How To Maximize Your Content Marketing Strategy With Search Engines

The panda is watching.

When it comes to a Google search – a whole lot of factors play a part in where you turn up.

But thanks to the 2011 Panda Updates these factors no longer include low-quality, ‘thin’ website content that is stuffed with keywords. If your website is seen as “high-quality” in Google’s eyes, these Panda updates will reward your website with ranking boosts, and more importantly – traffic boosts.

For example, the image below shows that sites like Ebay were slammed by the Panda update in 2014, which caused them to lose over half of their organic traffic almost overnight. This is due to the website being full of duplicated & thin content, ads, and links to other product pages within the website.

Image courtesy of SEMRush

What does this mean for your content marketing strategy?

Content marketing is becoming increasingly popular in the digital marketing space, and as we can see above, Google is rewarding websites that are offering high-quality content. This means that including what Google considers as “best practices” in your content marketing strategy, will ultimately help your website rank in search engines.

Where do you begin?

For this process to begin you will need a website. Thankfully, there are a number of website builders and web hosting sites that make this a relatively pain-free process. To get started, here is a list of the top five website builders and another of the top five web hosting companies. It is important to choose the best supplier for your website’s goals, since each service has its pros and cons.

Now let’s talk about optimizing your website and its content to Google’s standards.

Keyword Opportunities

Once you have decided on a web-hosting service, next is keywords. Keywords are the lifeblood of your website’s visibility, as they are what Google uses to understand exactly what your site is talking about.

With this in mind, it is of high importance to analyze your target audience and ensure your website is passing the correct signals to Google. There are a variety of factors that play into choosing the correct keywords to target.

•  What does your website provide?
• Who does your website cater to?
• Local? Global? National?

These are all questions that need to be asked during the beginning keyword analysis stages. Once these questions are answered you can use tools to ensure they are the best keywords to target, based on the competitive nature of the keyword(s). 

Tools for the Job

Moz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool – Below we see a screenshot of Moz’s Keyword Difficulty tool.

Searched is the term “social media”. At first glance we can see the top ranking websites for this keyword are enormous, high-authority websites, like Wikipedia and The New York Times.

Trying to outrank these websites is essentially impossible. It would be a better idea to target more long-tail keywords such as, “how to design a social media campaign” which is much more attainable to rank in the top 10 for.

User Experience

Google is constantly changing their algorithms to help better the search engine results, and user experience is something they care about. While designing your website you must ensure your website can be “crawled” by Google. This means you must structure your website in a way that Google and your customers can navigate your website’s content efficiently, and know exactly why they are looking at each specific page.

Another important component about usability and Google’s ranking factors is responsive design.

Responsive design is ultimately a website’s ability to be viewed on both PC and mobile devices. As PC sales have recently dropped by 9%, an awareness of the mobile world has grown exponentially.

Guess who’s watching? Google.

Since this mobile trend, Google has released an algorithm update, “Mobilegeddon”, which has caused websites that lack a responsive design to seemingly disappear from their rankings. Therefore, responsive design is clearly a must-have in today’s online world.

Tools for the Job

Browsershots – Browsershots allows web designers to see how their webpage will be viewed on any internet browser platform. This will allow you to analyze the responsive design of your website across all browsers and make tweaks where necessary.

Content

Is the content on your website worthwhile in the eyes of Google?

As content marketing is becoming increasingly relevant, it is important for a website to regularly provide quality, informational content. The days of stuffing content with keywords and hoping to increase search engine rankings are over.

Google recognizes these tactics and is actively penalizing websites who do this – don’t do it no matter how tempting it is! Providing worthy information to your audience is a necessary tactic to maximize brand loyalty and is one of the many traffic driving assets of an optimized website.

Once you have created a piece of content for your community it is important to treat the release as a grand opening. However, the ultimate takeaway here is to provide great community engagement and get your content in front of the people who want to see it.

If you are providing high-quality information to your readers this will assist in building a trusted brand around your website, and Google will take notice of this behavior. If Google sees your website as a useful source, then it will want you to be the answer to the community’s questions in the search results.

A win for both SEO and your content marketing strategy.

Tools for the Job

HubSpot SEO – HubSpot SEO will allow you to design content with search engine optimization in mind. This tool will analyze your content, and suggest improvements based on Google’s ranking factors.

Wrapping it up

Overall, it is very important to keep up with Google’s updates and ensure your website is relevant to both your customers and Google. Doing this will help launch your content marketing efforts into the realm of success. Thank you for reading!

Let’s continue the conversation in the comments and/or on twitter: @Trvshlvrd_RR.

How do you incorporate SEO into your content marketing strategy?

Guest Author: Taylor Tomita is a creative writer and musician residing in Boise, Idaho. He loves all aspects of marketing and social media, and spends too much time researching these topics. In his free time you can find him creating music or exploring the town in search of good pizza. Follow him on twitter.

The post How To Maximize Your Content Marketing Strategy With Search Engines appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

How to Drive Website Traffic With Instagram

Are you using Instagram to market your business? Want to direct followers to your website? With a few simple tactics, you can generate quality website traffic from Instagram. In this article you’ll discover how to use Instagram to drive traffic to your website. #1: Add a Website Link to Your Bio The most common way […]

This post How to Drive Website Traffic With Instagram first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
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Search vs Social: Where Should You Be Spending Your Advertising Budget?

It’s a battle that is heating up (but has been going on for years).

Everyone seems to have a different opinion or way of looking at it.

So what’s the best way to spend your marketing budget; search engines or social media?

Paid ad spend has been strong in 2015, with the US market seeing 26% growth year on year, whilst growth in PPC budgets from existing users continues to grow at around 70% year on year (as way of contrast only 6% of businesses actually report using search advertising to drive website traffic).

Social spend in comparison has also been rising consistently, hitting 27% last year and is expected to hit 29% in 2015 ($19.5 billion).

In mobile, search still dominates, with Google receiving over 3.5 billion searches each day, and continuing to dominate mobile ad revenues, collecting 35% in the U.S, compared to Facebook’s 17%.

Digital ad spend on the whole across search, social and mobile has never been greater, and it is only going to grow as web usage worldwide, especially mobile, continues to grow. In fact, advertising revenues are expected to grow 10.7% annually to reach $194.5 billion by 2018 (just $20 billion behind predicted TV advertising growth).

Statistics aside for a moment, it pays to take some time to think about which is the superior marketing strategy for you; search vs social?

To really answer that question will depend a lot on the nature of your business, your customers and what you are trying to achieve.

Social networks

There’s no escaping the huge growth of social media and the ability for it to get your ads or content in front of a lot of people.

Its power to influence consumer decisions and generate leads for B2C and B2B is certainly in evidence as well (54% of B2B respondents in a CMO study said they’d generated leads via social media). But proponents of search ads will point to a lack of ‘intent’ in social media users and less reliable conversions as a result.

Pros

• You don’t have to guess at your audience. Their gender, age, location, interests, work, friends and so much more is provided for you. Discovering your target demographic has never been easier.
• Peer endorsements can mean an instant conversion. 75% of individuals aged 18 – 26 use recommendations on social networks when deciding on a product.
• Your reputation is in your hands. With social networks, your positive response to a negative review is not merely instantaneous, but how you handle the situation is witnessed by a broad web audience.
• It nurtures brand loyalty. 71% of consumers are more likely to make purchasing decisions based on what they discover about brands on social media. Making social media a great opportunity for create life-long customers.

 Cons

• A large number of consumers don’t have a social profile. Unless you know that your target audience is on social media, you could be throwing advertising money down the drain.
• Most users of a social network are there to ‘socialise’, not to shop. As a result, your conversion rates on social networks are going to be a lot lower than search where ‘intent’ is more implicit.
• It can be time consuming, with up to 64% of digital marketers spending six hours or more on social media each day.
• It is incredibly difficult to set metrics and define your return-on-investment (ROI). Social media can be great for business, but with few direct conversions it is difficult to determine exactly how it is profiting your brand.

Search engines

Search is, and remains, the most powerful and trackable medium for digital advertisers with tried and tested methods for generating traffic and measuring conversions and ROI.

Critics will point to the increasing cost of PPC on platforms like Google Adwords, as a result of fierce competition over competitive keywords. This aside though, search advertising remains one of the most popular options for advertisers.

Pros

• Most consumers who discover your brand through a search engine are there with the intent to buy, resulting in increased traffic and higher conversions.
• Search allows for targeted marketing. You don’t have to go out looking for your target audience; the keywords they use direct them to you.
• Using analytics you can find out exactly what words and phrases consumers are searching for and alter your keywords accordingly. There may, for instance, be 50,000 consumers searching for ‘dog restraints’, but over two million users looking for ‘dog leashes’.
• If you don’t have the time, or expertise, to raise your site’s profile in organic listings, paid ads allow you a practical way to get your brand and products in the SERPs.

Cons

• Competition is fierce. It requires a substantial investment of resources and time, especially in a world where SEO algorithms are continuously changing.
• No guarantees. It’s been shown that 75% of searchers are unlikely to scroll past the first page so if your brand isn’t able to compete at the top, either in organic or paid, then some of those competitive keywords you really wanted to rank for may be out of reach indefinitely.
• It pays to rank well for organic search as well as for ads, but with link building and other SEO tactics, ROI isn’t instantaneous. SEO is an investment and it can take a long time before you see the results of your efforts.

So where should you invest your marketing budget: Search vs Social?

Well the get out of jail free answer is surely; why not both? Your customers are probably using both and the existing infrastructures of search and social are already beginning to merge.

Good social media habits can help to boost your organic rankings, while new social network advertising options can reveal a lot of information on keywords, target audiences and competitor activity, which in turn can feed back into your paid search campaign.

Social networking, after all, is terrific at building brand awareness and establishing credibility, whereas search is better at creating conversions.

A consumer is going to be much more likely to click your ad if they recognize your brand name from social media.

Used together, social and search can quickly become greater than the sum of their parts.

Guest Author: Thomas Coppen is the Technical Director and founder of Bristol based online advertising specialists Keel Over Marketing. Founding the company in 2012 Thomas has gone on to secure a client base that spans America, Australia and Asia, as well as Europe. You can connect with Keel Over on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus.

The post Search vs Social: Where Should You Be Spending Your Advertising Budget? appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

How to Manage Your Facebook Page Effectively

Do you manage at least one Facebook business page? Are you using all the admin features? Facebook Pages include many tools to help marketers and business owners get the most out of their business presence. In this article I’ll share how to use Facebook’s features, tools and settings to manage your business page effectively. #1: Access […]

This post How to Manage Your Facebook Page Effectively first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
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Don’t Discount the Importance of Native Apps

By now, you probably understand the importance of having a mobile-friendly website for your business. But if you already have such a website, you may think that it’s not important to also have a native app for your business.

Not so, according to some experts.

While having a mobile-friendly site is probably more important in most industries, native apps offer other benefits. One of the main benefits that mobile apps have over mobile websites is the increased control they give you over the entire user experience.

For example, apps give you the opportunity to send users push notifications, add social features, and make every function and design just how you envisioned it. Mobile websites are a bit more limited, since they can only really interact with users when they are specifically visiting the site. In addition, the need to have a mobile site that works on a variety of different devices limits how you can make your site look or interact with each device.

Andrew Thomas of SkyBell recently explained to Mashable:

“A native app allows you to deliberately design your user experience around mobile and to create a stickier relationship with your user. By using your native app, you can better code an experience with gestures, features and behaviors that may lead to better experience or conversion. For example, swipes and pinching can make navigating much more efficient and effective. Beyond the user interface, a native app allows you to make more use of APIs designed specifically for the experience you’re trying to accomplish. When done correctly, a user understands the value of using your app and adopts the use of your native app as a central part of the experience.”

But, of course, you can’t expect every consumer you come in contact with to download your app upon first learning of its existence. Sometimes visiting a website is just more convenient. If possible, it can be beneficial to have both a responsive or mobile-friendly site and a native mobile app, as they both offer benefits to different types of customers.

Brian Honigman wrote in a post for The Next Web:

“The native mobile app will provide a mobile centric experience for your existing and most loyal customers, while your responsive website can help provide an optimized experience to new and old visitors browsing your website or discovering it for the very first time.”

Code Image via Shutterstock

This article, "Don’t Discount the Importance of Native Apps" was first published on Small Business Trends

Facebook Notes Enhancements: This Week in Social Media

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What’s New This Week Facebook Notes Expands, Becomes Highly Customized: “With this update, you can add a cover photo that represents what […]

This post Facebook Notes Enhancements: This Week in Social Media first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
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Need Better Email Marketing Results? Try a Better CRM

The right CRM system used the right way can drastically improve your email marketing ROI, but again, the key words here are the “right” system and using it the “right” way.

It’s important to understand how to manage the data you receive about your customers, organize your information, and more to help keep your email marketing opportunities in one place. The biggest thing that a CRM system can help you do is identify where a customer lands within your sales funnel so that you know where to focus your efforts.

It can seem overwhelming at first, but as you work with a CRM you’ll find that it can help walk you through the process. We wrote an article here for Salesforce (which I recommend checking out for more detailed information) and they created an infographic around the content about this exact subject.

Check out the following infographic and then be sure to let us know your thoughts, questions, or any experiences you may have had in the comment section below.

[Click for Larger Image]

Republished by permission. Original here.

Image: Salesforce

This article, "Need Better Email Marketing Results? Try a Better CRM" was first published on Small Business Trends

Instagram Images: How to Stand Out on Instagram

Is your business on Instagram? Are you curious about what to post? To discover how to use images on Instagram, I interview Peg Fitzpatrick. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works […]

This post Instagram Images: How to Stand Out on Instagram first appeared on Social Media Examiner.
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35 Cool Social Media Facts You Should Not Ignore

Social media seems to have been with us forever.

In fact Facebook has turned ten!…that is an eternity in tech. Social media is so old that the fun police have turned up and are threatening to ruin the party.

The no rules and the dope smoking, beer swilling social media parties have started moving into the board room. The swinging 60′s of social have started to be invaded by the serious suits.

The politicians are now even pushing for social media privacy and protection laws. The lawyers have also joined. So don’t post anything too controversial on Facebook.

You may get sued. It is becoming legislated and legal.

At the big end of tech town, companies like IBM and Oracle are investing big bucks and building Enterprise software for social. It is now all about process, management and control.

How boring is that?

But in 2008 when I joined Facebook and Twitter, it was the wild west. There were no textbooks for social and people just leapt on and started playing. Tweeting with someone on the other side of the world who you didn’t know was so cool.

But questions were asked

When there are no rules then the general population feels a bit uncomfortable and starts asking for directions. The command and control economy is still embedded in our psyche.

How many times should I tweet? Is posting on Facebook once a day enough? Should I start a blog or is micro-blogging enough? Can I use my Facebook page like a website?

But maybe it’s time for social to grow up and develop some rules and guidelines and become accountable.

Is that bad?

No. It is time for the social zealots to become more responsible and the return on investment question is not to be shouted down but to be taken on board. It is not just about engagement. That is just the start of the conversation. Social media needs to convert engagement and trust into real leads and sales.

Is it a tad more boring?

Maybe.

There are some new social toys

But there is a still a lot of fun to be had for people who love shiny new toys.

This year has seen the emergence of some exciting new social platforms that remind me of the time I discovered social for the first time. Meerkat and Periscope have introduced us to live video streaming.

When I first used Periscope to observe someone in London streaming their walk to work while chatting it was was bizarre, confronting and very voyeuristic.

Just last week I joined Blab and watched as 4 social media pundits held a late night chat fest while sipping some wine and downing some cans of beer. This was done with 200 people on the virtual reality sidelines cheering, commenting and asking questions.

Conversations and questions centred around how engaging the live global video interaction was and would Blab rule in this connected world.

This engaged global connectedness that social brought us is still intoxicating.

But will these new platforms be game changers?

This question is often asked.

But at the end of the day it comes down to asking some key questions that need to be raised without wearing beer goggles.

• Could they drive more traffic? Not sure at this stage but looks like it may not be worth all the focus, time and the effort for achieving that goal.
• Will they provide more engagement with your prospects and customers? I think the answer to that is a big yes.
• Is it worth the time? Maybe and maybe not. That then begs the question of where and how should my time and resources be best spent.
• Can they make more money for your brand? That is maybe not what a social media purist wants to hear but the CEO will want to know.

The Pareto principle needs to be applied here.

If 20% of your efforts produce 80% of the results then being distracted by shiny new toys could be a tyre spinning exercise. Fun for sure but not a good use of resources.

At the end of the day they will be useful tools to consider for your marketing in the midst of many others.

The growth rates were astronomical

The growth rates at the beginning of the social media revolution were astronomical. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and other social networks grew at rates that hadn’t been seen before in a web world.

That pace has slowed and it is much more organic in 2015.

That is except for some of the new kids on the block such as Periscope, Meerkat and Blab.

One significant driver of social media growth and engagement in 2015 is the impact of smartphones. This is due in part to the populations in developing countries using mobiles as their primary internet device.

So what are the social media facts as we approach the end of 2015.

Facebook facts

Facebook still rules the social media world and is consolidating its dominance on a lot of levels. Sheer size, social advertising spend and dominating the mobile screen are just a few.

Here are some Facebook facts:

• Facebook has over 1.49 billion monthly active users
• Revenue hit $4.042 billion for the last quarter (second quarter 2015)
• For the the first time Facebook had 1 billion users log on in one day
• Mobile-only monthly active users have now reached 655 million
• Mobile advertising revenue is now at 76% of total earnings

Twitter facts

Twitter was always an accidental social network. It was never intended to be social. It was originally designed as a private internal messaging service for a podcasting company.

It is a technology experiment that escaped.

• 316 million monthly users
• 500 million tweets per day
• 80% of active users are on mobile
• 4,100 employees
• 50% of the employees are engineers

One other little known Twitter fact is that if you tweet more you will get more followers.

Source:  Agorapulse 

YouTube facts

YouTube has been with us since 2004. In 2005 it was acquired by Google for $1.5 billion. This is when Facebook got started. Facebook is now on a mission to replace YouTube as the largest video platform on the planet.

Here are some YouTube facts to ponder.

• Over 1 billion users visit YouTube every day
• Over 100 hours of video are uploaded every minute
• 25% of views are from mobile devices
• 6 billion hours of video are watched every month
• More content is uploaded in 60 days on YouTube than all 3 major U.S. Networks generated in the last 60 years

Source: Internetmarketingdojo.com

LinkedIn facts

LinkedIn was a little slow to the content marketing party and only introduced a publishing feature for all its members in 2014.  A new tool called LinkedIn Elevate is being trialled to help companies leverage their content by making it easy for companies to increase sharing of their content via their employees.

We will see how that pans out in powering companies to build more engagement. In the meantime here are some of the latest LinkedIn facts via Linkedin.

• 39 million students and recent college graduates are on LinkedIn
• 380 million users
• Total annual revenue is 0ver $2.8 billion
• Add 2 new members per second
• 8,700 employees

Instagram facts

Instagram is still one of the fastest growing social media properties. The reason. It’s mobile and visual which are two of the fastest emerging trends in social media marketing.

It is not just for images and photos and individuals can also post 15 second videos and has recently removed its ban on rectangular images.

Here are some Instagram facts.

• Over 400 million users
• It is estimated that Instagram will bring in $595 million in mobile ad revenues in 2015
• Mobile ad revenues are projected to surpass Google and Twitter by 2017 at $2.81 billion
• It is estimated that 9ver 27% of the U.S. population use Instagram in 2015
• 90% of Instagram users are younger than 35

Pinterest facts

Pinterest has been one of the most female dominated social networks since its inception. That has continued. Many of its images are about fashion (4.5 billion pins), recipes (1.7 billion) and home related images.

• 73 million global users
• 85% of Pinterest users are female
• 53 million monthly unique user in the USA
• There re 1 billion Pinterest boards
• 50 billion Pinterest pins

The new social toys

Despite social media maturing there are still some new toys that are filling niches and also leveraging emerging technologies and faster data networks.

Here is a quick look at some of the fast emerging social media platforms. What isn’t surprising is that they are mobile, video centric and live. It is all about engagement.

They are live streaming video apps that drive a lot of engagement and make sharing fun and highly engaging.

Meerkat fact

Meerkat allows you to broadcast live video from your mobile. This app launched in 2012 but broke through into public consciousness at SXSW in March, 2015. It then had a direct competitor launched a few weeks later.

The latest facts about the app that are hard to get due to its non-disclosure:

• It had an estimated 2 million users in May, 2015

Periscope facts

Periscope was Twitter’s answer to Meerkat and shortly after launching it also cut off Meerkats access to it’s API and service that made its growth trajectory much more muted.

• It announced on August 2 that it had reached 10 million accounts just 4 months after launch
• 40 years of video are being watched every day
• Daily active users – approximately 2 million

Blab fact

Blab only launched in April.

It allows up to 4 users to run a live video streaming conference that can be watched from the sidelines by others. The best way to describe it is Google+ Hangout for mobiles. It can be recored for later use and is a lot of fun. It feels like a mobile stadium. A few people on the stage and onlookers sharing feedback via questions and chatting visibly via text on the side column.

Signing up to Blab.im from your desktop is as simple as using your Twitter account. At this stage the mobile app is only available for the iPhone.

A lot of the top bloggers and social media early adopters have been hosting “Blabs” over the past few weeks. It’s fun and highly engaging.

An interesting Blab fact: Blab is a new start-up launched by the founders of Bebo. Bebo was a social network started in 2005 by Michael and Xochi Birch and bought by AOL in 2008 for $850 millon when it had reached 45 million users. It went into decline and was bought back by the couple for $1 million in 2013.

The post 35 Cool Social Media Facts You Should Not Ignore appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

How To Launch a Podcast and Capture #1 Ranking

Podcasts are hot.

It seems everyone is either thinking of launching a podcast, producing one or being interviewed. Podcasts are a very engaging way to communicate with your audience. They can be listened to while sitting on the beach, driving the car and working out at the gym.

The sound of the voice reveals a lot about a person. You can feel their passion and the meaning that intonation and pitch and volume reveals.

I recently launched a podcast called “The Top” which is like an audio version of a monthly income report and had the fastest growth any business podcast has ever had in its first month. We learned a lot along the way and in this in-depth 4,000 word post we will reveal the specific strategies and tactics that worked.

So what were the exact results?

Here’s the results

Before we tell you the stats  why don’t you check the podcast out. (click here to listen on iTunes or click here to listen on Android)

This post will be one of the most useful pieces of content you can study if you’re curious about podcast launches in 2015 and beyond. (There are also some other useful links at end that I found to be great for researching on the art of podcasting)

Here are the results.

1. Hit #1 on day one

It was 100% engineered and predictable.

Most other “podcast launch” blog post strategies are from 2014, 2013 or even later than that.

Totally USELESS.

2. 1,050 downloads on day one

Here are the RESULTS we drove in the first 30 days of the show being live:

3. #1 in “Business New and Noteworthy”

Don’t understand how Apple picks who to feature and who to sink? Keep reading and I’ll show you how to virtually guarantee you get into New and Noteworthy.

4. 36,000 downloads in first 30 days

What they said

The reviews were positive right out of the gate. This is what the @thecelluarguy had to say in one of the reviews.

 So what were the steps behind this successful launch.

Step 1: Launch with at least 8 episodes

I like doing things I know I can WIN. Podcasting is one of those things. It is ABSOLUTELY possible to literally ENGINEER a successful podcast if you follow these tips:

Everyone told me to launch with 3-5 episodes but no one gave me good reasoning.

“Launching with 3 episodes is WRONG STRATEGY“

The way I saw it, there was incredible UPSIDE to launching with the maximum numbers of episodes I could without making my audience feel like they couldn’t catch up.

The math is SIMPLE:

• 1 Subscriber x 1 episode = 1 download
• 1 SUBSCRIBER x 8 EPISODES = 8 DOWNLOADS

Downloads play a role in rankings and a high ranking gets you more FREE listeners from iTunes. Anyone wanna be 8x more effective? Get ranked 8 times higher? Get 8 times as many downloads?

Launch with as many episodes as you can but no more than 2 hours of total content. (If your show is 1 hour long, launch with 2 episodes).

The KEY is to MAKE sure you don’t overwhelm your audience on day 1.

I decided to launch with 8 x 15 minute episodes.

This means there would be 2 hours of content: Not too much to make new listeners feel overwhelmed BUT still getting 8 “launch partners” who EMAILED THEIR LISTS on day one.

Here’s how I got them to email. I sent an email to all 20 pre-recorded episode guests and said:

“Hey, I’m trying to decide which 8 episodes to launch with. These episodes will go out to my list and I’ll be investing heavily in promoting them. If I put you on launch day, are you willing to help out and email your list?”

Needless to say, everyone who said “yes” went out on day one. Everyone who said “no” was put in the queue for later.

BONUS: I used the fact that Apple ranked us #1 on launch day to convince initial “no”s into “yes’s” for emailing their lists!)

The result was that straight away on Day 1, we were AVERAGING 1000 downloads per day. Here is a screenshot from Libsyn, the tool I used to host my podcast:

 

Launch with as many episodes as you can but don’t exceed 2 hours of content.

What are 12 free shortcuts to getting 5,000 downloads FAST?

1. Add a PS into every personal email with a link to the episode. 

Here is a screen shot showing an email signature with a link to an episode (I use gmail):

 

2. Email your guests the day their episode releases and soft-sell them to sharing on social media. 

This helps in convincing guests yo post on social.

3. Encourage competition between your guests

Publish a “Top 10 Most Influential Entrepreneurs From August” list each month and encourage competition among podcast guests to get in that list.

I did this with Sue Zimmerman and she crushed it driving an additional 893 downloads to her episode in 24 hours (GO Sue!).

THIS DROVE OUR DAILY SPIKE OF 2500 DOWNLOADS

4. Get one big guest who you truly admire and use them as an anchor to attract other big names

(Bob, I appreciate you sharing how you charge $20k per keynote and sold 1.5m books you best-seller, you! .

This is how I COLD pitched A BIG NAME GUEST – Joe Pulizzi (CEO at Content Marketing World).

Joe said yes – his interview is #54 (release date 9/17/2015):

5. Every episode should start with a pre-interview open loop 

This means you should say 1-2 sentences to drive intense curiosity about the last episode that went live. For example:

“In yesterday’s episode #1, you heard how Kim Garst built a $23k/mo membership site using a $47/mo product!”.

This turns one download into 2 almost automatically.

6. Post an Instagram picture for each episode

Also include the top trending hashtag that day (found on Instagram homepage dashboard), along with 5-10 hashtags relevant to that episode.

I also like TAGGING 5 people who I think would get value from listening to the episode. Make sure you LINK to your podcast in your Instagram Biography.

Here’s an example I did with a woman who is doing $171k/mo and CRUSHING most men (Go Crystal!):

7. Encourage guest sharing

When a tool or guest gets mentioned in your podcast, tell them via twitter/facebook – they will re-share. I strategically spend 120 seconds on every episode asking 5 questions called the “Famous Five”.

Each of these questions get the guest to mention their “favorite” something (that ties with a new potential podcast partner/DISTRIBUTION channel on STEROIDS for me!)

8. When a book, tool, or person gets mentioned, tell them and tag them.

This is the same marketing strategy as #5.

(BONUS: Publish a Top 10 Books from Top Entrepreneurs blog article once per month to get book authors to retweet/re-email their lists/re-post on Facebook and Instagram).

This will help new folks discover the podcast:

How @neilpatel captures over 1,000 email leads A DAY and the software idea he and @hnshah are working on next: https://t.co/ECCTBfOSrV

— Nathan Latka (@NathanLatka) September 1, 2015

9. Use a tool like lead digits from leadpages

Then tell your guests to text: “the word nathan to 33444 for your chance to win a GoPro from episode 8” to build your list fast.

In 30 days this resulted in 203 email opt ins (or about 1 new subscriber per every 150 downloads)

10. Email the list daily about a new podcast episode

(WARNING: Do not email your whole list daily right off the bat – get them to subscribe to a segmented list requesting daily updates). Keep this conversational, short, and sweet.

This email about Carrie Wilkerson’s episode got a 76.2% open rate and 28.5% click through rate:  

11. Back link each blog article to the previous episode with a super provocative “open hook”.

Listen to this episode to see what I mean. This is how you get people TOTALLY ADDICTED – same strategy TV show survivor uses when they say “stay tuned for scenes from our next episode):

12. Email a larger segment of your list once per month with the top 10 episodes

I did this and drove 222 clicks back to the website. The trick is that this Top 10 article will back-link to the individual blog posts for each of the top 10 episodes, thus driving more downloads.

 Doing these little things, CONSISTENTLY, every day will drive incredible results over time. In our first 30 days we drove 36,000 downloads.

Keep reading to see some more unique things we did to drive these results:

Step 2: Focus on getting featured in “New and Noteworthy”

Getting into “New and Noteworthy” means Apple will basically feed you new subscribers for FREE for about 8 weeks. I conquered the top spot easily using the next few tactics…

There was no single magic bullet that led to us getting featured in New and Noteworthy – more like several little “BB” guns that if you fire constantly, you’ll WIN.

Ethically bribe (encourage) 50 people you can count on to review on day one

When launch day comes around, you will be swamped with fires to put out so get as much done beforehand as you can. I FB messaged friends and said:

“Here’s a preview of an episode, shoot me a quick reply if you like it”.

If they replied, I asked them if I could reach out on launch day and have them write a review and leave a rating. I kept track of all the commitments in a Google Doc:

While this is very much science and art,

I knew that if I got 30 5 star reviews in a very short amount of time on day one, Apple would put me in New and Noteworthy based off other business shows that were in N&N that had way less reviews.

Top tip: Create a 2 month buffer before launch

I was well aware that getting into podcasting would need to be a commitment. To get a show to #1, it requires a consistent release schedule over a very long period of time.

To MINIMIZE RECORDING TIME and to make sure I got one episode out every morning, I block off two days each month (6 hours each day) to be in studio. My calendar on those days looks like this:

I block off 20 minutes for each interview (live taping is 15 minutes, 5 minute buffer) and I knock out 15 interviews each recording session. In two recording sessions (12 hours), I can knock out a months worth of episodes.

When I find a guest I want to interview, I send them to my schedule once page:

Once they are scheduled, I plan out their release schedule in our “Show Master” google doc. It’s critical you do this BEFORE you do the live session.. keep reading and I’ll tell you why (you strategy people will LOVE this):

Top tip: Pick a logo/artwork that gets Apple to give you new listeners for free

You want to pick a logo and artwork that is clean and that POPS. To see if it’ll pop or not, literally edit your logo into a screenshot of mobile version of iTunes take them into Starbucks, and ask people to point to the first logo they see! Here’s an example (this design got ZERO attention, so I threw in the trash, fast!).

I did a version of this testing in an Instagram post:

Final result 

Make sure you use highly contrasting colors if you care most about getting organically discovered in iTunes.

Your designer will HATE YOU for making something that looks so ugly – but guess what? It works! Start with one of these color combinations (I landed on a more subtle orange/white/black combo):

Top tip: How to  spend only 12 hours per month on the podcast

I spend all of my time running Heyo.com. We’ve launched over 500,000 Facebook campaigns for businesses, raised $2.5m dollars in VC, have served over 10,000 monthly paying customers.

Since podcasting is NOT MY TOP FOCUS, I committed to building a process for the podcast that would require less than 15 hours a month of my time to run.

The key piece to pre-launch was getting a hyper efficient SYSTEM set up so that execution would be flawless and scaleable.

I started by setting up Google Drive folders organized around Pre-Launch, Launch, Post-Launch. I learned this from Amy Porterfields podcast episode 64!

Oration Recording would be the studio I would record in.

This SAVED ME about $800 from having to buy my own podcasting equipment, and countless hours I didn’t have to spend figuring out how to make all the audio “stuff” work.

More importantly, I estimate I save 10 hours per week on editing – the studio handled (and now handles) all of that.

Deb with Patch Design in Toronto would handle graphics for each episode.

Hunter Orrell, a super talented thinker who serves on the Virginia Tech entrepreneur club board, was in charge of posting each episode to the blog each day.

This is the 12 STEP DAILY PROCESS my team runs to keep the podcast at the top, without me:

1. Nathan use meetme.so/nathanlatka to schedule podcast guests

2. Sean put initial draft audio file (intro, content) and upload draft version into Google Drive folder titled “Audio Files” no later than 40 days before release date and sign in column “F” in this Google document when done.

3. Nathan listen to draft audio files to determine release order. Update release order in Google Drive file called “Show Schedule”. No later than 37 days before release date.

4. Sean finalize each audio file by adding on the pre and post-roll open loop along with the 33444 Call to Action (CTA),  and upload final version into Google Drive folder titled “Audio Files” no later than 35 days before release date.

5. Nathan access Google Drive folder and transcribe each recording through Rev.com. Upload each transcription to Google Drive folder title “Transcriptions” no later than 33 days before release date. Sean depositing audio file in Google Drive.

6. Hunter Orrell upload transcription into a new blog post using this template on nathanlatka.com/wp-admin. The blog post title should be the same as the show title (ex: E1: How Kim Garst Makes $23k/mo With a $47/mo Membership Site) and the link should be set to nathanlatka.com/the-top-firstnameguest-lastnameguest with a pretty link set up as nathanlatka.com/thetop1 or /thetop2 or /thetop3 – whatever the episode # is) no later than 30 days before release date.

7. Deb design blog image at 805 pixels wide by 500 pixels tall, upload into Google Drive folder “Images” no later than 30 days before release date.

8. Deb design Instagram image at 613 pixels wide by 613 pixels tall and upload into Google Drive folder “Images” no later than 30 days before release date.

9. Sean post show to Lisbyn each night at 5pm EST and put podcast episode in blog post using Smart Podcast Player. When complete, sign initials here. (Hunter will put out blog post the next morning.. as defined in the next step). Include check box to post to SoundCloud.

10. Hunter Orrell upload image from step 7 as “featured image” in blog post, assign “The Top Podcast” category to the blog post, and then hit “publish” on blog post each morning at 9am EST. Login at this link, username and password is in email I sent you. When complete, sign initials here.

11. Deb post to Nathan’s Instagram at 925am EST M-F (Nathan manually post on weekends) using this text: “[TITLE FROM COLUMN D]. Go to link in bio to listen AND for your chance to win prizes ranging from $5 to $500!  #inspiration #motivation #instagood #newday #love #friends #follow #followme #podcast #marketing #ideas #entrepreneur #startup” If guest has Instgram listed in Posting and Marketing Schedule Doc, tag them in post. When complete, sign initials here.

12. Deb post to Nathan’s Twitter at 928am EST M-Sun using this text: “ [TITLE FROM COLUMN D] (tag guest with @handle) Listen now [STICHER LINK]” When complete, sign initials here.

13. Nathan email guest telling them episode is live and asking them to Tweet/Facebook/IG, email market. When complete, sign initials here.

14. Nathan email The Top list in Mailchimp notification that new episode is live

15. Repeat #11-17 every day

Time is MORE IMPORTANT to me than money.

If you are the reverse, don’t build a team, build a process and execute it yourself and you can do this for less than $500.

Step 3: Tap into the power of email marketing of your guests

Email marketing is the quickest way to drive incredible amounts of traffic and downloads to your podcast. It’s critical you convince guests to email their lists.

 Here is the email script I use to convince guests to email their lists

Script:

Hey Mike, I’m about to feature the top 10 episodes for August in a blog post. You’re almost in the Top 10 but not quite there. Are you game to email your list at 9am EST on August 23rd?

Thanks, Nathan

P.S. – Apple has us ranked in the TOP new business podcasts and I’m already getting great feedback about your episode!

Now that we have a WAITING LIST of the top CEO’s wanting to be on The Top podcast for free exposure, I’m requiring all guests email their lists!

Two unsexy things no one talks about

These unsexy items are long term plays that no one does because you don’t see immediate results.

I’m convinced that by setting up a few of these unsexy things that when I check them out 5 years from now, they’ll be huge channels for the show.

First, set up Soundcloud for easy, quick playback inside Twitter.

This drove 288 additional downloads/plays in August alone.

(Peanuts compared to iTunes but this required less than 5 minutes to set up and requires 0 time ongoing to keep updated).

Second, get set up on Stitcher so android users have an easy way to listen in.

This drove about 210 downloads in August and consistently drives 7-8 new downloads per day on autopilot:

The show is quickly rising to the top on stitcher rankings as well. With time, I expect the show will be a top 10 show which will help drive new organic listeners from Stitcher native search.

Over the 30 days in August, we went from a 7000 ranking to 2000, BEATING out 5000 other shows:

Top tip: Use podcast meta-data

This is a hidden gem.

You have to think about your podcast meta-data just like you do with blog post SEO on Google. The trouble is, data on what is searched in the iTunes podcast app is limited – so you have to guess/predict.

I know that my ideal listener is always looking for advice on business, money, marketing, and life. Many of the top shows focus on these 4 categories. Optimize your show title accordingly:

Show Title: The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business, and Life

Secondly, iTunes users are likely to be searching for the names or podcast titles of other shows in your category. Include those keywords in the Author section of each show:

Author: Nathan Latka brings you top entrepreneurs daily inspired by Tim Ferriss, Pat Flynn, John Dumas, Entrepreneur on Fire, Chalene Johnson, NPR, HBR, the StartUp podcast, Art of Charm, Dave Ramsey, Planet Money, APM Marketplace, Mixergy, Seth Godin, #AskGaryVee, ProBlogger, Question of the Day, Build Your Tribe, and Diane Sanfilippo.

Now, if someone heard about Chalene Johnson’s podcast and they go search on iTunes, my show will also appear. Because our audiences are similar, these are potential listeners who’ll get hooked on my show too.

No shame. Stand on shoulders of giants. That’s what smart people do (just give credit where credit is due!)

Lastly, optimize episode titles to include the guests name.

Example:

“His Event is Free, So How Does He Make $800k Every Time? With Nick Unsworth”

Now, when anyone searches Nick Unsworth on iTunes, they’ll see his episode with me:

These are all little, unsexy things, that may drive 2-3 downloads per day but added up, over time, they move the needle.

Top tip: The trick to getting 7 reviews per week and a flood of new subscribers

Another advantage to a daily show is you can require guests to subscribe to the show, rate the show, and review the show.

Use this simple email script to make sure all of your guests are helping grow the show with you:

When people opt in to my list, I send an autoresponder sequence that many people call brilliant. It’s because I focus on people and conversation:

The SUBJECT LINE says: “hey” (I copied this from Barack Obamas #1 fundraising email)

The content says:

Now, take a look below and notice the click through rate on the first email is 0%. That’s because there are no links to click. I’ve optimized the email to get the new subscriber to reply directly to me!

If they reply to the auto-responder, I’ll reply manually to make sure they subscribe to the show by saying:

“If you’re loving the show will you follow these instructions and subscribe? Once your done, text me a screenshot of iTunes that shows you’ve subscribed and I’ll call you out on the next episode to get you some free exposure and show my appreciation! My number is 7034312709”

Once they subscribe, THEN use one of these 4 phrases to FORCE PEOPLE TO LEAVE A RATING AND REVIEW…

DO NOT ASK for both at once – it’s too much. Get them to say “yes I’ve subscribed” first AND THEN use the 4 phrases below to instantly get reviews:

1. If you’re loving the show will you leave a rating? Let me know what you write when you’re done, I’m curious.

2. Sometimes Apple is weird, shoot me a quick reply when you’ve left a review so I know it worked

3. I want to call you out on the next episode, leave a review? (See how I did this in the episode on this show.)

4. Screenshot your review and send it to me so I can give you a surprise that everyone else has to pay for (I then send them an eBook that I sell for $27 for free).

NOTE: If you just ask for a review, people will make you feel good and just say yes. You have to get them to emotionally commit. The 4 phrases above are working the best for me.

Step 4: Position for the long term game

This starts with recording a pre and post roll on every episode. Nobody does this and I don’t understand why.

The reality TV shows that are THE BIGGEST hits start each show with a 2-3 minute teaser of what happened last time, and usually end with a 2-3 minute teaser of whats coming up.

Survivor. Shark Tank. The Apprentice. HOUSE OF CARDS. They all do it and it works on me so I’m copying them.

At the start of each show I’ll say something like:

“In the last show you missed [guest name] talking about [headline that sparks curiosity/suspense]“

At the end of each show I’ll say something similar as well. This helps “connect” the episodes like a story that listeners can get totally addicted to and turns one download into 3, 4, and 5 downloads.

So, create amazing content and get people addicted.

Top tip: Be consistent

This is the #1 way to increase downloads is to publish more frequently. Many podcasts have sputtered out because the hosts quit too early. Commit to doing at least a years worth of shows or don’t do it at all. I’ve committed to one show per day released at 9am EST lasting between 15-20 minutes.

We always stick to this and our listeners love it.

We experimented with posting a REPLAY of a past episode with a different title to see if it would spike downloads.

Should you post the same content over and over to juice download numbers?

If the experiment worked, it would mean we could double frequency from 1 per day to 2 per day (unheard of in Podcasting but we’re trying all sorts of weird tactics!)

The idea came because I know when I listen to other shows, I never go all the way back to the beginning. A replay with a compelling title might pull me in and get me addicted.

We haven’t done a replay since the one we did on August 23rd because I’ve got several concerns despite the apparent success that day in terms of downloads.

We saw 1718 DOWNLOADS that day up from our 1100 average (about a 67% increase!)

My biggest concern is that our most loyal listeners (who HAVE listened to all shows) will get PISSED OFF that we’re reposting content. Then again, reality TV shows do this all the time (See Shark Tank).

My second concern is I don’t know if Apple penalizes you for posting the same content twice (kind of like how Google does if you post same blog post twice).

Will keep you updated on these experiments.

No matter what you do, tell your audience in episode 1 exactly what your show is, why you’re doing it, and when they can expect new shows – and STICK to it!

Top tip: Aggressively look for ways to stay close to your listeners

The best way to do this is to give out your phone number and text listeners. My favorite question to ask is: “What question do you always wish I would ask but I never do?”

Below, Ben Williamson from Episode 23 sent me a text as I was writing this congratulating me on the top spot in new and noteworthy. It’s always important to celebrate with your guests and listeners!

I also tell each new email subscriber from the show to UNSUBSCRIBE from my list unless they introduce themselves by taking this survey I set up using Ryan Levesque’s Ask book technique.

Ryan’s technique consists of a series of 8 questions. You then use responses to update subscriber merge tag fields in your CRM.

I then send out podcast episodes where guests match almost exactly where my new subscriber was 5 years ago.

The 8 questions:

1. What is your single biggest marketing challenge right now?

2. Which of the following best describes you? (choices like “sell own products” “sell other peoples products”)

3. Which of the following best describes you? (choices like “$500k-1m in revenue”)

4. Roughly, what’s the overall size of your business in terms of gross sales $?

5. What’s your primary niche/market?

6. Email, Name, Phone

I then put responses in an excel doc to categorize and then re-upload fields into Mailchimp so I have more accurate merge tags (THESE ARE FUTURE OF MARKETING!!)

This increases open rates and click through rates like you wouldn’t believe.

Top 10 Articles I Studied Pre-Podcast Launch

1. 8 unique marketing strategies to grow a podcast to the top of iTunes

2. How to produce a podcast with Jay Baer

3. How to start your own podcast with Lifehacker’s Patrick Allan

4. 3 unique ways to get started with business podcast with John Dumas on Social Media Examiner

5. How to start a podcast with Pat Flynn

6. 21 tips for launching a podcast with Jim Harmer

7. The podcast workflow with John Dumas

8. How to get your podcast to #1 in iTunes with Chris Ducker

9. Ten step podcast launch plan with Show Notes Guy

10. Studied and watch patterns in iTunes podcast app for 2 weeks

Wrapping it up

In conclusion, don’t podcast unless you have a really good reason to. For me, I was already having conversations like this in my daily life and thought it would make sense for me to record and share them.

I’m playing a long term game with the show – betting on the fact that podcasting will become the NEW RADIO and that, by getting in early, I’ll reap rewards long term.

Author bio: Nathan Latka is the CEO and Founder of Heyo. He’s worked with over 200,000 small businesses and entrepreneurs on launching social campaigns that capture emails and drive sales. You can find Nathan on Twitter.  

The post How To Launch a Podcast and Capture #1 Ranking appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.