Content Marketing & Thought Leaders Part 8

Posted on April 26, 2016 by ianotr

Thought Leaders & Content Marketing

Consumers are gravitating toward Thought Leaders

Bloggers are the stars of the online world in terms of being viewed as influencers by search engines if they are popular and authoritative enough. Blogging is part of what makes content marketing valuable since effective blogs can create online followings. The reason blogs have become important in SEO is that they represent a chance to bring keywords to life in a unique story.

Blogs vs Articles

Many people have used the terms “blogs” and “articles” interchangeably, but the two are very different. Articles are written in a more traditional style, almost like a newspaper story, whereas blogs are more conversational and creative while delivering information that can be hard to find elsewhere. Another big difference is that blogs are written from the perspective of an expert, whereas articles are written by objective observers who can be anybody.

When you think about it, if you’re not getting information from an expert, why should you trust the information? Search engines favor experts because they are better sources than non-experts. The internet is flooded with articles by non-experts who are mostly duplicating information that already exists. Bloggers, on the other hand, offer new information and original perspectives, which are two components of content marketing that search engines reward.

How Blogs Become Big

Big media helps put the spotlight on popular bloggers, but it’s also possible to develop a blog that grows in popularity organically. The main strategy for building an organic online following is the combination of SEO and unique content that can be categorized many different ways. Your blog can be planned out many months in advance based on all the different angles you see in an industry.

When you think of all the different types of people who are attracted to your industry and start writing blogs about the different reasons people use certain products, you can gain acceptance as a leading observer in that field. Once you’ve written about a hundred quality blogs about your industry, it’s likely that your name or brand will be referenced in many different ways associated with the industry in search engines. The more unique blogs you write, the more chances search engines will consider you to be an authoritative expert.

Maximizing Blogs

Not all blogs are successful partly because not everyone is a good storyteller. Certain industries work well with blogging if they are already very detail-oriented. Sharing food recipes, for example, can create endless excitement for cooking fans since there are infinite ways to prepare food. But sharing information on how to operate machinery used in redundant situations is not the best approach to blogging if it doesn’t spawn many different ideas.

Ideally, you want to create blogs that other people share on social networks. One of the ways to make a blog attractive is to start with a colorful photograph, design or infographic. A blog that accompanies a picture and video has extra advantages. The reason you want to make sure the blog has a nice picture is because people see hundreds of stories and pictures as they scroll through their social network newsfeeds, but only so many catch their attention.

A blogger who interviews experts, especially on video, can gain even more credibility. By taking the role of a multimedia curator who explores an industry deeply, you can gain the reputation of a Thought Leader. When your blog becomes what people turn to with high expectation of gaining new information, you have become a Thought Leader, a monumental goal of bloggers. Take the lead in content marketing by reviewing new products and helping other bloggers create a buzz about them.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web, a web development company creating market ready websites since 2000, with locations in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Inbound Marketing Consumers Empowerment Part 7

Posted on April 22, 2015 by ianotr

Inbound Marketing Consumers Empowered

Economic factors encourage customers to be researchers

The internet has represented consumer empowerment since the 1990’s because it operates like a high speed phone book. It takes you wherever you want to go, including to websites of competitors you just visited. Due to last century’s marketing that promised more than it delivered, consumers have become skeptical of unfamiliar brands, but are able to quickly learn about brands as a result of inbound marketing.

Marketing Affordability

One of the reasons many people use the internet is to learn how to save money. When budgets tighten, people intensify searches as “affordable” becomes an important keyword to attract bargain hunters. At the same time, many consumers are looking for the best quality at the lowest price. The internet is competitive because it gives you a lot of different choices quickly.

At physical stores consumers deal with extra problematic variables such as shelf space and number of units in stock. If a product sells out it can create inconveniences for customers. Online markets have eliminated the problem of store hours and inventories. Since many store costs have been reduced, online marketers can afford to sell products at lower prices than retail.

Accelerated Research

What consumers are really latching onto when they begin to have favorite blogs is a feeling of comfort that they have learned something from someone online. Surfing the net can take up a lot of time and sometimes there’s nothing to show for it. But engaging through social media and online discussions can generate a useful dialogue that builds loyalty and interest while saving time. For many people saving time is just as valuable as saving money.

Search engines have been such helpful time saving devices that they can instantly bring you in touch with any market imaginable through keywords. Searching for something online is not the same type of passive activity as sitting through TV commercials. In many ways TV advertising chases away customers while inbound marketing invites customers to participate with the product.

Lower Marketing Costs

One of the main keys to inbound marketing is that it helps make your brand a star in several categories instead of just one. The marketing of several different products under one brand name has become an incredibly powerful way to maximize marketing at lower costs.The more variety in products and services you can offer, the more visibility you will generate online and the more chances for customers to find you.

Imagine if you had a different brand name for every different product you sold. If you sold hundreds of different products it could cost a lot of money just to design each logo. But one brand that can be marketed hundreds of different ways is a much more economically efficient venture. In many cases brands are becoming about values related to visions of the world. People now value brands that share similar visions, such as going green.

The Value of Information

Thanks to search engines and inbound marketing, original information has become valuable. At one time marketing costs were high in order to have access to a big passive audience that wasn’t necessarily in the mood to buy. Now marketing costs are low to reach a big active audience that is already searching to buy. All it takes is effort on the part of the marketer to put these pieces together and connect with followers.

The road to becoming successful at inbound marketing involves placing value in stories about your products. Take the lead in inbound marketing by offering free information that helps others gain economic advantages and makes your site more valuable than sites with less information.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web, a web development company creating market ready websites since 2000, with locations in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Content Marketing & SEO Part 5

Posted on April 8, 2015 by ianotr

Content Marketing & SEO

One size fits all marketing is ineffective

Traditional marketing relied on a theory that one message can connect with a mass audience. The internet helped branding become more multidimensional. Websites can be full of different versions of brands. The one size fits all model was designed to reach a vast market through a numbers game and limited media, but it did not always reach its target market. Today SEO has become a realistic way to develop a significant loyal online community.

Brand Diversity

One of the keys to business survival in the 21st century has been brand diversity. The internet has made it easy for a brand to become a package that serves a market with many different niches. By offering many different products instead of one product a brand potentially reaches a much wider market. Each version of a brand can have its own web page using keywords associated with the brand. One of the many reasons for creating many different brand versions is to offer the brand in different languages.

Brand diversity may imply that a conglomerate is the force behind the business, but small businesses can also be diverse. Using creativity, a local business may find reasons to market different product versions to different market segments. The more a brand can offer customization, the more personalized it is and the more it fits the model sought by modern consumers.

Research Beyond Demographics

In the 1990’s demographics played a huge part in the mass marketing of one size fits all products. By selling products to specific target demographics there was a consensus among marketers that everything came down to age groups. Then psychographics became part of marketing that expanded the thinking to include interests and lifestyles as important market factors besides age group. Tech gadgets have been marketed as lifestyle items, in which several different versions fit different lifestyles.

Ever since Google introduced Analytics, the marketing world has gravitated toward this tool and similar traffic tracking programs as a measurement of marketing power. Analytics take the marketer into a world of online behavior, which can reflect how well a website is presented. Now that markets can be studied on a micro level, thanks to SEO and web stats, it’s possible for a marketer of a brand to meet the needs of various markets.

Updated Products

Unlike last century’s products, this century’s products require much more frequent updating, especially when it has anything to do with digital products. One marketing message can no longer summarize a product in a way that meets the needs of modern consumers. Software, books, video games, music and blogs can all be updated seamlessly in the cloud. Even T-shirts can now be designed in the cloud.

Part of SEO involves updating web pages, as search engines favor fresh content. Authoritative blogs that are updated frequently carry heavy weight with search engines. The internet has helped expand the boundaries of branding, giving owners more flexibility in reaching niche markets. All you mostly have to do as a content marketer is write a useful article for each different market you are trying to reach.

Reaching Niches with Content Marketing

The secret to effective content marketing has always been to create unique and compelling content. The beauty of content marketing is it allows you to get indexed in search engines as much as possible when writing about the various niches associated with your brand. While last century’s marketers were mainly concerned with demographics, this century’s marketers have much more data and must think about customers more as individuals than statistics. Take the lead in content marketing by writing about various niches within your market.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000, with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Content Marketing vs Interruptive Marketing Part 4

Posted on March 4, 2015 by ianotr

Content Marketing vs Interruptive Marketing

Interruptive marketing annoys more than it helps

Interruptive marketing still exists online for those who can afford it. Since most people do not go online to click ads, online advertising should only be done when it makes sense and you have an idea how many people you will be reaching. It’s possible to create a successful campaign with interruptive advertising, usually after learning from failed campaigns.

Why Ads are Annoying

A big reason why interruptive ads continue to be annoying is that people have become more conscious of how time can get wasted, especially people who spend a lot of time watching television. Interruptive advertising on websites is forcing many users to move on to the next website faster, especially when it comes to trying to watch videos. Getting hit with an ad has become a two minute slowdown. Many times it’s easier to exit a website than wait for an ad to finish.

Since ads represent clutter, they are usually bothersome. Only once in awhile do ads communicate the way they were designed. Interruptive ads are starting to become hard to justify except in narrowly targeted situations. The problem with constantly interrupting people who don’t want to be interrupted is that it gets old. The person can also form a negative image of the brand if it is over-marketed.

Image Problems

We are moving into an era in which brands are considered phony if they don’t live up to their claims. It’s now easy to look up customer feedback for almost any brand, now that sites like Amazon keep track of consumer comments. Consumers are now conscious of giving such feedback sites weight compared with advertising. The rising popularity of content marketing is causing businesses to understand the negative impact of interruptive advertising.

Now that audiences have learned to see through advertiser claims, it’s becoming a challenge for businesses to win the trust of customers. Since content marketing is more about communicating with the target market, it makes sense to try to gain as much respect as possible by telling the truth than to exaggerate the facts just to trick people into sales. When people realize they’ve been fooled by advertising, it can damage association with the brand.

Less Like Radio

The irony about radio advertising is that it does the opposite of what it’s supposed to do. Instead of delivering a message to a mass audience, it’s delivering a message to people who have switched stations during commercials.In order to meet the standards of content marketing, it’s important to think of the opposite of how radio commercials have been made. Many commercials have used phony voices to try to give the spot more energy. Today’s marketing is closer to being conversational without theatrical characters.

Traditional radio commercials usually told you a limited amount of information to fit the format of a 30 or 60 second spot, whereas content marketing does not limit its message to the constraints of a third party. Radio commercials always get clustered with other commercials in “stopsets,” which is exactly when many people tune out of the radio. Clearly, most people do not listen to radio commercials no matter what the message is.

Another problem with radio commercials is due to the time constraint, many times the announcer will speed up his or her voice and speak too fast to be understood. If you watch business videos designed to raise brand awareness through content marketing, you will likely come across more relaxed than hyper presentations. Interruptive ads have become more annoying over time now that people have learned to use the internet as a quick gateway to many free activities.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000, with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

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Content Marketing vs Mass Marketing Part 3

Posted on February 18, 2015 by ianotr

Content Marketing vs Mass Marketing

People Have Learned To Tune Out Mass Marketing

Content marketing of the 21st century is quickly turning into something much different than the marketing of the previous century. In the 20th century not much attention was paid to how many people you offended through marketing. All that mattered was sales conversions. In the new century, consumers are looked at more as individuals rather than statistics, so this shift has created a set of new marketing standards.

Consumer Behavior

It’s difficult to predict consumer behavior, regardless of the type of marketing. One thing clear about the internet revolution is that consumers are no longer quiet about bad purchases. Social media, forums and blog activity have steered a growing number of self-educated consumers toward using the internet for research before making a purchase. Customer reviews on sites like Amazon have become part of research.

Throughout the growth of the internet, users have been bombarded with thousands of ads that had zero effect. People have now seen so much advertising since the 1990s on a daily basis that it has a nullifying effect on most advertising. People learn to not worry about the stack of coupons kept in a drawer or in their email. Since people witness so much marketing in any given day, it’s easy to conclude that most of this marketing doesn’t work for any given individual, as most advertising represents clutter.

Years of Advertising

People have figured out that advertising does not always present the best messages about products. Many times products are over-hyped by ads. Consumers are no longer easily fooled by emotional appeal used by advertisers. The internet has taught many consumers how to articulate what they like or dislike about a product. Ultimately, as people sharpen their brand awareness skills, advertising is becoming more informational than persuasive, at least with content marketing.

One of the important lessons that stands out about advertising is that consumers have become aware of sales pressure, which can lead to high credit card bills. The internet has erased the barrier of location, which gives consumers more choices. Sales pressure is not embraced in content marketing, which favors guiding users through a sales funnel with interesting facts that eventually lead to a product.

Authenticity in Demand

Now that it’s easy for anyone to start their own web business, there is a growing need to separate helpful websites from sites that waste time. Mass marketers can be found everywhere online, which has contributed to an overall consumer skepticism about advertising. Like all advertising arenas, the number of people who respond to ads even on popular social networks is a small percentage.

The reason authenticity is becoming part of the new marketing paradigm is that original content rather than duplicate content is favored by search engines. The more your website follows Google’s guidelines, the less you have to worry about it. The main objective of content marketing is to provide plenty of valuable content that is of interest to an online community.

Why Content Marketing Works

Content marketing is a completely different world than interruptive marketing. Instead of interrupting someone’s day, your articles and blogs are found in search engines by people who care. Instead of annoying users with advertisements, you provide them with stories that promote products. These stories are presented in a unique way, which helps search rankings.

A main strength to content marketing is that it helps establish the relationship between the business and the customer. Interactivity through social networks or email helps achieve goals for both parties. While traditional marketing relied on wordplay and image, today’s content marketing is more about developing trust through sharing accurate and helpful information.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Inbound Marketing & Big Media Advertising Part 2

Posted on February 11, 2015 by ianotr

Inbound Marketing & Big Media Advertising

Big media advertising is expensive and high risk

One of the traps that many start-ups have fallen into has been to set aside a budget for traditional media advertising. This budget can be drained quickly because it involves a fun element, which is creating commercials. But once the spots are run, pressure builds to see a return on investment. Television and radio spots are seen and heard by thousands of people, but most viewers and listeners still consider commercials to be an interruption.

Inbound Marketing vs. Traditional Media

Traditional media such as television, radio and newspapers still reach a huge audience. It’s still a way to deliver a message to the masses and hope that the numbers game will produce a return on investment. The cost of a radio spot depends on how big the station’s market is, but in major markets a sixty second spot can cost hundreds of dollars per minute. Even though television advertising is much more expensive than radio advertising, they both equate to seeing thousands of dollars spent quickly.Inbound marketing usually does not reach as many people as television or radio audiences, but connects more with the target market. While traditional media marketing relies on reaching as many people as possible to produce a single digit percentage of respondents, inbound marketing aims at building a more loyal following, instead of a general following. Reaching followers through blogs and social media has a more personalized feel than traditional media.

Commercial Risks

In the late 1990s one of the reasons there was a “dotcom bust” was that many new internet companies thought they could create markets for their brands through buying radio and television time. Many of these companies attracted funding that helped pay for the advertising, but they eventually collapsed due to having poor business models that did not have clear revenue streams.

The lesson of the dotcom implosion helped steer internet companies toward more concrete business models. The collapse of hundreds of companies served as a reminder that markets cannot be created so quickly just by spending a lot of money on exposure. Part of marketing that remains true is that you cannot build a brand overnight regardless of the medium.

Print Advantages

In recent decades the number of newspapers and magazines have dwindled, but advertising rates have remained high. Ask yourself if advertising in a newspaper helps your cause in any way, knowing that most of your market gets its news online. Big ads – the expensive kind – work best in print, but the best deal when it comes to print is printing your own flyer and mass distributing it through various channels.

You can combine print with inbound marketing by offering printed materials to people who request them through your website. A big part of inbound marketing is offering free items that give people a chance to engage with your brand. You can use print to promote your website locally at stores that reflect your industry. Working with a printer is also helpful in getting your logo on various marketing items.

Avoiding Expensive Advertising

There’s a tendency for some business owners to blame sales declines on lack of advertising. But a business is much more than the product it advertises, which is why advertising does not always work. Mass advertising works when many factors have come together. Loyalty, brand awareness and reputation are just as important as the message being advertised.

It’s better to conserve resources and develop a business slowly than to try to jump start a business with expensive media advertising. By building a market with inbound marketing, a company can focus on developing a long term organic following.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Content Marketing & Small Business Part 1

Posted on February 4, 2015 by ianotr

Content Marketing & Small Business

Small businesses are shut out of big media

How did content marketing become such a big deal in the 21st century? It can all be traced back to how last century’s outbound marketing invaded people’s lives too much and didn’t do enough for small business. Outbound marketing is usually interruptive in the form of visual or audio advertising. The main problem with outbound marketing was that you had to do a lot of it to make any kind of impact.

Budget Constraints

Small businesses simply do not have the budgets to gamble with expensive advertising that may not work. Television, radio and newspaper advertising each require repetition to be effective. But to gain visibility and brand awareness through this type of mass media, it can take several months of advertising to see results, which may not be the best return on investment. Big companies can afford saturating their markets with continuous advertising that can run several thousand dollars per month, but small companies cannot afford constant advertising.

Limited Message

Another problem with traditional media marketing was that it only gave you small snippets of information about the product. It was impossible to learn much about a product just from a newspaper ad or radio commercial. Part of the problem was that the advertiser was only given so much time or space to deliver a message. Last century’s marketing messages encompassed vague slogans designed to be one size fits all solutions.

One of the biggest weaknesses of traditional media advertising was that the target market was not always clear. You could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on reaching big markets, but there was no guarantee that the advertising would generate sales. The broadcast industries blurred the picture further by using questionable ratings research as evidence that people pay attention to commercials. The fact is that media advertising can work, but does not always work.

Internet Expansion

The internet opened doors for marketers who were trying to get away from last century’s marketing approach that was expensive and invasive. In many cases, advertising was full of exaggeration. A more consumer-friendly approach has developed on the internet that allows marketers and consumers to connect when it’s right for both of them.

Instead of interrupting content with commercials, content marketing provides the information people are already searching for, presented in a digestible way.By designing a series of online messages through blogs and articles, you can educate customers about products much faster than in the past. You can even get some customers to speed up their purchases.

Content marketing avoids hard sell language and concentrates on giving readers the most important product information and then funnels toward web pages devoted to deeper details. By creating thorough web pages about products, pages are indexed by search engines, which can potentially equate to vast amounts of free advertising.

Alternatives to Mainstream Media

The rise of content marketing may not have happened if small business had not been shut out of mainstream media. Expensive advertising led to big business having a heavy presence on local television, newspapers and radio as small companies were overshadowed. Thanks to Google’s AdWords pay per click program small businesses finally found low cost ways to reach their target markets.Google and other search engines have also contributed to customers finding the businesses they are looking for faster.

Take the lead in content marketing by building a website full of content that people are searching for. If you build a small business site full of unique information that cannot be found elsewhere, it’s possible for search engines to create your core market and for content marketing to nurture your market.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000, with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Reactive Content for Social Sharing

Posted on August 11, 2014 by ianotr

Reactive Content for Social Sharing

Content that creates any kind of significant and fast spreading online buzz is considered viral and sometimes called “contagious content.” What are the qualities of videos, images, blogs and articles that go viral? It definitely has more to do with standing out than blending in. Evidence suggests that people who sort through YouTube deciding on what to watch pay attention to views, as popularity attracts more viewers. That’s why the more “likes” you can initially generate, the more chance others will watch it.

Seeing Through Viral Hype

The biggest myth about viral content is that there’s a certain formula that can work for anyone. Obviously not all content creators have equal significance. No matter how many experts you listen to about the keys to crafting viral content, the top viral videos and blogs will usually either come from an already popular website or somehow receive exposure from a popular media outlet.

The video to the novice song “Friday” by Rebecca Black was the most viewed video on YouTube in 2011 and sparked a national discussion on how such an amateur could overshadow professional recording artists. What was amazing was that over 80 percent of viewers who rated the video voted “dislike.” The mystery can be explained by the fact that the viral activity began after the video was mentioned on a popular blog by comedian Michael J. Nelson. From there it was reviewed and ridiculed by several media outlets.

Viral videos can also be rigged. In December 2012 YouTube discovered and cancelled two billion views for music videos were faked possibly by hackers who worked for the music industry. In other words, don’t be distracted too much by what’s considered hot online because there’s always a chance it’s misleading, distorted, rigged or hyped information.

Viral Factors

Your video or blog might never be viewed by millions, but you might still have a chance to get enough attention to attract an audience that helps your business. One of the most important factors of viral content is that it gets reviewed by influencers such as popular bloggers. Developing an ongoing relationship with several successful bloggers can plant seeds to future viral action. Content that has no connection with other online influences will likely not go viral on its own.

The actual content can take on many different forms in viral scenarios. Short wacky videos and informative lengthy blogs are typical examples of contagious content. But there are no real ways to predict what can go viral, other than the content is usually filtered through popular media channels. Other terms that have been used by experts to characterize viral qualities include: relevant, controversial, personable, creative, inspiring, emotional, humane, humorous, shocking and daring. Catchy titles help as well.

Consistent Vision

Stay true to what you believe in instead of trying to figure out how to fit into popular schemes. Compromising your vision for short-lived popularity might not be worth it because viral activity does not guarantee sales conversions or building long term loyalty. As long as you craft creative content you should be in the running for viral opportunities, provided that it catches the attention of influencers with big audiences.

If you come across viral content that inspires you and fits your vision, then go ahead and experiment with it, but don’t just do something controversial or shocking to try to go viral. What works for others might not work for you. It’s fine to experiment with humor and novelty, but never lose site of solving problems. Take the lead in content marketing by crafting edgy educational content that no one else is doing.

Would you like to get exclusive & relevant information such as this blog/article delivered to your mailbox? Join our OTR Web Newsletter now.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Partner with HubSpot.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Interacting with Followers

Posted on August 6, 2014 by ianotr

Interacting With Followers Is Crucial To Your Business. Learn Why!

Content marketing is strengthened exponentially with social media in mind. You can rely on search engines to a degree to help bring you a certain amount of traffic, but if you want to accelerate loyalty and possibly sales, you will need to interact with followers through social media. The most popular social networks are Facebook, YouTube, Google Plus, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. You don’t need a presence on each of them, just the ones that suit your goals.

The Power of Interaction

The quote from Ian Conklin that “clients want to believe they found you .. not that you found them” applies to search engines, websites and social media as vehicles for knowledge discovery. People feel rewarded by making the right connections in their networks. Take advantage of the fact that half the world is now looking to make new friends online through social media to help with problem solving and possibly career advancement.

Interaction through the internet is a much more empowering form of communication than a person who passively absorbs television or radio programming. Social media can deliver immediate answers and responses faster than email or any other electronic medium besides the telephone. Social media is more convenient than the telephone, which can be interruptive at times, whereas people with social profiles crave attention. Another strength that social media offers is group discussion that can expand through content sharing.

Mixing Art with Messages

Putting Paint to Canvas

What’s spectacular about social media sharing is that it allows you to express yourself in artistic ways that had previously not been possible. You can now easily associate your message with a song, a movie clip or a painting to help reach a common ground with followers. Sharing original art, music, video or photography with your message can give a personal touch to your campaign. It’s easy to type a post with a link to your blog or article and upload other media at the same time, creating a multidimensional post.

Posting news articles with artistic graphics and a theme that goes along with your writing is a creative way to lead followers to your content. Facebook and Google Plus give you flexibility for combining multiple links on one post. The visual imagery helps pull in readers from their news feed, which is important, since only about 15 percent of your Facebook friends will see your posts in news feeds. Facebook learns through “likes” and comments what the most active friends are for each individual and serves them their own individual news feed of top connections. So it’s important to create as many impressive posts as possible to increase visibility.

Comments and Likes

Your social media interactivity should include reading other people’s posts as well as writing your own. You can write comments on people’s “walls” on Facebook just by clicking their names. If someone likes your comment it’s a good idea to like their comments at least once in a while. It helps remind them of your content and builds a connection that keeps your feeds active.
Adding new unknown followers on Facebook can be done for a business profile, but is discouraged for personal profiles, so you may want to have two separate profiles on Facebook.

Google Plus is more about building new relationships online and engaging in more about knowledge, while Facebook has a more fun and casual orientation. Both social networks allow you to create subgroups focused on specific discussions. Twitter is more about promoting links with simple short statements.Take the lead in content marketing by interacting with followers on a level that creates a meaningful bond that is mutually beneficial.

Would you like to get exclusive & relevant information such as this blog/article delivered to your mailbox? Join our OTR Web Newsletter now.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Partner with HubSpot.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Data Collection and Audience Measurement

Posted on July 10, 2014 by ianotr

Data Collection and Audience Measurement

One of the things that makes content marketing more scientific than traditional marketing is the fact that it provides a mountain of data. Most of this data can be obtained at low to no cost. Google Analytics is one of the best tracking platforms for your online efforts to find out how well your content attracts traffic. Various other tracking services can help you gauge your performance. Studying this data will help you determine your strengths and weaknesses at content marketing.

Google Analytics

There are many different services that offer audience measurement for websites, but Google Analytics is by far the most popular and it’s well respected due to its comprehensive detail. Analytics tell you how much traffic you’re getting, where it comes from and how visitors behave on your site. The research is designed for marketers and is divided into free and premium services. The basic free package tells you how many visits your site got in a given day, week or month, along with average session time and bounce rate, which reveals the percentage of visitors who exit the site after viewing one page.

One of the helpful indicators that Google Analytics provides is how users found your websites. Referrers such as search engines, social networks and websites are listed as sources that brought you traffic. You can use this information to share with referrers to let them know they provide you value. Another use of Analytics is finding out which geographic locations bring you the most traffic, which can help you determine if your branding messages need to be more universal or focused on certain regions. The main limitation of Google Analytics is that users can disable cookies in their browsers, which blocks data collection on how they use your site.

CrazyEgg

You can help improve your conversion rate by analyzing why people leave your site with Crazy Egg heat maps. The software shows you specific locations on web pages that visitors clicked before exiting. A scroll map shows how far visitors scrolled on pages, which helps you determine which parts of pages are most and least effective at holding people’s attention. The Confetti tool within the software helps you learn search terms that were used by people to find your site.

Alexa and Quantcast

Two audience measurement sites that can teach you a lot about web popularity are Alexa and Quantcast. Both sites rank millions of websites, using separate methodologies to measure web traffic. Unlike ComScore and Nielsen, Alexa and Quantcast publish their rankings for the public. You can even use them for free to find out how your website compares with competitors in traffic rankings. If you sign up for either service and paste their code on your web pages you can get much more detailed statistics.

Alexa, owned by Amazon, tells you how your site ranks globally as well as in the United States. If your site gets enough traffic it will tell you other interesting information, such as bounce rate, daily pageviews per visitor, daily time on site and heat maps for gender, education level, browsing location (home, school, work) and visitors by country. It will also tell you the percentage of visits that originated from search engines and the top keywords used from search engines. It will also give your site an SEO score on a 0-100 point scale.

Quantcast is useful for looking at income levels and other demographics of your users. Both sites provide much more information if you subscribe.Take the lead in content marketing by utilizing website Analytics, which will help fine tune your understanding of your audience.

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Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

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