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 Reddit Announces New Ad Offering: Reddit introduced Promoted User Posts, a new ad offering that gives marketers the [...]
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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Bing Network. All opinions are 100% mine.
If you could choose just ONE form of digital marketing, what would it be?
I get asked this question from big brands all over the world, and my answer is always the same…
Search engine marketing.
It often shocks people, because social media and content have been such a big contributor to my success. But in reality, search engines are where I continue to get the best return on investment.
In fact, 55% of the traffic for this site comes from organic search alone. And for me, more traffic means more earning potential.
Search engines are the lifeblood of digital marketing, not just because they deliver the most sustainable traffic to websites, but also because they are an essential component of our every day life.
Without search engines, life from a digital sense would inevitably stand still, stop functioning and most likely create widespread panic.
We are reliant on our ability to get answers and information at the click of a button, and that's why search engine marketing is such a powerful tool for you as a marketer.
But don't take my word for it, let me show you what I mean…
There is more to search engine marketing than just website traffic, and to illustrate why you should consider it an integral part of your digital strategy here are some statistics:
Of course these are just stats, but they tell a compelling story. Search engine marketing is here to stay, and it's importance will only grow as the global adoption of mobile devices continues to accelerate.
So how can you make the most of it?
A few weeks ago I wrote an article that encouraged you to diversify your search engine marketing strategy; in order to stay competitive and create a distinct point of difference for your website.
The most natural place to start if you're looking to diversify your strategy, reduce your overall risk and tap into some unique opportunities, is with the Bing Network.
Bing has come along way in the past decade, and it's much more than just a search box on a webpage. It's now a powerful connector between technology, information, people and knowledge.
Beyond being your typical search engine, Bing powers over 14 billion searches around the world across the Microsoft ecosystem; from Cortana, Xbox, Twitter, Apple and Amazon.
This means as a search engine marketer, Bing offers a unique opportunity to reach MORE people, in MORE ways and on MORE platforms.
Bing helps search engine marketers reach people at times when they are ready and willing to spend money – in their everyday lives. They connect you to prospects where and how they want to be reached.
Search engine marketing isn't just about dropping a few keywords into a search bar anymore…
It's much more than that.
Now search is present in everything we do, from interacting on social networks, to purchasing products, to finding a local restaurant.
As the digital marketing space continues to evolve, so will search, and you need to be prepared to ride that wave and capitalize on opportunities when they surface.
Networks such as Bing help you diversify your search marketing risk and tap into a growing and unique opportunity to reach your ideal customers.
The post The Undeniable Power Of Search Engine Marketing appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
How effective is your digital marketing strategy? Would you consider yourself a successful digital marketer?
If that question makes you feel queazy, you're not alone. Digital marketing is hard to get right, and it's changing every day.
The only way to keep up with these changes and get ahead of your competition is to innovate. Get out of your comfort zone, experiment, and test new methods to improve the effectiveness of your digital marketing.
If digital is a big part of your business, then you'd be familiar with terms like link building, content marketing, social media marketing etc. These are umbrella terms covering a number of marketing techniques that can really up your game.
But knowing this alone is insignificant if you don't know how to make the most of each technique with new and interesting tactics. So let's walk through some techniques that can increase the effectiveness of your online marketing.
While you may have heard arguments that guest blogging is being overused as a tool for link building, and losing value as a means of useful content deliverance, none can deny its effectiveness in the marketing world.
Guest blogging is here to stay, so you better make it part of your marketing strategy!
Ironically, the hardest part about guest posting is not the content creation; rather, it's sourcing the blogs. Thankfully, the internet is a great place where you can find solutions to every problem imaginable.
BuzzStream is one solution to the ordeals of guest posting. It carries out a number of tasks for guest bloggers, such as:
As interesting as its sounds, the skyscraper technique requires that you find the tallest skyscraper content in your niche and improve it with stories of your own.
Once you get going, you will realize the numerous ways you can edit and improve people's content and make it so much more useful. Also, you will be amazed by the grand attention your content receives through the skyscraper method!
Here are three fairly easy steps to guide your way through the skyscraper technique:
This relatively new term coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko has taken marketing agencies by surprise. The method is the marketing equivalent of revamping old clutter to create something way more useful than the original.
This marketing technique requires you to:
Simple and witty, just like what we expect from marketers of the twenty-first century!
Internationalization is a method not too common but of great significance. You make your website/blog accessible to more people by offering it in languages of more than one country. Makes sense!
Offer translations of your website in multiple languages and localize words to get your fair share of an international audience.
Image Source: Moz
Many times while implementing your marketing strategy, you will have to think like more than just as a marketer; you will have to think as a psychologist.
Understanding the psyche of your audience and creating content that they can actually relate to are skills possessed by only rare, true marketers. If you learn the art you can conquer the hearts and minds of your audience.
This psychological effect is sometimes created by the use of powerful words. Don't hesitate or fall short of researching such power words within your niche as they can compel new customers to join your community.
Image Source: Buffer
The second strong psychological effect is that of social sharing and caring. Use social media sites and communication to your full advantage by being humanistic and generous in your approach. Connect with people and other companies as people. When they share your content, always remember to return the favor.
Increasing your CTR in search engines is a time tested method of improving search engine ranking for websites.
Business blogs and websites have been going through the struggle for a long time. However, it's really not that hard if you have a systematic approach to it.
CTR can be increased fairly easily by:
LinkedIn is a wonderful place to run into new businesses and clients, stir up conversations, offer deals, and market your products in the process. In order to provide value and engage in a conversation with members of your target audience, share content through LinkedIn groups.
Image Source: Soho Tech Training
Who hasn't tried email marketing in order to address a wide audience? But the process and content of email marketing has become so monotonous and predictable that most companies usually get ignored by email recipients.
It's about time we start getting innovative with email marketing;
Learn from the geniuses, such as Dropbox which designed this sleek, beautiful email you just cannot ignore!
Image Source: HubSpot
There's no point in trying to target and build connections with random websites which have no correlation to topics in your niche. You can better spend the effort on reasonable prospects. Companies employ a number of methods when trying to identify and reach to potential websites which can backlink to their content.
One such technique is email marketing to people who have backlinked to relevant content already. Get in touch with these websites which have established positions in the market. Break the ice with them and ask politely for a feature or two of your own website.
Advertorials are the way forward in the present age of content marketing and promotion. They are unique and unlike traditional advertising because the content imitates editorial content but serves to fulfill the goals of a brand.
Following are ways to make advertorials advantageous for your brand:
Redirection is a process of sending both users and search engines to a URL different from what they requested. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which transfers almost all of the link juice to the new page.
A 301 redirect is the most preferable type of redirect because it indicates to browsers, search engine bots, and the users, that the page has been permanently moved. Search engines may take some time to discover your new page but once they do, they will take your new page to the same rankings where your former page stood.
The 11 ways of making online marketing more effective are the latest and most responsive of their kind. However, online marketing is a long, on-going process which cannot be summed up in 20, let alone 11 techniques.
Go beyond your threshold, employ all the methods discovered here and you might eventually find what works best for your business.
Guest Author: Junaid Ali Qureshi is a digital marketing specialist who has helped several businesses gain traffic, outperform competition and generate profitable leads. His current ventures include Elephantation, eLabelz, Smart Leads.ae, Progos Tech and eCig.
The post 11 Advanced Tips To Be A Successful Digital Marketer appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
Throwbacks are all the rage right now. And that's what MTV is banking on with the launch of its new network, MTV Classic. The new network will play nothing but reruns of popular MTV shows from the 90s and early 2000s, like Beavis and Butthead, Daria, Total Request Live, MTV Unplugged and Laguna Beach.
And MTV isn't the only company using nostalgia to get people's attention. Nickelodeon also has a network dedicated to older shows. And Pokemon Go likely wouldn't have been as popular without nearly 20 years of the Pokemon brand behind it.
Nostalgia can also be a big selling point for other types of brands. If people have fond memories of something from their past, they could buy something associated with it without much convincing from you. And in the case of MTV, playing reruns also means saving money on production costs.
Using nostalgia doesn't mean you have to sell an actual product that's old. You could find a way to associate your new product with something from the past. You could create a new spin on something older. Or you could even use a retro design in your marketing materials.
Whatever you decide to do, just make sure that your nostalgia is likely to bring back fond memories for people. And keep an eye on the trends. MTV's move makes sense because everything from 90s music to 90s fashion is experiencing a resurgence.
When you look at using retro ideas for your next product, service or marketing campaign, make sure it's from an era your audience can relate to. Otherwise you'll be putting distance between you and your customers instead of bringing people together.
Beavis and Butthead Image: MTV
This article, "MTV is Bringing Back the 90s With New Network (Watch)" was first published on Small Business Trends
Do you review your Twitter Analytics? Want to use them to improve your Twitter marketing? Ian Cleary is with us to explore what you can learn from the data provided in Twitter Analytics. 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 [...]
This post Twitter Analytics: How to Know if Your Twitter Marketing Works first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
“Email marketing is dead.” If you've been involved in the world of marketing over the last few years, you've likely heard that declaration more than once.
But a new podcast wants to bring a new perspective to that discussion about email marketing. Email Marketing's Grave is a new podcast from the team at marketing solutions provider PostUp. And you can subscribe on the podcast main page to never miss a future episode. Or download the podcast via iTunes or on SoundCloud.
PostUp Product Marketing Manager Andrea Bridges-Smith, who hosts and runs the podcast, said in a phone interview with Small Business Trends, “Email marketing gets declared dead a lot. Everyone's always excited about the latest social media platform popping up every two minutes. But email has been around for awhile, so no one's that excited about it anymore. But those of us in the industry who are dealing with it every day and seeing all of the innovation and potential for it to bring about different relationships than the ones you can have with social media, we think it's really exciting. So we want to sort of turn that notion of email being dead on it's head.”
The first episode, titled “How to Make Email Sexy Again,” features an interview with Jeff Kupietzky, CEO of PowerInbox. He and Bridges-Smith talk about some of the changes that businesses are making with their email marketing efforts and where they see the industry going over the next several years.
Bridges-Smith thinks there's plenty of room for innovation still. From companies including animated GIFs and videos to news tickers and other unique formats, email doesn't just have to feature static text anymore. And she's excited to feature those types of ideas and innovations in future podcast episodes.
The first episode of Email Marketing's Grave is just about 15 minutes long. But Bridges-Smith says that future episodes will probably be around a half hour in length, and released every other Wednesday. Since she has plenty of experience with podcasting, both on a personal and professional level, Bridges-Smith will continue to host and produce each episode, with a rotating roster of guest interviewees.
“What I want is for people to get excited about email again,” Bridges-Smith says. “We're going to be discussing trends in the industry and the evolution of the industry. We're going to take a look at email marketing programs from all different kinds of people. There's a lot of attention paid to retailers and eCommerce businesses and their email marketing programs. But there's a lot of other interesting people out there like publishers and media companies that are experiencing a real resurgence now. It gives publishers the ability to have real relationships with their audience, especially when we now have adblocking taking away revenues and social media where algorithms keep changing to make it harder for businesses to connect with their audiences. There are a lot of cool things people can do in email now that we couldn't do a few years ago. So we want to celebrate that.”
Email Photo via Shutterstock
This article, "Email Marketing STILL Not Dead, New Podcast Claims" was first published on Small Business Trends
Are you a content creator? Do you find yourself desperately looking for something to share about two-thirds of the way through the month?
I have been where you are, staring at my screen willing an idea, any idea, to come to me. It can feel like everything has been said, and that there are just no more topics to cover.
This is the point in every content marketer's life when they start getting a little overwhelmed by their editorial plans.
Updated posts, recycled blog posts in new formats, master list posts… these are all pretty standard workarounds for when the inspiration just isn't flowing.
But I want to point you towards a different route that should immediately become a regular part of your publishing routine: expert roundups.
You can probably guess what an expert roundup is, but I am going to explain anyway. An expert roundup is a collection of quotes or interviews of people who are influential in your chosen field. Someone who has authority, and has some advice to provide to you and your readers.
An example of an expert roundup is this one. It is a collection of experts discussing Google's quality raters' guidelines.
Creating your own is one of the greatest ways you can freshen up your content. It is also a pretty simple process, just follow these five steps!
The first step is an obvious one… you need to know what experts to contact! I try to make a few lists of experts about once every three months, which will encompass several expert roundups using a couple of different media forms. That gives me a better selection to choose from.
So one list will be bloggers and book writers who I think could contribute something special for a roundup. Another list will be YouTube or podcasters that I want to contact.
The third type of list is usually an occasional type. I only put it together when I am going to be attending some kind of event where experts will be. A conference, an expo, a meetup, a party… somewhere that networking is a natural part of the environment.
I use Twitter lists to keep in touch with different kinds of experts.
Once you have your lists it is time to move onto the next phase…
Some people will suggest coming up with your topic list first, but I have never found it to be as helpful as putting it second. Having a list (or several) of experts will allow you to start organizing the topics you want covered. It may even give you some ideas to help you along the way.
Coming up with an interesting question determines the success of the future article: A good question prompts the participating experts to come up with detailed answers and directs the conversations to something your audience would be willing to learn about.
SerpStat is a great tool to get some question-inspiration. Type in your core term and it will return the search queries that are questions.
SerpStat is powered by Google Suggest which means it shows you the questions people actually type into the search field (Those are definitely questions they'd appreciate answers to). Here are some more tips on using the tool.
Take a look at each expert and ask yourself, “What do they know best? What can they contribute to my followers?” From there, begin to separate them into groups depending on how long you want your roundups to be. I prefer to make a couple of posts or videos on any topic, and so split those experts up to get more content out of the deal.
It also leads directly to number 3…
Having a specific topic in mind when you contact your experts will make them much more likely to follow up with you. After all, it doesn't take that long for someone who really knows their stuff to write a paragraph or two giving a tip, opinion or anecdote. And it is a benefit for them, because it further expands their authority and loops them in with other respected members in the industry.
I would say two weeks are plenty of time prior to the publication date to contact experts for blog bites. However, if you are contacting for a video or other recorded media style, you will need to provide a lot more notice. I try to aim for 4 – 6 weeks, in order to find a good time to get the recording, without having to rush the edits.
If you are in a hurry (e.g. filling in your editorial calendar before you leave for a vacation), use MyBlogU to easily find and contact the experts. MyBlogU scales many steps I am listing here:
Finally, it is time to start hyping up those readers / viewers / listeners! About a week before you publish send out a social media post alluding to something big and expert-filled on the horizon. Then a couple days before release a teaser with a bit of the info and a promise for more to come.
Work on your promo materials! Your participating experts are your assets: Feature them in your teaser videos and banners.
Tool alert: I highly recommend using Bannersnack for creating your promo materials. It's an easy-to-use banner creation and hosting platform that lets you make awesome banners and even track their performance through analytics.
If you plan on turning expert roundups into a long-term strategy, Bannersnack analytics will help you A/B test and identify the best-working promo media.
Don't forget to tag your participating experts in social media updates to engage them in promoting the piece! Here's a quick checklist on social media tagging.
If you choose to make expert roundups a regular feature you can lessen the hype time and just send out a reminder, but by then people will know the score and get excited all on their own.
By now you should have a good idea of what expert advice you will have, and you can start planning the content itself. This is pretty straightforward: design, formatting, presentation, visuals, publishing date, etc.
I like to gather enough advice to make several expert roundup posts and schedule them for a few months, with a quick email to the expert thanking them and letting them know when it will be posted, and that you will shoot off a link to it once it hits the site.
I don't do more than one expert roundup a month not to overwhelm my readership. Expert roundups are for diversifying your editorial calendar once in a while. When used too often, they may hurt your blog because too much of anything is not a good thing.
Since videos, podcasts and graphics take longer, consider alternating between content formats when you publish. So you can release a blog expert roundup, and then a few weeks later release a video, etc.
Here are different types of expert interviews you can try adding to your editorial plans.
Monitor the performance of each roundup religiously to be able to identfy what works and why. Again, don't run roundups too often: It's much more effective to do them right each time than publish them each week.
I use Cyfe to monitor every roundup I do: I monitor social media signals, traffic (using Google Analytics) and rankings of each roundup I do on my blog.
The beauty of doing expert roundups is that you are no longer alone promoting them: Those experts will be there to share, link and comment!
Guest Author: Ann Smarty is the brand and community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas and co-founder of Viral Content Buzz, the free platform helping your content reach social media influencers!
The post 5 Easy Steps For Creating A Traffic-Driving Expert Roundup appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
Does Instagram's algorithm have you worried? Are you looking for proven tactics to increase your visibility in the Instagram news feed? In this article, you'll discover how four of the most successful companies on Instagram are responding to the algorithm change, and how your business can do the same. #1: Create Campaign-specific Instagram Links Ben [...]
This post 4 Ways to Beat the Instagram Algorithm first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
Are your customers using social media? Do you want to provide them with better customer service? Today's tools make it easier than ever for brands to ensure that no customer service issues go unresolved. In this article, you'll discover four tools to manage customer service on social media. #1: Rignite Rignite makes it easy to [...]
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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
Have you been struggling to get the traffic you feel you deserve on your content? Join the club: that is one of the most common complaints from content creators. They spend hours crafting the perfect piece to go on their site, or to promote their brand. They begin to market it on their social media profiles. Yet the results are disappointing, and nothing seems to work.
Having faced this problem myself for many years, I have learned some super-tips along the way. Most are common sense, but if you take them seriously, you should see your traffic increasing consistently.
Pushing more traffic to your site takes time and effort, but content is always your best bet. These tactics will give your content more oomph, and so make it work harder for you.
Just remember the most important rule of all: be consistent and patient; success doesn't happen overnight.
This has been a staple of content providers for years, and rightly so. Posting regular, time sensitive content is a great way to boost traffic and build an audience… granted it is only half the battle (you want to make them a returning audience, which takes more work).
I generally recommend people do one timely story, such as based around an industry event or relevant piece of news, once for every five pieces of content. That way the time sensitive piece brings new traffic, and the evergreen content keeps them coming.
This has been the common wisdom for ages, and it is as true today as it was five years ago. People love lists, hence why you are reading this now instead of a complicated, dry case study. It breaks down topics into manageable bites that are easy to skim, read and digest. Chances are lists will become your most popular pieces.
That doesn't mean you should only do them. Like I suggest one out of every five should be timely, I think two out of every five should be list based. It will diversify your content, while giving people what they probably want most of the time.
People don't always want to read. They want other forms of content that appeal to them in different ways. Likewise, some audiences respond better to visual or audio content, and you should try to cater to them, as well.
Podcasts, videos, infographics, charts, comics and visual quotes are some examples of ways you can venture out into other styles and net a wider audience. Since they tend to be harder and take longer, you may want to sprinkle them in here or there rather than make them a constant feature.
Alternatively, you can cycle out what kinds you do, and present one a week. So one week you release an infographic, one week a video tutorial, another a slideshow, etc.
This type I like to do once a month because too many can be overwhelming.
When done well, expert interviews are so helpful, fun to put together, and attract a lot of attention. An expert roundup is when you ask various industry experts a single question, and then present them all in a single post.
What I tend to do is make a list of twenty or so experts per question, for around ten questions, and send messages to each asking them for an answer. Most will be experts I know personally, some will be those who I have never met. Most will respond, as it is a quick and easy way for them to get a link back to their blog.
By sending out so many questions I can be prepared for weeks in advance.
Guides are tough, because they are so very long. They take a time and energy investment that just isn't feasible for regular publication. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be creating them every so often.
The best part about using these forms of content is that they spread like wildfire, and you can present them as an incentive for things like subscribing to emails. It counts as additional and advanced content. Consider releasing one a few times a year, and you will reap the benefits.
This is another one I just do every so often, usually every one to three months depending on how many categories I can put together at any given time. Master lists interlink within your site to direct users to other pieces they are likely to enjoy.
Each list takes minimal effort, and introduces new readers to articles they might have otherwise missed. So you can bring old posts back to the forefront, no matter how long it has been.
Now that you know how to create the content, you need to know what topics to take advantage of. You can get help using the right tools, which will tell you what topics are currently popular within your industry.
I personally love Buzzsumo, which is a pretty great way to hunt through multiple sources. You can look at both common industry topics, and competitors.
Speaking of competitors, one of my favorite tools is SERPstat: It shows keyword sets your competitors are ranking high for but you are not. It's a great source of content inspiration and nothing I have ever seen in other tools:
Google Keyword Planner is also good, if more broad. You can see patterns in popular topics by search, and set your dashboard to watch them over time. Any of their Webmaster tools can be helpful, including analytics allowing you to see what topics tend to get the most attention.
Social media is another way to find out what people are talking about and interested in. It takes some time to filter, but with a social dashboard in place you can watch keywords and catch them as they get hot. I use Cyfe to curate and archive multiple sources including Twitter search results and any number of RSS feeds.
What I like about social relevant topics is that they are easy to talk about more in depth.
Content is the foundation of a solid traffic generation strategy but it doesn't mean traffic is all it's good for. Robert Tadros explains how content marketing should be used to grow brand awareness, building loyalty and ultimately increasing conversions, and I am 100 percent behind this. Limiting your goals to merely traffic generation means missing out on more important goals, so make sure your content strategy is comprehensive and multi-purpose.
Have any tips to give? Let us know in the comments!
Traffic Light Photo via Shutterstock
This article, "8 Traffic Driving Super-Tips For Your Content" was first published on Small Business Trends
Every Monday morning, you find yourself sitting down to send 10-15 emails to people you'd love to get responses from.
Maybe they are cold prospects, or potential joint venture partners, or press outlets you're hoping to get coverage in.
Regardless of why you email, to ultimately get what you want the other person has to open and reply to your email, lost in the over 205 Billion emails sent per day according to Radicati Group.
Over the past 2 months, for every 100 emails I sent to influencers, A-Listers, and CEO's, 97 were opened and 92 were replied to, using 3 nifty secrets built into this tool called Send Later for Gmail.
When I send 15-50 emails every Monday morning to new potential partners, the last thing I want to do all week is try and remember to follow up with people who don't respond.
Enter the Clock.
When I send my emails each Monday morning, I click the clock which will remind me to follow up in some amount of time (tomorrow at 9am) if no one replies.
Tomorrow at 9am, if the person hasn't replied, the clock will put that email back to the top of my inbox to remind me to follow up.
On average, for every 100 emails I sent, 40% did not get a response by “tomorrow at 9am”. Had the clock not reminded me, I would have lost 40% of my total opportunities. Instead, I followed up and closed many more deals.
If you're in sales, you know follow up is key. Use the clock if you want to out-sell your competition.
You might wonder what email I sent after Send Later for Gmail reminded me that the person had not replied.
Many times I'd call them, email them with a simple “bump”, or use the double arrow button.
When I'm trying to schedule podcast guests I used to gather all of their emails into a google spreadsheet using EmailHunter.io and then update it every Monday based on who responded and who didn't.
Here's what that looked like:
Now, I use the double arrows which will “send email 2 of podcast guest sequence if guest doesn't reply within 2 days”.
Then 3 days later it'll “send email 3 of podcast guest sequence if guest doesn't reply within 5 days”.
Here's what it looks like:
I think of this almost like one to one email marketing.
Get this: Over 60% of my total opens and responses came after 4 follow up emails!
Everyone always says consistency wins and this was proof.
The problem is folks like you and I don't have time to keep manually following up.
Use this double arrow icon to set up the auto follow up sequence right from the start. Then go enjoy your family and the pool.
The subject lines that got the highest open and reply rates (sometimes after 5+ automated follow ups) for me included:
“Hey” (92% open, 85% reply)
“quick question” (90% open, 77% reply)
“do you know” (84% open, 75% reply)
Try copying these when you're trying to get a reply.
In a recent report by GetResponse, it was found that most emails are opened between 6am and 11am or early afternoon.
That means if you want to maximize the chances of your emails getting opened, you want to send your email in those time slots so you appear at the top of the inbox.
My problem was, I like keeping my mornings to myself to read (Right now enjoying Ego is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday).
So what I now do is I write all my emails at 6pm each day and then use the Send Later button to have them all send at 6am the next day.
This ensures my email is at the top of the inbox when my recipient opens their inbox for the day.
Many of you are like me in that email frustrates the heck out of you and sucks up your time.
Try using the auto-follow up button, clock button, and send later button to save yourself time while increasing your open and reply rates by a healthy 40-45%. These buttons are all free to use and are part of Send Later for Gmail which you should be able to find here.
Tools Mentioned:
Guest Author: Nathan Latka Founded software company Heyo.com at 19 and after raising $2.5M and growing to 10,000+ monthly paying customers sold it to his number one competitor. He's now the host of the fastest growing business podcast, Top Entrepreneurs on iTunes, having passed 2,000,000 downloads in 9 months.
The post 3 Secret Gmail Buttons To Guarantee Your Cold Emails Get Opened appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Bing Network. All opinions are 100% mine.
Effective search engine advertising is about delivering the right message, to the right person at exactly the right moment.
It's answering people's questions, whenever they have them, in the most personalized and accurate way you can.
As advertising technology continues to evolve, yes your ability to achieve this becomes easier, but user expectations of real-time understanding and intuition grow just as fast.
If you don't keep up, your ROI from paid search will continue to deteriorate.
As we move into the next wave of the digital revolution, you will be able to deliver highly intelligent advertising messages, backed by enormous amounts of personal and behavioral data on your prospects.
The future of search engine advertising is exciting, but blink and you'll miss the opportunity.
People want information, and they want it now. And with a sea of data and insights available to advertisers this expectation can only grow.
It will become the norm to type a query into your handheld device and get a real-time recommendation based on your location, preferences, demographic information and a thousand other data points.
Advertising personalization will go BEYOND basic remarketing.
The ads you see won't just be about the last web page you visited, they'll be tailored based on years of behavioral cues and off and online activity. This is your digital footprint, and brands will be able to capitalize on it.
Ads will be triggered based on the weather outside, the store you just walked past, or the birthday party you have coming up next weekend. And these ads won't just pop up in search engines. They'll be everywhere. In mobile apps, across your favorite websites and even on digital billboards.
BIG data is more than just an email address and some website history. It's your shoe size, your dating history, the type of books you read, the ads you click on, the ads you don't click on, every car you've ever bought. All of this information is being aggregated in a way that will change the paid advertising industry.
Your smartphone, powered by Siri or Cortana, will recognize that it's your Mom's birthday today and suggest stopping to pick up flowers as you approach the florist on your way home. As it turns out, that specific florist has a sale on and you were just told about it by a computer.
This is what search advertising will evolve to be.
Voice search is primed to overtake text-based search, and advertisers will need to adapt.
It requires a new approach and a deeper understanding of the natural human language.
Not surprisingly voice search is powered by technology such as Cortana, Siri and Google Now, which are all owned and operated by the search engine giants.
Then we have mobile…
Sure it's not groundbreaking to suggest that mobile search is the future. But as an advertiser it's even more important than you think. 3 out of every 4 people who search for something locally on their smartphone, visit a business within that day.
As more and more people start searching for geographically based information on their phones, there is more and more opportunity to personalize the advertising experience for them. And it's not just about showing a relevant ad in a search engine result. To win in the future of search advertising you will need to expand your ad's visibility across multiple devices, and on multiple platforms.
Bing alone powers tools such as Cortana, Xbox, Windows, Microsoft Office, Twitter translations, Siri and Amazon search. And that is just scratching the surface. Your ads will need to create touch points across multiple platforms in a person's day, with each touchpoint being more and more personalized.
Search engine advertising has come along way in the last decade, but the biggest changes are yet to come.
Some of what we can expect is predictable based on the trends and innovations we see today. But most of what lies ahead is beyond our imagination.
What we do know is that data, real-time expectations and personalization are rapidly becoming significant influencers over how we deliver advertising messages to our prospects.
Are you ready for the next wave of the digital advertising revolution?
The post The Future of Search Engine Advertising and Why You Need to Innovate appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
Harry Potter is back – or at least, another book starting with that name will be released this weekend. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a book written by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, which is actually based on a play of the same name, is slated to hit bookshelves on Sunday.
The book, which takes place about 20 years after the original Harry Potter stories and follows the adventures of Harry and his son, is already breaking pre-sale records. And it is expected to be the best selling book of this year.
But with the year only half over and a book that hasn't actually been released yet, how can people be so sure of this title's impending success? Simple – name recognition. J.K. Rowling's original set of Harry Potter novels created so many incredibly loyal mega-fans that anything else with the name “Harry Potter” in the title is likely to be a huge success.
That level of reader loyalty certainly isn't normal. But it's something that other authors and even businesses should strive for. If you provide something that consumers love, then continue putting out great products or services year after year, you're going to build some loyalty. Once you have that, even the name of your company or product line is likely to gain some pull with customers. They might even sign up to buy before you've even released your latest offering.
Hogwarts Photo via Shutterstock
This article, "The Latest Harry Potter Book is Already Breaking Records (Watch)" was first published on Small Business Trends
Are your Facebook ads costing you too much money? Do you want to run successful campaigns and not break the bank on advertising? The answer is not so obvious. And it starts with creative use of your blog. In this article, you'll discover how to reduce your ad spend on Facebook. #1: Write Five Focused [...]
This post The Secret to Cutting Your Facebook Ad Spend first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
As a companion piece to an earlier post about important elements of branding, I felt it apropos to discuss the intellectual aspects of brand activity. Why do I refer to it as brand activity? Because your brand must be active. All of the elements within are actions that keep your brand alive. Thus, because a brand is not a product nor a service, it is necessary to complete the connection between the heart and the head that we all have as people and is illustrated by your brand's emotional and intellectual essential features.
When you consider branding from this perspective, you will likely notice that as important as affinity and equity are, the place your brand occupies in one's mind surrounds the feelings that connect people to it. Be sure to remember this particular fact when you contemplate where your brand is and where you want it to be.
We all have names and other characteristics that help others identify us. Similarly, brands possess these components, the combination of which is most often referred to as the logo. Your logo is so important that it is mistakenly called a brand by some. This is due to the fact that the words, fonts, shapes, colors and other attributes that make up your logo [should] say a whole lot about who you are and what you believe in.
Your positioning defines where you fit in the market. The importance of this brand element has everything to do with clarity. One of your biggest responsibilities as a business is to serve your customers and that obligation is difficult to fulfill if you don't know: 1) where you fit within the human community; and 2) who your customers are or will be. Furthermore, your position will help differentiate you from those who, at first glance, seem to be similar.
Planning. It is imperative. This plan is not a general idea. Your strategy must have clear objectives and goals. And, when you have crafted your well-defined brand strategy, it will affect all aspects of your business including consumer needs, competitive environments and, of course, emotions.
How do you want to be perceived by those who come in contact with you? Your vision is an extension of your positioning as it can help communicate your present and future position through your values. This is one of those brand elements that is exactly how it sounds. Vision win!
You know all of those fundamental ideas that your potential and actual customers or colleagues look for in order to decide whether or not they would like to connect with you? They reside, at least in part, inside of your mission. Moreover, your mission will contain action steps that move your company forward. Add some strategic direction, vision and priorities.
Quality is defined as the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; or the degree of excellence of something. In the context of branding, this comparison is represented by your know how or how capable your product or service is in contrast to those analogous to you. A major point of differentiation, quality will help you stand out as well as help you set your price or other barriers to entry.
Closely related to quality, value is an appraisal made by a consumer or colleague that is used to assist them in making a decision to connect with your brand. An amalgam of all of your brand elements, value is the importance, worth or usefulness of your brand in the eyes of the consumer. Thus, all of the thoughts, feelings and experiences people have with your brand contribute to its value.
How you create, manage and employ your brand is based upon all of these factors - both emotional and intellectual. So, when crafting all parts of said brand, be sure to actively reflect on the pieces that your consumers think about innately. It is the best way for you to firmly ensconce your brand into a consumer's mind and heart.
Republished by permission. Original here.
Brain Photo via Shutterstock
This article, "Train Your Brain to Work in Brand Mode" was first published on Small Business Trends
Are you wondering how your business can use Facebook Live? Looking for examples to help you get started? Using live video will improve your Facebook reach and it can take less time than writing individual posts. In this article, you'll discover six ways your business can succeed with Facebook Live video. #1: Address Blog Comments One [...]
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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
Content marketing is entering a new phase.
It's heading into the trough. You could call it the dip of disillusionment. For many the promise hasn't arrived and the returns just haven't materialized. And the the marketing manager is now not sure if they should even continue.
Often this is because the idea at first glance looked good. The reality? The execution was poor. Content was created and shared but nothing of substance showed up. Few leads and little or even no sales.
They had bought into the hype but didn't realize the work and effort needed to make it effective.
Gartner puts out the “Hype Cycle” graph every year. It's a revealing look at their take on the rise of the different technology innovations, the peak of what is sometimes inflated expectations and the trough of disillusionment that often follows.
Their placement of where they see the current state of content marketing is revealing.
Graphic source: Gartner
But despite this insight from the technocrats and the observers, content marketing is not not going away any time soon. But the reality of non performing content has started to sink in as as the attention span of the consumers of content becomes shorter and the noise and competition grows greater.
What does this mean for us as entrepreneurs and marketers?.
We are going to have to work not just harder but smarter. And we are also going to have to pay attention to trends that maybe you hadn't noticed or thought didn't matter.
After years of just telling people what to do it has become apparent to me that education and soulless content as I knew it was not enough to change minds. It was time to add stories to the telling. Inspiration was required to be empowered through storytelling.
If you want to be remembered then touching hearts is where it happens. Many content marketers are discovering that storytelling has a power that they have ignored but are struggling to stand out in a sea of brand blandness.
“They may forget what you said - but they will never forget how you made them feel“. - Carl W. Buehner
So the art of storytelling and the importance of emotions is being rediscovered and gaining the focus it deserves.
The Hero's Journey as revealed by Joseph Campbell (and used in movies) is a revelation on the power of myth and storytelling. It is an art form that sits behind the science of what can sometimes be seen as a technology arms race.
If you want to stand out in a noisy digital world then you need to also tell a better story.
Content marketing started out as a few blog articles, a Facebook post followed by a tweet. It was a gentle walk in the park. That was enough. But that was then.
Content became militarized and industrialized. Done at scale for the masses.
The monolithic media companies had been poked and stirred and discovered the power of content and publishing. They woke up and smelled the potential and rolled out the big metal.
So competing for attention has never been harder. Creating content on your own is a lonely place and there is another issue. It doesn't scale.
So you now need the crowd to help you create content.
This includes stakeholders. employee advocates and consumers. Then you need the tools and platforms to create, manage and measure. These include platforms and apps like Shuttlerock.
User generated content is a trend that you will need to consider as part of your content marketing tactics.
Infographic source: Crowdtap via Mashable
Traveling is a passion of mine. It is about discovering humanity and nature at the same time. But capturing those experiences doesn't require the DSLR with 10 lenses and a big bag.
A smartphone is enough.
Who waits to edit and photoshop back in the hotel room? Now we just hit upload and hit the share button. Those real and raw images create more trust. Polished and fake images are seen as less trustworthy by a discerning millennial audience.
Snapchat can't be polished and maybe that is part of its charm.
So we are going to see a lot more live video and images that taps into this growing need for authentic content.
One of my first blog posts was 106 words. No visuals and no sub-titles. It was enough then. We all need to feed the content beast that is a global competition for attention so banging out a ton of words, images and videos is still part of the game.
Quantity is still important but as Google has continued to impose its “user experience” and “quality” algorithms as part of its search optimization the standard bar has been raised.
Content marketing is not just about social and shares it is also about search. Quality long form content sits right in that mix.
So long form content is now a key component for serious content marketers. SEO traffic is often 50% of the attention for a blog post. Over half this blog's traffic comes from organic search.
Posts that are positioned as a resource for an industry work on several levels. Link building and also as an authoritative portal for the niche.
Creating evergreen quality content is a long term content marketing trend that the top publishers understand.
We are now seeing the rise of “live video casting” that is moving from niche to mainstream
Meerkat was the most visible startup in the space in 2014 . Periscope followed close behind and Twitter bought them. Now we are seeing the fast growth and uptake of “Facebook Live”. YouTube and Tumblr are also starting to play at live streaming video.
Live streaming video is also emerging as in built features in video marketing platforms such as Twentythree.net
As the adoption of ad blocking software reduces the effectiveness of banner ads then brands are trying to reach their audience in other ways. This leading to the rising trend of blog posts and articles that are sponsored.
The old is now new.
We knew it in the past as the old school “advertorial”. Part of the reason the use of Native branded content has been embraced is the necessity for digital publishers to monetise their websites.
Forbes has been one of the pioneers in this space (it started with this under the moniker “Brandvoice”). It is reported by AdAge that 30% of Forbes advertising revenue now comes from native advertising.
One of its latest iterations is “Special Features” that gives advertisers access to the same content creation tools as the Forbes editorial staff. Dell is one of the first to use this. It allows the publishing of posts, videos, infographics, interactive elements and photo galleries on the Forbes website.
Image source: AdAge
One of the challenges with native advertising is scaling it. And we can see how Forbes is confronting that be allowing access to its content creation backend.
It will be interesting to see how this trend spills over from the big players into the small niche publishers and bloggers.
For some other in depth insights on native advertising there is a recent study released by King Content that is worth checking out.
Online influencers are a new species.
They have emerged from the primordial digital mist because social media happened. At first they were not noticed even though they were in plain sight.
The sub-species includes:
And now the Snapchat influencer is even in the mix.
But they all have a few things in common. Great content, distribution and credibility. And some are even entertaining.
Companies that haven't built their online audience want access to their viewers, readers and networks.
Almost everyone has this problem. Procrastination. It is very human. Marketers and door to door salesman have understood this for decades. Expiring content is part of the solution today.
What was perceived as a fad has become a serious trend and it comes down to a metric that is always in decline. Engagement. A noisy digital world with an ever growing explosion of content means everyone is competing for engagement.
Expiring content creates scarcity.
Also called “FOMO”. If you don't leap onto Snapchat today you will miss that video or photo from friends and followers. Snapchat has this type of content corralled and cornered at this point in time.
But it hasn't gone unnoticed.
Facebook has failed in the past to compete with its Slingshot app. But its new feature within its Messenger app (which now has nearly 1 billion users) might get more traction.
A Facebook message with a timer!
Many content marketers have a blind spot.
They know how to get traffic. They also know how to create engaging content. But they often overlook optimizing. Because it's not just about the traffic that turns up to engage with your content but what you do with it.
The switched on and savvy content marketers are now paying more focus on optimizing their content to capture leads and sales. The attention is shifting from fluffy and vanity metrics to using data for testing content for conversion. Part of that optimization journey is A/B split testing.
The ROI elephant never left the room. He just became visible.
Earlier this year I added some new sharing buttons to my site. I checked into my analytics the other day and something stood out. Twitter shares were 135, LinkedIn shares 31 and Facebook was 13. But there seemed to be an anomaly.
The WhatsApp's metric stood at 75.
That's worth paying attention to. Don't assume that your content distribution channels are static. Keep an eye on your data and the digital marketing trends and make sure that you are testing the emerging social networks and messaging apps.
Some others to watch are Flipboard, Medium and even SMS for getting your content in front of a new audience. It's about removing friction and making your content move.
Automation was first seen as an anathema on the new and emerging social web.
But marketers soon came to realize that their content, efforts and effectiveness didn't scale very well without it. This is now being woven into influencer marketing and native content marketing tools. Marketing automation tools are moving from a “nice to have” to being essential and they do not have to be expensive.
Delivery of content and distribution to multiple channels including email and social networks is complex and fragmented. The answer is often not more people but better mousetraps.
Automated email marketing funnels deliver the prospect to content such as a video sales page, an evergreen webinar or a free ebook. They can be targeted and tagged to be delivered to the the most relevant prospect.
Using semi automated technology to crowd-source visual content is also becoming adapted by forward thinking content marketers.
With declining attention and engagement on websites and blogs the content marketer needs better tactics, tools and standout content in the toolbox. One of these is interactive content.
Early exponents of this tactic was Hubspot with its website grader which was used by over 4 million websites after being introduced in 2006. I remember going back to this site many times after starting my blog to see if it was improving. In 2011 was replaced with the Marketing Grader tool.
One of the top trends and biggest uses of interactive content are competitions and social contests which are often run and marketed on Facebook.
Infographic source: Demand Metric
Though it is now an obvious trend it still needs to be mentioned. Some of the key areas to watch as mobile continues to become an essential extension of humanity and the tool for receiving and consuming content are:
Streaming video is the hot trend but the use of pre-recorded video is now essential. But it is now being taken from the video hosts and played from within the social networks. Video used to sit just on YouTube and on websites.
Now we are seeing it being played on the platform without ever leaving. This is happening on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and the list goes on.
Fast emerging video marketing technology platforms are starting to replace multiple tools (from editing to landing pages and calls to action) that had made video content marketing complex and clunky.
Expect to see video content marketing continue to be used much more widely due to better ease of use.
Podcasting is a powerful type of content to engage with your audience. Its domination by a walled garden called iTunes is also a barrier to making content move and hard to discover. Those constraints were barriers to leaping into the space for many content marketers and potential publishers.
But emerging technology platforms and podcasting apps like Stitcher.com and Otto Radio are attempting to make this content more shareable and discoverable.
Podcasting is building some serious content marketing momentum.
Augmented and virtual reality is often a fantasy world that has been beyond the reach of most content marketing and brands. The cost, the timelines and resources required have made it prohibitive.
But the stunning success of the Pokemon Go mobile app that is an intersection of virtual reality, mobile and social is an insight into where augmented reality sits in the content marketing pantheon.
It's real, interactive and augmented content. Expect to see content marketers take a lot more notice.
We have seen the rise of sponsored native content and now we are about to see the emergence of “sponsored locations” according to the CEO of Niantic (the development studio behind Pokemon Go). This will aim to drive real foot traffic to retail stores. And this will be in addition to the the monetisation of the game with the in app purchases of power-ups and extra Poke balls.
McDonald's Japan is about to be the first major brand to sponsor locations and host “gyms” (or battle locations) at 3,000 of its stores across the country.
We have assumed for a long time that humans had a monopoly on content creation but artificial intelligence to augment humans collating and creating content is the next frontier. This could be marketing content and also educational content.
Platforms like IBM's Watson are helping sift through big data, solving problems and creating content at scale. To put some perspective on this, Woodside Energy (a large mining company) needed to capture the IP of its engineers and its decades of experience of designing, building and managing complex infrastructure. Using artificial intelligence technology they have now created 28,000 by 100 page documents that are used to transfer the expertise of their senior engineers to new graduates.
Also expect this AI technology to start creeping into content marketing over the next decade.
So are you still disillusioned?
Maybe it's time to pay closer attention to converting traffic and engagement from your content into leads and sales. Or you might need better tools to scale your efforts.
It could be that you need to tell a better story.
The post 15 Content Marketing Trends That Need Your Close Attention appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.
