Quora to see if we can learn anything from changes made to one of the world’s most popular Q&A sites in terms of SEO.

What Quora is trying to achieve

Quora has very neat and tidy SEO. When you search “site:quora.com” almost all results are category pages for the first couple of dozen results. It’s tempting to think Quora has its SEO all sorted out. After all, this is a website that has a Domain Authority of 90. However I think we SEO professionals know better deep down.

There is no perfect SEO, and especially so when you’re striving to become the world’s leading repository of knowledge. To illustrate the point, I gathered all of the featured categories on Quora’s sitemap page and compared them to the first 100 results for a Quora site search on Google.

We already know that Google doesn’t return the pages with highest page authority in a site search, and that shorter URLs are favored. However, that is an acceptable compromise since we are comparing a relatively large sample of 100 categories from the SERPs and the sitemap. I downloaded the links for the sitemap and Google SERPs using Link Klipper, and compared the resulting CSVs using VLOOKUP in Excel. Only a puny nine categories listed in the sitemap were also in the top 100 search results. The huge disparity between the topics Quora wants to feature prominently for, and the ones that they actually do is evidence towards the difficulty Quora faces to achieve its SEO goals.

These are the 18 categories that exist in the SERPs and the sitemap:

1. Marketing
2. Learning
3. Physics
4. Food
5. Sports
6. Philosophy
7. Science
8. Writing
9. Photography
10. Finance
11. Entertainment
12. Life
13. Business
14. Education
15. History
16. Books
17. Economics
18. Movies

There are some problems I believe are timeless for any Q&A website and I tried to uncover Quora’s best attempts to address them.

My efforts at investigating them led to at least one dead end before leading to a deeper mystery. On one occasion, the journey led to my IP address getting temporarily banned from Quora.

The problems as I saw them are as follows:

1. How to avoid link spam
2. How to avoid duplicate questions
3. How to surface new content quickly
4. How to surface quality content

Humans and bots on the same team, fighting together

Quora’s efforts to combat link spam and avoid duplicate questions are straightforward.

They have moderators and content reviewers who remove links or whole answers where necessary, merge duplicate questions and even remove capitalization from questions that are formatted badly. This is a very manual process. But as a Quora user myself, I think the outcome is great, as it results in better answers getting pooled into fewer questions and discourages spamming.

Two notable aspects of the curation are automated.

There is a Quora Topic Bot dedicated to adding topics to questions, which I believe is one aspect of their SEO strategy (more on this below), and the answer submission engine itself appears to automatically nofollow links to websites with low Domain Authority.

Taken together, this seems to ensure a better reading experience.

Surfacing new content is a major challenge for all large websites. Past a certain threshold, there are so many new user profiles, questions, product listings, etc. that it becomes untenable for Google to crawl all the new content on your site. Quora lists the most recent questions that have been answered on their sitemap, as do many large websites.

Here, I’ll digress slightly as surfacing new content and surfacing quality content come to the same point.

Quora is a massive network in a real way. Internal links pass link juice all the way through from questions to user profiles to other questions, whether a user is following, upvoting or answering a question. New, popular content can rise to the top through user actions. While writing this post, though, I wondered if there were any other ways Quora was promoting content.

For example, when the Olympics are rolling around, I would definitely want to give a boost to the Olympics topic without having to wait for Q&A link juice to flow through user actions to the relevant topic. Depending on Googlebot’s crawl schedule, I could lose a good few days of high traffic that way.

Prying open the mystery inside the enigma, inside the conundrum

To get an overview of the link structure of Quora, I elected to use the Screaming Frog SEO Spider to crawl a chunk of Quora. I decided to let the crawl run overnight at home since I expected it to take a while. The next morning, I was greeted with the unhappy sight of a mostly failed crawl, with tens of thousands of pages that returned a 403 (Forbidden) error.

This was a big setback as I was counting on the results of the crawl to quickly help me understand how Quora is organized. Even though at this point I had a few thousand links crawled, I intended to run it a few different times with different settings to compare results. Since I couldn’t do that, I instead had to manually browse the site and take notes while using a VPN.

To investigate Quora, I figured I would need to see question pages as both a logged-in user and as a logged-out Googlebot. I also figured I would need to run searches in Google to see if the pages I was investigating would show up in the SERPs in unexpected ways.

I used the following:

• User Agent Switcher Chrome extension
• Moz toolbar (for on-page URL highlighting)
• Good old-fashioned search operators

I also did this:

• Disabled and enabled JavaScript for a Chrome window at different times
• Opened one window where I was logged out of Quora and another where I was logged in

Through this research, I posed some varied questions — Where does link juice flow to from questions? Are there any differences between logged-in and logged-out UX? Do questions with no answers get indexed? Are there any unexpected search results for particular queries? — And I tried to answer them in the context of surfacing new, quality content with an eye towards learning new SEO tactics.

The deluge of links

I started with a simple query for “how do i add rss on flipboard.”

Lo and behold, Quora’s is the first SERP result. Browsing the results and a few related questions later, there seemed to be a pattern of heavily linking to related questions. I remembered this as an old feature but it seemed to have disappeared from user feeds. Apparently, though, it’s still present in question pages when viewed in a logged-out state. This is a pretty hefty red flag in my view.

This is in addition to the “related questions” section on the right-hand side and the Top Stories at the bottom. These exist even with JavaScript disabled. With JavaScript disabled, you can’t use infinite scrolling to load more questions, but you still get 20 related questions. Twenty related questions even exist on pages with no answers. Most bizarrely, the right-hand sidebar related questions were overlapping with the feed questions.

So you’re getting two links to the top five questions Quora is promoting. I get that Quora really wants visitors to convert to users, and there is more incentive than usual to show related questions to visitors who aren’t logged in and, hence, probably aren’t registered. This answers the question for me of how Quora would promote a topic with transient popularity like the Olympics.

If the related question’s curation is not handled well, the outcome looks a little like this screenshot below, where a specific question about a particular situation and place gets expanded into generic questions about college and nationality. I don’t believe for a moment that Quora is unaware that these links could be treated as unnatural, but it’s clearly not ringing any bells at Google. Thin content, gratuitous linking — this should be a lightning rod for some black and white Google herbivores.

Apart from the related questions, Quora does some good work passing link juice along through internal links but slapping a noindex on all pages that don’t have to show up in search results. This is an oft-neglected consideration for companies with user profile pages, as realistically the average user doesn’t need and may not want to have their behavior shown publicly. Another benefit of making everything work through links is that an upvote from a particular user will create a link from their profile to the question, which passes link juice.

It is a more SEO-friendly implementation of Facebook’s Like, where liked content shows links to the liking user, but not vice versa. Coupled with the aforementioned Quora Topic Bot, link juice gets passed efficiently to the most popular topics, and again this helps surface new and quality content.

There were three discoveries, in addition to those above, which don’t fit neatly into the categories of SEO problems that Quora faces, but which warrant special mention because of how odd they were.

HTTP misdirection

Quora implements 307 redirects for content indexed under the HyperText Transfer Protocol to the secured version (from HTTP to HTTPs). Since a 307 status code means “moved temporarily,” what Google does is to let the old version remain indexed. However, the new page is also slowly working its way up the rankings. It’s a neat (if shady) exploit of Google’s treatment of 307 redirects. The screenshot below shows exactly what happens. A newer HTTPS page has caught up to the original in terms of rankings.

Following the trail of breadcrumbs

There is also the matter of breadcrumbs in search results. Quora has no breadcrumbs markup that I could find, and the Google Structured Data Testing Tool couldn’t find anything either. Yet, there are countless instances in the SERPs where breadcrumbs are clearly shown.

I have no answer for how this is possible and would be really happy to hear any ideas about this.

Pulling at the thread

The last item is conspicuous by its absence since its common for forum threads to appear in clusters (see screenshot below).

However, to my knowledge, Google has never shown Quora answers in this format, despite there being plenty of questions and answers on Quora that would surely work in this format. For instance, this SERP of questions around Game of Thrones doesn’t give us threads like the one captured in the above screenshot.

If I were to guess, I would say that it could be due to URL structure. Unlike most forums, Quora has a flat URL structure that may make it more difficult for Google to apply the right rules to surface similar content. I wonder if this represents a tradeoff that the engineers at Quora made when deciding on URL structure.

By giving up the possibility of appearing as a cluster of search results, they get a cleaner URL by not having a deep subdirectory structure. Seemingly, the only possible reason to do this would be to increase click-through rates. Without real data, though, this is strictly speculation.

I really believe that Google tries it’s best to give users the best search experience possible, but every once in a while, you stumble across something like this — a big company not so much pushing the limits as obliterating them for its own benefit.

Come on, Google, you’ve already shown us that you’re not afraid to punish the biggest brands in the world. Now show us all spam is the same. Stuffing a bunch of links to related questions on each and every question page, even on stubs, can’t be OK. The use of a 307 redirect when a 301 redirect is probably more appropriate and straightforward merely reinforces the suspicion that both Google and Quora are aware of the duplicate content being served, yet chooses to let it continue.

The lack of identifiable breadcrumbs markup shows me that there is some fascinating engineering going on under the hood of your site, Quora. However, my wonderment has been tainted by some of the other choices you’ve made.

My advice: Clean it up, Quora.

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It's Officially Ridiculous for CEOs to Not Have a Social Presence

It’s Officially Ridiculous for CEOs to Not Have a Social Presence … Sure, having your own professional branding strategy on Twitter isn’t quite the …

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How to Write Good Instagram Captions: 8 Tips for Perfecting Your Copy

At the end of the day, Instagram is all about the visuals. The quality of your photos will be the differentiating factor when it comes to gaining Instagram followers, getting them interested in your brand and what it’s about, and showing off the human side of your business.

But the hard work doesn’t end once you’ve taken that beautiful photo and edited it to perfection. The caption of your post is where you can give a voice to that visual content.

It’s where you can explain what the photo is about, tell your followers to take action, or crack a joke that makes your content all the more delightful and shareable.

If you think of the caption on your Instagram posts as an afterthought, then you’re losing out on an opportunity to engage and delight your followers in ways you can’t with just a visual. Here are some tips to help you write better Instagram captions.

8 Tips for Writing Great Instagram Captions

1) Write several drafts first.

Ever thought of the perfect joke after it was a liiiittle too late to tell it? We’ve all had a similar feeling when we come up with the perfect Instagram caption once we’ve already published the post.

The lesson? Don’t rush the process. Instead, write a few ideas for captions down, sit on them for a bit, poll coworkers on which one is best, and generally take your time.

You might be asking yourself at this point, “But aren’t timeliness and chronology important on Instagram?" They can be, depending on the subject of your post. For example, professional Instagrammer Patrick Janelle says he uses Instagram as a kind of chronological journey of his activities and lifestyle. He likes to post in real time to document what he’s doing at a given moment.

But thanks to the impending Instagram feed algorithm change, the level of engagement your posts receive will soon matter more than chronology. Soon, our Instagram feeds will be ordered to show the moments Instagram thinks we’ll care about the most. The visibility of your posts in your followers’ feeds will depend on the number of Likes and comments a post has, your relationship with the user posting, and other factors.

That’s why it’s important to take your time constructing a great caption that’ll keep your followers around, delight them enough to share with their friends, and encourage them to engage with your content.

2) Front-load the important stuff.

The maximum character count for an Instagram caption (2,200 characters) is basically a formality. But the important thing to note is that captions cut off in users’ feeds after three to four lines of text.

That doesn’t mean you should keep your captions super short so users can see 100% of it without having to click "more.” Instead, frontload your captions with the important content or text calls-to-action – and leave any hashtags, @mentions, or extraneous information for the end.

Here’s an example of an enticing, front-loaded caption from coffee-based skincare company Frank Body:

3) Include a call-to-action.

The best way to increase the shareability of your Instagram post and engage your followers is to have some sort of call-to-action in the captions of your photos. That means using action verbs to prompt people to do something, instead of just passively scrolling by. We found that verbs generate more shares on Twitter than nouns and adjectives – the same can be true for Instagram.

For example, you might say, “double-tap if you find this funny” or “share your story in the comments.”

Here are a few other action-based ideas to get you started:

Ask a question.

Encourage people to comment with their own experiences. You might be able to draw on these experiences to shape your Instagram strategy moving forward, or to come up with new content ideas. To increase engagement and delight your followers even more, respond to users’ answers to make it like a conversation.

H&M: “All you need for a weekend get-away. Where would you go?”

Lorna Jane: “Be you, everyone else is taken. Today’s inspo inspired by our leading lady @ljclarkson - how are you finding your BELIEVE today?”

Direct people to a link in your bio.

Clickable URLs aren’t allowed anywhere except the single “website” box in your bio. That’s why optimized Instagram profiles update that URL frequently to point to their latest blog content, YouTube videos, products, or offers – and then refer to that link in their Instagram captions.

For example, are you running a contest, or want to increase subscribers to your blog? Just change the link, and then post a photo that mentions the new link in its caption.

Pro tip: Use shortened links that include UTM tracking codes so you can see how much of your traffic came from your Instagram page. (Learn how to create UTM codes to track your URLs here.)

To change the link in your bio, go to your profile page and click “Edit Profile.”

Then, simply insert the URL of your choosing into the URL box.

Invite people to tag their friends.

Encourage your followers to share your post with friends by inviting them to tag their friends. Here are a few examples of fun, clever ways brands have asked followers to tag friends.

Frooti: “It’s scrabble day! Tag some friends you’d like to play with.”

H&M: “Planning for a luxe escape with your bestie? Tag your travel partner in crime!”

HubSpot: “Coffee with coworkers make Friday mornings that much brighter. Tag your office coffee buddy - and better yet, take a break!”

Invite people to enter a contest.

Contests are great for increasing engagement and brand exposure on Instagram. 

Simply invite people to post their own pictures and tag them in the caption using a hashtag, like BuzzFeed Tasty does below.

Consider including the contest's official rules in your caption for folks who are interested, and even a link in your bio.

4) Limit yourself to 0-4 hashtags.

On Instagram, a hashtag behaves the same way as it does on Twitter and Facebook: It ties the conversations of different users into one stream. As long as your account is public, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your Instagram post. (Read this blog post to learn more about how hashtags work on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.)

Hashtags are great for connecting users who aren’t otherwise connected to one another, but who are talking about – and interested – in the same topics, events, brands, and so on. They’re also a great way to add some fun and coy humor to your posts, like FOMU did below.

But: Use hashtags sparingly.

Some Instagram users include a string of searchable hashtags as a way to get more followers – but the fact is, it looks spammy to the followers you dohave. If you use a ton of hashtags, people will notice, and they will think it's lame. Limit your hashtags to three or four, tops.

And remember, you don’t have to include any at all if you don’t want to. You don’t need a hashtag to have an awesome Instagram caption. Here’s an example of a good caption with no hashtag from Starbucks:

Use hashtags at the end of your caption.

Unless the hashtagged phrase fits naturally into a sentence, don’t list any hashtags until the very end of the caption. That way, the part of your caption that’s more appealing to humans will come first, making it more user-friendly.

Plus, if your caption is long enough to get cut off, the hashtags that are there to connect people (as opposed to delight people) will be hidden. So the hashtags in this caption:

Will be hidden from folks scrolling by in their Instagram feeds – which is totally fine, since they’re just there for search reasons.

Pro tip: Need inspiration for a hashtag that’s already popular? Instagram will suggest hashtags to you based on their popularity when you open up a new post and type out the # symbol followed by an incomplete search. Here’s an example of that in action:

5) Meld your brand voice with Instagram’s lighthearted tone.

Every social network has a different tone that works best. While serious, jargon-heavy copy may work well on LinkedIn, for example, that same copy won’t work as well on Instagram. The best Instagram posts tend to have a lighthearted, fun tone, showing off the more authentic, human, and personable side of brands. 

That’s why you’ll want to adapt your brand voice for Instagram’s more lighthearted tone. This’ll be easier for brands whose brand voices are already lighthearted and fun, like Wistia’s.

For others with a more serious brand voice, find a balance between sincerity and relatability.

 

Being relatively consistent in your Instagram voice can help you build your brand on the channel. For example, think about how long you’ll typically want most of your posts to be. Do you want to be a storyteller who writes a paragraph or more?

 

“I grew up in India where a woman got married, settled down, and kept a house. I never thought I’d do anything different. I lived a very sheltered existence. I went to a British school, then a women’s college, and then I met my husband. I assumed that I’d be taken care of for the rest of my life. But shortly after we came to America, my husband slipped into a coma and lingered for another fifteen years. We had a small child at the time. I’d never worked before, except for a part-time job in the bookshop at the Met. I was a very quiet person. And suddenly I had to make all of the decisions. I had to get a full time job. It was empowering. I learned that I could be fearless, I could be angry, and I could fight. These were three things that I’d never had to do before. I was thinking recently, that if my husband had lived, he might not have liked who I’ve become.”

A photo posted by Humans of New York (@humansofny) on May 3, 2016 at 9:15am PDT

Or do you need the space to write out instructions, or a recipe?

 

Spinach And Artichoke Cups Here’s what you will need: Yields: About 16 Dip Cups For dip: * 8 oz cream cheese * ¾ cup frozen spinach, defrosted and drained of excess liquid * ½ cup mozzarella * ½ cup romano * ½ cup parmesan * 14 oz can artichoke hearts, quartered * ¼ cup chopped bacon * ¼ cup sour cream * 1 tsp minced garlic * ½ tsp red pepper flakes * 1 tsp dried basil For Cups: * 1 box puff pastry, thawed according to box instructions For Toppings (Optional): * Parmesan cheese Instructions: 1. Preheat your oven to 400˚F/ 200˚C. 2. Combine cream cheese, drained spinach, mozzarella, romano, parmesan, artichoke hearts, bacon, sour cream, garlic, red pepper flakes, and dried basil in a large bowl. 3. Mix until the ingredients are well combined and set aside. 4. Roll out the puff pastry using a rolling pin. 5. Take a jar and press down on the dough to create perfect circles. 6. Once you have all your circles, remove excess dough and repeat steps four and five until you have enough to fill your muffin tin, or until you run out of dough! 7. Take your dough and place it in the muffin tin to create a cup for the dip. 8. Spoon the dip into each cup until they’re ¾ full. 9. Top with parmesan cheese (optional). 10. Bake for 20 minutes at 400˚F/ 200˚C (temperature and time may vary based on the oven) 11. Remove from muffin tin and allow to cool for about 15 minutes. 12. Serve & Enjoy!

A video posted by Tasty (@buzzfeedtasty) on Feb 8, 2016 at 2:06pm PST

Or do you favor a minimalist approach with just a few words?

 

FRIYAY.

A video posted by New England Patriots (@patriots) on May 27, 2016 at 10:57am PDT

When in doubt, be punny. Cleverness tends to perform quite well on social media, especially Instagram. People love when brands crack a joke or include a play on words. JetBlue, for example, is always an excellent source of puns:

Here’s another one from Chobani:

If you’re experience caption writer’s block, the Wall Street Journal’s Elizabeth Holmes suggests playing a word association game or brainstorming with a friend.

6) Use emojis.

Emojis, the cartoon-like emoticons available to most smartphone users, can add some personality to an Instagram caption. That’s why a lot of brands use them in their captions – even the more “serious” brands.

There are a lot of different ways to use emojis in your posts. For example, you can use them at the beginning of post to catch people’s eye, like this:

You can also use them in the middle of sentences to replace words, or at the end of a post as a sort of “punchline,” like this:

 

7) Cross-promote your other social channels.

You can also use your caption to cross-promote your other social media accounts. This is a great way to let your followers know where else on social media they can find you – so that your Instagram followers can become your Twitter followers, your Facebook fans, your Snapchat audience, and so on.

For example, you might promote a campaign that’s taking place on another channel, like Coca-Cola did here:

Pro Tip: If you have a Snapchat account, Snapcodes are perfect for cross channel promotion on your other social media profiles. Every Snapchat user has a unique Snapcode, which is an image that looks like the Snapchat logo but with a unique pattern of dots. To follow you on Snapchat, all users will have to do to is open the Snapchat app, take a photo of your Snapcode, and tap their screen.

Here’s an example from WeWork:

8) When in doubt, keep it brief.

Depending on your audience, your captions might need to be longer than a few words or a sentence. For example, if you’re a food company, you might post entire recipes in your captions – and that’s OK, as long as you’re front-loading the caption with the most important information (like the name of the recipe) so it doesn’t get cut off.

But if you’re not sure what your brand voice is yet, a good rule of thumb is to keep it brief. Some of the best Instagram captions are short punchlines, or in some way make their point quickly and let the visual content do most of the talking.

Coca-Cola: “Goodbye, tan lines. Hello #SpringBreak.”

WeWork: “Every day.”

BuzzFeed Tasty: "Whip it good.“

 

Whip it good.

A video posted by Tasty (@buzzfeedtasty) on Mar 2, 2016 at 6:15pm PST

As you test out different types of posts on Instagram, keep track of how different post types work – including your captions. Instagram doesn’t have a whole lot to offer in terms of analytics, so you’ll have to do this manually. Try listing each post on a spreadsheet and keeping track of its URL, the time it was posted, how many Likes and comments it got, and the types of feedback you’re getting from your followers.

What are your tips for writing the perfect Instagram caption? Share them with us in the comments below.

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