Unless you run a huge corporation with locations in multiple countries, and your products and services are available globally, it's more likely that you want to reach a certain area with your advertising. If you run a bakery in Chicago, then you want to reach people who are actually in the Chicago area that can come to your bakery. You have no need to advertise to people in France, who will most likely never buy your cookies or cupcakes.
This is where local PPC comes in. Local PPC, also known as geo-targeting, gives you the ability in AdWords to target your ads to people who are only in the area that you specify. Like we said earlier, you don't want to be wasting your ad budget on those who are not in your target area. This is essential for location-based companies to make the most of their budget. Not only does it make more sense, but you should also see an increase in your ROAS due to an increased chance of the audience being able to use your services or products.
Local PPC Tips
Mobile Preference
Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has stated that “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries.” This momentum toward mobile has a ton of implications for retailers, especially those who want to run local PPC to get people into their store front. Like we said earlier, people search when they are on the go. If they are out and about, and decide they want to do a little shopping, they are going to search something like “retail stores around me.”
In order to reach people like this, you need to make sure that your website and ads are ready for mobile use. It is critical that your website be mobile responsive. Mobile phones aren't going anywhere. You need to be able to serve those audience members. You also want to make sure that your campaigns target all devices. You want to make sure that your ads are being served to mobile devices. You can also have a mobile preferred ad. Make sure, with a mobile preferred ad, that your ad copy has a shorter headline in order to cater to how ads are displayed on mobile phones.
Location Extensions
The first thing that you want to do when you are working on a local PPC campaign is to make sure that you utilize location extensions in your ads. Location extensions are a feature that allow you to show your address, phone number, hours and other information on your ad. For mobile ads, you also have the option to include a button that gives customers the ability to call you directly or get directions to your location.
This extension is important because it encourages searchers to visit your business in person, instead of just scrolling past your ad. One thing to keep in mind: Location extensions are based off of your Google My Business profile, and you have to link at least one business location to your AdWords account for these extensions to work. Therefore, you want to make sure that your Google My Business account is up to date and accurate for all of your locations.
Call Extensions
In addition to location extensions, you also want to make sure that you are utilizing call extensions, which shows your phone number on your ad. This displays a clickable call button on the ad, which encourages searchers to call your business, especially people who are on the go.
Call extensions have a lot of different features that you can play around with. You can set them up to show only when your business can take calls. You can give preference to mobile phones, which makes it less likely that it will show up on a laptop or desktop. You also have the ability to use either your phone number or a Google Forwarding number. By using a Google Forwarding number, you get more insights into the performance of the call extensions, which allows you to count phone calls as conversions. And, for all of this, clicks for your phone number also cost the same as headline clicks.
Geo-Targeting
Geo-targeting can be another great technique to help out with local PPC. Google gives you a lot of room to play with, as to where you want to target your PPC ads geographically. If you only serve the Chicago area, then you can set your ad up to only serve people in that geographical area. If you serve the entire state of Illinois, then you can target that state individually. If you serve multiple locations or states, then you can set your ads up to only target the locations that you serve.
In addition to being able to target people in certain geographical locations, you can also exclude areas. If you set up your ads, and then notice that you are getting impressions and clicks from areas that you don't serve - for instance, France - then you can add them to your excluded area.
Keywords with Geo-Locations
While geo-targeting can be a great tool for local businesses, it doesn't always work. It is dependent on how people are searching for your business. For some local businesses, it would be more appropriate to limit targeting not by the location, but by keyword only.
For example, let's say you are a cable company in Charleston. In this situation, you might want to create separate campaigns to target people searching for “cable companies Charleston,” rather than only using geo-targeting. Most people know that cable services are limited to an area, so they might be more likely to include a geo-modifier in their query. The cable company can then pick up more traffic and even use this as a competitive strategy.
Do you want a bigger email list? Looking for list building techniques? To explore how to grow your email list using Facebook Live and podcasts, I interview Amy Porterfield. 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 [...]
As a small business owner, it is imperative to retain the customers you have as attracting new customers costs nearly seven times the amount it does to retain an existing one. In addition, your existing customers are fourteen times more likely to buy from you than a new customer.
Here are the facts:
86 percent of consumers say loyalty is primarily driven by likability and 83 percent of consumers say trust. (Rare)
47 percent of customers would take their business to a competitor within a day of experiencing poor customer service. (24/7)
The estimated cost of customers switching due to poor service is $1.6 trillion. (Accenture)
60 percent of mobile coupon users say they will “gladly switch brands to use a coupon” (GfK)
27 percent of small business owners estimate that 11-20 percent of first time customers don't return to their business (Belly)
32 percent of executives say retaining existing customers is a priority (Forbes)
66 percent of companies that saw a decrease in customer loyalty over the past year do not have a mobile app (Apptentive)
Business is a numbers game. So how do you get and keep more customers at lower costs? The trick is to focus less on advertising and more on customer retention, leveraging your existing customers to bring in new ones. Mobile apps can be one of the best investments you can make when it comes to customer loyalty and retention.
Surveys show that 73 percent of satisfied customers will recommend your service to others, and positive testimonials from existing customers are far more likely to influence people than a brand's own marketing messaging. In other words, your existing customers are a goldmine. They require less investment, they buy more, and they bring new customers with them. With a mobile app, you can even ask for reviews from customers and what is so great about this strategy is that customers who download your app will generally write a positive review since they are loyal customers.
Why You Should Be Using Apps to Build Customer Loyalty
Here are a few more mobile app tips for customer retention:
Use a Mobile App Retention Tool
Apps help you keep a pulse on your customers through advanced analytics. Track in-app activity to see the type of content that's drawing users most. View demographic info that helps you refine your sales and marketing efforts. And most of all, use features like geofenced push notifications, mobile newsletters and loyalty programs to keep your customer base thriving.
Adapt or Die
Don't sit on your data - adapt and evolve according to the trends you uncover. Do you know why Richard Branson, the billionaire owner of Virgin Atlantic Inc., lost to the venture capitalists in the Silicon Valley when he tried to go head-to-head with Uber? One simple reason: Uber was backed by an algorithm, by data. Analytics turned Google from good to great and Uber from an audacious venture to the peer-driven giant in transportation. The companies introduced their service, gathered the data, then used it to refine based on customers' needs.
Long story short, don't fall behind your competitors when it comes to your investments in new technology such as building a mobile app for your small business. Data shows that customers want to download and use mobile apps from their favorite small businesses. Don't ignore the data that is right in front of you!
Focus on Customer Service
Ninety-seven percent of customers see customer service as the most important factor when choosing a brand. And after signing up, customer service weighs most heavily on customer satisfaction and net promoter score - or the likelihood that they'll recommend your brand to someone else. On average, a user contacts customer service about 65 times per year, and 62 percent would leave their provider because of poor customer service. Companies can avoid that fate by making their customer service experience overly simple. Apps with quick contact buttons and sites with digestible help centers reduce customer effort, reflecting positively on your brand as a whole.
A mobile app is a great way for customers to be in touch with your business 24/7. Whether that's for general business information or to ask you a question about your business. In addition, great customer service can come as a surprise. For example, mobile apps give you the ability to offer in-app only sales and updates on events which customers really appreciate.
Does Retaining Customers Matter in the App Industry?
Absolutely. If you create a mobile app, you may wonder how beneficial user retention really is to your bottom line. After all, deleting an app is easier than installing one - it requires little to no effort to part ways. But as it turns out, app users are far more likely to return back to your business if the right features and incentives are in place. In some ways, it's a winner-takes-all market, and you need to stay ahead of the curve with your competition. With a mobile app you give your customers an outlet to share their experiences across Facebook, Twitter, and with their friends. Also, you just can't ignore the facts anymore regarding how mobile apps can help grow a small business.
The more you up your retention, the wider your potential user base grows.
Do you want to grow your LinkedIn network? Interested in practical, scalable ways to establish your professional credibility? LinkedIn is a powerful platform for fostering strategic connections and creating a successful brand. In this article, you'll discover four ways to build trust and grow your influence on LinkedIn. #1: Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile Your LinkedIn [...]
So you have created a great piece of content and posted it on your blog. Now, what?
Wait for the audience to discover it and praise it? Of course not. You must think of ways to amplify your content so that it reaches the right audience, at the right time.
Content is created to fulfill a specific purpose and if it fails to reach the audience at the appropriate time, it loses its value.
The secret to success with content marketing is to “provide value”. But in order to provide value, you need to deliver the content to the right audience.
Most businesses focus primarily on production (of content) but they forget about the distribution part. So how will you make sure your content reaches your target audience?
There is a huge amount of content competing for attention; how will you cut through the noise?
Fortunately, there are a number of tools that help businesses deliver content to their target audience at the right time.
By leveraging these content distribution tools, businesses can expand their reach and make a positive impact on their audience with the help of high-quality content.
However, you must remember that to leverage these tools to their maximum potential, you must create very high quality and valuable content.
Top 5 Content Distribution Tools
Without a solid content distribution strategy, you are only trying focusing on half of the game. So to help you get started with content distribution and reach your target audience, we have listed the top 5 content distribution tools that will help you expand your reach and improve the visibility of your content.
1. SimpleReach
According to Bryan Birsic, the president at SimpleReach, this content distribution tool helps publishers to identify and publish their content that will drive the maximum traffic through various social media channels.
'The Slide', which is their primary product, features the most shared (and most likely to be shared) content that the publisher has in his or her archives and persuades the users to share them. Publishers can also feature their highly shared content on various other high authority publishers' sites.
Their intelligent paid distribution tool offers amazing features like audience targeting, which you can use to target the right audience to showcase your best content on popular channels such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Taboola and Outbrain etc.
You can even programmatically optimize your content for earned media. Better yet, SimpleReach allows you to shift your spend to drive traffic at a lowest cost.
Their analytics tool offers publishers real-time insights about content performance; while the predictive tool helps you realize which content is likely to perform the best so that you can focus on this content the most.
Thanks to its real-time dashboard, SimpleReach provides actionable insights to promote your best content. You can even segment your data using the custom dashboards, which also allows you to set email alerts for everything that's important to you.
Finally, this tool provides historical reports, which you can use to identify the most effective channels and plan your content strategy accordingly.
2. Outbrain
Outbrain offers a pay-per-click model of content distribution, starting as low as $10 per day.
It helps businesses reach a bigger and more targeted audience. The publishers submit links or RSS feeds of their content, which is then featured at the bottom of leading stories on a number of high authority media sites. These links are labeled as 'Sponsored' or 'Related' posts.
Using Outbrain, you can promote your own content as well as press coverage related to your business. This content distribution tool accepts almost every content format including articles, slideshows, videos, and infographics. However, Outbrain does not accept any kind of direct sales landing page or even your home page for promotion or marketing purposes.
You should use this tool to target your audience and reach out to them on desktop, mobile or tablet. You can even geo-target your content by region or state and optimize your content for publishers that deliver the best ROI.
One of the most striking features of Outbrain is that it allows you to optimize your campaign directly from the dashboard as well as analyze your spend, traffic, and conversions easily. You can adjust campaign settings as it suits your needs and launch or pause a campaign at any time.
The marketing team at Outbrain claims the links are highly targeted and posted under relevant posts, so it generates 44 percent higher page views per session compared to any other referral program.
Some highly reputable sites like Mashable, CNN, Fox News, etc. are included in the list of publishers under Outbrain, so you can get more eyes on your content by publishing your content on these sites. Outbrain has also introduced a self-serve platform to enable small businesses and blogs to publish their content easily.
3. Taboola
Taboola's content discovery platform helps businesses and publishers drive more traffic and improve lead generation by getting their content recommended by top publishers.
Similar to Outbrain, once the publishers submit their links, Taboola's algorithm matches the content with one of the hundreds of premium publisher sites such as USA Today, NBC News, Business Insider, etc.
This content distribution tool provides a great way to monetize your site. The targeted recommendations from Taboola's sponsored content marketplace will help you generate revenue from your website or mobile app.
Better yet, you can even increase your revenue from native advertising campaigns. With this tool, you can provide a performance-based pricing model to your clients to maximize revenue.
Even businesses selling products and services can generate and improve their revenue using the real-time bidding environment of Taboola-X. And your editorial team is perhaps going to fall in love with this content distribution tool.
Taboola provides complete visibility and inline editorial controls to your editorial team over the website content, allowing them to decide when to refresh content, filer and promote content. Besides, it lets your visitors filter content according to their preference and indexes both articles and videos.
Whenever a visitor clicks on your content, it is showcased through social media, YouTube, your site/blog or other third party sites. Taboola also offers analytics, performance stats and one-on-one support to help businesses achieve their business goals.
4. Xink
Xink is an exclusive cloud-based email signature management software that helps marketers leverage their email signatures to improve the visibility of their content.
Are you wondering how can you distribute content through email signatures?
Just include the link to your best content, news, or any form of content and improve its visibility among email subscribers. Depending upon the size of the contact database, you can create a huge impression for your content.
Use this tool to improve your brand management across organizations, regardless of the device, as Xink also allows marketers to connect email accounts of team members to expand distribution and ensure better and increased impressions for their content.
This means you can not only automate email signatures but also ensure that all your employees have a professional email signature, resulting in thousands of brand impressions each day.
This undoubtedly creates a great branding and marketing opportunity for your business.
Xink makes email signature management very simple with three easy steps. You can either design a custom email signature template or use an existing one; once done, start adding your employees to Xink.
Finally, when you have added all your employees, launch an email signature campaign to boost your brand impact.
5. Inbound.org
Inbound.org started as a small project initiated by Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot and Rand Fishkin of Moz, but it quickly evolved to be the best community-curated hub where the highest quality marketing content can be found.
As a marketer, it is often hard to stay up to date and keep a track of everything, given the large quantity of content published each day. It is humanly impossible to do dozens of blog and email subscriptions and keep a tab on them.
This is where Inbound.org comes in; it is a feed where you can read about things that matter most to you as well as share ideas and participate in discussions.
In addition, you can get answers to your questions from an expert in that particular domain, thanks to the large and ever-growing Inbound.org community.
However, this content distribution channel is not recommended only for self-submissions, but it can be leveraged to share your most newsworthy pieces of content. After posting your content you must encourage the community to comment and reply to your thread.
If you can properly use this tool to showcase your marketing achievements and contributions, you can even win clients or get noticed by industry players. This, of course, is an added bonus making Inbound.org a clear winner.
Wrap
Content marketing is not only about creating amazing content, it is about what happens after you publish it. Creating great content is only half the war won; the next half involves the proper distribution of content. So with these amazing content distribution tools, you will have to worry less about delivering your content to the most targeted audience.
Now you can focus more on producing high quality and valuable content for your target audience and feed them with the most relevant content at the most appropriate time. With these advanced content distribution tools, the distribution becomes more streamlined. So get ready to feature your posts on the highest authority sites and leverage your content to their maximum potential!
Did we miss out something? Tell us your unique experiences about content distribution in the comments.
Guest Author: Kunjal Panchal is a Digital Marketer at E2M, the fastest growing digital marketing agency in India. She is a social media geek, a complete foodie and enjoys trying varied cuisines. A perfect day for her consists of reading her favorite author with a hot cuppa coffee.
Do you use your smartphone or tablet to post images to social media? Looking for mobile image apps to enhance your visuals? In this article, you'll discover four mobile apps to help you create and publish outstanding social media images on the go. #1: Brush Up Images With Prisma Filters Prisma has a variety of artistic [...]
The single most important strategy in today's content marketing world is using video.
Whether it's video on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or YouTube, the content you need to be thinking about creating and marketing on social media for your business is video. Period!
No matter what you're selling, no matter what your company does, if you don't have a video marketing strategy for the biggest video platforms, you are going to lose out. And in case you haven't noticed, the platforms for distributing video content online have shifted drastically over the last 18 months.
Facebook is getting more daily minutes watched than YouTube, Snapchat's daily views are now in the billions, and video on Twitter has taken listening and one-to-one branding to a whole new level.
Here are some more shocking video marketing stats…
Now, maybe I've scared you a bit, but don't worry because I'm here to make sure you understand the landscape of all of the biggest, most important social platforms right now. By the end of this article, you'll have the information you need to dominate at video marketing. I promise.
Social media marketing along with making videos is easy due the flexibility of both components. All you need to know is the right way to use them.
What is a social media video?
The term “social media” covers a lot of territory. Each social network has a unique audience, social videos need to be optimized for different channels.
A video that works on Facebook may need a serious editing before it can work on Instagram. And you might have to take an entirely different approach for a video on Snapchat or Twitter.
If it's pre-recorded, social videos need to be shareable. You're not just optimizing for the channel, but for shareability as well. Different things make content shareable, from the emotions it induces, to the traditional story structures it uses.
Live social videos need to be about authenticity and real-time engagement. They should feel like a conversation between you and the viewer.
Many people confuse social media-videos with viral videos, but there is a key difference.
Watch this video of Gary Vaynerchuk as he talks about the power of social media marketing.
The effect of video on each social media platform
Almost all the social media platforms leverage the power of video and now it's a well known fact that each of these platforms work differently with video.
To master in video marketing and social media strategies, it is very important for you to know the nuts and bolts of each site individually.
YouTube is a library of video content
Let's get started at the top with the obvious grand daddy of online video “YouTube.” Yes it is huge, with 300 hours worth of video content being pushed to YouTube every minute.
YouTube is valuable for business, for growing brands, and for reaching new audiences. So, it is clear that over the years, YouTube will continue to be a video content giant for businesses and personal brands.
But the problem with YouTube is that it's in a downward trend compared to Facebook's 4 billion daily video streams; a number that's only going to continue to grow with time.
Due to its sheer size, there's a ton of competition amongst videos on YouTube and all fighting to be seen. When you have a platform with over a billion users, all wanting the same thing (exposure), it's going to get noisy. And that's been figured out.
In short, marketers have ruined it. Because of that, it's much harder to break through the noise which makes hosting your content on the platform much less valuable.
Additionally, YouTube doesn't have the capabilities of some other growing video platforms, and so far, they haven't shown signs of catching up.
“So, what exactly are those capabilities other platforms have?” you might ask.
Well, here's the big one: data. Data, data, data. And the leader in that domain is, without a doubt, Facebook.
Facebook content is smart, shareable, and personal. Facebook video for my brand has become the best way to reach my fans on a large scale.
Couple that with their new video ad products for sales and direct response marketing, and the fact that they're the greatest data company of all time for marketers, and you have some serious reasons to spend some big money on Facebook video ads, and video content.
Just give it a thought. If you're creating video content for YouTube, and not putting those videos onto Facebook as well, your brand or business is losing distribution on a powerful platform.
And I don't mean cross channel promotion by simply pasting a link to YouTube on your Facebook page as a status update. I mean uploading the video natively to Facebook, so that it lives in your Facebook page's video content.
Why? Because right now,Facebook's Newsfeed algorithm is placing an enormous amount of weight on videos, otherwise known as “reach.”
When you upload videos natively, instead of linking out, you have a much higher chance of your video being seen by your community (and new fans, too). Google and Facebook are competitors, so if you think Facebook wants to have YouTube links perform well in their Newsfeed algorithm, you better think again.
YouTube should honestly be concerned; Facebook is already on its way to becoming a massive competitor when it comes to video marketing and content distribution. They are sitting on an enormous amount of targetable consumer data. It creates the ultimate marketing machine.
For example, let's say you upload a video natively, like I talked about before, about “the best places to eat ice cream outdoors in your town.” You could then spend money on a sponsored video to directly market your brand's video to people who:
love ice cream
live in your area
have kids.
Automatically, you're reaching the audience who is the most interested and most profitable to your business.
But while Facebook should be an enormous priority, don't ignore the other social channels that might be more in tune with your brand. There are a ton of other social channels to be creating video content for that offer what marketers love - reach and attention.
Twitter's new video product, which was released late January of this year, has changed the way people use content on this platform.
Video on Twitter is truly “social” and the best way to use Twitter video is by connecting and engaging, rather than just pushing.
As Twitter has grown in size, it's become a listening platform. Six years ago, I could send a tweet and get more engagement on it than I do now. I had less of an audience, but the audience was paying closer attention. It was more serious. Now the amount of information and users on that platform have become so intense that it's hard to have that same engagement. It's diffcult to get anyone's attention.
That's why the game, the real way to win with Twitter video, is through engagement - using it as a “pull” rather than a “push.”
The truth is, people respond to the effort. With Twitter's new video feature, they've been able to take that feeling to the next level.
All you have to do is get in there and engage. Reply to a tweet using the camera option, select video, and start talking. It takes me nine to twelve seconds to make a video and reply, but those extra seconds hold a lot of meaning.
Not to mention it's more personal, visual, and we are living in a world where the visual is often regarded as a better engagement than the written.
Snapchat marketing is huge right now. More than 60% of U.S. 13 to 34 year-old smartphone users are Snapchatters.
They now have more than two billion video views a day, and there are a few interesting things about Snapchat regarding their platform and how it works.
Snapchat gets your undivided attention because of the individual stories available. It's also one of the only platforms in which you can draw creative on top of the video, creating opportunities for some awesome Snapchat exclusive artists like Shonduras.
Most importantly, videos have a maximum life of twenty four hours or less if the users choose to make it so. A video can last as little as a second. The urgency to see something before it disappears can be a huge factor.
I had a very successful start on the platform by advising Snapchat users to screenshot the snap before it disappeared and post it to Twitter to get a reply from me. People respond to that kind of urgency.
Now, marketers are getting really serious about Snapchat as a platform to reach an enormous number of people due to some key changes Snapchat has made.
Earlier this year, Snapchat launched the Discover section of the app. It's a feature that allows users to receive content provided by media companies. Current participants include National Geographic, Vice, ESPN, and more. Eleven participants in all. It's a very serious play on the company's part because it puts it in a very aggressive place with the overall user interface of the app. It completely changes how the app is both perceived and used.
I might also mention that Snapchat is now basically handing brands the 13 to 34 year-old demographic through the use of their Discover feature. Brands can have ads pre-roll before the content.
And while you may not be able to afford the pre-roll program that they have, just the mere fact that these big brands and media companies have signed on should tell you something. Teens and young adults use Snapchat all day and night. It's one of their main forms of communication, and because of that, you need to care about it and learn to talk to them on on the platform.
Instagram was bought by Facebook on April, 9, 2012. At the time, Instagram had only 30 million users and introduced advertising for selected brands in October 2013, but didn't open up for all marketers until September 2015.
48.8% of brands are on Instagram and by 2017, it is predicted to rise to 70.7%.
Video ads offer the same visually, immersive quality as photo ads on Instagram – with the power of sight, sound and motion. And now, you can share videos up to 60 seconds long and in landscape format. When Instagram first introduced videos, more than 5 million were shared within the first 24 hours!
If you are not using video in your social media marketing yet, you should be. A third of all online activity is spent watching videos and with 90% of users saying that they found product videos helpful while making an online purchase decision, you want to make sure your hat is in the social video ring.
These statistics can help you build a strong marketing plan with the perfect video distribution strategy for each platform.
Guest Author: Mehroz Khan is an Entrepreneur and Co-founder at Videoexplainers-Video production company. He is a blogger, strategist, social media marketing specialist and growth strategist. His expertise includes marketing and video production. He regularly writes on Videoexplainers where he talks about explainer video, its various business advantages (increased website conversions, high sales, qualified leads, and facilitating customers' understanding level) and the massive video impact on customers. Follow Mehroz on Twitter: @mehrozanwer, connect with him on LinkedIn: Mehroz Khan or email him at mehroz@videoexplainers.com.
You've done it. You have finally finished creating an amazing piece of content. You spent hours researching and developing something that you know your readers are going to love. So much work has gone into this piece, and you can't wait for people to read it. This could be the content that goes viral and which is read by thousands. Only one problem - how are people going to read it if they don't know it exists?
They're not. You can't expect to publish your content and people to just flock to it. The whole “Build it and they will come” business model doesn't really work, here. They aren't going to be searching for you - you need to be searching for them. You have to promote your content in order to get it in front of as many people as possible. Now, there are a lot of ways that you can do this. However, there is one method that works a little better than others: social media.
Social Media Rules
While there are a lot of ways that you can promote your content, none of them are as good as your social media platforms. Think of these social sites as the Olympians of the world. They are just better at sharing content than anyone else. But why are they so great for content promotion?
Well, just think about it. Americans spend 25 percent of their time on social media. In 2014, consumers doubled their sharing activity on mobile devices. As of the second quarter of 2016, there were over 1.7 billion Facebook users. Whether we like to admit it or not, Zuckerberg changed the world with Facebook, and today we are a society dominated by social media.
Facebook Domination
If we think of the social sites as the Olympians of content promotion, then Facebook is Michael Phelps. There is no doubt that Facebook is the greatest. It is the absolute best place to be sharing and promoting your content. But why?
The first thing that most people bring up when they are complimenting Facebook is the sheer reach that the platform has. Facebook has a global audience made up of 1.49 billion members worldwide. That is more than any other social media platform out there. With that many people using the site, you can make a safe bet that your audience is out there somewhere.
Facebook is also the most popular social media site for sharing. Not only are more people on the site, but they use it more and use it for sharing content. The next closest site would be Pinterest, but Facebook's sharing activity is 10:1 that of Pinterest. In addition, 81 percent of all shares come from Facebook.
Also, Facebook has Facebook Advertising, which is one of the most advanced advertising tools on the market today. With over 22 billion ad clicks per year, Facebook Advertising has become the biggest advertising opportunity since search came along. The ads on Facebook tend to be relatively cheap, compared to other marketing channels, and there is also a large variety of ads that you can run on the site.
But the one thing that makes Facebook advertising really stand out is the targeting capability that it has. You can target people based on demographics, age, language, behavior, connections, geography, etc. You can also perform remarketing to target those who have visited your site previously. You can also create lookalike audiences that clone audiences you have. The possibilities are really endless, here, and guarantee that you can serve your ads to the audience that you want.
Using Social Media for Content Promotion
We've established that social media is a great tool for promoting your content. But how do you start using it to your advantage?
Great Content
First thing first. You have to start with great content. Without it, this whole promotion strategy is a complete waste of time. No one wants to read sub-par content, and, trust us, people are going to know when you don't put much work into your article. Your content needs to be better than all the other content out there.
Here is our best tip for getting your content shared and read by thousands: Have a dazzling headline. People don't want to waste their time, and they aren't going to read your content if you can't compel them to do so with a strong headline. Take it from David Ogilvy: “It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.”
Share It
After you have created an incredible piece with a strong headline that is going to draw readers in, it's time to get it out there. You want to share it across your social media platforms. If you don't want to take the time to share your content on each one individually, you can set up scheduling software like Hootsuite or Buffer, where you can schedule all of your platforms at once.
We know that posting your content on Facebook or Twitter seems simple enough, but there does need to be some thought behind how you post and when you post. You want your content to be formatted correctly for each platform. For example, on Facebook, your audience is going to want more information in the description of the article, whereas on Twitter you only have 140 characters to explain your article, so you have to ditch the fluff.
When you post matters, too. You can Google “best times to post on Facebook” (or Twitter, Instagram, etc.) to see what other people think is the best time to post on platforms. Normally, you can find good information about posting and the different platforms in these articles, but the best way to figure out when to post is to do a little research.
The easiest thing to do is go check out your Facebook Insights page. There you can see when most of your audience is online, and then you can see the time frame when you should be posting your content. You can also try posting the same or similar content at different times throughout the day and see which one does better.
Promote It
Unfortunately, sharing your content really isn't enough, anymore. You are also going to need to promote it. Now, there are several ways that you can do this. One involves email outreach. You can send your content to other influencers to get them to share it. You can also put your content in the email marketing that you already have set up and, when people read your newsletters, they will see your great content.
Another way to promote your content is through social media advertising. We have already talked about Facebook Advertising and all that you can do with it. You want to make sure that you are utilizing this because you aren't going to get a lot of reach organically on Facebook. Unfortunately for you (and fortunately for Mark Zuckerberg), once Facebook realized that they could make money off of content promotion, they ran with it. Today, you are going to have to pay to get your content out to your entire audience.
But it doesn't stop with just Facebook Advertising. There are other advertising channels on other social media platforms that you can use. LinkedIn has a great advertising platform if you are trying to get your content in front of other businesses and business professionals. They give you two options to promote your content, with either sponsored updates or text ads.
You can also run ads on Twitter, which is very cost-effective and generally has a wide range of users available at your disposal. Promoted tweets will help you reach a wide group and help with engagement.
Engage with Audience
Once you have shared your content and promoted it, you should see some engagement on your posts. This is what you want - you want people to read your article and have something to say about it. If people are commenting on your article, you want to make sure that you are commenting back to them. This is how you build a strong audience: engagement. You want to make them feel appreciated for reading your work and as if the two of you are friends.
Facebook hounds you with this supposedly important message.
You scoff. Why would anyone pay to boost their posts?
You might even consent to Facebook's badgering and fork out the $5 needed, and what happens? Facebook becomes even more irritating, now blasting you with confusing messages about retargeting options.
Facebook ads? Pah, it's just a fad and the internet will soon get over it.
This is how myths begin.
Facebook Ads are a powerful platform with incredible potential. It's also complex and surrounded by myths and misconceptions.
Let me show you how to see past those myths and unlock the real power of Facebook advertising.
The power of reaching a tiny amount of people
Facebook doesn't cost any money, but it's far from free.
This massive people-search engine sits there quietly, collecting every detail of your life and your friends' lives, storing everything as searchable data for advertisers.
While that might sound like something even George Orwell would lose sleep over, it's a dream scenario for every marketer. Imagine targeting anyone you want to target: No more wasted money on showing irrelevant ads to the wrong people.
The Facebook ad-platform, with its ample targeting power and complex features, is quite a handful even for the most seasoned marketing professional. Many are content in simply scratching the surface and taking what results they get.
Such variance in user experiences has lead to different ideas about what Facebook Ads is and isn't.
Myth #1 – It's too expensive!
We have no problem purchasing the latest MacBook for work, or the latest lead generation plugin for WordPress. We'll gladly pay for a landing page service or domain hosting, or hire someone to help us design an image.
Spending money for advertising though? Nope. Most of us would rather sweat away at guest posts (yes, guilty as charged) and other forms of free promotion before even looking at paid advertising.
Let's talk about that.
Can you afford NOT to advertise?
Perhaps you should save your money and keep doing the free promotion.
This was my thinking. Then I opened up my calculator.
An average guest post takes 20 hours to write. On average, that brings in 100 subscribers. Let's say my time is worth $10/h. Whoops, I'm paying $2 per subscriber. Even then, I'm risking that no one takes an interest and I've wasted my time.
These ROI-figures are tough to achieve and require a lot of experimenting, but it just goes to show that Facebook ads can be extremely lucrative. Question is, can you afford NOT to spend money on advertising?
Absolute minimum budget for a Facebook Ads-campaign:
The absolute minimum daily budget based on Facebook's pricing is $2/day, or $5/day for manual bidding. That's $60-150/month on advertising. Hardly more than your internet bill.
Granted, it's the absolute minimum budget, and probably won't bring in massive results. But for someone with a minimal advertising budget, any positive result is welcome.
The minimum budget for your campaign depends on your campaign goal, but it's safe to say that Facebook advertising doesn't require a massive budget to get started.
Myth #2 – Useful, but will not work for my business
Facebook Ads won't work for YOUR business because of one of the following reasons:
Only B2C companies advertise on Facebook.
Only fun media companies advertise on Facebook.
It's only for boosting posts, to collect likes and increase brand awareness.
Your product isn't digital.
You don't want to annoy people while they're browsing Facebook.
etc…
If reasons like these are preventing you from dipping your toe into the Facebook advertising pool, you might be looking at it completely backwards.
The marvelous thing about Facebook is that, much like Soylent Green, it consists of real people. Every account, if not for a tiny percentage of fake accounts, is a real person. Real people are generally interested in a variety of different things, including your business.
1.65 billion people have a Facebook account. This means a member of your potential audience is browsing Facebook at this very moment and you're missing out on an opportunity to get in front of them.
In short: If your business provides a benefit to your audience, Facebook Ads will provide a benefit to your business. Whether it be in leads, subscribers or sales.
Myth #3 – I need a huge audience
If you've heard the myth that Facebook ads are only good for collecting “likes”, you've heard the misconception that follows: You need a huge audience to get any true results from Facebook advertising.
The great thing about Facebook is that you already have a huge potential reach. Facebook will gladly serve your ad to any of its 1.65 billion users.
All you need to do is tell Facebook what sort of person you want to target.
Build a target audience from scratch
You can build an accurate target group for your ads quickly, starting from absolutely nothing. All you need to do is specify the type of person you want to target, and Facebook will do the rest.
Here's how:
Find Pages focused on your selected interest using Facebook's search function.
Use this cool hack to find more relevant groups to further narrow down your search.
Make a profile of the type of person involved in these groups.
Using this profile, create your first target audience.
Boom – audience from nothing.
Expand an existing audience
If you already have a group of engaged followers in the form of a mailing list, you can turn that into a custom target audience for Facebook. Facebook can then expand on that with the Lookalike Audience-function.
Use the data recorded by the pixel to create a Lookalike Audience.
It's helpful if you already have a large list of subscribers, but you can use Facebook's provided tools to build an audience from nothing and still be successful.
Myth #4 – I need professional quality images
Your Facebook ad needs an image, that's true. To be successful, it needs to be:
Visually appealing
Attention grabbing
That's it.
Sure it helps to be relevant to your offer, but that's in no way a requirement.
At Thrive Themes, we're always trying to optimize and increase our Facebook ad-ROI. This means going to some extremes in image choices.
A standard stock photo. Note the cute baby pondering and looking. Your eyes are automatically drawn to the corner with a feeling of getting ready to learn.
Using humor and a striking graphics style, this image brings home the message and stands out from the crowd.
A professional brand colored design, built by our team of designers. Your attention is drawn to the product logo in the center of the image.
Using similar copy and target audiences, which one do you think brought a positive ROI? (Answer below.)
As Sketchdesk concluded in their mythbuster-case study about Facebook images, people respond to images in surprising, often counter-intuitive ways. American Marketing Association was quick to criticize Sketchdesk's case study as inconclusive and lacking targeting data.
Sketchdesk and AMA agree on one thing: you must test different images. It's the only way to really know what your audience responds to.
So don't worry if you're not a professional designer or a studio photographer. If you want to create something from scratch, Adespresso has a great guide on using Canva to create amazing Facebook ad images.
Here are a couple of image ideas you can easily make:
Plain colored background with an icon on it
Stock photo
Screenshot
Scenery photo
Then test. Test two or three images on the same advert. You might be surprised by the result.
If you're stuck looking for images, here's a few good sites with free or cheap images:
In short: As long as you have an image that's visually appealing and attention grabbing, you're good to go. Don't get stuck on the idea that the image has to be perfect.
Answer: ALL of those three images brought a positive ROI after testing.
Myth #5 – Facebook Ads are ignored because they're annoying
Remember when banner ads were all the rage? Yes, the flashy and annoying ones, informing you of the iPhone or million dollar prize you've won. You don't see them anymore. I mean, you literally don't see them anymore.
This dreadful ad format was so annoying that people became blind to it.
Irrelevance makes an advert annoying. They're trying to sell you something you don't need and end up robbing you of your time. On the other hand, if an ad offers you something you find truly beneficial and helpful, you'd love to find out more.
But they know where that money comes from: the users. Facebook's primary goal has always been to attract and keep users on the platform. Keeping users requires constantly engaging them with relevant information and keeping irrelevant information out of sight.
In other words, Facebook has no incentive to let marketers ruin the platform with spammy ads.
Sure, once in a while a spammy ad or annoying post slips through, but it soon disappears if not enough users engage with it. Properly targeted quality ads take precedence because they're the ones people tend to click.
Facebook's humongous user base keeps on growing because of the perceived value users get from continually being presented with relevant content.
Bottom line – Facebook ads is designed to favor showing relevant ads, and keep irrelevant ads out of your Newsfeed. That's why it's so damn effective.
Ditch the myths – Start your ad campaign with a fresh mind
There are other myths, and Facebook's lackluster communication about new updates and features doesn't exactly prevent new myths from forming.
Truth is, you're losing a ton of profit if you let misconceptions keep you out of this advertising platform. Now you know the myths. You can start your journey into Facebook ads with a fresh mind.
When you create your first Facebook campaign, remember to pair every ad set with a conversion optimized landing page. If you need a quick and simple way to create converting landing pages, check out the Rapid Landing Pages course!
Guest Author: Jay is passionate about copywriting, inbound marketing and turning marketing jargon into something humans can understand. When he isn't waxing lyrical about conversion optimization on the Thrive Themes blog, you can find him roaming the streets of major European cities looking for business opportunities.
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The process of creating content for your website in hopes of attracting a wave of traffic has changed in recent years.
In the past you'd be able to throw up a simple 500-word article onto your blog and get a stream of traffic. As long as it provided some semblance of value and had a few keywords thrown in, it was good enough. Ah the good ol' days!
Try doing that today and watch that piece of content be buried on the 800th page of Google's search results.
In today's race to produce content that hits the front page of the Google search results, your content must be more than stellar. It must be AT LEAST 10 times the value anyone's looking for if you want it to hit the front page of Google, attract traffic, shares, and mentions.
In this article I want to share with you 4 dead simple ways you can 10X the content you're producing to drive more traffic.
1. Include visual content
There are several roads to a 10x piece of content. One of them involves plenty of visual content.
Stunning photography and eye catching graphics build on top of the typical written blog post and help drive home the points you're making.
Lots of readers on the web are visual learners and the added visual aids help to elaborate on the points you're making. Web readers want their information quickly and in the most simple format. Why write a 500-word explanation when something like an infographic would suffice?
Take for example, Neil Patel's Advanced Content Marketing Guide, an extensive step by step guide for those looking to improve their content marketing strategy.
It is jampacked with graphics, visuals, and text that clearly and succinctly explain everything involved in the content marketing process.
Aside from it being a visual masterpiece, the Advanced Content Marketing Guide perfectly blends both graphics and text in the best of ways for the reader. There are subsections that are explained with text and others that can be explained visually.
A content marketing newbie would be hard pressed to find another resource offering up more value than this one.
The tips and strategies Neil offers up are supported with visual aids that boils down a complex topic for the reader. It covers the content marketing gamut and delivers 10x the value of anything else on the web.
2. Recycle popular past content
When we're discussing 10x content we're thinking of ways to offer up more value than anything else that's available on the web.
It can mean starting from a blank slate and building something awesome OR it could mean building on top of what has already been made. The later being the path of least resistance.
Allow me to explain.
If you've managed to create a healthy stable of content surrounding one subject you've already done most of the 10x work.
Take a look back through your analytics to see what has garnered the most traffic and engagement. This will be the content you'll be doubling down on and recycling into another format. Maybe one of your articles on DIY desks performed above expectation and it would do well as an infographic on Pinterest. Maybe you've written all you can on the topic of french bulldog grooming, why not compile it into one big ebook.
One example I can share with you is Wishpond's article100 Growth Hacks Learned as 5 Years as a Startup. This was an article we came up with, with the idea of creating a 10x piece of content.
After taking a look at the content on the web surrounding “growth hacks”, we set out to create a list that was 10x the value. We contacted popular influencers and brands to give the article a lift, and it took off spectacularly.
After the success of the article began to taper off we recycled it into a SlideShare presentation to hit an additional audience. The press began rolling again and the SlideShare presentation was featured on the front page!
It didn't stop there. We assumed our readers would be interested on how we were able to get featured, so we wrote a blog post explaining just how we did it.
It's all about finding product market fit for the content that you're producing. The more you know about your target audience, their likes, dislikes and problems, the greater you can 10x that content and recycle it into more content.
3. Unique data, opinions, or research
As I mentioned before, 10x content can be created off the back of another piece of content. But if you're really looking to shake things up there are types of content that are 10x the value unto themselves.
This type of content includes…
Unique data. Do you serve a specific target audience? Is there unique data that you're privy to? Consider capitalizing on unique data that you or your business is able to capture. Maybe this is user data within your industry. Maybe it's demographics for a specific product. Being the first to present unique data puts your content ahead of the race.
Original opinions. Don't have any unique data to present? Try voicing an original opinion. Take a divisive stance on a specific argument or debate. Be polarizing to a certain extent. It draws attention and creates conversations.
Original research. Do you have the ability and the resources to perform original research? Presenting original and quotable research promotes you as a thought leader in your industry.
An example of this comes from the SEO/keyword tool company Ahrefs. In a research-backed article (previously) entitled On-page SEO is Dead the company analyzed over 2 million random keyword searches and presented the data to its readers. Ultimately stating that on-page SEO is dead.
The article attracted a wave of comments and thousands of shares due to its findings. The fact that it was original research performed by a qualified and respected company made all the difference. Ahrefs was able to use the data only it had access to, to present something fresh for its audience and ended up with a 10x piece of content.
4. Outreach and amplification
Let's imagine that you've done your research, wrote some outstanding copy, and included a few helpful visual aids. A 10x piece of content is not complete without a post-publishing, outreach and amplification schedule.
Just because you've created a valuable resource does not mean it will magically be discovered and promoted. You need to get it in front of influencers and others in your industry.
How can you get your content noticed and amplified by influencers?
One technique we employ is to make a measured effort to include influencer names, quotes, and techniques within our content, which increases the likelihood of it being shared by the people mentioned.
After we publish an article, we shoot off a quick email or tweet to the influencer letting them know we'd mentioned them. We found that if the content is within their realm of interest, is professional and is helpful to their audience, there's a high likelihood they'd give it a share.
The key here is ensuring that the content is helpful and valuable to the influencer's audience.
Alex Turnbull, the CEO & founder of Groove, a help desk software company, wrote an extensive article detailing how Groove got 1,000 blog subscribers from one blog post. In the article Alex details what he did to engage with influencers in his industry and leverage those relationships further down the road.
Alex is a big believer in spending equal amounts of time promoting and creating each piece of content you create. By putting in the time to promote content it extends the life of each piece, allowing him to spend less time creating content.
We all would love to spend our time only creating content but it's all for naught if no one sees it. If you have the opportunity to include more opinions and input from influencers, jump on it, that way your content can become a part of the larger conversation.
Tying it all together
In your quest to create 10x content, don't expect your first attempt to hit the front page of Google and sky rocket you into a seat at the head table. Not all swings are going to be home runs.
Remember that 10x content does not happen without a little experimentation to see what sticks. Once you find content that works, double down on it by:
Including visual content
Recycling popular past content into new formats
Doing outreach and amplification
Using unique data, opinions, or research
Before you hit the publish button, make sure your content is…
Sure, almost everything under the sun has been written about before but have you put your own unique spin on it?
Does your content flow cohesively and maintain the reader's attention throughout?
Does this piece of content have a clear use and provide value? Does it solve a problem? Does it answer questions? Why should it be published?
If you can confidently answer yes on all these points, your content is well on it's way to becoming a 10x piece of content.
What strategies do you follow to create 10x content?
What works for you and what doesn't?
Leave a comment for me below and weigh in!
Guest Author: Jordan Lore is a Content Marketer at Wishpond in Vancouver, BC. Wishpond makes it easy for marketers to run lead generation and marketing automation campaigns, all in one place. When he's not writing he has a camera attached to his arm. Follow him on his budding twitter account @jordanlore6.
