What do you want to get out of your social media marketing? For most companies, the benefits they expect to see are: increasing exposure (89%) developing loyal fans (68%) providing marketplace insights (66%). These are all real benefits of social […]
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Social Media For Customer Acquisition
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Written by Teena Thach, blog.socedo.com
The post Social Media For Customer Acquisition appeared first on Search Engine People Blog.
As a discerning digital marketer and business owner, you're on top of the latest trends and tips on how to convert.
You know all about SEO, and CRO, and PPC (that's a whole lot of acronyms). You're an active content creator, social media participant, and advocate for your brand.
And you, of course, recognize the power of the buyer persona.
Most successful businesses – from ecommerce to SaaS and all points in between – have at least one or two at the ready. They act as a guide, providing hints and suggestions on the best way to do something – anything – in order to appeal to your customers.
Without them, you're flying blind. But let's back up for a moment.
Creating buyer personas is a useful exercise for any business: if you don't know exactly who you're going after, how can you possibly expect to find, connect, engage, and convert them?
Personas allow you to zero in on the ideal target in your marketing, your content, your communication, and virtually everything else.
Many companies complete persona cards with photos, descriptions, and identifying characteristics (just as an author might do for each character in the story…the personas represent each “character” in your story). They name the individuals, and refer to them by those names.
They define the various types of buyers for your product or service, including their demographics, motivations, interests, beliefs, and emotional responses. Personas are detail-oriented and contain many parts beyond just the obvious (age, gender, location, and so forth).
If that all sounds well and good – a cute albeit not terribly valuable activity – you're not seeing the bigger picture. In the uber-competitive modern business world, buyer personas are a pivotal component.
Think about it: a concrete buyer persona lets you get inside the head of your customers and prospects. You're no longer making guesses or assumptions about what they might like, want, need, or respond to. You know.
Mark Schaefer of Business Grow says that 3-4 buyer personas typically account for 90% of your sales. Why? Because everything you throw at them is already targeted and exactly what they've been looking for. It's an easier (if not easy) sell.
Buyer personas = good.
Your buyer personas are a fictionalized version of your (very real) ideal buyer(s) based on legitimate data and validated common traits.
But just where does this data come from? Take your pick:
These represent the usual suspects. Unfortunately, some of them – most notably surveys and questions – can be misleading. People aren't always 100% honest with their answers, either intentionally or accidentally.
A more atypical method – and one that can provide some seriously targeted data on your buyers and visitors – is A/B testing. It uses natural customer behavior and response to clarify and strengthen your personas.
(For more information and advice on buyer personas, check out The Complete Guide to Building Your Personal Brand, 20 Questions to Ask When Creating Buyer Personas, or How to Create a Buyer Persona Map)
You've no doubt heard about A/B testing already. It compares audience behavior and reaction to two samples – a control and a variation – to create powerful landing pages, effective email messages, and website design that resonates with an audience.
It allows for data-supported decisions that incrementally improve the performance of something. A tweak here, a different headline there, all moving towards better conversions and (ultimately) more revenue.
If you're not certain what it's all about, a good beginner's guide can bring you quickly up to speed (it's not hard to grasp the basics). A master's guide can dig a little deeper and explain in greater detail.
Either way, make sure you're including it at some level in your marketing and communication efforts.
A well-crafted testing plan is essential to modern marketers. What's not working can always be fixed. What's good can always be better.
It allows you to gradually find the optimal design/wording/structure for your particular target. It's not a quick fix. It's not a shortcut. It's just smart, savvy behavior for the digital 21st century.
A/B testing = good.
Testing can find big improvements from small changes. SumoMe, for example, A/B tested a video version versus the text control of their landing page for an email list building guide and discovered a 55% conversion lift (from 8.86% to 13.7%).
But A/B testing goes beyond just trying two different versions. It can do so much more than just determining whether your visitors prefer a red or blue CTA button. It's more akin to a science experiment, with the procedure to match. It involves proper prep and planning.
A strong test adheres to the following steps:
There are A/B test mistakes to avoid, and common pitfalls can actually hurt your conversions and your website as a whole. A checklist to remind you of the dos and don'ts is a handy resource.
The services available for testing run the gamut from free and barebones to (much) more expensive and feature-rich. As with everything, you get what you pay for. If you have the budget and know-how, a robust testing tool is definitely worth the investment.
Some of the best and most popular A/B tools include:
Are you starting to appreciate the connection between these two? A/B testing can be used to steadily improve your existing buyer personas. It can fill in the blanks or areas of questionable validity.
It provides verifiable hard data on what is resonating with your visitors and customers based on their actual behavior. And if you know that, you understand them on a deeper level than you'll likely experience by asking them.
Some of what you include in your buyer personas is subject to interpretation. You have hard data that suggests your buyers don't like X, or believe Y.
The advantage of A/B testing your buyer personas is that you can either confirm or refute that in no uncertain terms.
But how?
Let's pretend you own a security company that sells alarms and other personal security apparatuses.
Let's further pretend that all the existing evidence strongly suggests your buyers are motivated by fear. Fear of what could happen to them and their family without the proper security measures in place.
That sort of attitude – if true – should directly influence your choices. You would speak to (but hopefully not manipulate) that fear factor.
But if you're wrong about it, your marketing would meet a very cool reception, and that translates to poor conversions and revenue for you. You could be alienating your buyers with negative and fear-associated vocabulary, images, and statistics.
Enter A/B testing.
A simple test comparing one page that appeals to fear and another that appeals to, say, the proactive peace of mind that comes with your security package (with no mention of the bad stuff that might happen without it) would confirm which resonates more with your buyers. Which one had the greater sign-ups for a no obligation security evaluation at their home? That's your true buyer persona.
Whatever your assumptions and beliefs about them, a simple A/B test can bring it all into focus.
Get your feet wet with the free and basic Google Content Experiments feature in Google Analytics to test one against another. Just be sure to frame each one as a testable hypothesis (“I believe my buyers are motivated more by the money they can save than the ease of use”).
Introduced by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg in their book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?, the customer modalities classifies each buyer as one of four different types:
Each is characterized by the speed of their decisions, and whether they're driven by emotion or logic. It's just one more example of how you could organize your customers and frame your marketing, content, and communication for them.
Are your buyers mainly methodical – motivated by logic, thoroughness, details, and the slow approach – or spontaneous – making snap decisions based on their gut and the excitement of the purchase? Both would demand a very different marketing approach.
Not sure? Test, test, and test your working hypothesis. They each want something different from your website and content.
The humble A/B test can remove all lingering doubt. Slot your buyers into their personas with full confidence that you know what they want and what makes them tick.
And once you know that, you can craft everything for them specifically. Your personas are tweaked, refined, and polished one hypothesis at a time.
It won't happen overnight, but you'll eventually end up with personas that are accurate and battle-tested. You'll be able to climb inside their head for anything and everything. You'll slowly but steadily know what you need to know in order to connect, engage, and convert like a boss.
Buyer personas and A/B tests are good. A/B testing your buyer personas? That's better. That's marketing for the digital age.
Have you experimented with A/B testing your personas? What insights did it reveal? Leave your comments below.
About the Author: Aaron Agius is an experienced search, content and social marketer. He has worked with some of the world's largest and most recognized brands to build their online presence. See more from Aaron at Louder Online, their Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
These days, it's no secret that high-quality images are important for any marketing strategy, particularly when it comes to social media. Images not only help brands stand out in busy social news feeds, but they also boost engagement and build brand awareness-and their importance is growing.
According to a WebDAM infographic, 84% of all communication will be visual by 2018. So, there's no better time than the present to ensure you're creating and sharing top-notch imagery. And that starts with following sizing best practices for each channel.
To help you do just that, below is a quick cheat sheet for sizing your images for optimal impact, complete with dimensions and some examples. In addition, you'll also find some helpful tools that can help your resize, edit or create images.
Since each network has different features and layouts, each has its own sizing best practices.
Follow these sizing guidelines to ensure that any images you share aren't cut off or distorted when they display, your profile and cover photos make your page look top-notch. We've also included some examples of brands doing it right.
Profile photo: 180 x 180
Cover photo: 828 x 315
Shared image or link: 1,200 x 630
Profile photo: 110 x 110
Shared image: 1,080 x 1,080
Profile photo: 400 x 400
Background image: 1400 x 425
Shared image: 700 x 400
Company cover photo: 1536 x 768
Profile image: 400 x 400
Header image: 1,500 x 500
Shared image: 1,024 x 512 (maximum to appear expanded)
Profile image: 165 x 165
Board covers: 217 x 146
Shared image: 735 x 1,102
Profile photo: 250 x 250
Cover photo: 1080 x 608
Shared image: 497 x 373 (displays as this size)
Shared link: 150 x 150
Landscape
Landscape from SproutSocial aims to streamline the photo resizing process for each social network. It's pretty simple. You upload your photo, select the social network you want to size it for and then crop.
Pixlr
If you're looking for a wide ranging editing tool that will also allow you to custom size and image, Pixlr is a good option. In my opinion, using this tool is easiest if you have a little photo editing experience, but nonetheless still an option if you're willing to take a little time to feel it out. Also, there is a mobile version, too, which makes it a convenient option.
Other simple sizing tools include:
Canva
For those without Photoshop or InDesign chops, Canva is a fantastic tool for helping you create professional and compelling images. Not only is it easy to use, but it also offers different templates for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, as well as many other options.
Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark, formerly Adobe post, is another easy to use tool that allows you to create graphics quickly. One feature that I personally like is the Inspiration Gallery, allowing you to select a category and get ideas for creating your own image.
Stencil
Stencil, formerly known as Share Image As, is a tool designed specifically for creating images to boost social media engagement, offering more than 30 custom sizes to fit different social network guidelines, as well as templates, and thousands of graphics, photos and icons to use. There's also a Chrome extension that makes it easy to create images on the go. There is a free version, but the Unlimited version that includes all the pro features is just $18 a month.
Other creation and design tools include:
Like everything in the digital marketing world, these best practices are likely to evolve and tools will come and go. We'll continue to update this page to give you the latest guidelines and tools.
What is your go-to image resizing, editing or creation tool? Tell us in the comments section below.
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Social Media Cheat Sheet: Tools & Tips for Perfectly Sized Social Media Images | http://www.toprankblog.com
The post Social Media Cheat Sheet: Tools & Tips for Perfectly Sized Social Media Images appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.
Posted by rjonesx.
Rand called "Not Provided" the First Existential Threat to SEO in 2013. While 100% Not Provided was certainly one of the largest and most egregious data grabs by Google, it was part of a long and continued history of Google pulling data sources which benefit search engine optimizers.
I don't intend to say that Google made any of these decisions specifically to harm SEOs, but that the decisions did harm SEO is inarguable. In our industry, like many others, data is power. Without access to SERP, keyword, and analytics data, our and our industry's collective judgement is clouded. A recent survey of SEOs showed that data is more important to them than ever, despite these data retractions.
So how do we proceed in a world in which we need data more and more but our access is steadily restricted by the powers that be? Perhaps we have an answer - clickstream data.
First, let's give a quick definition of clickstream data to those who are not yet familiar. The most straightforward definition I've seen is:
"The process of collecting, analyzing, and reporting aggregate data about which pages users visit in what order."
– (TechTarget: What is Clickstream Analysis)
If you've spent any time analyzing your funnel or looking at how users move through your site, you have utilized clickstream data in performing clickstream analysis. However, traditionally, clickstream data is restricted to sites you own. But what if we could see how users behave across the web - not just our own sites? What keywords they search, what pages they visit, and how they navigate the web? With that data, we could begin to fill in the data gaps previously lost to Google.
I think it's worthwhile to point out the concerns presented by clickstream data. As a webmaster, you must be thoughtful about what you do with user data. You have access to the referrers which brought visitors to your site, you know what they click on, you might even have usernames, emails, and passwords. In the same manner, being vigilant about anonymizing data and excluding personally identifiable information (PII) has to be the first priority in using clickstream data. Moz and our partners remain vigilant, including our latest partner http://www.jumpshot.com">Jumpshot, whose algorithms for removing PII are industry-leading.
So let's have some fun, shall we? Let's start to talk about all the great things we can do with clickstream data. Below, I'll outline a half dozen or so insights we've gleaned from clickstream data that are relevant to search marketers and Internet users in general. First, let me give credit where credit is due - the data for these insights have come from 2 excellent partners: Clickstre.am and Jumpshot.
It isn't very often that the interests of search engine marketers and social scientists intersect, so this is a rare opportunity for me to blend my career with my formal education. Search engines like Google personalize results in a number of ways. We regularly see personalization of search results in the form of geolocation, previous sites visited, or even SERP features tailored to things Google knows about us as users. One question posed by social scientists is whether this personalization creates a filter bubble, where users only see information relative to their interests. Of particular concern is whether this filter bubble could influence important informational queries like those related to political candidates. Does Google show uniform results for political candidate queries, or do they show you the results you want to see based on their personalization models?
Well, with clickstream data we can answer this question quite clearly by looking at the number of unique URLs which users click on from a SERP. Personalized keywords should result in a higher number of unique URLs clicked, as users see different URLs from one another. We randomly selected 50 search-click pairs (a searched keyword and the URL the user clicked on) for the following keywords to get an idea of how personalized the SERPs were.
As you can see, a highly personalized keyword like "banks near me" or "landscaping company" - which are dependent upon location -receive a large number of unique URLs clicked. This is to be expected and validates the model to a degree. However, candidate names like "Hillary Clinton" and "Donald Trump" are personalized no more than major brands like Dropbox, Google, or Facebook and products like the Samsung Note 7. It appears that the hypothetical filter bubble has burst - most users see the exact same results as one another.
But is that all we need to ask? Can we learn more about the political behavior of users online? It turns out we can. One of the truly interesting features of clickstream data is the ability to do "also-searched" analysis. We can look at clickstream data and determine whether or not a person or group of people are more likely to search for one phrase or another after first searching for a particular phrase. We dove into the clickstream data to see if there were any material differences between subsequent searches of individuals who looked for "donald trump" and "hillary clinton," respectively. While the majority of the searches were quite the same, as you would expect, searching for things like "youtube" or "facebook," there were some very interesting differences.
For example, individuals who searched for "donald trump" were 2x as likely to then go on to search for "Omar Mateen" than individuals who previously searched for "hillary clinton." Omar Mateen was the Orlando shooter. Individuals who searched for "Hillary Clinton" were about 60% more likely to search for "Philando Castile," the victim of a police shooting and, in particular, one of the more egregious examples. So it seems - at least from this early evidence -that people carry their biases to the search engines, rather than search engines pushing bias back upon them.
Search marketers have been looking at click-through rate (CTR) models since the beginning of our craft, trying to predict traffic and earnings under a set of assumptions that have all but disappeared since the days of 10 blue links. With the advent of SERP features like answer boxes, the knowledge graph, and Twitter feeds in the search results, it has been hard to garner exactly what level of traffic we would derive from any given position.
With clickstream data, we have a path to uncovering those mysteries. For starters, the click-through rate curve is dead. Sorry folks, but it has been for quite some time and any allegiance to it should be categorized as willful neglect.
We have to begin building somewhere, so at Moz we start with opportunity metrics (like the one introduced by Dr. Pete, which can be found in Keyword Explorer) which depreciate the potential search traffic available from a keyword based on the presence of SERP features. We can use clickstream data to learn the non-linear relationship between SERP features and CTR, which is often counter-intuitive.
Let's take a quick quiz.
Which SERP has the highest organic click-through rate?
Strangely enough, it's the last that has the highest click-through rate to organic. Why? It turns out that the only queries that get that bizarre combination of SERP features are for important brands, like Louis Vuitton or BMW. Subsequently, nearly 100% of the click traffic goes to the #1 sitelink, which is the brand website.
Perhaps even more strangely, pages with top ads deliver more organic clicks than those with just news. News tends to entice users more than advertisements.
It would be nearly impossible to come to these revelations without clickstream data, but now we can use the data to find the unique relationships between SERP features and click-through rates.
Perhaps Moz's most well-known usage of clickstream data is our volume metric in Keyword Explorer. There has been a long history of search marketers using Google's keyword volume as a metric to predict traffic and prioritize keywords. While (not provided) hit SEOs the hardest, it seems like the recent Google Keyword Planner ranges are taking a toll as well.
So how do we address this with clickstream data? Unfortunately, it isn't as cut-and-dry as simply replacing Google's data with Jumpshot or a 3rd party provider. There are several steps involved - here are just a few.
I can't stress how much attention to detail needs to go into these steps in order to make sure you're adding value with clickstream data rather than simply muddling things further. But I can say with confidence that our complex solutions have had a profoundly positive impact on the data we provide. Let me give you some disambiguation examples that were recently uncovered by our model.
| Keyword | Google Value | Disambiguated |
| cars part | 135000 | 2900 |
| chopsuey | 74000 | 4400 |
| treatment for mononucleosis | 4400 | 720 |
| lorton va | 9900 | 8100 |
| definition of customer service | 2400 | 1300 |
| marion county detention center | 5400 | 4400 |
| smoke again lyrics | 1900 | 880 |
| should i get a phd | 480 | 320 |
| oakley crosshair 2.0 | 1000 | 480 |
| barter 6 download | 4400 | 590 |
| how to build a shoe rack | 880 | 720 |
Look at the huge discrepancies here for the keyword "cars part." Most people search for "car parts" or "car part," but Google groups together the keyword "cars part," giving it a ridiculously high search value. We were able to use clickstream data to dramatically lower that number.
The same is true for "chopsuey." Most people search for it, correctly, as two separate words: "chop suey."
These corrections to Google search volume data are essential to make accurate, informed decisions about what content to create and how to properly optimize it. Without clickstream data on our side, we would be grossly misled, especially in aggregate data.
How much does this actually impact Google search volume? Roughly 25% of all keywords we process from Google data are corrected by clickstream data. This means tens of millions of keywords monthly.
The big question for marketers is now not only how do we respond to losses in data, but how do we prepare for future losses? A quick survey of SEOs revealed some of their future concerns...
Luckily, a blended model of crawled and clickstream data allows Moz to uniquely manage these types of losses. SERP and suggest data are all available through clickstream sources, piggybacking on real results rather than performing automated ones. Link data is already available through third-party indexes like MozScape, but can be improved even further with clickstream data that reveals the true popularity of individual links. All that being said, the future looks bright for this new blended data model, and we look forward to delivering upon its promises in the months and years to come.
As Moz continues to improve upon Keyword Explorer, we want to make that data more easily accessible to you. We hope to soon offer you an API, which will bring this data directly to you and your apps so that you can do more research than ever before. But we need your help in tailoring this API to your needs. If you have a moment, please answer this survey so we can piece together something that provides just what you need.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
The post Online Marketing News: Shareable Infographics, Instagram Buyable Tags & YouTube End Screens appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.
I chose manual labor for the first few months until I found a semi-paid position at a nonprofit writing grant proposals. The program I worked in was funded by Americorps, so they could get away with paying me close to nothing. It was my first legitimate job out of college, and I made $11,000 that year working 40 hours a week.
Luckily, my new wife was able to take a job waiting tables to supplement our income while I padded my resume out.
That job lasted a year due to the nature of the Americorps commitment. By then it was the beginning of 2010, and job prospects were still pretty bad. So I started freelancing. I slowly learned how to build and write for websites and began making them for local small businesses.
Finally, in May 2011, work and education paid off. I landed a salaried position here at MarketingExperiments, and I'm doing what I love: writing for a living.
How did I get here?
My English degree was the one thing I could point to that helped me get through one of the toughest economic periods in recent history. Here are the three skills I learned while pursuing my degree that almost every English major has in spades.
Three skills that I learned as an English major that helped get me to where I am today:
The ability to analyze data is in high demand and short supply in the business and marketing world. Most businesses have so much data and so little time to learn what it all means that there is a significant feeling of overwhelming loss about what to do when a given problem arises.
Most of the time, however, the data is there, and problems can be solved - they just need to be thought through with a creative lens.
How do English Majors have this skill?
Every piece of great literature ever written is also a complex problem to be solved. The words a great author uses are just pieces of data encoded with meaning waiting to be snatched up by creative readers who see, not words, but the stuff beneath the words. The most complex problem of them all: the human experience.
Analyzing all that literary data and turning it into meaning for yourself and your peers isn't just good for your soul; it's also a crucial skill for the business world.
Marketing and business majors are typically the worst at empathizing with customers. Take any ad you see on television or any billboard you see on the interstate as an example. The entire premise of capitalism hinges on self-interest.
What's ironic about self-interest, however, is that it blinds business people to the self-interest of their customers. This, of course undermines their business.
The truth is, while you can't escape your own self-interest and be completely altruistic in the business realm, you also can't ignore the self-interest of the customers you serve.
How do English Majors have this skill?
While business majors tend more towards their own self-interest, English majors are taught from day one to empathize. Literature at its root is a call for empathy. Anyone who has read the poetry of Mary Oliver or the novels of Fitzgerald knows it's one of humanity's greatest tools for fighting loneliness and isolation.
Reading and studying literature is the practice of empathy. We empathize with the characters; we empathize with the author; and as a result, we can empathize better with our fellow human beings.
That empathy is also what drives businesses forward. The best businesses anticipate what their customers want and authentically deliver it using their heightened sense of empathy.
The ability to clearly communicate is a pretty obvious skill that most English Majors have. What's not obvious is the dearth of communication skills in the business world. Of course, everyone thinks they can communicate clearly, but most people don't.
How do English Majors have this skill?
Every paper I wrote in college was structured in the same way every interaction I have with my peers is structured in the business and marketing world. I have something I want to say, and I need to say it in a way that leads them to conclude what I have concluded.
Every single project I do in my career can be reduced to a series of emails, phone calls and meetings. All of these are simply mediums for the communication of an idea or a thesis.
The most effective communicators lead more, accomplish more and ultimately earn more.
A lot has changed since 2008. The job market has improved significantly. Businesses (including mine) are beginning to hire again. But what they need, even if they don't know it yet, are English majors.
You might also like:
Marketing Career: 5 tips for building a personal brand
Marketing Careers: 5 sites to develop and enhance your skills with free online courses
