Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What’s New This Week LinkedIn Rolls Out Matched Audiences: LinkedIn introduced Matched Audiences, “a set of targeting capabilities that give you the
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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
If you have an online business, you may be under the assumption that Twitter and Facebook are the only ways to generate leads. A social network site you might be missing out on is Pinterest! Each social site has its own benefits and advantages, which is why it’s important to try a variety of social
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Mike Gingerich contributes a monthly column on Facebook. A Facebook, Social Media, Online Marketing and Business Leader, Mike helps businesses improve lead capture, grow sales, and increase business effectiveness. Mike brings 10+ years building strategies for TabSite and other brands to increase awareness, sales, and maximize ROI in both B2B and B2C companies. His expertise is in developing and outlining effective online marketing and business strategies that deliver results, drive revenue, build healthy companies and yield positive ROI.
How You Can Use Pinterest for Lead Generation by Mike Gingerich -Maximize Social Business
http://ift.tt/2qmB3jWE-commerce companies need highly cost-effective marketing strategies to survive in 2017. Rather than getting distracted by newer platforms like Outbrain, they should stick to using traditional social networks. Native Advertising Isn’t Ideal for Most Ecommerce Companies Demand for eCommerce is growing at a shocking rate. According to recent studies, Americans are expected to increase online
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Why Social Media is Better Than Native Advertising for eCommerce by Ryan Kh -Maximize Social Business
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Do you use Facebook to market your business? Wondering how marketing on Facebook is evolving? To explore how marketers should adjust to Facebook’s recent and future changes, I interview Mari Smith. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy
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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
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Have you thought about what your pop-ups might be doing to your SEO? There are plenty of considerations, from their timing and how they affect your engagement rates, all the way to Google's official guidelines on the matter. In this episode of Whiteboard Friday, Rand goes over all the reasons why you ought to carefully consider how your overlays and modals work and whether the gains are worth the sacrifice.
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Video TranscriptionHowdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about pop-ups, overlays, modals, interstitials, and all things like them. They have specific kinds of interactions with SEO. In addition to Google having some guidelines around them, they also can change how people interact with your website, and that can adversely or positively affect you accomplishing your goals, SEO and otherwise.
TypesSo let's walk through what these elements, these design and UX elements do, how they work, and best practices for how we should be thinking about them and how they might interfere with our SEO efforts.
Pop-upsSo, first up, let's talk specifically about what each element is. A pop-up now, okay, there are a few kinds. There are pop-ups that happen in new windows. New window pop-ups are, basically, new window, no good. Google hates those. They are fundamentally against them. Many browsers will stop them automatically. Chrome does. Firefox does. In fact, users despise these as well. There are still some spammy and sketchy sites out there that use them, but, generally speaking, bad news.
OverlaysWhen we're talking about a pop-up that happens in the same browser window, essentially it's just a visual element, that's often also referred to as an overlay. So, for the purposes of this Whiteboard Friday, we'll call that an overlay. An overlay is basically like this, where you have the page's content and there's some smaller element, a piece, a box, a window, a visual of some kind that comes up and that essentially says, maybe it says, "Sign up for my email newsletter," and then there's a place to enter your email, or, "Get my book now," and you click that and get the book. Those types of overlays are pretty common on the web, and they do not create quite the same problems that pop-ups do, at least from Google's perspective. However, we'll talk about those later, there are some issues around them, especially with mobile.
ModalsModals tend to be windows of interaction, tend to be more elements of use. So lightboxes for images is a very popular modal. A modal is something where you are doing work inside that new box rather than in the content that's underneath it. So a sign-in form that overlays, that pops up over the rest of the content, but that doesn't allow you to engage with this content underneath it, that would be considered a modal. Generally, most of the time, these aren't a problem, unless they are something like spam, or advertising, or something that's taking you out of the user experience.
InterstitialsThen finally, interstitials are essentially, and many of these can also be called interstitial experiences, but a classic interstitial is something like what Forbes.com does. When you visit Forbes, an article for the first time, you get this, "Welcome. Our sponsor of the day is Brawndo. Brawndo, it has what plants need." Then you can continue after a certain number of seconds. These really piss people off, myself included. I really hate the interstitial experience. I understand that it's an advertising thing. But, yeah, Google hates them too. Not quite enough to kick Forbes out of their SERPs entirely yet, but, fingers crossed, it will happen sometime soon. They have certainly removed plenty of other folks who have gone with invasive or overly heavy interstitials over the years and made those pretty tough.
What are the factors that matter for SEO?A) TimingWell, it turns out timing is a big one. So when the element appears matters. Basically, if the element shows up initially upon page load, they will consider it differently than if it shows up after a few minutes. So, for example, if you have a "Sign Up Now" overlay that pops up the second you visit the page, that's going to be treated differently than something that happens when you're 80% or you've just finished scrolling through an entire blog post. That will get treated very differently. Or it may have no effect actually on how Google treats the SEO, and then it really comes down to how users do.
Then how long does it last as well. So interstitials, especially those advertising interstitials, there are some issues governing that with people like Forbes. There are also some issues around an overlay that can't be closed and how long a window can pop up, especially if it shows advertising and those types of things. Generally speaking, obviously, shorter is better, but you can get into trouble even with very short ones.
Can that element easily be closed, and does it interfere with the content or readability? So Google's new mobile guidelines, I think as of just a few months ago, now state that if an overlay or a modal or something interferes with a visitor's ability to read the actual content on the page, Google may penalize those or remove their mobile-friendly tags and remove any mobile-friendly benefit. That's obviously quite concerning for SEO.
C) ContentSo there's an exception or an exclusion to a lot of Google's rules around this, which is if you have an element that is essentially asking for the user's age, or asking for some form of legal consent, or giving a warning about cookies, which is very popular in the EU, of course, and the UK because of the legal requirements around saying, "Hey, this website uses cookies," and you have to agree to it, those kinds of things, that actually gets around Google's issues. So Google will not give you a hard time if you have an overlay interstitial or modal that says, "Are you of legal drinking age in your country? Enter your birth date to continue." They will not necessarily penalize those types of things.
Advertising, on the other hand, advertising could get you into more trouble, as we have discussed. If it's a call to action for the website itself, again, that could go either way. If it's part of the user experience, generally you are just fine there. Meaning something like a modal where you get to a website and then you say, "Hey, I want to leave a comment," and so there's a modal that makes you log in, that type of a modal. Or you click on an image and it shows you a larger version of that image in a modal, again, no problem. That's part of the user experience.
Conditions matter as well. So if it is triggered from SERP visits versus not, meaning that if you have an exclusionary protocol in your interstitial, your overlay, your modal that says, "Hey, if someone's visiting from Google, don't show this to them," or "If someone's visiting from Bing, someone's visiting from DuckDuckGo, don't show this to them," that can change how the search engines perceive it as well.
It's also the case that this can change if you only show to cookied or logged in or logged out types of users. Now, logged out types of users means that everyone from a search engine could or will get it. But for logged in users, for example, you can imagine that if you visit a page on a social media site and there's a modal that includes or an overlay that includes some notification around activity that you've already been performing on the site, now that becomes more a part of the user experience. That's not necessarily going to harm you.
Where it can hurt is the other way around, where you get visitors from search engines, they are logged out, and you require them to log in before seeing the content. Quora had a big issue with this for a long time, and they seem to have mostly resolved that through a variety of measures, and they're fairly sophisticated about it. But you can see that Facebook still struggles with this, because a lot of their content, they demand that you log in before you can ever view or access it. That does keep some of their results out of Google, or certainly ranking lower.
I think this is what Google's ultimately trying to measure and what they're trying to essentially say, "Hey, this is why we have these issues around this," which is if you are hurting the click-through rate or you're hurting pogo-sticking, meaning that more people are clicking onto your website from Google and then immediately clicking the Back button when one of these things appears, that is a sign to Google that you have provided a poor user experience, that people are not willing to jump through whatever hoop you've created for them to get access your content, and that suggests they don't want to get there. So this is sort of the ultimate thing that you should be measuring. Some of these can still hurt you even if these are okay, but this is the big one.
Best practicesSo some best practices around using all these types of elements on your website. I would strongly urge you to avoid elements that are significantly harming UX. If you're willing to take a small sacrifice in user experience in exchange for a great deal of value because you capture people's email addresses or you get more engagement of other different kinds, okay. But this would be something I'd watch.
There are three or four metrics that I'd urge you to check out to compare whether this is doing the right thing. Those are:
So those four will help tell you whether you are truly interfering badly with user experience.
On mobile, ensure that your crucial content is not covered up, that the reading experience, the browsing experience isn't covered up by one of these elements. Please, whatever you do, make those elements easy and obvious to dismiss. This is part of Google's guidelines around it, but it's also a best practice, and it will certainly help your user experience metrics.
Only choose to keep one of these elements if you are finding that the sacrifice... and there's almost always a sacrifice cost, like you will hurt bounce rate or browse rate or return visitor rate or time on site. You will hurt it. The question is, is it a slight enough hurt in exchange for enough gain, and that's that trade-off that you need to decide whether it's worth it. I think if you are hurting visitor interaction by a few seconds on average per visit, but you are getting 5% of your visitors to give you an email address, that's probably worth it. If it's more like 30 seconds and 1%, maybe not as good.
Consider removing the elements from triggering if the visit comes from search engines. So if you're finding that this works fine and great, but you're having issues around search guidelines, you could consider potentially just removing the element from any visit that comes directly from a search engine and instead placing that in the content itself or letting it happen on a second page load, assuming that your browse rate is decently high. That's a fine way to go as well.
If you are trying to get the most effective value out of these types of elements, it tends to be the case that the less common and less well used the visual element is, the more interaction and engagement it's going to get. But the other side of that coin is that it can create a more frustrating experience. So if people are not familiar with the overlay or modal or interstitial visual layout design that you've chosen, they may engage more with it. They might not dismiss it out of hand, because they're not used to it yet, but they can also get more frustrated by it. So, again, return to looking at those metrics.
With that in mind, hopefully you will effectively, and not too harmfully to your SEO, be able to use these pop-ups, overlays, interstitials, modals, and all other forms of elements that interfere with user experience.
And we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
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http://ift.tt/2oD7H4vWhen it comes to social media, trends change really quick. Marketers should adapt to these changes if they want to stand out in the crowd when promoting the companies and the products they work for. As Neil Patel says in his step by step guide on how to do social media marketing: Social media is
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Robert Katai contributes a monthly column on Instagram. Robert is a Visual Marketer, Blogger and Brand Evangelist Bannersnack. Passionate about visual marketing, Instagram, content marketing and always up to date with the latest trends.
How To Hack Your Instagram Game in 2017 With These Trends by Robert Katai -Maximize Social Business
http://ift.tt/2plzZNKSeth Price and I wrote (and designed) a book together. He and I just got our buddy Jay Baer online to talk about its topic: personal branding. ‘Twas a quickie and a fun little three-way interview.
See, in addition to releasing The Road to Recognition: The A-to-Z Guide to Personal Branding, we’re creating plethora of bonus content including a series of interviews with “Recognition Rock Stars,” like Jay (don’t call me Drew Carey) Baer.
After bantering about which celebrities Jay is accused of looking and sounding alike, the beauty of baldness, and a vulgar book title that sometimes appears when Seth does a search for his name, we got to talking about the history, and development of, a brand called Jay Baer.
You’ll enjoy it.
Highlights from the 24-minute interview are below.
A Fearless SpeakerSeth: I discovered you watching you speak. You command the stage and tell stories that relate to customer service and marketing in a way that I hadn’t seen before. How did that evolve? You just didn’t wake up one day and command the stage. You seem to have perfected the craft.
Jay: I appreciate that. Yes and no. My mom is an English teacher. My dad is very effusive. My aunt is a big-time corporate trainer. So I wasn’t raised in a house where people were shy about speaking, and I just always was okay with it—never scared.
As a sophomore in high school, I was the guy who was the MC of everything, like every pep assembly, every talent show. But once I started doing it professionally—and it wasn’t just sort of a hobby—and was like, “Yeah, this is actually a significant part of what I do,” then it’s just being smart about it, and practice, and practice, and practice.
I’ve got a tremendous number of great coaches who I work with all the time. But I will tell you where the big shift to me was. You mentioned storytelling. Probably five years ago or so, I was talking to a couple of coaches and they said, “You have lots of stories.” They’re like, “Why isn’t that story in one of your talks?” That was a huge kind of light bulb for me.
I just am working on a new talk right where it’s the same kind of thing. It’s actually more of a stand-up style approach. With most stand-ups, especially in modern comedy, it’s almost always self-referential and self-experiential. So I try to do that now more and more. In my speaking, it has actually really worked out, but it was very, very hard to do that for a long time.
10 Years of Heavy NetworkingBarry: I’m going to quote The Visible Expert. I love this book from Hinge Marketing with research on how to accelerate your path to building a powerful personal brand. Lee Frederiksen and his team wrote about and quotes you:
“My network was built on chicken wings and Bud Light. There is no substitute for getting out there and working hard and meeting people.”
Talk to us about some of the lessons that you’ve learned with regard to networking.
Jay: I am deceptively youthful-looking, but an old man. So I started doing all this in the pre-internet days, or at least very, very early when nobody actually knew what the internet was. When I used to live in Phoenix, for years, I went to at least four networking events every week. So I would go to 200 a year. It got to the point when I knew everybody in Phoenix that I needed to know.
That wasn’t because I had a personal brand, or a blog, or a podcast, or a video show, and I wasn’t even doing any speaking then either. It was just that I had put so much time into it that you just kind of ended up hooking up—you just get wired into the town. That kind of work enabled my company at the time to be the number one online marketing strategy firm in the Southwest for about five to six years in a row.
People lose that idea now. It cracks me up when I hear people, typically younger people, who come up to me and say, “Boy, I know I really should be out there doing more in social media and creating more content and working on my personal brand, but it’s just too hard. It takes up too much time.”
I’m like, “Too much time?” All you’ve got to do is sit at your desk in your underpants and send some emails and type some tweets. Give me a break, man! Try having to go to Rotary and Lions and Kiwanis and the Moose Club every night for ten years.
Competitors are just collaborators that you haven’t gotten around to doing a deal with yet.
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H is for Helping
Seth: One of the things that you do really naturally—and we have a chapter on the book about it—“H is for Helping.” Barry and I experienced it because you wrote the foreword for our book.
Jay: Make sure you buy the book. It’s awesome. (Now available in hard cover and Kindle on Amazon.)
You’re going to learn a lot. And buy a couple of copies. I guarantee, ten pages into it—actually probably just read the amazing foreword—you’re going to want to give that book to somebody else. So buy at least two.
Seth: The point that I was getting at is you and I were in this speaking group together, and you were amazingly generous, with your time, with your advice and encouragement. It seems to be part of your DNA. Talk to us about how that impacts your business.
Jay: Thank you. I think it is part of my DNA, and I’ve always operated like that going back 25 years. Here’s my operating principle, and I genuinely believe this. Maybe it’s corny, but I feel like everybody is competition, but nobody is competition. Competitors are just collaborators that you haven’t gotten around to doing a deal with yet.
So I’m always thinking about the long game. And one of the things that bothers me about business people and folks who are really struggling to achieve their personal branding vision is that they’re always looking at such a short-term horizon. It’s like, “Well, what am I going to do this month, or how is my business doing this quarter, or what do I want my personal brand to be by the end of the year?” And I’m like, “No, no, no. You’ve got to be thinking three, five, ten years down the road.”
A lot of the decisions I make today are not going to pay off for me for three, five, seven, ten years. And I’m totally okay with that. That’s just how I’ve always operated.
The Trick to Running a Successful BusinessBarry: We have a chapter about targeting. We have a chapter about creating a unique selling proposition, whereby you sort of perfect your niche and your elevator speech. And then we have a chapter called “Y is the You Do List,” which is about making choices, the things that you do daily and quarterly and long-term, like you just talked about.
I’m quoting you from The Visible Expert, again, which you could call a book about personal branding. You say “Every year we look at we’ve done. We come up with a list of 15 percent of activities that didn’t get us ahead, and we stop doing them. The trick to running a successful business is to figure out what you’re uniquely qualified to do and then do only that.” I love that.
Jay: People have asked me in the past, “When did you know you made it, or how do you define success?” I get those kind of questions sometimes on entrepreneurship podcasts, and I always answer it the same way. I am there and have been for a while, because I define success thusly: I only spend time on things I want to spend time on—period.
We don’t take clients we don’t want to take. We don’t do projects we don’t want to do. I don’t do podcasts I don’t want to appear on. I decide 100 percent how I spend my time. To me, if you can get to that point, everything else is just gravy. Money is gravy.
One of the ways we have been able to do that as an organization at Convince & Convert is by being wise about who does what and how our resources are deployed. So one of the classic traps entrepreneurs make—and people who I think are interested in personal branding are entrepreneurs of their own success—whether you’re self-employed or not is irrelevant. If you’re interested in personal branding, you are starting a business, and that business is your own recognition. It is a company of your own design.
One of the traps is to say, “I have to do all the things. Because I’m really good at all the things, therefore I must do all the things.” What we do at Convince & Convert is every year we audit my time, and we try to take 15 percent of that time away and give it to somebody else on the team. What happens is that the number of things that I do get smaller, but I’m more concentrated on those things. The more you devote your time to those things, the better off you will be.
Look, I’m not embarrassed to admit, we have a community manager at Convince & Convert who does some of my social media. I mean she sends tweets under my name and does some other stuff under my name. I obviously know what’s going on generally speaking, but I’m not so foolish as to suggest that I have to type every single letter of every single tweet. I don’t have time for that. Nor am I uniquely qualified to do.
Seth: I think that’s one of the entrepreneur’s dilemmas—relinquishing control is the hardest thing.
Jay: That’s such a great point, Seth, and I couldn’t agree more. A lot of times you’re more scared, because you’re like, “If ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Like, I’ve been a control freak forever. Why do you tell me to not be a control freak? Because the reason I’m successful was because I’m a control freak. It’s like, yeah, but at some point you start bumping up against your natural level.
Barry: Somebody asked me once, “Do you have an assistant?” And I said no, and they go, “That means you are an assistant.”
Jay: I love that.
We BS-ed a bit more after that. Watch.
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http://ift.tt/2pprVOdCorporate blogging has now become almost a necessity in the online world. It’s a great way to build traffic to your website, keep your customers happy and loyal and much more. But what do you do when you’re not getting any positive results from blogging? In this blog post, I’m going to share the most
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Lilach Bullock contributes a monthly column on blogging. Highly regarded on the world speaker circuit, Lilach has graced Forbes and Number 10 Downing Street. She’s a hugely connected and highly influential entrepreneur. Listed in Forbes as one of the top 20 women social media power influencers and was crowned the Social Influencer of Europe by Oracle. A recipient for a Global Women Champions Award for her outstanding contribution and leadership in business. When Lilach isn’t working she enjoys spending time with her family and is an avid fan of Zumba. +Lilach Bullock
6 Common Corporate Blog Mistakes That Prevent Your Success by Lilach Bullock -Maximize Social Business
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Want to connect more with your target audience? Wondering how to deliver relevant social media content consistently? Planning your social media content delivery keeps your marketing on-message, making it more likely that you’ll reach your business goals. In this article, you’ll discover how to create a social media marketing content plan for your business. #1:
This post How to Create a Social Media Marketing Content Plan in 7 Steps first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
When it comes to influencer marketing, there’s a serious trade-off between audience size and reach. That’s where your brand can benefit from micro-influencers.
Takeaways
Zontee: Is there such a thing as being too popular? When it comes to influencer marketing, there’s a trade off between audience size and reach, and that’s where companies can benefit from working with micro-influencers.
Hi, I’m Zontee Hou, senior strategist at Convince & Convert, and today I wanna talk to you about why micro-influencers can be a great way to build credibility and reach niche audiences for many brands. A recent article from Digiday highlighted a study that showed that organic reach for accounts on Instagram that are one to 10 million followers have 1.7 percent engagement rate, which is less than half of the engagement rate that is found for posts from accounts that are only one to 10,000 followers.
Now, on one hand that doesn’t seem so surprising, right? But it means that we can focus on working with many individual niche influencers who can then total to have more deep connection and deep reach with their audiences than just one single, large influencer. And for companies, this can be really beneficial because these are influencers who can speak more credibly to their specific niches, and they are more likely to be influencers who are engaging on a more frequent basis with their audience, and so there’s a high level of credibility.
And this level of credibility with these micro-influencers doesn’t have to exist just online. In fact, I’m reminded of a case study from the book Cooking Up a Business by Rachel Hofstetter in which she talks about the snack company Popchips. Well, you might have seen Popchips products all over the place now, but back when they were rolling out, they focused on having a big micro-influencer outreach during their rollout into the northeast through New York City. And what they did was actually reach out to people across, not only media, but also arts and other influential spaces and send them just a killer snack box. And once they received that snack box and enjoyed it, there was also a card in there handwritten by somebody from their actual team that said, “Hey, you know, Jane, if you enjoyed the snack box, we’d love the names of three other people who you’d like to share this with, and we’ll send it on your behalf.” And so, it really allowed them to tap into the network effect of these micro-influencers, and reach, not only them, but other people. Because here’s the thing: It’s not just about reaching people with the biggest stage. It’s actually about reaching people who are going to be advocates for your brand over time, and winning them over.
And so, that brings me to my last fact about micro-influencers. A recent article in Adweek highlighted it in the best way, which was that they said we have a big blind spot when it comes to marketers and working with micro-influencers. We have a tendency of thinking about influencer marketing in terms of campaigns, but the truth is that we have to build relationships over time in order to get these people to talk about our products again and again and again, and to be those advocates who are gonna share and spread the word about our products.
So, that’s the takeaway that I’m gonna leave you with, and as always, we wanna hear from you. So, if your company has worked with micro-influencers, or is thinking about it, we’d love to hear about what you think are the main challenges. Leave a comment in our blog post, or shoot us a note, and I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks, and see you next week.
http://ift.tt/2p4SSGzI read an interesting fact the other day that 1.4 billion people around the world send over 50 billion messages each day to communicate with one another. Facebook’s What’sApp and Messenger have around one billion monthly active users each and WeChat around 900 million. I encourage you to stop for a moment and think about the enormity of these numbers. They are staggering, and they are going to continue to grow.
Messaging as a conversation and interaction interface has fundamentally shifted how we communicate with one another (when was the last time you called someone for a quick question?), and it is about to shift how people communicate with your company.
The format has taken off because it is inherently easy to use, is convenient, is contextual, and is expressive. Most importantly, it supports effortless customer service interactions. All one has to do is look for a brand’s name on a social network or messaging app and start communicating.
There are many conflicting definitions of messaging, but at Sparkcentral, we define messaging as text-based messages sent from social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, from messaging apps such as Messenger, WeChat, and WhatsApp to those from mobile devices such as SMS and in-app. Think of it as a conversation format that can be maintained across all of these mediums.
JetBlue uses Twitter’s Direct Message to message with customers regarding any service questions with humor and ease.
Messaging is primed to become the new standard in customer service.
Messaging is about to shift how people communicate with your company.
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Messaging Is Asynchronous
Think about how you message your friends and family. You send an iMessage, SMS, Facebook, or What’sApp message, and go about your other business. When your friend responds, you get a notification on your home screen or in the app. The same applies to communicating with brands. In fact, nine out of 10 people would prefer to message a business because doing so is convenient and does not interrupt their day. Traditional support channels like phone, email, and chat put the burden of work on the customer to call or email and often force them to wait to get help. With messaging, customers get notified of your response and can respond accordingly.
Messaging Provides a Threaded, Continuous Conversation HistoryUnlike most customer service interactions today, such as phone and live chat, which are based on sessions, conversations can continue where they last left off. This means that customers don’t have to repeat themselves every time they reach out to a company. Research has found that customer service interactions that make the customer repeat information, reach out multiple times, and generally add hassle factors to the process are four times more likely to drive customer disloyalty. With messaging, both the consumer and the brand have a history of past interactions, which makes follow-ups easier and more convenient, reducing the effort required to resolve the issue on both sides.
Companies that have adopted messaging as customer service channels achieve a 2.9 times greater annual increase in NPS compared to “All Others” (12.3 percent versus 4.3 percent). Additionally, research has found that employee engagement rates also increase as the format makes service agents jobs easier.
Messaging Is Quick, Convenient, and the Preferred Form of CommunicationPeople lead increasingly busy lives, and being held hostage by the phone or live chat doesn’t help in the matter. Some issues take time to solve, and instead of having to sit and wait while the rep troubleshoots, the customer can just go about their business. Companies can message the customer when there is news or they need additional information, which saves time and money on both sides. With email, you have no way of knowing if your problem is being dealt with, and most live chat sessions expire if your attention is diverted to other issues, forcing you to start all over again.
Messaging Is Contextual, Supporting All Kinds of MediaMessaging as an interaction interface is built to support operational and transactional messages. Brands can send customers boarding passes, receipts, shipping notifications, and more via messaging apps and even more within their own apps. Customers can respond directly to those messages and get help without having to look up phone numbers and repeat themselves to another agent.
Many companies are also leveraging structured messages (think flight delay notifications, shipping confirmations, etc.) and chatbots over messaging apps such as Messenger in order to provide customers with pertinent information in one convenient place.
Messaging Is ExpressiveGIFs, emoji, images, and video can all be leveraged in messages making it an entirely more expressive medium than phone, email, or chat. Many critics of digital servicing argue that text-based formats remove the human element from exchanges, yet messaging has been built to enable people to share emotions and express themselves in fundamentally new ways.
Emoji, in particular, have entered the mainstream with brands and people utilizing them to express humor, happiness, and even anger. Similarly, GIFs can be shared to express sarcasm and humor in a way that is often lacking on phone-based customer support. Customer service on messaging apps and interfaces works because it is a fundamentally familiar form of communication for most of the world’s population.
The Time to Get Started Is NowTo get started, I recommend that you begin by building your process and workflows to support digital care on the most commonly used social channels and messaging apps of today (Facebook, Twitter, Messenger, WeChat) and then moving from there towards owned (in-app, web) messaging channels. A recent report sponsored by Sparkcentral found that 41 percent of organizations surveyed currently use messaging as part of their channel mix for customer service conversations, and 15 percent of brands are considering adopting a messaging platform for customer service in the near future.
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http://ift.tt/2pi3rnXEdison Research has just about cornered the market on podcast research and podcast statistics, and their new report, The Podcast Consumer 2017, continues the trend with a deep-dive into the demographics of American podcast listeners.
In January and February of 2017, Edison surveyed 2,000 people ages 12 and older about their audio and social media habits.
I absolutely encourage you to grab the full report (no cost) here. Meanwhile, here are the findings I found most interesting.
60 Percent of Americans Are Familiar with the Term ‘Podcasting’
I believe this finding to be a good sign for podcasting, as it means that two-thirds of the people who have heard of podcasts (see above) have actually listened to a podcast. That strikes me as a modestly strong ratio of awareness-to-trial. By way of a totally unfair, straw man example, two-thirds of Americans have tried sushi, and I presume awareness of the concept of sushi hovers around 100 percent.
56 Percent of Podcast Listeners Are MenIs it because they have more listening windows? Is it the topics of podcasts? The reason has yet to be discerned, but among the 67 million people who listen to at least one podcast per month, 56 percent identify as men.
84 Percent of Podcast Listeners Are Under Age 55As I wrote about in “the 11 critical 2017 podcast statistics,” podcast listeners are younger than America as a whole, but the podcast community is no longer dominated by the young.
Recent Podcast Listening Growth Powered by 25 to 54 Year-oldsIn the past year, monthly podcast listeners ages 25 to 54 increased 29 percent, with listenership among younger and older Americans staying essentially flat. This may be driven by an expansion in listening devices (in-car, Spotify, Amazon Echo and Google Home) and/or the explosion in podcast options.
45 Percent of Podcast Listeners Have a Household Income of $75,000 or MorePodcast listeners are a relatively affluent group. Compared to America as a whole, monthly podcast listeners are 29 percent more likely to have a HHI of $75,000 or more. Combined with the large ratio of podcast listeners in the coved 25 to 54 demographic, this is why advertisers are starting to seek out podcast sponsorship opportunities.
85 Percent of Podcast Listeners Have Attended CollegePodcast listeners are also an educated group, as they are nearly 20 percent more likely to have attended college at some point, compared to the U.S. population as a whole. And among people who have secured a four-year college degree, the difference is even more striking, with podcast listeners 40 percent more likely to have done so.
Public Radio is a Major Engine of Podcast ConsumptionThis is perhaps not a surprise, as even a cursory glance at top podcast charts will show a wide variety of shows produced by public radio (This American Life, et al.). But the effect these podcasts have on the overall podcast listening community is really quite significant. In fact, among people who listen to public radio podcasts, 55 percent of them subscribe to one or more shows.
Podcast Listeners LOVE Social MediaAmericans who listen to podcasts at least monthly use every social media platform more than non-listeners—in some cases, significantly so. For instance, 34 percent of Americans use Instagram, but 48 percent of podcast listeners do so. Twitter sees an even more pronounced effect, with 41 percent of podcast fans using the platform, compared to 23 percent of Americans at-large. Linkedin sees an almost identical pattern, at 39 percent versus 22 percent.
Also, podcast listeners are 23 percent more likely to use social media “several times per day” compared to American social media users who do not listen to podcasts.
Get your copy of the free report: The Podcast Consumer 2017
http://ift.tt/2qebgu6Picture this: You’ve been told that infographics are a great way to engage your audience, so you find an online tool and spend a couple of hours designing what you believe to be an amazing infographic. And then you publish it. And no one seems to care. Finding ways to come up with engaging and
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Nadya Khoja contributes a monthly column on Infographics. Nadya is a Visual Content and Digital Marketing Specialist. She is part of the team at Venngage, an online infographic maker. Nadya has a B.A. with Specialized Honours in Devised Theatre and a Master's Degree in Digital Media with a focus on Audience Engagement and Immersive Experiences. When she has time, Nadya directs, produces and sound designs for experimental and interactive performances.
4 Principles For Coming Up With Better Infographic Ideas by Nadya Khoja -Maximize Social Business
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Do you use hashtags in your Instagram posts? Wondering which hashtags resonate best with your target audience? Choosing the right tool to analyze Instagram hashtag performance makes it easier to achieve your goals. In this article, you’ll discover five tools to evaluate the performance of your Instagram hashtags. #1: Command Analytics & Stats for Instagram
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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
Posted by jonoalderson
Websites, like the businesses who operate them, are often deceptively complicated machines.
They’re fragile systems, and changing or replacing any one of the parts can easily affect (or even break) the whole setup — often in ways not immediately obvious to stakeholders or developers.
Even seemingly simple sites are often powered by complex technology, like content management systems, databases, and templating engines. There’s much more going on behind the scenes — technically and organizationally — than you can easily observe by crawling a site or viewing the source code.
When you change a website and remove or add elements, it’s not uncommon to introduce new errors, flaws, or faults.
That’s why I get extremely nervous whenever I hear a client or business announce that they’re intending to undergo a "site migration."
Chances are, and experience suggests, that something’s going to go wrong.
Ouch. #ecomchat #seo http://pic.twitter.com/flgncLVJBTMigrations vary wildly in scope
— Mark Cook (@thetafferboy) February 26, 2017
As an SEO consultant and practitioner, I've been involved in more "site migrations" than I can remember or count — for charities, startups, international e-commerce sites, and even global household brands. Every one has been uniquely challenging and stressful.
In each case, the businesses involved have underestimated (and in some cases, increased) the complexity, the risk, and the details involved in successfully executing their "migration."
As a result, many of these projects negatively impacted performance and potential in ways that could have been easily avoided.
This isn’t a case of the scope of the "migration" being too big, but rather, a misalignment of understanding, objectives, methods, and priorities, resulting in stakeholders working on entirely different scopes.
The migrations I’ve experienced have varied from simple domain transfers to complete overhauls of server infrastructure, content management frameworks, templates, and pages — sometimes even scaling up to include the consolidation (or fragmentation) of multiple websites and brands.
In the minds of each organization, however, these have all been "migration" projects despite their significantly varying (and poorly defined) scopes. In each case, the definition and understanding of the word "migration" has varied wildly.
We suck at definitionsAs an industry, we’re used to struggling with labels. We’re still not sure if we’re SEOs, inbound marketers, digital marketers, or just… marketers. The problem is that, when we speak to each other (and those outside of our industry), these words can carry different meaning and expectations.
Even amongst ourselves, a conversation between two digital marketers, analysts, or SEOs about their fields of expertise is likely to reveal that they have surprisingly different definitions of their roles, responsibilities, and remits. To them, words like "content" or "platform" might mean different things.
In the same way, "site migrations" vary wildly, in form, function, and execution — and when we discuss them, we’re not necessarily talking about the same thing. If we don’t clarify our meanings and have shared definitions, we risk misunderstandings, errors, or even offense.
Ambiguity creates riskPoorly managed migrations can have a number of consequences beyond just drops in rankings, traffic, and performance. There are secondary impacts, too. They can also inadvertently:
I should point out that there’s nothing wrong with hustle in this case; that, in fact, begging, borrowing, and stealing can often be a viable solution in these kinds of scenarios. There’s been more than one occasion when, late at night before a site migration, I’ve averted disaster by literally begging developers to include template review processes, to implement redirects, or to stall deployments.
But this isn’t a sensible or sustainable or reliable way of working.
Mistakes will inevitably be made. Resources, favors, and patience are finite. Too much reliance on "hustle" from individuals (or multiple individuals) may in fact further widen the gap in understanding and scope, and positions the hustler as a single point of failure.
More importantly, hustle may only fix the symptoms, not the cause of these issues. That means that we remain stuck in a role as the disruptive outsiders who constantly squeeze in extra unscoped requirements at the eleventh hour.
Where things go wrongIf we’re to begin to address some of these challenges, we need to understand when, where, and why migration projects go wrong.
The root cause of all less-than-perfect migrations can be traced to at least one of the following scenarios:
There’s a common theme in each of these cases. We’re not involved early enough in the process, or our opinions and priorities don’t carry sufficient weight to impact timelines and resources.
Chances are, these mistakes are rarely the product of spite or of intentional omission; rather, they’re born of gaps in the education and experience of the stakeholders and decision-makers involved.
We can address this, to a degree, by elevating ourselves to senior stakeholders in these kinds of projects, and by being consulted much earlier in the timeline.
Let’s be more specificI think that it’s our responsibility to help the organizations we work for to avoid these mistakes. One of the easiest opportunities to do that is to make sure that we’re talking about the same thing, as early in the process as possible.
Otherwise, migrations will continue to go wrong, and we will continue to spend far too much of our collective time fixing broken links, recommending changes or improvements to templates, and holding together bruised-and-broken websites — all at the expense of doing meaningful, impactful work.
Perhaps we can begin to answer to some of these challenges by creating better definitions and helping to clarify exactly what’s involved in a "site migration" process.
Unfortunately, I suspect that we’re stuck with the word "migration," at least for now. It’s a term which is already widely used, which people think is a correct and appropriate definition. It’s unrealistic to try to change everybody else’s language when we’re already too late to the conversation.
Our next best opportunity to reduce ambiguity and risk is to codify the types of migration. This gives us a chance to prompt further exploration and better definitions.
For example, if we can say “This sounds like it’s actually a domain migration paired with a template migration,” we can steer the conversation a little and rely on a much better shared frame of reference.
If we can raise a challenge that, e.g., the "translation project" a different part of the business is working on is actually a whole bunch of interwoven migration types, then we can raise our concerns earlier and pursue more appropriate resource, budget, and authority (e.g., “This project actually consists of a series of migrations involving templates, content, and domains. Therefore, it’s imperative that we also consider X and Y as part of the project scope.”).
By persisting in labelling this way, stakeholders may gradually come to understand that, e.g., changing the design typically also involves changing the templates, and so the SEO folks should really be involved earlier in the process. By challenging the language, we can challenge the thinking.
Let’s codify migration typesI’ve identified at least seven distinct types of migration. Next time you encounter a "migration" project, you can investigate the proposed changes, map them back to these types, and flag any gaps in understanding, expectations, and resource.
You could argue that some of these aren’t strictly "migrations" in a technical sense (i.e., changing something isn’t the same as moving it), but grouping them this way is intentional.
Remember, our goal here isn’t to neatly categorize all of the requirements for any possible type of migration. There are plenty of resources, guides, and lists which already try do that.
Instead, we’re trying to provide neat, universal labels which help us (the SEO folks) and them (the business stakeholders) to have shared definitions and to remove unknown unknowns.
They’re a set of shared definitions which we can use to trigger early warning signals, and to help us better manage stakeholder expectations.
Feel free to suggest your own, to grow, shrink, combine, or bin any of these to fit your own experience and requirements!
1. Hosting migrationsA broad bundling of infrastructure, hardware, and server considerations (while these are each broad categories in their own right, it makes sense to bundle them together in this context).
If your migration project contains any of the following changes, you’re talking about a hosting migration, and you’ll need to explore the SEO implications (and development resource requirements) to make sure that changes to the underlying platform don’t impact front-end performance or visibility.
*Might overlap into a software migration if the changes affect the configuration or behavior of any front-end components (e.g., the CMS).
**Might overlap into other migrations, depending on how this manifests (e.g., template, software, domain).
***Might overlap into a domain migration if the CDN is presented as/on a distinct hostname (e.g., AWS), rather than invisibly (e.g., Cloudflare).
2. Software migrationsUnless your website is comprised of purely static HTML files, chances are that it’s running some kind of software to serve the right pages, behaviors, and content to users.
If your migration project contains any of the following changes, you’re talking about a software migration, and you’ll need to understand (and input into) how things like managing error codes, site functionality, and back-end behavior work.
*Might overlap into a domain migration if you’re absorbing software which was previously located/accessed on a different domain.
3. Domain migrationsDomain migrations can be pleasantly straightforward if executed in isolation, but this is rarely the case. Changes to domains are often paired with (or the result of) other structural and functional changes.
If your migration project alters the URL(s) by which users are able to reach your website, contains any of the following changes, then you’re talking about a domain migration, and you need to consider how redirects, protocols (e.g., HTTP/S), hostnames (e.g., www/non-www), and branding are impacted.
Chances are that your website uses a number of HTML templates, which control the structure, layout, and peripheral content of your pages. The logic which controls how your content looks, feels, and behaves (as well as the behavior of hidden/meta elements like descriptions or canonical URLs) tends to live here.
If your migration project alters elements like your internal navigation (e.g., the header or footer), elements in your <head>, or otherwise changes the page structure around your content in the ways I’ve outlined, then you’re talking about a template migration. You’ll need to consider how users and search engines perceive and engage with your pages, how context, relevance, and authority flow through internal linking structures, and how well-structured your HTML (and JS/CSS) code is.
*Might involve domain, software, and/or hosting migrations, depending on implementation mechanics.
5. Content migrationsYour content is everything which attracts, engages with, and convinces users that you’re the best brand to answer their questions and meet their needs. That includes the words you use to describe your products and services, the things you talk about on your blog, and every image and video you produce or use.
If your migration project significantly changes the tone (including language, demographic targeting, etc), format, or quantity/quality of your content in the ways I’ve outlined, then you’re talking about a content migration. You’ll need to consider the needs of your market and audience, and how the words and media on your website answer to that — and how well it does so in comparison with your competitors.
*Might involve domain, software and/or hosting, and template migrations, depending on implementation mechanics.
**May overlap into a template migration if the layout and/or URL structure changes as a result.
6. Design migrationsThe look and feel of your website doesn’t necessarily directly impact your performance (though user signals like engagement and trust certainly do). However, simple changes to design components can often have unintended knock-on effects and consequences.
If your migration project contains any of the following changes, you’re talking about a design migration, and you’ll need to clarify whether changes are purely cosmetic or whether they go deeper and impact other areas.
*All template migrations.
**Don’t forget to 301 redirect these, unless you’re replacing like-for-like filenames (which isn’t always best practice if you wish to invalidate local or remote caches).
7. Strategy migrationsA change in organizational or marketing strategy might not directly impact the website, but a widening gap between a brand’s audience, objectives, and platform can have a significant impact on performance.
If your market or audience (or your understanding of it) changes significantly, or if your mission, your reputation, or the way in which you describe your products/services/purpose changes, then you’re talking about a strategy migration. You’ll need to consider how you structure your website, how you target your audiences, how you write content, and how you campaign (all of which might trigger a set of new migration projects!).
Armed with better definitions, we can begin to force a more considered conversation around what a "migration" project actually involves. We can use a shared language and ensure that stakeholders understand the risks and opportunities of the changes they intend to make.
Unfortunately, however, we don’t always hear about proposed changes until they’ve already been decided and signed off.
People don’t know that they need to tell us that they’re changing domain, templates, hosting, etc. So it’s often too late when — or if — we finally get involved. Decisions have already been made before they trickle down into our awareness.
That’s still a problem.
By the time you’re aware of a project, it’s usually too late to impact it.
While our new-and-improved definitions are a great starting place to catch risks as you encounter them, avoiding those risks altogether requires us to develop a much better understanding of how, where, and when migrations are planned, managed, and start to go wrong.
Let’s identify trigger pointsI’ve identified four common scenarios which lead to organizations deciding to undergo a migration project.
If you can keep your ears to the ground and spot these types of events unfolding, you have an opportunity to give yourself permission to insert yourself into the conversation, and to interrogate to find out exactly which types of migrations might be looming.
It’s worth finding ways to get added to deployment lists and notifications, internal project management tools, and other systems so that you can look for early warning signs (without creating unnecessary overhead and comms processes).
1. Mergers, acquisitions, and closuresWhen brands are bought, sold, or merged, this almost universally triggers changes to their websites. These requirements are often dictated from on-high, and there’s limited (or no) opportunity to impact the brief.
Migration strategies in these situations are rarely comfortable, and almost always defensive by nature (focusing on minimizing impact/cost rather than capitalizing upon opportunity).
Typically, these kinds of scenarios manifest in a small number of ways:
All sorts of pressures and opportunities lead to rebranding activity. Pressures to remain relevant, to reposition within marketplaces, or change how the brand represents itself can trigger migration requirements — though these activities are often led by brand and creative teams who don’t necessarily understand the implications.
Often, the outcome of branding processes and initiatives creates new a or alternate understanding of markets and consumers, and/or creates new guidelines/collateral/creative which must be reflected on the..
http://ift.tt/2pyeah8We’re taught to share at a young age. Kids who hoard their favorite toys are typically reprimanded and told to be less selfish. “Plays well with others” is an encouraging sign on a report card.
Sadly, this cooperative spirit fell by the wayside when we created marketing agencies. People suddenly became overprotective of their team members, processes, ideas, and expertise. Agencies do it in the name of self-preservation, but this hoarding mentality causes them to stagnate by only sticking to what they already know. In the end, it’s a loss for clients.
We need to return to a mentality of collaboration and transparency, even if it means feeling vulnerable. It’s admittedly a tough sell. Giving up a sense of self-preservation and putting all your cards on the table can create anxiety among those accustomed to stifled innovation and “only invented here” syndrome. When you’ve found something that resonates with consumers, the last thing you probably want to do is share your secrets with competitors. Opening the door to collaborative discussions with partner agencies takes more than a modicum of trust and faith.
If you’re so worried about your own offerings that you don’t consider industry innovations, you’ll ultimately fail to deliver. Your agency—and your clients—will miss the amazing stuff that’s out there.
The Importance of SharingEvery company is ultimately trying to sell a product or service to customers. The company’s marketing and sales teams make sure there’s a population that will buy the organization’s wares, and an agency’s job is to help the company reach that audience.
We tend to be protective of our ideas because they feel like the only thing that differentiates us from competitors. That’s not to say you should give away trade secrets—what would KFC Corporation be without Colonel Sanders’ original recipe?—but we need to move away from the mindset of “I have this idea for my client, and nobody else can have it.” It’s limiting, and it damages everyone involved.
When companies share ideas, they boost their natural abilities. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when a dozen other organizations have already solved a problem. Monsanto and American Express might seem about as different as you can get, but they ended up learning a lot from each other.
Our agency fostered a partnership between the two companies by helping them connect the dots on customer relationship management protocols. They ended up uncovering synergies through sharing.
While they avoided disclosing any confidential secrets or customer information, this collaboration gave the companies a rare and exciting opportunity to freely engage in problem-solving that benefitted their customers. Their employees realized Monsanto and American Express had vastly different clientele, but their CRM models dovetailed in a beautiful way. The organizations walked away from the partnership stronger than before they went into it.
To reach this kind of epiphany, we need to stop the car, put it in reverse, and open our eyes to the benefits of transparent communication. Here are four steps to move you toward the promised land.
1. Break Down the SilosA team of people deeply immersed in its clients’ business tends to put on blinders and forge ahead without looking backward or sideways. They might not even notice the same issues exist for other clients within their own agency. As leaders, we need to make sure there’s always a “bigger picture” perspective at work. Goals, values, and strategies can only be aligned when team members have freedom to cooperate and communicate.
2. Try Some Cross-PollinationBrainstorm sessions; planned meetings; chance discussions. These are times ripe for cross-pollination. People don’t need to be experts on a given topic to add value to a problem-solving venture.
Silicon Valley provides a fabulous example of the power of cross-pollination. Because of its geography and the way companies are laid out next to each other, formal and informal powwows are relatively commonplace. Our perspective tends to get skewed when we operate in a bubble. Popping that bubble through cross-pollination allows us to get talented thinkers and creatives together to come up with novel solutions.
3. Get a Fresh PerspectiveEvery agency gets stale—especially if it’s not actively seeking new ideas. At Sandbox, we frequently ask people who have nothing to do with a client to help solve various problems. We bring them into sessions and pick their brains for fresh perspectives based on their specific skill sets.
This feedback helps us understand our options and keeps us from allowing complacency and shortsightedness from taking hold. We might have never realized the benefit of introducing Monsanto and American Express had we not asked a team member with CRM expertise to help brainstorm ideas.
Self-preservation is understandable in the marketing world, but it’s no way to run an agency.
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4. Create Open Forums and Collaborative Platforms
Find a way to share an open forum so people feel free to look, observe, and chime in. As I walk around our agency, I inevitably see other people’s work. Instead of sequestering that work to their own team, they should be encouraged to share it. Isolating people and thoughts is a terrible strategy for building a successful agency. Reward and inspire collaboration, and you could see your team efficiency improve by 20 percent.
Self-preservation is understandable in the marketing world, but it’s no way to run an agency. Your clients will eventually find other innovative ideas in the world and wonder why they’ve missed out because of your narrow worldview. Drop the elitist attitude, and reach out to your industry colleagues for a little collaboration—you’ll look better, and it will help you put together programs your clients will appreciate. You might discover sharing as an adult is way more profitable than it was when you were a kid.
Joe Kuchta is chief client officer with Sandbox, an independent marketing agency with offices in Chicago, Kansas City, New York, and Toronto. He previously served as CEO of GA Communication Group, one of four founding members of Sandbox. Follow Sandbox on Twitter.
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http://ift.tt/2q1mP8WThe most popular question asked at any social gathering when meeting someone new is, “What do you do?” in reference to what one does to earn a living. It’s fun telling people I am the Contest Queen as everyone has a winning story. The discussion is always lively as I explain how it’s both a
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Carolyn Wilman (aka @ContestQueen) contributes a monthly column on Social Media Contests. Carolyn is a Digital Marketing Strategist and Sweepstakes Specialist. Carolyn works with companies to create, and viral market, winning promotions maximizing ROI and loyal customers along with teaching others how to Find, Organize, Enter and Win giveaways. +Carolyn Wilman
Why People Are Afraid to Enter Your Sweepstakes by Carolyn Wilman -Maximize Social Business
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Do you want to use more video in your Twitter marketing? Wondering how each type of Twitter video works? With the launch of its native live video service, Twitter is prioritizing video higher in the news feed, making it the perfect way to reach your audience more often. In this article, you’ll discover how to
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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
Posted by Tom.Capper
Back in September last year, I was lucky enough to see Rand speak at MozCon. His talk was about link building and the main types of strategy that he saw as still being relevant and effective today. During his introduction, he said something that really got me thinking, about how the whole purpose of links and PageRank had been to approximate traffic.
Essentially, back in the late '90s, links were a much bigger part of how we experienced the web — think of hubs like Excite, AOL, and Yahoo. Google’s big innovation was to realize that, because people navigated the web by clicking on links, they could approximate the relative popularity of pages by looking at those links.
So many links, such little time.
Rand pointed out that, given all the information at their disposal in the present day — as an Internet Service Provider, a search engine, a browser, an operating system, and so on — Google could now far more accurately model whether a link drives traffic, so you shouldn’t aim to build links that don’t drive traffic. This is a pretty big step forward from the link-building tactics of old, but it occurred to me that it it probably doesn’t go far enough.
If Google has enough data to figure out which links are genuinely driving traffic, why bother with links at all? The whole point was to figure out which sites and pages were popular, and they can now answer that question directly. (It’s worth noting that there’s a dichotomy between “popular” and “trustworthy” that I don’t want to get too stuck into, but which isn’t too big a deal here given that both can be inferred from either link-based data sources, or from non-link-based data sources — for example, SERP click-through rate might correlate well with “trustworthy,” while “search volume” might correlate well with “popular”).
However, there’s plenty of evidence out there suggesting that Google is in fact still making significant use of links as a ranking factor, so I decided to set out to challenge the data on both sides of that argument. The end result of that research is this post.
The horse's mouthOne reasonably authoritative source on matters relating to Google is Google themselves. Google has been fairly unequivocal, even in recent times, that links are still a big deal. For example:
Then, of course, there’s their continued focus on unnatural backlinks and so on — none of which would be necessary in a world where links are not a ranking factor.
However, I’d argue that this doesn’t indicate the end of our discussion before it’s even begun. Firstly, Google has a great track record of giving out dodgy SEO advice. Consider HTTPS migrations pre-2016. Will Critchlow talked at SearchLove San Diego about how Google’s algorithms are at a level of complexity and opaqueness where they’re no longer even trying to understand them themselves — and of course there are numerous stories of unintentional behaviors from machine learning algorithms out in the wild.
Third-party correlation studiesIt’s not difficult to put together your own data and show a correlation between link-based metrics and rankings. Take, for example:
However, these studies fall into significant issues with correlation vs. causation.
There are three main mechanisms which could explain the relationships that they show:
I’ve yet to see any correlation study that addresses these very serious shortcomings, or even particularly acknowledges them. Indeed, I’m not sure that it would even be possible to do so given the available data, but this does show that as an industry we need to apply some critical thinking to the advice that we’re consuming.
However, earlier this year I did write up some research of my own here on the Moz Blog, demonstrating that brand awareness could in fact be a more useful factor than links for predicting rankings.
The problem with this study was that it showed a relationship that was concrete (i.e. extremely statistically significant), but that was surprisingly lacking in explanatory power. Indeed, I discussed in that post how I’d ended up with a correlation that was far lower than Moz’s for Domain Authority.
Fortunately, Malcolm Slade recently discussed some of his very similar research at BrightonSEO, in which he finds similar broad correlations to myself between brand factors and rankings, but far, far stronger correlations for certain types of query, and especially big, high-volume, highly competitive head terms.
So what can we conclude overall from these third-party studies? Two main things:
At the end of the day, we’re interested in whether links are a ranking factor because we’re interested in whether we should be trying to use them to improve the rankings of our sites, or our clients’ sites.
FluctuationThe first example I want to look at here is this graph, showing UK rankings for the keyword “flowers” from May to December last year:
The fact is that our traditional understanding of ranking changes — which breaks down into links, on-site, and algorithm changes — cannot explain this degree of rapid fluctuation. If you don’t believe me, the above data is available publicly through platforms like SEMRush and Searchmetrics, so try to dig into it yourself and see if there’s any external explanation.
This level and frequency of fluctuation is increasingly common for hotly contested terms, and it shows a tendency by Google to continuously iterate and optimize — just as marketers do when they’re optimizing a paid search advert, or a landing page, or an email campaign.
What is Google optimizing for?
The above slide is from Larry Kim’s presentation at SearchLove San Diego, and it shows how the highest SERP positions are gaining click-through rate over time, despite all the changes in Google Search (such as increased non-organic results) that ought to drive the opposite.
Larry’s suggestion is that this is a symptom of Google’s procedural optimization — not of the algorithm, but by the algorithm and of results. This certainly fits in with everything we’ve seen.
Successful link buildingHowever, at the other end of the scale, we get examples like this:
The above graph (courtesy of STAT) shows rankings for the commercial keywords for Fleximize.com during a Distilled creative campaign. This is a particularly interesting example for two reasons:
It seems that links did eventually move the needle here, and massively so, but the mechanisms at work are highly opaque.
The above two examples — “Flowers” and Fleximize — are just two real-world examples of ranking changes. I’ve picked one that seems obviously link-driven but a little strange, and one that shows how volatile things are for more competitive terms. I’m sure there are countless massive folders out there full of case studies that show links moving rankings — but the point is that it can happen, yet it isn’t always as simple as it seems.
How do we explain all of this?A lot of the evidence I’ve gone through above is contradictory. Links are correlated with rankings, and Google says they’re important, and sometimes they clearly move the needle, but on the other hand brand awareness seems to explain away most of their statistical usefulness, and Google’s operating with more subtle methods in the data-rich top end.
My favored explanation right now to explain how this fit together is this:
This is very much a work in progress, however, and I’d love to see other people’s thoughts, and especially their fresh research. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
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http://ift.tt/2pZII8sPersonalization is the name of the game in modern marketing. Consumers demand tailored experiences, having grown accustomed to scrolling through their Instagram feeds and seeing intimate, conversational posts from their favorite influencers. Now, they crave equally personal engagement from brands.
Fortunately, big data enables marketers to create the types of content and experiences their audiences want. User metrics indicate which articles, videos, and social media posts resonate most with consumers. Brands can use these insights to create targeted marketing campaigns that hook users and keep them coming back for more.
Big Data Is a Big DealThe sheer amount of information made available by big data often seems overwhelming to marketers who are unaccustomed to dealing with metrics and analytics. But platforms such as Hadoop and Hive simplify the process of collecting and organizing information, so you can zero in on key insights.
The secret to using big data effectively is to identify which metrics are relevant to your audience, discarding the rest. Such focus allows you to develop and execute campaigns quickly that address your users’ needs. There’s a significant learning curve to getting personalization right, and mastering it requires time, patience, and interdepartmental collaboration.
Although the vast majority of marketing professionals recognize that personalization is critical to their success, 65 percent of those interviewed in one study said silos in their departments hindered progress. That’s a real problem because personalization only works when you take a cohesive approach.
The SEO team should not be launching campaigns that are completely disconnected from what the social media crew is doing. Marketers must collaborate with each other, as well as with colleagues in other departments. Business managers and IT professionals can provide invaluable insights on how to improve the execution of marketing strategies.
Most importantly, everyone involved with marketing initiatives should operate under the banner of offering a personalized customer experience. Research shows that 48 percent of consumers included in one study spent more money with companies that personalized their interactions. Another report indicated that 72 percent of people interviewed said they were likely to do business with brands known for good customer service.
Data and Personalization Are Better TogetherOay, you get it: Personalization and big data are still important. Let’s look at how you can combine them to create resonant campaigns that generate leads.
1. Invest in High-Quality Data ManagementNothing matters more than data management. You can collect every piece of information humanly available on users, but not a single scrap of it matters if you can’t process and analyze it effectively. Great personalization campaigns answer questions consumers haven’t yet thought to ask, speak directly to their circumstances, and engage them with the types of content they find most valuable. All of that information lies within the data, and a data management system will help you find it.
Purchase a data-processing platform that suits your company’s processes. There are solutions for finance and accounting, store operations management, order processing, product management, and just about every other area essential to running a business. Find ones that align with your data capture needs, and implement them ASAP.
Great personalization campaigns answer questions consumers haven’t yet thought to ask.
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2. Believe the Numbers, Not Your Instincts
Marketing teams often think they know their customers better than they actually do. Data dispels misconceptions and helps you avoid costly mistakes.
Customers leave trails of information about which websites they frequent, which products interest them, which videos they’ll watch all the way through, and which articles they believe are worth sharing with their social networks. All of these habits provide honest, comprehensive pictures of who these people are. Rather than rely on fallible human instincts, look to the data to build campaigns that match consumers’ online lives.
3. Identify Core Insights and Act QuicklyUntil 2016, most companies focused on data collection. They weren’t entirely sure how to use it, so many hedged on putting the insights they’d gathered into action. That trend won’t hold in 2017. Brands now understand that personalization is critical to customer engagement and retention, and they’ll move swiftly to implement cutting-edge, customized campaigns.
Create a team that focuses exclusively on monitoring analytics. Connect its members with your marketing department, so they can make recommendations for reaching consumers in real time and optimizing the customer experience. Give the data team access to the full spectrum of user data by pulling from websites and web apps, smartphone activity, tablet behaviors, and even in-store purchases. The more robust their data sets, the more effectively marketing will be able to put their insights to use.
4. Understand How Big Data Will Impact Your IndustryBig data is transforming every industry, though not necessarily in the same ways. For instance, in my industry—travel—airlines are using data to improve their “look to book” ratios and increase revenues. Travel agencies can track trends among different age groups and market their destination packages accordingly, while hotels can pair loyalty customers with the rooms and services they favor across locations. Consider how big data can boost the customer experience in your industry. Look to your competitors; see how they’ve utilized data so far and how they’re likely to incorporate it in the future.
Big data is a nonnegotiable for marketers, especially as trends toward personalization ramp up. Those that get it right stand to ride a $430 billion wave in increased productivity benefits. By investing in high-quality data collection and management now, you will position your brand for long-term customer retention and profitability.
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