10 Social Media PR Lessons From #OITNB

Looking to connect, bond and create brand advocates? You might learn a social media lesson or 10 from the hashtag #OITNB.

The Netflix original television series, "Orange is the New Black", has more than its recent 12 Emmy nominations to brag about.

The show's social media team, fans and cast do a breakthrough job at publicizing the steamy side of women's prison and building relationships, engagements, interactions and advocacy that borderline's addiction – between the show, the characters, and audience.

Survey Says Social Media News Goes From Vice to Habit

Social media has become a powerful, effective, and cost-efficient news distribution network for organizations of all sizes.

In a recent TekGroup social media news survey; 37 percent of respondents confessed they are hooked on social media about 1 to 2 hours a day and are using tools habitually with almost 90 percent saying they use Twitter, Facebook, and blogs on a daily basis to follow and monitor a brand's news and information.

So as social media transitions from vice to habit and content marketing bubbles up as the next marketing drug, I mean strategy, of choice, what's the right prescription for your brand?

How Brands Like #OITNB Keep Fans Hooked Via Social

With the big push in content marketing and the use of social media as a commonplace tactic for brands, rising above the clutter is becoming a challenge, but with a little creativity, any size brand can steal some social media inspiration from shows like "Orange is the New Black".

"Multichannel storytelling talk is pretty commonplace these days, but finding great examples of brands doing this well can be tough to find because the reality is it's pretty hard to pull off," said Lisa Grimm, director of social and public relations for Space150.

"OITNB is among those doing a nice job extending its popular women's prison Netflix TV drama into digital with stellar content, distribution and conversation with its growing base of rabid fans," Grimm said.

Do you have to be a sexy TV show to pull off a magnetic social media campaign? Absolutely not. But it helps to have a quality product or service. Your social media marketing and public relations can't make up for holes in customer service, product fails and weak business models.

"OINTB is guilty of savvy social media marketing," said Kristi Kellogg, content writer at Bruce Clay Inc. "The evidence doesn't lie – one look at their Twitter feed proves the community managers are conspiring to engage their vast audience with photos, videos and memorable one-liners. Furthermore, OINTB is inciting rampant OINTB-related hashtag use and consorting with fans in branded Twitter chats (#AskOrange)."

10 Easy SMM Lessons From #OITNB1. Use Hashtags With Meaning, Power, Purpose

Twitter Cards: A Quick Start Guide

Everyone should know by now, the importance of creating multiple streams of internet traffic to ensure ongoing success. Relying strictly on Google organic traffic is both unwise and dangerous.

No one is immune from being negatively impacted by an algorithmic update, at any time. It is completely out of your control and if you aren't prepared for it, it can be devastating.

That's where social media comes in. Done correctly, it can drive tons of qualified traffic to your website.

Social media is more conversational than transactional, but smart retailers are finding ways to convert conversations into revenues. Twitter and Facebook are the undisputed leaders in the social space and should be the first place to look for opportunities. The challenge is in figuring out just how to stand out.

In the case of Twitter, one of the best ways is to use Twitter cards. Twitter cards allow people to view videos, pictures, and product information, without leaving the twitter feed. Instead of clicking a link, all of the information and content is displayed in the tweet. As more people use Twitter cards, they will have less impact, so now is the time to get started.

Using Twitter Cards for Business

As with any marketing tool, it's critical to have a plan for how Twitter cards will be used. Some of the most effective uses include:

Introducing new products: Because a picture can be included on the cards they are a great way to introduce new products and to generate excitement.Offering resources: Businesses often offer great resources for their customers on their website. The Twitter card can help direct people to these resources and build brand awareness.Using current events: Twitter cards can use popular events to help create a card that is passed along to others. Retweeting of business cards is a great way to spread information for a business.Sharing videos: If a business has a video that becomes popular, the Twitter card be shared and brand awareness will grow.Lead generation: A great way to capture email addresses.Types of Twitter Cards

The process to get Twitter cards is fairly simple, but before you get started, you will need to know the eight types of Twitter cards that businesses are using.

Summary Cards

17 Keys to Success in Social PPC

If you haven't jumped on the social PPC bandwagon yet, it's time you gave it some serious thought. While social PPC won't replace Google AdWords any time soon, it's become an effective source of incremental leads and sales for savvy businesses.

What follows are 17 keys to running successful social PPC campaigns. The first four apply to all social PPC, then we'll talk about keys to success for each major social PPC engine.

Social PPC Keys to Success1. Identify Your Target Audience

In search, the target audience is "anyone who searches using my keywords." In social, much more thought must be put into the people and personas you'd like to reach. Are they consumers? Business owners? Teenagers? What do they like to do? Where do they work, shop, play?

Defining your audience is critical to success in social PPC.

2. Identify the Marketing Challenge That Paid Social Solves

Think about why you want to use paid social in the first place. Are you active organically in social media, but need a larger or more engaged audience? Are you struggling to reach a B2B audience because consumers also search on your keywords? Do you need awareness of your product, service, or company?

All of these can be great reasons to use paid social – the key is to think about what problem social PPC will solve for you.

3. Define Your Paid Social Strategy and Objectives

If you've done the first two steps, this will be easy.

If your audience is B2B decision makers, and your objective is lead generation, then you'll want to define your strategy and objectives as such. If your goal is audience growth, build that in to your strategy.

Mapping strategy out ahead of time sets you up for good results.

4. Segment Your Audience Based on How You'll be Posting

This is an overlooked and yet important part of social PPC setup.

It isn't unusual for advertisers to have multiple segments within their target audience. You might have different types of businesses that you want to reach, or you may be targeting both men and women, for example.

Look at your current social posts to see what audience they're intended to reach – and then set up your social PPC campaigns accordingly.

LinkedIn Keys to Success5. Carefully Identify Your Target Companies and Job Levels

LinkedIn's targeting optionsare great for targeting individuals at specific companies and job levels; it's especially effective for B2B. But think carefully about how you want to target.

Do you want narrow targeting with specific job titles and companies, or do you want to cast a wider net and focus on categories rather than specifics?

Be especially careful about seniority targeting. If you need to reach decision-makers, you'll probably want to exclude entry level people. But be aware that the higher level you target, the higher your minimum CPC will be.

6. Be Ready to Pay $5

5 Most Important Takeaways From the Link Building Survey 2014

by Jon Ball,July 29, 2014Comments

James Agate of Skyrocket SEO released the 2014 edition of his link building survey on Moz.

Big hat tip to Agate for his hard work in building the survey along with analyzing and releasing the results. If you haven't yet had a chance I'd strongly recommend you take the time to read the original post.

Agate has built the data into a visually pleasing infographic as well.

I want to add my own takeaways about the survey and data, and how it all reflects on the SEO industry.

Let's jump in.

The Interesting Data

3 Ways to Extend Your Products Into Social This Holiday

If you ask retail marketers where they will be sending their product feed this holiday season, nearly all of them will say Google Product Listings Ads (PLA). Many will list off comparison shopping engines (CSEs) like Shopzilla, Shopping.com, and The Find, or online marketplaces like Ebay, Amazon, and Sears.

Most retail marketers, however, won't list social shopping sites like Pinterest and Polyvore. Given those sites' increasing contribution to brand and product discovery, they represent a huge revenue opportunity for retailers this holiday season. In fact, Pinterest alone drives nearly 6 percent of social referral traffic, according to Shareaholic.

Many social sites already do accept retail product feeds through offerings such as Pinterest Rich Pins and Polyvore for Brands and Retailers. However as of this summer very few retailers are incorporating their feeds into these programs.

A recent study showed that only 1.7 percent of retail products merchandised in PLA were represented in social commerce on sites such as Pinterest, Polyvore, and Wanelo. Additionally, the study also highlighted that when product listings are incorporated into social, the content itself is often not updated to influence and engage a shopper that is in ‘discovery' mode.

There are a few reasons why there is a gap between the opportunity to merchandise in social sites and the adoption within retailers, outside of standard pre-holiday inertia towards the tried and true.

There is separation between brand and ecommerce teams, with brand teams typically owning social media and little to no budget allocated for testing social ecommerce.There is a definite lack of awareness of the expanding toolset available for ecommerce via social channels, both in terms of rich, informative, and sometimes promoted posts as well as in analytics.Retailers who have minimal resources dedicated toward social commerce find themselves in a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma since optimization resources won't be realized without a dedication to the effort.

There a few key things that retailers can do this holiday season to overcome the challenges listed above and incorporate their products more comprehensively into rapidly emerging social channels.

1. Recognize That Social is a Branding and Commerce Opportunity

These types of programs can be mutually beneficial to brand managers and performance marketers alike. Brand marketers want to make sure their presence and messages tell a story in social channels.

These programs, Rich Pins especially, allow for the addition of a commerce experience without the loss of branding value. This should help to break down organizational silos that prevent collaboration today.

2. Keep It Simple: Focus on Your Top Products Initially

It doesn't require a feed wizard or a robust feed management technology to make these programs work for you. At the very least, a retailer's top products should be in all oft-visited channels as consumers travel between discovery and shop modes.

Using sales data from PLA can help retailers find their most engaging products such that they can ensure those are represented in social programs. Additionally, the products that have been Pinned, saved, or liked in social already can enable better decisions on what products and messages to highlight in search and PLA campaigns.

3. Use Search Data to Drive Social Merchandising Decisions

From years of search query data, retailers can determine what colors, styles, and materials are driving traffic and sales. Armed with that knowledge, retailers will have a good sense of what to profile in product titles, descriptions, and images that they publish to social channels.

Summary

We're witnessing a huge change in consumer shopping behavior as many purchase decisions are now influenced by online peers in social shopping channels. As retailers are start to look for ways to incorporate their offerings into these sites in an authentic way, selecting the right products from feeds and highlighting their best qualities is a great way to start.

Maybe We Should Break Up With Google

Imagine you had a friend in a relationship with someone who was unreliable, secretive and made big decisions without regard to their well-being. Beyond that, the person in question is insensitive, self-absorbed and sometimes downright cruel.

You'd tell your friend to kick the loser to the curb and find someone who deserves them. You'd tell them they were better off on their own. You'd advise them to focus on making themselves better, instead of being subjugated by a significant other who doesn't appreciate them.

Well, Google is a bad boyfriend. And that's my advice.

Let's be honest, all of us in the making-money-online business have been in a polyamorous courtship with Google for a long time now. Look at the guy next to you in the search results, yup, he's your sister wife.

But like any relationship, if you're looking to the other party to define you, to bring quality to your existence, you're doomed to disappointment. Ranking well in Google should be an extension of the fact that you are the best at what you do.

The expectation of ranking should come as a result of a consistent effort toward being the most competitive, most relevant, most knowledgeable and most trustworthy competitor within your space. Chasing rankings instead of chasing those goals will only lead to a continually punishing, continually unfulfilling dysfunctional relationship with Google.

Love Your Rankings, Whatever They Are

Learn to let go of an obsession with perfect rankings. Try to imagine a world in which you didn't care whether Google thought you were hot.

We all ask ourselves the same questions; Does Google like me? Am I good enough? Am I as pretty as the girl next to me?

Maybe you are, maybe not. But it shouldn't matter whether Google thinks so.

When you look at your site, do you see the value? Real value. Try looking, not as you on the inside, but as an outsider, as an unbiased customer.

What about you means that you deserve to be one of 10 of the best of the best in all the world? There are only 10 spots on the front page, and that's growing fewer and fewer with local, shopping, images, etc.

The diversity of Google's search results pages adds its own opportunities for varied assets done well. Though making videos and getting added to Google News to share great content is a totally different endeavor than making them for the sake of trying to jump on a bandwagon.

Focus more on being ranked because you're the epitome of information in your niche. If you try to do it the other way around, you wind up coming off as inauthentic and it's desperate. It's like the chick macking on the bartender at last call. Don't be that girl.

Confident Sites are Always Attractive

If your business relies too heavily on organic search traffic from Google, maybe it's time to alleviate that dependence. That reliance takes a lot of power away from you and gives it to someone else.

Granted, there's always going to be an inequality of need between websites and search engines, but search engines don't and never have existed for the site-makers. They are and always have been for the site seekers. Sites that are built for the middle man, the search engine, and not for the site seeker are sort of missing the point.

It's one thing to want to have a smartly constructed, crawlable, well-structured, clearly defined website that makes it utterly clear to any crawler where the content is and what it is about. That is just good business. Like basic hygiene, and matching socks.

You also need to be aware of some of the trickier technical missteps, particularly larger websites and ecommerce sites. SEO is an essential undertaking, but it's about so much more than just trying to rank for one or two top phrases.

Caring about smart SEO is one thing, but obsessing over search engine traffic and rankings is another. The same way it's one thing to work out to stay healthy, but it's totally different to work out like a maniac to stay attractive to someone else. We'd call the former friend an "inspiration" and the latter, we'd coach for low self-esteem.

How are we any different Googling the same phrase every day just to make sure we haven't moved down even a spot? Being secure in your own worth means never having to worry if you're good enough.

There Are Other Visitor Fish in the Sea

In spite of how good the relationship can be with Google, when things are going well, it still isn't Google's job to make websites money. So let's consider for a second that we absolve Google of that responsibility. Instead we start to see rankings and traffic as a perk of the relationship, rather than the foundation of it.

If you have a site that is mindful of all of the technical and strategic necessities involved in good SEO, then the rest is just about being yourself and keeping your options open. People use search engines at such a great volume that it's absolutely possible to forget they use other means of web travel too.

There's no guarantee that taking the time to invest in a well-planned, meticulously executed social media campaign is going to get you all of the business a number one ranking will for any given keyword. In fact, it's unlikely. But it could certainly bring you an ROI on the project and it could raise your brand visibility, drive new visitors, turn former one-time visitors into returning customers, affect direct traffic and grow your listening audience for future efforts. And that's not too bad.

Some search queries are always going to be the Quarterback/School President/Debate Team Captain. They will be lusted after by everyone. But maybe try a drama kid, or a band geek, or the yearbook editor because they have something to offer too. And that's coming from a former drama kid, band geek, and yearbook-staffer.

You Can Still Be Friends!

We will never be entirely free of search engines, but that's OK. We love and we hate them for everything they do and don't do. For everything they were and for everything they could be. But maybe, just maybe they're not ready for the same kind of relationship we are.

Maybe we need to give each other some space to figure things out. In the meantime, we can work on ourselves and figure out who we are outside of a co-dependent romance with search engines. We'll always want the traffic and rankings from they can give, but it's time we tried something different, too.

Even though saying goodbye to a relationship of any kind can be hard, when you know it means moving on to something better, sometimes you have to do the hard thing. But don't worry, we'll still hang out with Google, we have a lot of mutual friends.

Google Still Shows Max Mosley S&M Party Pictures, So He Sues Again

Twitter is Blocked in Turkey, Google’s Public DNS Helps Users Regain AccessMarch 24, 2014Popular→ Blogger Fined for Top-Ranked Restaurant ReviewJuly 21, 2014→ Google Still Shows Max Mosley S&M Party Pictures, So He Sues AgainJuly 30, 2014→ Google Has Removed 100,000 Links, Approved More Than Half of 'Right to be Forgotten' RequestsJuly 25, 2014→ Danny Goodwin Leaves Search Engine Watch, Thank You & GoodbyeAugust  1, 2014→ Google Love Grows, Bing Satisfaction Drops Among U.S. Customers

Google Introduces Product Ratings on PLAs

by Jessica Lee,July 30, 2014Comments

Product Listing Ads (PLA) will now feature product ratings, starting in late July, the announcement said: 

We believe these ratings will help differentiate products across google.com and google.com/shopping and will help merchants drive more qualified traffic through Product Listing Ads. In initial tests, product ratings also helped increase click-through-rates of Product Listing Ads.

How to Create a Social Media Friendly Landing Page

Landing page optimization continues to be a growing conundrum for many brands, especially when you throw social media communities into the mix. Community managers can create great little posts that entice and pique the curiosity of friends and fans.

We demonstrate every day that we can drive traffic from social media channels to brand sites, but those visitors tend to browse more than buy. We love them for browsing, but is there something we could do to get our browsing friends to commit?

Be honest, you have pockets of social media connections that do the very same thing. They love to engage with you in their favorite social media space. They come to visit your site often, but they browse a while, read a blog post, and wander off to the next shiny thing that attracts their attention.

Could the problem lie with where they land on the site when they come to visit? There often seems to be a disconnect between social media communication and website development. The same psychology that applies to crafting an engaging social media post should apply to the pages those posts lead to.

Social Media Mindset

Your brand's social media audience is easily distracted. The more obvious you make the call to action, the more likely they are to take that action.

That simplicity doesn't change when you move them from their favorite social channel to your website. If you direct them to a page that is full of options and cool shiny things, they are more likely to browse and never make a decision.

If you want your social media friends and fans to watch a video, download a tool, or sign up for an email list, you have to make it super simple to do. That is the job of the landing page.

Landing Pages That Fit the Channel

Each social channel, whether it's Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter, or Google

Defining Local SEO KPIs & How to Measure Them for Maximum ROI

So Why Did All Those Movie Sites Lose Google Search Traffic?March  4, 2014Popular→ Listing Management: The Required Foundation for Local SEOJuly 24, 2014→ Defining Local SEO KPIs & How to Measure Them for Maximum ROIJuly 31, 2014→ Foursquare Upgrades App, Transitions Check-Ins to SwarmJuly 24, 2014→ Ripoff Report to Revise Removal Policy: May Accept Court OrdersJuly 23, 2014→ Yelp Trends Reveals What's Hot or Not Locally, But Beware of Unreliable DataJuly 31, 2014TopicsKPIs • SEO strategy • Search engines • Yelp • Google, • organic search • Data Aggregators • measurement • AnalyticsPlease enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.comments powered by Disqus

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Google Analytics Helps You Filter Spider and Bot Traffic

by Thom Craver,July 31, 2014Comments

Ever wonder how much of your traffic was actual human visitors and how much of your traffic was really scrapers, bots, and other web spiders? Google Analytics will now help you discern just that.

On their official Google

Yelp Trends Reveals What's Hot or Not Locally, But Beware of Unreliable Data

by Pierre Zarokian,July 31, 2014Comments

Yelp is turning 10 years old, and has announced it has accumulated 57 million reviews filled to the brim with colloquialisms and verbal memes. It is dropping a new tool to explore all of those ideas and fads it calls "Trends." For all of its ideas and accomplishments, Yelp is still a niche website. The Trends tool is a new addition to their formula, but can it find an audience outside of their core power users?

Yelp Trends

New Bing Site Safety Page Tells You Why Sites Aren't Safe to Visit

by Jessica Lee,July 31, 2014Comments

In the past few weeks, Bing rolled out its site safety page, a place where searchers can better understand why Bing is indicating that a site may not be safe to visit. 

In the past, a customer would click on a potentially dangerous search result and be presented with a warning cautioning them that visiting this site could be dangerous, but with no real context or background information. With the rollout of the Bing Site Safety Page, Bing users can now understand in more depth the reasons for the warning, and more technically savvy users can potentially make better informed decisions (e.g. disabling javascript and plugins before visiting the site, or providing the site owner a link to the BSSPpage as a point of reference when they encounter the warning.)

Danny Goodwin Leaves Search Engine Watch, Thank You & Goodbye

4 Critical Elements of a Successful Content Marketing TeamFebruary 16, 2014Popular→ Blogger Fined for Top-Ranked Restaurant ReviewJuly 21, 2014→ Google Still Shows Max Mosley S&M Party Pictures, So He Sues AgainJuly 30, 2014→ Google Has Removed 100,000 Links, Approved More Than Half of 'Right to be Forgotten' RequestsJuly 25, 2014→ Danny Goodwin Leaves Search Engine Watch, Thank You & GoodbyeAugust  1, 2014→ Google Love Grows, Bing Satisfaction Drops Among U.S. Customers

Fake Googlebot Activity up 61% [Report]

by Kristine Schachinger,August 1, 2014Comments

Just in time for the annual security conferences of Black Hat and Defcon in Las Vegas, Nevada, Incapusla Security has released their latest report on the state of Googlebot (and it's evil malicious twin). The news isn't good for those of us who spend our days staring at website statistics.

How to Eventually Become a Millionaire Using Your SEO Knowledge

There are many types of SEO services you can offer and running your own websites might even be more profitable.

With a wide range of clients you get asked to offer your expertise in many forms, but which ones are the most lucrative?

Here are a few potential career choices for an SEO expert to make.

Teaching SEO

Gathering up-to-date SEO knowledge can be a daunting task that requires a lot of time and effort. If this isn't your daily business you can easily lose touch.

Working with outdated SEO information can even ruin you. SEO is also a hard profession to learn because it involves so many other fields of expertise.

A good teacher is hard to find. Companies should pay top dollar for somebody that can help their team stay up-to-date for both the technical guidelines and possibilities and everything involved in link building.

For a single training of about 4 hours you can easily ask between $600 and $1,200. Most companies require at least four of these to get some grasp of the things involved in SEO.

An advanced SEO expert can teach to in-house teams, freelancers, online courses, and SEM agencies.

SEO Consultancy

An SEO consultant doesn't only teach, but he also provides clear instructions for in-house teams to execute. He checks their execution and directs all the involved tasks and specialized people.

Most SEO consultants are mainly technical consultants that work with website builders. A good SEO consultant should also be able offer strategic guidance that is focused on the ROI of unpaid search traffic.

Selecting the right keyword combinations, determining what texts need to be added to which pages, setting the guidelines for copywriters, monitoring results, and setting up link building are all the tasks of a good consultant.

At this time $150 an hour is a good rate for a broad SEO expert. Most consultants make even more money by selling their consultancy as a fixed fee. Just make sure the client's expectations are clear.

Products and Services

Most companies that rely heavily on search traffic have their own teams for the day-to-day SEO tasks. Setting up teams for certain services can often be challenging and there are many tasks they gladly outsource.

An elaborate keyword research offers valuable marketing information. When you really want to get to know your audience and when it involves recovering search volume trends, competition levels and conversion rates it can easily take two days to create.

Some expensive tools can make keyword research somewhat easier, but a client normally doesn't have access to these. You can easily ask $2,000 for good keyword research.

With unpaid search traffic comes a lot of copywriting. This will often be billed on a per page basis. These so called landing pages can be added for each individual keyword. Depending on the quality and length of a page, prices range between $20 and $60.

When a client works with some outdated CMS that's inflexible for SEO purposes, it's often smarter to build them a new site or additional section in WordPress, osCommerce or other simple open source platforms. These already take many SEO aspects into account and little customization should be needed.

Creating a website in WordPress can range from $5,000 to $500,000. A lucrative business if you use cheap labor.

Link building involves a strategic part, but also requires a lot of manual labor. Getting in touch with all those other website owners and convincing them to link to a website is very time consuming.

It can easily take an online marketer a day a week to make partnerships and acquire links. Something many companies gladly outsource at $60 an hour. Because link building requires a continuing growth as the competition is active, a fixed monthly amount (often $1,000 a month and up) is probably the industry standard.

Conversion optimization comes in many forms and service types. I haven't seen that much industry standardization, but because taking conclusions out of all the available data requires a lot of expertise, an hourly rate of $150 is quite common.

All these services seldom come as a one-time thing. That is why many SEM agencies like to sell them in packages. A mix of copywriting, link building and monitoring starts at $1,000 a month, even for SMEs. If that is too expensive, they should rather do everything themselves.

Revenue Share

All the previous examples show that SEO is often time consuming and expensive for a client. Therefore offering a share of their revenue from SEO traffic allows them to keep the cost within limits and ensures very motivated SEO firms.

For the SEO firm it is often smartest to keep a mix of low initial fees and a revenue share percentage that in many cases earns more than a fixed fee. The risk of under achieving should be limited and the influence on the revenue should be large (whatever metric is used).

Depending on the margins on a product a 5% fee on all revenue from unpaid search is not uncommon. I've even worked with a conversion attribution model where 50% of all direct and indirect sales from unpaid search got paid.

Having Your Own Websites

Working for clients is fun, but using your expertise in industries where product fulfillment is easy or where great affiliate programs (or other business models) exist is often much more lucrative. The greatest advantage of working without clients is the freedom and control you have over the perfect SEO situation.

Link building becomes a lot easier when you don't represent some big brand and when you can easily start many websites within the same industry. Finding the right industry where the competition still leaves a lot of gaps in their SEO approach and where margins are high is the only hard part of having your own websites.

From Steady Income to Millionaire

When you need a steady income to get by, start out with the services at the beginning of this article. Once you've made sure you can pay the rent for some time to come, having your own websites is the only chance to become a millionaire from your SEO knowledge.

Twitter Buys Image Search Company Madbits

Twitter hasn't traditionally been known for their image capabilities. However, that may be about to change as image search company Madbits earlier this week announced via their website that they were joining Twitter.

Within the posting, Madbits co-founders Clement Farabet and Louis-Alexandre Etezad-Heydari shared the following insight:

"Over this past year, we've built visual intelligence technology that automatically understands, organizes and extracts relevant information from raw media. Understanding the content of an image, whether or not there are tags associated with that image, is a complex challenge. We developed our technology based on deep learning, an approach to statistical machine learning that involves stacking simple projections to form powerful hierarchical models of a signal.

We prototyped and tested about ten different applications, and as we've prepared to launch publicly, we've decided to bring the technology to Twitter, a company that shares our ambitions and vision and will help us scale this technology."

Madbits had taken to their LinkedIn page to share that they are "primarily interested in the task of image search, and the creation of intelligent, dynamic image sets, to automatically organize large databases of images," according to TechCrunch.

It appears that Twitter has been slowly adding image features to their arsenal. These capabilities include:

People-taggingMultiple photos per tweetAnimated GIFs

GigaOm, which broke the news, had this to say about the potential future implications:

It’s not at all surprising that Twitter would want to acquire the company, given the tremendous amount of images published on Twitter every day. If Twitter wants to roll out functions such as image search, improve its search rankings based on image content, or perhaps even analyze images to get a better sense of what people are tweeting about, it will need people who understand how to do it.

Would you like to see Twitter add image search? How do you think this might affect the way marketers utilize images on the platform to reach consumers? Tell us in the comments.

30% of Traffic to Insurance Sites Came from Search in June

by Jessica Lee,August 1, 2014Comments

How do auto insurance brands stack up in the search results? How much do they rely on search traffic to their websites? New data coming from Millward Brown Digital explains.

Across the carriers studied in June, approximately three in 10 website visits were generated from search engines. State Farm had the highest percentage of traffic to its site from search, at approximately 36 percent, according to Millward Brown.

Want to Measure Social ROI? Start with These 5 Cross-Channel Metrics

by Uri Bar-Joseph,August 4, 2014Comments

In a recent Gigaom survey, 52 percent of responders stated that, "It's difficult to prove ROI for social media marketing." ROI, specifically social ROI, has been a point of contention ever since the term "social media" started surfacing in the marketing circles, dating as far back as 2007-2008.

Why, after almost a decade, doesn't social media measurement have a solution for measuring ROI? Why is social ROI still such a major challenge?

What Makes Content Shareable & Why It Matters for SEO

→ Read more on ContentPopularTopicsPopular→ How to Optimize Your Content Strategy With Social ListeningJuly 23, 2014→ 4 Amazing Things You Simply Must Know About Sensational HeadlinesJuly 22, 2014→ Using Majestic's Topical Trust Flow to Find Online PR OpportunitiesJuly 23, 2014→ What Makes Content Shareable & Why It Matters for SEOAugust  4, 2014TopicsSEO • Content marketing • Social media • Facebook • Google • Audience • consistent • shared • Guess • Search EnginePlease enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.comments powered by Disqus

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Bing Reveals U.S. "Fireworks" Search Interest in Time for July 4th

→ Read more on SEOPopularTopicsPopular→ The 10 Best Ways to Generate Traffic Without GoogleJune 30, 2014→ Panda 4.0 Help: Google Clarifies Tremors, 3 Analogies for Diagnosing HitsJuly  2, 2014→ 6 Ways to Make Your Search Results ShineJuly  3, 2014→ SEO Website Audits: Everything You Need to Know Part IIJuly  7, 2014→ Keeping Your Head Above Water in the Google LagoonJuly  1, 2014→ Content Creators Ranking Checklist: How Quality Scores InfluenceJuly  2, 2014TopicsFourth of July • Bing • New Hampshire • Rhode Island • firework • Louisiana • Portland • Mississippi • Oregon • NorthwestPlease enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.comments powered by Disqus

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Yahoo Retires Less Popular Products to Make Room for New Innovation

by Ashley Zeckman,July 3, 2014CommentsIn an effort to focus on developing some of its more popular products, Yahoo has decided to retire some of its not-so-popular ones. However, all is not lost. Many of the features from the newly retired products have been integrated into other areas of its product set.

Yahoo first announced its upcoming changes earlier this year and eliminated products such as Newlook Service, Research Reports, and Bookmarks.yahoo.com in April and May. Yesterday, the company revealed further changes. 

In a blog post confirming the move, Jay Rossiter, senior vice president, Cloud Platform Group at Yahoo writes, "Over the past two years, our teams have been incredibly focused on our mission: making the world’s daily habits more inspiring and entertaining. This focus has allowed us to launch some new, exciting products while giving us the opportunity to make the core products our users already love even better.

"To achieve this, we took a hard look at our products and have shut down some of the less popular ones and integrated widely loved features from others into core Yahoo experiences."

So, what additional Yahoo products are facing elimination?

People Search: As a user, you want one place to find everything you need. You can use Yahoo Search to find people, blogs, places, maps - anything. That’s why today, July 2, we are closing down Yahoo People Search, a defunct directory site that’s no longer useful. Check out Yahoo Search to find the people you’re looking for.

Xobni: As we announced in July 2013, although we are shutting down Xobni.com and the Smartr Product Suite today, July 2, we have incorporated many Xobni-like features into Yahoo Mail (like compose auto-suggest and people-centric mail search) and the technology behind the product continues to inform our current and future user experiences.

Yahoo Toolbar on Chrome: By July 22, the Yahoo Toolbar will be removed from the Chrome Web store, to comply with recent Google Chrome policy updates. Instead, we now offer the Yahoo Extension for Chrome, which will give you quick access to Yahoo.com whenever you open a new tab. The Toolbar is still available for Firefox and Internet Explorer at toolbar.yahoo.com. Install the Toolbar and sign in to your Yahoo account to access your personalized settings.

Yahoo Shine: We recently unveiled several new digital magazines that dive deeper into the topics our users have come to love on Yahoo Shine and offer unique advertising opportunities for brands. While Yahoo Shine will be closing on July 31, through our digital magazines, like Yahoo Beauty and Yahoo Travel, we will continue to bring these topics to life with stunning visuals, a strong editorial voice and engaging native advertising.

Yahoo Voices and the Yahoo Contributor Network: On July 31, Voices.Yahoo.com will be shut down and at the end of August, Contributor.Yahoo.com closes. Yahoo will be notifying contributors and please refer to this FAQ for more details.

Yahoo is determined to focus its energy on what it calls its "four core areas." Included in this group are Search, Communications, Digital Magazines, and Video. The company will also invest efforts in further developing Flickr and Tumblr.

While Yahoo’s recent changes may not affect marketers directly, it is clear that it will change the way that consumers utilize Yahoo. Do you think that the large number of changes will push users to try other search engines such as Google or Bing? Let us know in the comments section below!

Google 'Forgets' Publisher Articles as EU Takedowns Begin

by Carly Page,July 3, 2014Comments

Google has started taking down search results following Europe's 'right to be forgotten' ruling in May, with both the BBC and The Guardian seeing articles being removed from the search engine.

The BBC and the Guardian reported that pieces have been removed from Google, such as a column by Robert Peston commenting on bankers' woes during the 2007 financial crisis. The Guardian's James Ball said that six of the paper's articles have been removed from Google search.

Ball is calling for publishers to revolt against this, and has asked that media outlets set up Twitter accounts that tweet the links of articles that have been pulled from Google.

Google started removing search results last week, following the European Court of Justice landmark "right to be forgotten" ruling in May.

A Google spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal at the time, "This week we're starting to take action on the removals requests that we've received.

"This is a new process for us. Each request has to be assessed individually, and we're working as quickly as possible to get through the queue."

Google didn't sound too pleased about the whole thing, and didn't reveal any further details about the process, which means it's not clear how many requests the firm has received, nor how many it has removed so far. If recent reports are to be believed, takedown requests have topped the 50,000 level.

Bloomberg noted that, as well as articles from the BBC and Guardian, the interrnet search engine has removed a link to a Spanish newspaper that was the target of a court case by Mario Costeja Gonzalez. A Search of Gonzalez's name now shows text at the bottom of the page, which reads, "Some results may have been removed under data-protection law in Europe."

"We're showing this notice in Europe when a user searches for most names, not just pages that have been affected by a removal," Google clarified on its website.

Towards the end of May, Google started offering EU citizens an online tool to fill out if they want a link removed from its search results.

When submitting a request, Google said that users will have to provide at least one kind of photo ID, and stated that links will only be removed if the information is erroneous, misleading or no longer relevant.

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.

10 Shocking Facts About Content Marketing Today

Every day, more than 27 million pieces of content are shared on the Web. If there was ever a question as to whether content is still king, this statistic speaks volumes. However, the content marketing industry is just beginning to bloom as more people turn to it to exhibit their company brand and message.

Content marketing has revolutionized what it means to showcase your business to the world. With social channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter, it's quick and easy to get the word out about your goods and services. Now, content marketing has evolved into an art – every marketing team is attempting to create the next unique, wildly successful campaign to propel their company to the top.

As marketers find new ways to reach their target audiences and technology continues to evolve, the future of content marketing continues to get brighter. Here are 10 shocking facts about this revolutionary marketing strategy that shapes the way we make purchases, evaluate services, and use the Internet each day.

1. Companies with an active blog generate 67 percent more leads per month

This statistic highlights one key factor that anyone who uses the Web can't ignore – people love blogs. They love them even more when they happen to find them on their favorite company's websites.

Why? Because blogging provides consumers with a down-to-earth view of what a business is all about. Furthermore, company blogs can quickly become a go-to resource for other people in the industry, assuming posts are always educational and relevant. Marketers can utilize the company blog to entice readers with calls-to-action and content offerings for lead capture. Why not cast a larger net when there are plenty of fish in the sea?

2. On average, content marketers are using 12 different tactics

Multitasking is an understatement for marketers, as this statistic from the Content Marketing Institute implies. Every year, more channels of communication open up for marketing teams – think of all of the apps and social networking sites that have exploded onto the scene in 2014 alone.

That being said, content marketers are taking advantage of many of them – most have an average of a dozen in their arsenal. Virtual conferences, videos, and research reports are among some of the most popular ones, and they may be worth incorporating into your own strategy.

3. About 86 percent of B2C companies use content marketing

It's no longer just the B2B companies that are taking a stab at content marketing, according to this statistic. With the number of consumers turning to social networking to make buying decisions, B2C companies are viewing content marketing as the key to expanding their client base. The value of content marketing continues to expand across multiple industries.

4. B2B marketing teams spend 33 percent of their budget on content marketing

This statistic indicates one key point: content marketing is valuable – so valuable that it's worth 33 percent of the marketing budget.

Resources such as content management systems and email marketing software come with a price. That being said, you can make up for the cost with the ROI of the product. Automating certain marketing tasks can save your team valuable time that they could put toward other tasks such as lead nurturing.

The value of content marketing continues to prove itself in the number of leads that are brought in, which have the potential to translate into deals.

5. Social media sites and blogs reach eight out of 10 Internet users in the U.S.

This is a large number, even when you aren't taking into account the number of people who may be using these sites to make purchases. Whether your buyer persona is most frequently on LinkedIn or Facebook, content marketers need to have a presence on social media and develop a blog strategy for outreach purposes.

6. Email is the most popular form of communication

Despite the prominence of social networks and their relevance in content marketing, email is still the winner. For this reason, marketers need to continue to place value in their email marketing campaigns, as well as the content that they are distributing to their target audience. These days, email automation and tracking software make it easy for marketing teams to tackle this portion of their job.

7. Approximately 47 percent of B2B marketers regularly use LinkedIn

Even if your target audience primarily uses Facebook or Twitter, it's a good idea to utilize LinkedIn as a marketer. Business professionals turn to this website to make connections with other people in their industry and build their network.

If you still aren't convinced, consider this statistic – top salespeople spend approximately six hours per week on LinkedIn. The social networking site has evolved into a powerful sales and marketing tool that continues to grow in popularity.

8. Nearly 87 percent of B2B companies use social media to distribute content

While it's completely acceptable to offer content on areas of your company website, there's a greater chance of reaching the masses through social media. That being said, publishing your content on websites such as Facebook and Twitter isn't always enough.

Your content marketing team needs to build a following on these social networking websites by providing valuable, insightful updates. This may take some work – and an employee who is dedicated to social networking efforts. However, the ROI will come in the form of more prospects and leads, who may eventually become customers and contributors to your overall bottom line.

9. Companies that blog 15 times per month get five times more traffic than those that don't

This number indicates one simple fact – build a blog, and people will come. Active blogs can create a breadcrumb trail for more leads and set the sales team up for success; pointing to an expert and in-house-written blog post that answers a lead's question thoroughly and intelligently is a very helpful sales tactic. It's up to the marketing team to ensure that the blog is always full of insightful, fresh content, and although this may take some work, the potential benefits are hard to ignore.

10. Only 44 percent of companies outsource their content marketing efforts

While it may be easy to outsource tasks such as blogging and social networking, companies are showing a preference toward keeping content marketing in-house. There are pros and cons to doing so, but the biggest benefit is that in-house teams generally have greater access to primary data, company voice, and other brand nuances that outsourced writers don't. However, in-house teams are commonly more expensive than outsourced solutions.

Conclusion

Content marketing isn't just a fad; it has firmly established itself as a core facet of the marketing industry. Its seemingly sudden increase in popularity is due to its significant benefits to other disciplines of online marketing, such as SEO and social media marketing. Clearly, marketers have embraced content marketing and the statistics prove its value.

Image credit: Stock Monkeys

Implementing the SEO Quality Gate

Brands are doubling down on content and becoming publishers in the true sense of the word. With all this investment in content creation, it’s become critical to have internal processes to ensure content is optimized before it goes out the door. Enter the SEO Quality Gate.

What Is the SEO Quality Gate?

It’s a simple idea – nothing gets published on the website or other digital properties without a check for SEO and inbound tactics optimization. It can take the form of a review by an in-house expert, a third-party agency, or it can become part of the way your editors, writers, and content creators do their job. And while it may be a simple concept, sometimes the simplest things are tough to implement.

The Rise of the CMS

As most sites of any significance now run on content management platforms, non-technical people can have a real impact on the level of optimization a given image, Web page, or video has when it gets pushed live.

Even the most basic CMS configurations allow for the editing of key SEO fields. Given a bit of development resources, the CMS interface can be customized to allow for even greater control – the ability to edit or add Schema.org tags for example – or the ability to add G

SEO Website Audits: Everything You Need to Know Part II

In a follow-up to an earlier column on what a site audit is in general, today I am going to spend a bit more time helping with the understanding of what a good audit is and why you would get with a tools audit vs. a human one.

Website SEO Audits - What Are They?

The term website SEO audit is a very general one that means anything that the auditor wants it to mean. This means I could be spending hours laboring over every detail of your site looking for issues, challenges, and areas of improvement or I could be running a tool that spits out a report and I spend an few hours writing up a few actionable items for you. So which is it?

It Is All of the Above.

Is it wrong if someone just uses some tools and writes up a few actionable items and gives that to you? Is it worth the money to pay for someone to pour over every nook and cranny looking for the slightest detail that might be out of place? The answer is that it depends. Why are you doing the audit? What do you want from the audit? And what is your budget?

Tools Vs. Humans

So when you are getting an audit, the most important thing you need to know is what you are paying for and why you are paying for it. In most cases, your audit reports and costs will be based on who is doing the auditing: tool or human.

Tools-Based Audits

All audits have some level of tool involvement: reports are run, analytics reviewed, links pulled for evaluation. The question is, does the auditor write most of the analysis for you or does the tool?

Vine Your Way to ClickZ Live San Francisco

by ClickZ ,July 7, 2014Comments

Interested in attending ClickZ Live San Francisco in August? Enter to win travel, accommodations, and a Platinum pass to the event by creating your best Vine video clip using your favorite toys. Yep, you heard that right, we did say "TOYS"...after all, who isn't a big kid at heart?!

From the announcement:

We want you to tell us the biggest challenge you've faced in digital marketing in a Vine video, using toys (because, being digital types, we know you've all got a toy cupboard in your office …)

For inspiration, ClickZ has created a few Vine videos of its own, featuring Ken (of Ken and Barbie), Legos, Thor, and Darth Vader.

"Think twice about building unnecessary apps":

"Keep in mind your global audience":

"Too much social":

"Keeping up with Google’s algorithm updates":

To enter, tweet your Vine video using the hashtag #DigitalMarketingChallenges. The favorites will be posted on the ClickZ Live Twitter feed.

The competition will close at midnight (PDT) on Wednesday, July 16. The best five will be put to a public vote, and the winner will be announced on Friday, July 25. Good luck!

This article was originally published on ClickZ.

Lucky Duck: Why Things Are Going Swimmingly for DuckDuckGo

by Jessica Lee,July 7, 2014Comments

DuckDuckGo continues to delight users with new, novel features on top of the foundations the search engine is known for, and why many people choose DuckDuckGo over giants like Google: DuckDuckGo does not track users, and it does not "filter" search results.

Mobile Now Exceeds PC: The Biggest Shift Since the Internet Began

by Rebecca Murtagh,July 8, 2014Comments

If you're still struggling to leverage the website to support goals, you have some catching up to do, as the landscape has recently experienced a tectonic shift.

Mobile Exceeds PC Internet Usage for First Time in History

In early 2014, the landscape in which businesses operate changed forever when Internet usage on mobile devices exceeded PC usage.

Top Keyword Combos for PPC Retail Ads During Back to School [Data]

The back-to-school and back-to-college retail audience spent an estimated combined $72.5 billion in 2013 – this season is second only behind the holidays for highest spending.

The critical thing about the back-to-school shopping season is that it's long – about three months! This is because school start dates vary across the country, from as early as the first week of August (Hawaii's public schools) to mid-September (New York City public schools).

Shoppers time their back-to-school shopping to the school start date, with 73 percent of shoppers filling their carts three weeks to more than two months before school starts.

Does Advertiser Spend on Keywords Match Top Queries?

To get an indication of the search terms the back-to-school shopper is using, we can look at advertiser spending on keywords that are relevant to back-to-school. Our friends at AdGooroo aggregated this data from both Google AdWords and the Yahoo Bing Network. It shows ad spend and impressions served – giving you a peek into how the two match up:

Google's Matt Cutts Goes on Leave, but Says Don't Panic

Remember a few weeks ago when Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts made himself invisible to prove a point about the importance of having a website? Well, now it seems Cutts is literally going to disappear from his very prominent position as the face of all things Google SEO.

Last week, Cutts announced he would be taking a few months of leave from Google to spend more time at home, returning in November. In his announcement, he made it clear he would not be answering emails or working (instead, he and his wife would be taking up ballroom dancing). 

He did leave a list of resources people can go to in his absence, and reiterated that the SEO community was in capable hands.

“Thanks to a deep bench of smart engineers and spam fighters, the webspam team is in more-than-capable hands. Seriously, they’re much better at spam fighting than I am, so don’t worry on that score,” Cutts said in his post.

We’ll miss Cutts as the star of the Q&A Google Webmasters videos on YouTube, but while he’s gone, here’s a list of resources he gave for webmasters and SEOs to turn to:

Webmaster forumsOffice Hours Hangouts Google Webmaster Central on TwitterGoogle Webmasters on Google

'Delete' is Now 'Remove' In AdWords

announced yesterday a tiny change to the language within its user interface (UI) that could have a big impact on how people view "old" campaigns. In about two weeks, AdWords will replace most instances of the word "delete" with the word "remove" in its UI. 

Mobile Site Configuration 101: How to Choose

by Jim Yu,July 9, 2014Comments

IPhones and Androids, now in their eighth and seventh year of existence respectively, have 23 percent of the organic search market, according to April data from BrightEdge's Data Cube.

How to Diversify Your PPC Campaigns – and Your Skill Sets at the Same Time

If you've been managing pay-per-click campaigns for a while, you probably know that the "80/20" rule applies to many accounts. The "80/20" rule means that 80 percent of your traffic/sales are generated by 20 percent of your keywords. Even though this happenstance is commonplace, there is an inherent danger lurking in your account if you don't start diversifying immediately.

Around our office, we call the top-performing 20 percent "Golden Corral" keywords. These keywords provide a solid foundation for your account. However, relying solely on your golden corral keywords is known as putting all your eggs into one basket. If your golden corral keywords' performance ever slips, your entire account will suffer. Diversification insulates you from these fluctuations – because they will happen.

Diversification serves as a defensive tactic by spreading out your traffic to various campaigns. Also, this strategy is proactive because this is how good account managers provide new strategies and leadership. On the flip side, there is also risk with conducting tests and differentiating your traffic sources.

The campaign diversification process is filled with bumps, potholes, and even landmines. Hopefully, most of the tests you launch will achieve a level of success and they will evolve into long-term tactics. Let's face it: many of the new ideas you bring will not work, and that's OK. You need to have a process for launching new ideas, monitoring them closely, and making timely decisions when you have generated enough traffic to make a smart decision. Keep the things that work, and discard the tactics that don't.

If you push to learn and test new ideas, you will diversify your campaigns, which will help your overall performance. But through this process you will grow as a campaign manager as you expand your knowledge and experience. Everyone wins!

Below is a quick plan to get your diversification process started:

Define and Segment Your Golden Corral Keywords

You need to fully understand which keywords belong in your golden corral; segment those terms into specific ad groups and campaigns; monitor and optimize them precisely. If you utilize loose match types like broad match or broad match modified, you should drill down the exact match variations that are truly driving the most valuable traffic.

Develop Your Keyword List

Many accounts I review suffer from lazy keyword strategies. These accounts rely too heavily on broad match to generate the majority of their traffic. There is risk involved in this strategy because you are not truly in control of your traffic; you're allowing Google to match queries to your general keywords.

As you discover keywords that are high-value or high-potential, you need to extract those queries and shift them into exact match keywords in order to maintain tight control over your traffic. This is an evergreen process. This process should be ongoing so that you continuously expand your keyword list.

Designate a Testing Budget and Plan

Once you have a process down for regularly expanding your keyword list, then you need to designate a testing plan. As I mentioned earlier, many tests won't be successful, but you need to test to see what works. However, you don't want these tests to negatively impact overall performance – or at the very least offset the trends that may cause you to make erroneous corrective actions.

The best way to conduct testing while maintaining your core momentum is to create tests outside of your core campaigns when possible, and establish reporting that segments the performance of your core campaigns against those of your testing initiatives.

Also, you should establish a testing budget for each month or quarter. This way, your core budget is not impacted and you continue to optimize that spend – while you are using a smaller budget to find new sources of high-yield traffic.

Promote New Products/Services

I recently reviewed an e-commerce client that has an extension list of products, however only about half of their products were promoted through PPC. Their current strategy was to focus on the "heavy hitter" products that performed the best. This makes total sense and these are their 20 percent golden corral products (golden corral isn't just for keywords), but they were missing out on huge opportunities.

The client decided to devise a plan to begin expanding their promote products via AdWords. Sure, we may find that certain products just don't stack up well and they don't meet our key performance indicator (KPI) requirements, but we may also find a handful of products that do well if we try them out again – especially since these products hadn't been promoted in a few years.

Expand Your Geographic Targeting

The 80/20 rule can apply to numerous aspects of your campaigns; geographic location is one of them. I've reviewed accounts recently that focused heavily on tight niche of metro areas. This made sense because these geographic locations provided the best ROI. However, this exposed a weakness in the account because if a metro area's performance weakened this could have a significant negative impact.

You should test new markets, or perhaps re-test markets that didn't work previously. Also, you may have to establish new KPIs for these expanded markets. As with any expansion, you need to reach beyond your comfort zone, while clearly marketing your point-of-diminishing returns.

Introduce New Distribution Channels

Just within Google's service offerings you have a few distribution channels: Google Search, Search Partner Network, Google Display Network, YouTube, and Gmail Sponsored Promotions. You should review your traffic mix to see where the majority of clicks reside, and then consider an expansion test.

Each of these channels presents opportunities and challenges. Even though each of these channels can be managed through Google, they all require a unique mindset and skill set. For example, if you currently have minimal experience with the Google Display Network (GDN), then you're going to have to do some educational investment before launching any GDN campaigns.

You can link your YouTube account directly to your AdWords account and run video ads. This can be very powerful, but the targeting options for YouTube campaigns are different from standard AdWords campaigns. So, this will also require some research and education.

Launch New Ad Formats

The core of most PPC campaigns is text-based ads. You can diversify your campaign by utilizing new ad formats such as image ads via the GDN or App Ads. As with any expansion tactic, some ad formats will work better than others and App Ads are totally different from everything else because you are driving app downloads. How can you make all of this work?

On average, we find that image ads via the GDN have a higher click-through rate (CTR) but a weaker conversion rate. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be in your media mix. There is inventory on the GDN reserved specifically for image ads so you may new pockets of distribution. Similar to any other expansion effort, you should segment these new ad types. For example, if you launch new image ads, you should create individual campaigns or at least ad groups for these ads. You need to mark them with campaign naming conventions or labels – or both!

Enroll in New Beta Products

Google AdWords and Bing Ads launch beta products frequently. You should work with your AdWords or Bing Rep closely to get whitelisted for these betas.

For example, I have a client that tries most betas within Google (that make sense for their campaigns). Many of these betas under-performed and they weren't a good fit. But many betas have provided supplemental traffic with acceptable results. In fact, just recently we launched a new beta for this client that completely changed how we will manage their account going forward (see graph below). The up-tick in this graph was when we launched the new beta tactic in AdWords.

Publisher Guide for Adding Custom Variables in Google Tag Manager

If you're an online publisher using Google Analytics, I'm sure you've heard this before: you need to use custom variables so that you can really segment and measure your audience.

You also most likely are currently working on migrating to Google Tag Manager in order to make your life easier.

So how do you implement them together? What follows is a step-by-step guide for installing publisher-centered custom variables using Google Tag Manager.

I am going to assume, that you already have Google Tag Manager installed in your site and that one of your tags is the asynch GA js. If you don't, read this first.

Google's Justin Cutroni recommends adding seven custom variables for publishers. This article will go in detail and breakdown how to install four of them:

CategoryContent TypePublication DateAuthor

These four custom variables at the most basic level gets you a good idea of your overall site performance. Once you add these data points, you can also get closer to information that other publisher-centered analytics tools such as Parsely track.

Let's jump in!

3 Things You Need to Know Before You BeginThese custom variables should be implemented on the page level. For all the custom variables mentioned above, the value changes as the user goes from one page to the next. For example, a user might read an article by author one and then click on a link that goes to an article by Author 2. This is true for all the custom variables aforementionedYou're going to need a data layer. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. The best and only way to have these custom variables on your site is via data layer. If you want to read more about this, here's an article that gives a good explanation of how data layers work.You need the help of your front-end engineer. If you don't know this yet, you will, a good analytics person is always good to his or her front-end engineers.

Ask your front-end engineer to create a data layer that contains the four custom variables we want to add: Content Type, Author, Category, and Published Date. Direct them to the developer documentation on adding data layer for Google Tag Manager. There are two key things to check in the developer implementation:

Make sure that the data layer comes before the Google Tag Manager code (we inserted ours before the /head tag).I like keeping my values in small caps, this eliminates any potential duplicate entries that could be created due to any weird capitalizations.

Check out the way we set up the data layer in one of our sites. The data layer in the source code for that page will look like below.

4 Ways to Maximize Agency Relationships

I've had the pleasure of working in multiple capacities throughout my career. On the one hand, this includes roles on the brand side of marketing and dealing directly with agencies. The flip side is working within an agency and dealing directly with brand marketing teams. I've enjoyed both and believe anyone in marketing should get perspectives from both sides.

Here are a few tips on how to maximize the agency-brand relationship to ensure the highest return on investment (ROI).

1. Relationships Matter

First and foremost, remember that you're working with people. I've engaged with clients that had no respect for the individuals working on their campaigns, and I can tell you that nothing good comes from it.

There are always situations where lighting a fire is a good thing. However, the vast majority of the time you want the project manager and team to genuinely care about you and your organization.

If that's the case, creativity and passion will happen naturally and campaigns will produce a higher caliber of results. Project managers are more likely to push their team, stick their neck out, and sacrifice their time for clients they liketo collaborate with.

2. Encourage Bold Moves

Taking calculated risks is part of any investing activity. With marketing, this is no different.

Success is achieved through a combination of science and creativity. Sometimes you need to test new ideas, and some of them may not meet expected outcomes.

These "failures" are opportunities to learn and should be seen as such. Without problems, there is no growth. If you're not growing, you're dying.

Learn and grow from campaigns and efforts that didn't turn out as expected. I like the phrase, "test often and fail fast." With that said, don't mistake evolution for incompetence. There's no excuse for consistent failure or testing something with no research or foundation.

3. Collaborate

If you're on the brand side, remember you hired the agency for a reason: take the time to trust its judgment. If you're an agency working with a brand, don't assume you know everything.

The client's experience, connections, and direction are critical to your success. View your partnership as a mutual endeavor that increases the prosperity of a given company. Collaboration and openness are critical to achieving this.

4. Bring the Energy

Nothing is worse than attending a meeting with someone that sucks the energy from the room. You've all been there and know what I'm talking about.

Positivity breeds positive results.This increases opportunities for success. Bring excitement to the table, and you'll be amazed at how different the meeting outcomes will be.

Summary

Generating positive returns and getting things done should be motivation for both parties. Ensuring this happens involves effort from both sides. Sometimes a little relationship maintenance is needed to take things to the next level.

How to Implement an Engaging Content Marketing Plan for the Finance Industry

Finance-related information is often dismissed as boring and dry and a pain to read. But it need not be that way. After all, everybody needsgood and reliable information when it comes to money. So it should not be difficult for financial institutes to grab people's attention with the right kind of content.

For an engaging content marketing plan, focus on creating content that helps your customers and provides them with the resources they need to make informed decisions.

Yes, we live in a consumer-driven world now, and not only do you need to understand exactly what content your target audience wants, you need to be obsessed with them to succeed. This post will help you do exactly this.

A Bird's Eye View

Before you dive into a new strategy, it's good to get the basics right. Make a plan and create an overview of your goals and what your content marketing will look like. Here's something to get you started.

Social Channels: Facebook and Twitter are the "must do" channels. But if you have the time and the resources for it, jump into LinkedIn communities or run a Google

3 Tests to Determine if Mobile Ads are Right for Your Online Store

by Mary Weinstein,July 11, 2014Comments

Mobile use is such a part of our lives that 73 percent of people admit they would feel panicked about losing a phone. Mobile use is a pervasive habit for our society- across search, shopping, and social networks.

Consumers spend more than 15 hours a week on mobile sites and apps, a year over year mobile use has grown 25 percent, according to Google. Just as marketers switched from print to television advertising, many marketers are emphasizing a mobile presence for their online store.

Should You Set Up Mobile Ads?

Mobile is big, and getting bigger. But are mobile search ads a good investment for your site?

Below are three questions to ask to help your determine your potential for mobile success, and analytics reports you can run to help answer those questions.

1. How Much Traffic Comes to Your Site From Mobile?

How many of your users are actually coming to your site using a mobile device? Depending on your site and consumer base, this answer will vary widely.

If your client demographic is older, you may have very few mobile visitors. Younger shoppers, or a more tech savvy audience will inversely be more likely to browse and purchase using mobile. Don't assume your site visitors are or aren't visiting on mobile. Look at the data first.

To determine how much of your site traffic comes from mobile, run a device report in Google Analytics. To do this, login to Analytics and select mobile in the left navigation under Audience. Click overview to view the mobile sessions, users, and other user traffic information for mobile:

Google Panda: Understanding the Technical Inner Workings

by Ben Goodsell,July 11, 2014Comments

The concept of a search engine is very simple. Database the location of pages and return the most relevant results.

Primitive search engines only understood words on the pages in their database and returned pages that included those searched words. Google essentially came along with the ability to reorder those search results based on how many other pages on the Internet linked to them.

Since then Google and other search engines have improved these foundational ranking factors and developed thousands of ways to reorder search results so only the most relevant are displayed to the user. For example the "freshness" of content or the location of where the search took place.

Panda is just another way Google reorders results based on the quality of a site's content.

Throughout this article we speculate in detail what can be learned from the "Panda Patent". The verbiage used is often vague and sometimes makes it hard to retain meaning, so here's a quick concept breakdown that should help throughout.

Panda refreshes gathered information about links and queries associated with a site.Upon a user search, each result listing (URL / Page) is given an initial score based on relevance to search and page quality.Calculations of #1 and #2 determine if the result listing (URL / Page) is above or below a threshold.Results are reordered by final values.Looking Back and the New "Panda Rank"

Way back in February 2011, Google released a major change in how they order search results. In it they explain:

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.

They go on to say:

...it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that's exactly what this change does.

Panda looked at the quality of content as it related to a site.

Baytech was very responsive and executed in a timely fashion

Baytech Web Design already has a good reputation in their field

’t know the answer to a question, she got an answer very quickly.

All of the project’s main goals were achieved with the aid of the consultants. It was easy to communicate with them and they laid-out the project in a clear and concise manner.

Baytech Web Design made it very easy to make requests and see results. It was just up to me to check to see if issued had been fixed. And they always ended up being fixed.

Baytech Web Design was fantastic in the implementation of our new Web site. It was not a small task, by any means, but the whole team was quick to implement and quick to fix issues that arose. Even when we added extra work during the implementation, it was done efficiently and seamlessly. I never once felt like we were waiting on them for anything.

Jon Pinson

www.electronicstockroom.com

24th June, 2010

Baytech was very responsive and executed in a timely fashion Baytech Web Design is very timely and professional WorkPortfolioClient ListServicesWeb DesignWeb DevelopmentOnline MarketingStrategy ConsultingMobileAboutOur MethodologyOur VisionOur MissionMeet the TeamCompany CultureNews/EventsTop Baytech NewsTestimonialsBlogWeb DevelopmentWeb DesignSEM / SEOFree SEO ToolsContact Us Connect--

Baytech Web Design is very timely and professional

Baytech Web Design was a pleasure to work with

and I had a lot of questions! In my opinion, she is an asset to your team.

Baytech Web Design offers reasonable rates, excellent results.

Lisa Akselrad

www.spg-corp.com

August 14th, 2010

Baytech Web Design is very timely and professional Baytech Web Design Team: Very patient and Helpful. WorkPortfolioClient ListServicesWeb DesignWeb DevelopmentOnline MarketingStrategy ConsultingMobileAboutOur MethodologyOur VisionOur MissionMeet the TeamCompany CultureNews/EventsTop Baytech NewsTestimonialsBlogWeb DevelopmentWeb DesignSEM / SEOFree SEO ToolsContact Us Connect--

Baytech Web Design Team: Very patient and Helpful.

Baytech Web Design Did a good job

Baytech Client, Poggled.com, Raises $5.6M of Series B Funding

s Regional Sales Manager, Sara Mahmoodi. We specialize in translating conceptual ideas into a technical specification that will be profitable for our clients. Its such an exciting process to bring those ideas to life.

In June of 2010, Poggled released their beta site. The Chicago startup has since continued to grow, recently securing $5.6M of Series B funding from New Enterprise Associates, the same venture capitalist firm that invested in Groupon.

The Poggled site is now Chicagos largest nightlife website, offering exclusive discounted drink deals and party packages to users. The Series B funding will support the companys continued growth and market-by-market rollout in the coming weeks and months.

We are constantly working with entrepreneurs to develop innovative sophisticated web applications, says Baytech

Customer Success Story: Origo Networks Lands Venture Capital Investment

that enables businesses to find software solutions through their application marketplaces. Investors in the debt round were not disclosed. The company did not say how the funding proceeds would be used.

http://www.venturedeal.com/News/2011/3/8/Origo-Networks-Lands-Venture-Capital-Investment

Baytech Client, Poggled.com, Raises $5.6M of Series B Funding Thank the Baytech Team for the patience and guidance WorkPortfolioClient ListServicesWeb DesignWeb DevelopmentOnline MarketingStrategy ConsultingMobileAboutOur MethodologyOur VisionOur MissionMeet the TeamCompany CultureNews/EventsTop Baytech NewsTestimonialsBlogWeb DevelopmentWeb DesignSEM / SEOFree SEO ToolsContact Us Connect--

Thank the Baytech Team for the patience and guidance

Off The Hook Recruiting
http://Www.OffTheHookRecruiting.com
http://Www.Facebook.com/OffTheHookRecruiting

Customer Success Story: Origo Networks Lands Venture Capital Investment Secrets to SEO, Everyone Forgets Number 6 – SEO San Jose WorkPortfolioClient ListServicesWeb DesignWeb DevelopmentOnline MarketingStrategy ConsultingMobileAboutOur MethodologyOur VisionOur MissionMeet the TeamCompany CultureNews/EventsTop Baytech NewsTestimonialsBlogWeb DevelopmentWeb DesignSEM / SEOFree SEO ToolsContact Us Connect--

Secrets to SEO, Everyone Forgets Number 6 – SEO San Jose

So, you are a reputable company right here in the heart of Silicon Valley and you are exploring your options for search engine optimization.

Here are the most important aspects to the SEO Process from the SEO San Jose Experts:

On-Page OptimizationOff-Page OptimizationContent GenerationLink BuildingSocial Media PostsCompany Blog

 

Back to School 2014 Trends: How Search Marketers Can Get Ready Now [Study]

by Jessica Lee,June 18, 2014Comments

School may have just got out for some, but that doesn't mean search marketers can take a break. The back-to-school marketing season is in full swing according to data coming from PM Digital's fourth annual "Back To School Trend Report".

Approximately 48 percent start shopping online in preparation for school three to four weeks prior to the first day of school, and about 31 percent do so two months prior. With much of the U.S. going back to school in late August or early September, that puts retailers into prime search opportunity starting in July.

Google: Top Search Ads Increase Brand Awareness by 6.6% [Study]

by Ashley Zeckman,June 18, 2014Comments

Traditionally, the value in search advertising has always been centered on increases in click-through rates and conversions. However, Google and Ipsos MediaCT partnered to study the impact of search ads on brand awareness. The results might surprise you.

How Was the Study Conducted?

Google and Ipsos MediaCT ran over 60 search experiments in 2013 in hopes of understanding how search ads affect brand awareness. As part of the studies, 800 U.S. consumers participated in the simulated search scenarios. Think with Google recently shared further information on how the simulations were conducted:

The consumers were prompted to search for a specific category keyword (for example, "hiking boots" or "small cars") on their desktop or laptop. They were then shown either a control search engine results page (SERP) or Test SERP spotlighting one of the 12 categories: apparel and durables, auto, B2B, classified and local, consumer packaged goods (CPG), education, financial services, healthcare, media and entertainment, retail, tech and travel.

Consumers that were given the Test SERP would see the test brand's search ad present at the top of their Google search results (as pictured below).

Bing Catapult: New Technology Delivers Faster, More Relevant Search Results

Bing has put significant resources behind a new data center project at Microsoft designed to give searchers faster results and results that are much more relevant to the query. Call it Bing's version of Google Caffeine.

The Catapult project is a redesign of the data centers and machines that power Bing search. It began in 2012 and plans to effectively recreate how Bing handles searches in the backend.

The Catapult project technology can also be scaled across many different Microsoft platforms and services, meaning it can provide a faster user experience to their customers outside of Bing search as well.

Like Google and every other web giant, Microsoft runs its web services atop thousands of computer servers packed into warehouse-sized data centers, and most of these machines are equipped with ordinary processors from Intel, the world's largest chip maker. But when he sat down with Lu, Burger said he wanted millions of dollars to build rack after rack of computer servers that used what are called field-programmable arrays, or FPGAs, processors that Microsoft could modify specifically for use with its own software. He said that these chips–built by a company called Altera–could not only speed up Bing searches, but also change the way Microsoft run all sorts of other online services.

What is also unique about the system is that Bing can update and enhance these types of chips, whereas the server system way of doing things has stalled out when it has come to getting the next bigger and faster version, according to a blog post on Microsoft TechNet.

"Going into production with this new technology will be a watershed moment for Bing search," he

Yandex's Sibir Reverse Image Search Technology is Pure Awesome

by Michael Bonfils,June 19, 2014Comments

Yandex users will now have access to reverse image search, "Sibir," which is the Russian word for Siberia and also based on the acronym CBIR, which stands for "content-based image retrieval."

Reverse image search gives results not based on a word search but on a search of visual content. The developers over at Yandex accomplished this creation of computer vision technology, enabling users with a better image search product.

How Sibir Works

SES Atlanta is Just 3 Weeks Away: Learn Top SEO & Paid Search Tactics, Tips & Tools

4 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Next Marketing ConferenceMarch 11, 2014Popular→ SES Atlanta is Just 3 Weeks Away: Learn Top SEO & Paid Search Tactics, Tips & ToolsJune 19, 2014TopicsAtlanta • Search Engine Watch • search engine marketing • Topher Kohan • Incisive Media • SEO • organic search • SEMPO • Product Manager • BuckheadPlease enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.comments powered by Disqus

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When Do You Add UX to Your Design?

It seems that user experience (UX) is becoming more prevalent in the website design arena, but some sites seem to get more out of their UX efforts than others.

It's not so much if you add UX to your process, but when you add it that makes the most impact.

Many curious design teams aren't sure about this UX thing, so they sprinkle a little UX in, like salt and pepper, after the dish is done.

Mature design teams treat UX as the main dish, not simply as a seasoning. They start with UX, first.

UX is Proactive, Not Reactive

What immature design teams fail to understand is that UX is a proactive, two-step process, not a single-step, reactive afterthought.

Step one clearly and accurately defines the problem from the users' perspective. Once the problem is well defined, the solutions become almost obvious.Step two focuses on applying UX design practices to create high-performing sites that solve the problem identified in step one. Relying on just the design step won't create high-performing sites.Define, Then Solve the User's Problem

This initial discovery research step is probably the least known, yet most important aspect of UX processes. Typically, companies merely assume they know what problem their visitors need to solve. In my 25 years of UX design, these assumptions have proven to be grossly inaccurate 100 percent of the time (no exaggeration).

I have never worked on a website that was based on an initially accurate problem definition. Knowing the problem is the key to success and UX research provides the most accurate problem definitions. Otherwise, the best you can hope for is to solve the wrong problem, very well.

UX research begins by interviewing (good) or observing (best) real users in their task environment. The focus is not on design, but to understand the users' point of pain they are trying to address.

For instance, with ProFlowers, we learned that guys don't go to flower shops to "build a bouquet." They go there to find a bouquet for a specific occasion. Ahh, but which bouquet? Finding the right bouquet for a given occasion is their real goal.

Imagine what would happen if a husband bought a sympathy bouquet for his wife's birthday. D'oh!

Usability Testing isn't User Research

A common misperception is that usability testing is user research. Testing is useful to validate a design after it has been created, not to define the problem. Testing induces an inherent bias that the design solves the right problem.

Testing provides incremental reactive feedback about the solution, but does nothing to identify the problem. I doubt anyone has ever heard a test participant say, "That's a good design, but it doesn't solve my problem."

Interestingly, many clients have asked why we need to spend so much time defining the problem when they already "know" the problem. As mentioned, they don't actually know the problem, they are just hesitant to "waste" time on user research.

Your clients will be amazed at how much design and development time they actually save by spending the time to clearly define the problem, up front. Moreover, they are even more surprised at what this initial discovery uncovers. It always identifies an important, unmet user need that creates a clear competitive advantage.

Google Censorship Ruling in Canada Has Worldwide Implications

Search engine censorship seems to be a topic that is popping up left and right in countries around the world. This begs us to ask the question: Just how much censorship control should a government have over search engines? One Canadian court ruling would have you believe that global control is the answer.

The latest case involves Equustek Solutions, a Canadian company claiming that a competitor stole their trade secrets and is selling networking devices on Google. Equustek Solutions has requested that Google "remove all search results that link to the rival's more than 300 websites."

While Google had no hand in encouraging use of the rival's product, search results present on Google have proven very useful to the company, as does the advertising they purchase from Google.

The Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled in favor of Equustek Solutions and issued a temporary injunction. Most importantly, the injunction requires that the results of the competing company be removed not only from Google.ca but instances of Google in other countries as well.

Google voluntarily offered to remove the search results from Google.ca but not for other sites like Google.co.uk, Goofle.fr and Google.com. A Google spokesperson drew attention to the fact that the injunction would result in "imposing Canadian law around the world". The judge's response was, "well, we have to keep up with the times."

Other Recent Search Censorship Cases

Over the last few years we've seen an increasing number of instances where Google was ordered to remove less than favorable results, or where countries have blocked content from their citizens.

Earlier this month China blocked Google results related to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.

In May, Argentinian model Maria Belen Rodriguez took both Google and Yahoo to court to demand the search engines remove images linking her to pornographic sites.

Also in May, European courts ruled in favor of a Spanish man who brought a case against Google due to search results that contained "embarrassing" financial information – the case that has become widely known as the "right to be forgotten." The courts ruled that Google and other search engines to remove results that "appear to be inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purpose for which they were processed and in the light of the time that has elapsed."

Many argue that these cases are not only censorship issues, but they alter the documentation of history. Gigaom put it best when they wrote:

Google, today, is like a library catalogue of available knowledge; while different countries may choose not to make certain knowledge available, people should be able to know it exists in the first place – and the best way they can do so is through Google.What is the Potential Aftermath?

A case like the one in Canada opens up the floodgates for all sorts of censorship questions and scenarios. Recent rulings provide ample opportunity for people to abuse a process and begin requesting more and more information be removed from search engines.

Law professor Michael Geist wrote:

The implications are enormous since if a Canadian court has the power to limit access to information for the globe, presumably other courts would as well. While the court does not grapple with this possibility, what happens if a Russian court orders Google to remove gay and lesbian sites from its database? Or if Iran orders it remove Israeli sites from the database? The possibilities are endless since local rules of freedom of expression often differ from country to country. Yet the B.C. court adopts the view that it can issue an order with global effect.

Where do you see all this search censorship leading?

The Original Search Marketing Event is Back!

Microsoft Kills Sponsored Post Program After Attracting Matt Cutts' Attention

When your social media campaign attracts the attention of Google's chief spam fighter Matt Cutts, it usually isn't a good sign.

Entrepreneur and founder of TechCrunch Michael Arrington, writing on Uncrunched, revealed that he received an email from the social media marketing company Social Chorus offering to compensate for posts promoting the brand-new Internet Explorer, along with a link to IE. While the campaign wanted personal experiences from bloggers, it was also required that each blogger disclose that it was a sponsored post – using a very specific wording from the company.

Cutts tweeted Gregg Hanano, the program strategist from Social Chorus whose name and email was on the landing page sent to Arrington.

Videos Dominate Universal Search Results 65% of the Time [Study]

by Jessica Lee,June 19, 2014CommentsSince its inception in 2007, universal search results have have morphed to show a multitude of choices for searchers to choose from, like videos, images, maps, shopping results, and news.

 

How Responsive Design Increases the Results of Your Online Marketing

by Kristi Hines,June 20, 2014Comments

We all hear about responsive design. But as a marketer, sometimes we are only focused on the specific tasks, such as creating content, developing email campaigns, building links, and updating social media networks. The fact of the matter is, if you or your clients do not have a responsive design in place, then all of the online marketing strategies we implement will not bring the full potential of results.

This post will cover the points you need to make to your boss or your clients when it comes to adding responsive design into the marketing mix.

A Quick Rundown of Mobile Statistics

So how does mobile play into content, email, search, and social media marketing? Here are just a few of the stats.

60 percent of Internet access is made on a mobile device. (InMobi)51 percent of emails are now opened on mobile devices. (Litmus)The majority of mobile consumers use search in the shopping process. Forty-eight percent start on search engines. (Google)70 percent of mobile searches lead to action on websites within one hour. That's assuming that the website is mobile-friendly, otherwise 40 percent will choose another result. (iAcquire)60 percent of social media time is spent on smartphones and tablets as opposed to desktop browsers. (Business Insider)

What do these statistics mean? They mean that every aspect of our online marketing efforts – content, email, search, and social – is affected by mobile. People are reading content, opening emails, performing searches, and engaging with brands on social media – all on their mobile devices.

If statistics do not convince you that getting mobile-friendly with responsive design is important, then hop into your Google Analytics and go to the Mobile Overview in the Audience portion. Chances are, if you do a traffic comparison between this year and last, you'll notice that your mobile users have grown, potentially significantly.

6 Reasons for Your Lack of Content Marketing Success

Content marketing is the phrase of the moment. Everyone in the marketing industry now seems to "do content". Several brands and agencies boast its success, and a growing number of "experts" claim that content marketing is an effective and relatively easy way to drive awareness, sales, and advocacy.

Is it too good to be true?

Excellent results in content marketing can certainly occur. And there are several agencies or brands where it has actually happened.

But content marketing is not as easy as one would think. It often requires a lot of education, the art of convincing and having to break a lot of old marketing habits.

If you have invested a lot of energy (and money!) in content marketing and despite all that the results are not meeting your expectations, perhaps the reasons that led to this failure are apparent. If not, here are six possible explanations to your woes in content marketing.

1. Lack of Planning

Like the saying goes "Fail to Plan is Plan to Fail". Creating a strategy that is clear and with foresight is essential for your success. From editorial calendars, training and managing of editors and authors, content approvals, performance measurement... there is a lot to manage!

Success in content marketing begins with having a well-detailed content strategy that clearly defines objectives, terms, and roles and responsibilities. Your plan needs to be bullet proof! The slightest flaw in planning will compromise your success from the starting point.

2. Lack of Listening

Ego-centric content is another content marketing fail. Create content for customers, not your boss.

Taking time to understand what your customers really want to see or read, you'll be able to focus your efforts on creating content indisputably useful for them. Listening and anticipating the needs of your customers is the key to a more effective content marketing strategy.

3. Lack of Agility

You know that the success of your marketing strategy content depends on the fact that you should be able to post relevant content on a regular basis, but management insists on approving every piece of content, jeopardizing the momentum and limiting its impact.

The lack of agility generated by a very complex chain of command (legal, PR, engineering), can really kill any good content marketing strategy. Leaning as much as possible the levels of decisions (and a more convincing buy-in from C-level) can greatly increase the success factors.

4. Lack of Focus on Loyalty

Rebecca Coggan, from Matter Inside, illustrates really well one of the reasons why content marketing tends to fail: Brands tend to put too much emphasis on sex (sales) and not enough on love (loyalty) when creating content.

Although many of us admit that quite a few relationships were born out of sexual intercourse, the secret of a healthy and lasting marriage lays in nothing else but love. It is kind of obvious to say that when focusing on loyalty you decide to invest in your most profitable customers – the returning ones.

Be loyal to your consumers. Prioritize gradual constant action over one time high risk, big budget campaigns that often become ephemeral. The famous viral video campaign launched by WestJet for the past Christmas holidays is a good example of a big campaign that quickly fell into oblivion.

It's better to spread your energy (and money) into a lot of smaller but precise actions. By doing this you have a greater chance of maintaining a closer relationship with all of your consumers and engaging them in content that will rekindle the flame of love.

5. Lack of Modesty

Your consumers aren't stupid. Millennials are THEtech-savvy generation. Bombarded by the most advertising ever in history, they know what to look for with a sharpened ability to detect whether a brand's approach in content marketing is genuine.

Therefore, the only way to succeed is telling a real story that supports the promotion of your brand and your products. This will also help you stand out of the crowd from boring and commercial competitors who use typical "product-talk" that draw in little to no interest from consumers. By creating a narrative you will both entertain your audience and be more accessible and valuable to your customers.

6. Lack of Testing

Andy Nulman, from Just For Laughs, once said that successful content the fruit of rebellion and religion. Don't be afraid to test something different and pray that it works!

This is a good lesson of humility for brands that are alas often too afraid to shock consumers (or their legal department). Experimenting and taking chances with your content might be revealing for your marketing department and who knows, provide unexpected results. The key is to constantly test and to fail quickly.

Summary

Success in content marketing depends on many factors, but these are the most obvious pitfalls. Avoiding them can be a hard task, but being aware of your weaknesses is always a good step toward bettering your content marketing performance.

Francis Bedard of iProspect contributed to this post.

Image credit: Imgur

The Original Search Marketing Event is Back!

PPC Budget Forecasting 101

As pay-per-click (PPC) professionals, we're often asked to play with our numbers, to shift our budgets, and essentially to predict the future. A daunting task, I know. Some common questions we get from our clients about our search accounts cover the following:

Could you spend an extra $20,000 this month? What would that look like?How many clicks or conversions are we leaving on the table with our current budget?Are we maximizing our impression share?What's the potential that we could spend without impacting our CPA?

Surprisingly, I've learned that many advertisers don't have a quick and efficient way to answer these questions. They get caught up on which data sets they should pull, which campaigns are performing best, what their tipping point is, their average positions, etc.

Instead of spending a ton of time thinking about the details, I'm going to walk you through the simplest form of budget forecasting, dubbed "Budget Forecasting 101."

In this example, we'll pretend that our client is an online-only electronics store, called LightningElectronics.com. Their products are considered "luxury" and come with a significant price tag.

Our current CPA from our search account over the last month is about $39 per purchase (or conversion, which typically ranges from a $3,000 to $10,000 sale). We have limited budget for our current campaigns, and have spent $2,300 in the last 30 days.

It's 9 a.m. Monday morning, at the start of a new month. The client sends an email:

Hey John,

Great job on all the PPC work you've been doing! I've talked with my manager and we're open to spending a bit more this month. So, I have a few questions for you:

Do you think you can spend an extra $3,000?If so, what would that look like?How many more conversions can you get and at what CPA?Looking forward to hearing back by tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks

Ted
LightningElectronics.com

Now, don't flinch! You've got more than enough time to create a rough forecast that will help answer these questions.

To do this, we'll take a really simple route and recalculate your search account's potential using "Lost Impression Share." Essentially, we're going to ask ourselves, "What is possible if we had 100 percent impression share for all of our active campaigns?"

Step 1: Login into AdWords

Navigate to your "Campaigns" tabs, add in the "Impression Share" and "Lost Impression Share (budget)" columns. Then, download the last 30 days of your data (or even 14 days if you feel you've made significant changes recently).

Step 2: Organize Your Data

Open your data spreadsheet in Excel, ensure you're looking at live campaigns, and line up your columns so that they look like the screenshot below (delete anything that's unnecessary). Keep in mind that I've changed some titles (i.e., "Conversions" was "Converted Clicks" and "CPA" was "Converted Clicks/Cost").