Category Archives: Online Marketing

Online Marketing, Social Media

5 Social Media Predictions For 2014

December 27, 2013 Stuart Springfield Leave a comment

What’s coming up for Social Media in 2014? Here are 5 predictions from Rick Mulready of Entrepreneur.com

“One of my favorite things to do this time of year — in addition to spending the holidays with friends and family — is to look back on the year that was and also look ahead to what the New Year holds in store.

When it comes to the state of social media, the past year could be summed up in a few words: real-time marketing, content, video and mobile. In a space that’s continuously changing and technology that’s advancing quickly, it can be a challenge to know where you should be spending your social-media efforts.
Understanding what’s ahead can help overcome these frustrations. Here are my top five predictions for where we’re heading in social media in 2014:

1. Look for a shift toward visual storytelling through short-form video.
On my Inside Social Media podcast, we talk a lot about telling the story of your business through social media. It started toward the end of this year, but a shift toward short, concise videos that tell a deeper story than pictures will only become more important in 2014.
Platforms like Twitter’s Vine app and Instagram’s 15-second video make it incredibly easy to create and share this short-form content so take the time to not only understand how to use these platforms but also how users consume content on them.

2. Businesses will embrace the ‘fandom.’
I hadn’t heard much of this term before I had Tom Fishman, MTV’s vice president of content marketing and fan engagement, on the podcast. Fandom is essentially the sub-culture of raving fans that exist within your overall customer base. These are the fans that are going to do a lot of your marketing for you, the ones who will promote your brand to other people.
In the New Year, I think businesses will make a bigger effort to identify and embrace the fandom. Connecting with and giving these fans the tools to help them spread the word about your business will go a long way.

3. Google+ will continue to grow in size and importance.
Google said that Google+ now has 300 million monthly active users. To put this in perspective, Facebook and Twitter have about 1.2 billion and 232 million monthly active users respectively. Not only has Google+ become a popular social platform but its integration with Google search results and Google Authorship makes it a no-brainer in 2014.
This means that being active on Google+, even a little bit, should improve the search engine optimization (SEO) for your business. Google+ is only going to become more mainstream in the New Year.

4. There will be a bigger focus on context.
We’ve all heard the cry that businesses need to focus on creating more content and that “content is king.” And, for the most part, I think businesses have started to embrace content marketing. But for 2014, I think the need to put out more content will become less important, in favor of focusing on and creating content that’s contextually relevant to the social channels you’re using.
Brands should start asking themselves, “How are people using a particular social channel?” and “What makes a channel unique?” Then they will create contextually relevant content based on that insight.

5. More businesses will get into paid advertising.
I don’t think it’s a secret that your Facebook fans are seeing less and less of your content. The recent changes to Facebook’s News Feed algorithm — the one that decides what people see and don’t see in their News Feed — has further limited the reach of most organic posts.
With so many brands using Facebook to market their business, paid advertising will need to be a critical part of their social strategy if they want their content seen by more of their fans.

In addition, Twitter is beefing up its paid advertising options with products like the recently announced “tailored audiences.” Look for more ad products from Twitter as it creates ways to make more money now that it’s a public company. If you’re serious about reaching your tribe on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, paid ads will need to be part of your plan in 2014.”

The author is an Entrepreneur contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Rick Mulready

Rick Mulready is a Los Angeles-based social media blogger, consultant and speaker who hosts the Inside Social Media podcast.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230324#ixzz2ohBaaRCi

Click here if you want to learn more about how to use social media and blogging to get you more sales in your business.

Stuart Springfield

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Online Marketing

3 Ways To A Celebrity Personal Brand

March 5, 2013 Stuart Springfield Leave a comment

3 Ways To A Celebrity Personal Brand

Why are we talking about your personal brand and why is it so important? Think of all the different industry leaders that you know. Notice you think of them by name and not by which different company they are in. Would you still think of them as a leader if they switched companies and was starting back at square one with a new team? Yes, because they have built a personal brand to where people recognize them as a leader no matter their rank in their respective company. Prospects gravitate towards them not because of what company they are in, but because they are attracted to them as a person. They are attracted to their personal brand.

Your Personal Brand Needs A Higher Velocity

People are attracted to those with higher energy levels and velocities. Ever notice when you are in a room and everyone is gather around a high energy individual who always seem to be telling a story, and you look around and see everyone glued to him like a TV screen. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be super energetic all the time or go to the extremes. You just need to raise your velocity 5% higher than those around you.

Your Personal Brand Needs A Social Following

It is 100 times more powerful to have other people talking about you then it is to talk about yourself. Social proof is one of the most powerful resources out there to create instant credibility. Are you more likely to follow the advice on the website of a person with a following of 10 people or 1,000 people? It’s instant credibility that will turn viral when you hit “critical mass.” Hence, you should take a quick break to “like” my fan page if you have not already done so

Don’t have the time to wait for a social following to gather? Find one BIG voice to edify you. If you took that same person with the 1,000+ people following and all of a sudden he told them you were a rock star, guess what? That loyal following of his will now view you as a rock star for nothing more than because he said so. I mean, he has a following of over 1,000 people so he must be right, right?

Now practice implementing this by taking another break and telling your following that I’m a Rock Star!

Your Personal Brand Is Nothing Without A Personal Story

This is something that Diane Hochman is a master of. Ever notice how you know the story of every major leader, and how they always tell the same story at the beginning of every event or webinar? I know that Ray Higdon was broke from real estate and his girlfriend had to pay his utility bills. David Wood lived in a van. The list goes on… A personal story gives others something to identify you with, and it also helps them remember you! Now keep in mind your personal story has to actually be real! Do NOT tell people a story that never existed because that will permanently destroy your reputation. The worst possible thing in this industry is to be labeled as a liar. Be honest, share your real story, the real you and your personal brand will become the key to your success.

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Online Marketing, Traffic

How To Get Traffic To Your Blog Part 3

March 1, 2013 Stuart Springfield Leave a comment

#15 – Attend and Host Events

Despite the immense power of the web to connect us all regardless of geography, in-person meetings are still remarkably useful for bloggers seeking to grow their traffic and influence. The people you meet and connect with in real-world settings are far more likely to naturally lead to discussions about your blog and ways you can help each other. This yields guest posts, links, tweets, shares, blogroll inclusion and general business development like nothing else, and get traffic to your blog.

I’m a big advocate of Lanyrd, an event directory service that connects with your social networks to see who among your contacts will be at which events in which geographies. This can be phenomenally useful for identifying which meetups, conferences or gatherings are worth attending (and who you can carpool with).

The founder of Lanyrd also contributed this great answer on Quora about other search engines/directories for events (which makes me like them even more).

#16 – Use Your Email Connections (and Signature) to Promote Your Blog

As a blogger, you’re likely to be sending a lot of email out to others who use the web and have the power to help spread your work. Make sure you’re not ignoring email as a channel, one-to-one though it may be. When given an opportunity in a conversation that’s relevant, feel free to bring up your blog, a specific post or a topic you’ve written about. I find myself using blogging as a way to scalably answer questions – if I receive the same question many times, I’ll try to make a blog post that answers it so I can simply link to that in the future.

I also like to use my email signature to promote the content I share online. If I was really sharp, I’d do link tracking using a service like Bit.ly so I could see how many clicks email footers really earn. I suspect it’s not high, but it’s also not 0. E-mails work to get traffic to your blog.

#17 – Survey Your Readers

Web surveys are easy to run and often produce high engagement and great topics for conversation. If there’s a subject or discussion that’s particularly contested, or where you suspect showing the distribution of beliefs, usage or opinions can be revealing, check out a tool like SurveyMonkey (they have a small free version) or PollDaddy. Google Docs also offers a survey tool that’s totally free, but not yet great in my view.

#18 – Add Value to a Popular Conversation

Numerous niches in the blogosphere have a few “big sites” where key issues arise, get discussed and spawn conversations on other blogs and sites. Getting into the fray can be a great way to present your point-of-view, earn attention from those interested in the discussion and potentially get links and traffic from the industry leaders as part of the process. You can use their popularity to get traffic to your blog.

You can see me trying this out with Fred Wilson’s AVC blog last year (an incredibly popular and well-respected blog in the VC world). Fred wrote a post about Marketing that I disagreed with strongly and publicly and a day later, he wrote a follow-up where he included a graphic I made AND a link to my post.

If you’re seeking sources to find these “popular conversations,” Alltop, Topsy, Techmeme (in the tech world) and their sister sites MediaGazer, Memeorandum and WeSmirch, as well as PopURLs can all be useful.

#19 – Aggregate the Best of Your Niche

Bloggers, publishers and site owners of every variety in the web world love and hate to be compared and ranked against one another. It incites endless intrigue, discussion, methodology arguments and competitive behavior – but, it’s amazing for earning attention. When a blogger publishes a list of “the best X” or “the top X” in their field, most everyone who’s ranked highly praises the list, shares it and links to it. Here’s an example from the world of marketing itself:

That’s a screenshot of the AdAge Power 150, a list that’s been maintained for years in the marketing world and receives an endless amount of discussion by those listed (and not listed). For example, why is SEOmoz’s Twitter score only a “13″ when we have so many more followers, interactions and retweets than many of those with higher scores? Who knows. But I know it’s good for AdAge.

Now, obviously, I would encourage anyone building something like this to be as transparent, accurate and authentic as possible. A high quality resource that lists a “best and brightest” in your niche – be they blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, individual posts, people, conferences or whatever else you can think to rank – is an excellent piece of content to get traffic to your blog and becoming a known quantity in your field.

Oh, and once you do produce it – make sure to let those featured know they’ve been listed. Tweeting at them with a link is a good way to do this, but if you have email addresses, by all means, reach out. It can often be the start of a great relationship!

#20 – Connect Your Web Profiles and Content to Your Blog

Many of you likely have profiles on services like YouTube, Slideshare, Yahoo!, DeviantArt and dozens of other social and Web 1.0 sites. You might be uploading content to Flickr, to Facebook, to Picasa or even something more esoteric like Prezi. Whatever you’re producing on the web and wherever you’re doing it, tie it back to your blog.

Including your blog’s link on your actual profile pages is among the most obvious, but it’s also incredibly valuable. On any service where interaction takes place, those interested in who you are and what you have to share will follow those links, and if they lead back to your blog, they become opportunities for capturing a loyal visitor or earning a share (or both!). But don’t just do this with profiles – do it with content, too! If you’ve created a video for YouTube, make your blog’s URL appear at the start or end of the video. Include it in the description of the video and on the uploading profile’s page. If you’re sharing photos on any of the dozens of photo services, use a watermark or even just some text with your domain name so interested users can find you.

If you’re having trouble finding and updating all those old profiles (or figuring out where you might want to create/share some new ones), KnowEm is a great tool for discovering your own profiles (by searching for your name or pseudonyms you’ve used) and claiming profiles on sites you may not yet have participated in.

I’d also strongly recommend leveraging Google’s relatively new protocol for rel=author. AJ Kohn wrote a great post on how to set it up here, and Yoast has another good one on building it into WordPress sites. The benefit for bloggers who do build large enough audiences to gain Google’s trust is earning your profile photo next to all the content you author – a powerful markup advantage that likely drives extra clicks from the search results and creates great, memorable branding, and get traffic to your blog.

#21 – Uncover the Links of Your Fellow Bloggers (and Nab ‘em!)

If other blogs in your niche have earned references from sites around the web, there’s a decent chance that they’ll link to you as well. Conducting competitive link research can also show you what content from your competition has performed well and the strategies they may be using to market their work. To uncover these links, you’ll need to use some tools.

OpenSiteExplorer is my favorite, but I’m biased (it’s made by Moz). However, it is free to use – if you create a registered account here, you can get unlimited use of the tool showing up to 1,000 links per page or site in perpetuity.

There are other good tools for link research as well, including Blekko, Majestic, Ahrefs and, I’ve heard that in the near-future, SearchMetrics.

Finding a link is great, but it’s through the exhaustive research of looking through dozens or hundreds that you can identify patterns and strategies. You’re also likely to find a lot of guest blogging opportunities and other chances for outreach. If you maintain a great persona and brand in your niche, your ability to earn these will rise dramatically.

Bonus #22 – Be Consistent and Don’t Give Up

If there’s one piece of advice I wish I could share with every blogger, it’s this:

The above image comes from Everywhereist’s analytics. Geraldine could have given up 18 months into her daily blogging. After all, she was putting in 3-5 hours each day writing content, taking photos, visiting sites, coming up with topics, trying to guest blog and grow her Twitter followers and never doing any SEO (don’t ask, it’s a running joke between us). And then, almost two years after her blog began, and more than 500 posts in, things finally got going. She got some nice guest blogging gigs, had some posts of hers go “hot” in the social sphere, earned mentions on some bigger sites, then got really big press from Time’s Best Blogs of 2011.

I’d guess there’s hundreds of new bloggers on the web each day who have all the opportunity Geraldine had, but after months (maybe only weeks) of slogging away, they give up.

When I started the SEOmoz blog in 2004, I had some advantages (mostly a good deal of marketing and SEO knowledge), but it was nearly 2 years before the blog could be called anything like a success. Earning traffic isn’t rocket science, but it does take time, perseverance and consistency. Don’t give up. Stick to your schedule. Remember that everyone has a few posts that suck, and it’s only by writing and publishing those sucky posts that you get into the habit necessary to eventually transform your blog into something remarkable.

Good luck and good blogging from all of us at Moz!

Feel free to copy and re-post this content or the graphics, but please do link back (or reference SEOmoz if using the images offline). Thanks! Original Article

Get Traffic To Your Blog

Part 1 …. Part 2

Stuart Springfield

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Online Marketing, Traffic

How To Get Traffic To Your Blog The Easy Way Part 1 of 3

February 27, 2013 Stuart Springfield Leave a comment

It’s easy to build a blog, but hard to build a successful blog with significant traffic. There’s an art to increasing a blog’s traffic, and given that we seem to have stumbled on some of that knowledge, I felt it compulsory to give back by sharing what we’ve observed. Keep reading to find out how to get traffic to your blog the easy way.

This post is intended to be useful to all forms of bloggers – independent folks, those seeking to monetize, and marketing professionals working an in-house blog from tiny startups to huge companies. Not all of the tactics will work for everyone, but at least some of these should be applicable and useful. There are several steps which explain how to get traffic to your blog. This was such a long post, I’ve broken it up into 3 episodes. Read on and come back tomorrow for the next installment of How To Get Traffic To Your Blog.

#1 – Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share

The first step of how to get traffic to your blog: you need to target the right audience. When strategizing about who you’re writing for, consider that audience’s ability to help spread the word. Some readers will naturally be more or less active in evangelizing the work you do, but particular communities, topics, writing styles and content types regularly play better than others on the web. For example, great infographics that strike a chord , beautiful videos that tell a story and remarkable collections of facts that challenge common assumptions are all targeted at audiences likely to share (geeks with facial hair, those interested in weight loss and those with political thoughts about macroeconomics respectively). how to get traffic to your blog.

If you can identify groups that have high concentrations of the blue and orange circles in the diagram above, you dramatically improve the chances of reaching larger audiences and growing your traffic numbers. Targeting blog content at less-share-likely groups may not be a terrible decision (particularly if that’s where you passion or your target audience lies), but it will decrease the propensity for your blog’s work to spread like wildfire across the web. Proper targeting is only the first step in how to get traffic to your blog.

#2 – Participate in the Communities Where Your Audience Already Gathers

A savvy way to learn how to get traffic to your blog is to follow what the big advertisers are doing. Advertisers on Madison Avenue have spent billions researching and determining where consumers with various characteristics gather and what they spend their time doing so they can better target their messages. They do it because reaching a group of 65+ year old women with commercials for extreme sports equipment is known to be a waste of money, while reaching an 18-30 year old male demographic that attends rock-climbing gyms is likely to have a much higher ROI. how to get traffic to your blog

Thankfully, you don’t need to spend a dime to figure out where a large portion of your audience can be found on the web. In fact, you probably already know a few blogs, forums, websites and social media communities where discussions and content are being posted on your topic (and if you don’t a Google search will take you much of the way). From that list, you can do some easy expansion using a web-based tool like DoubleClick’s Ad Planner:

Once you’ve determined the communities where your soon-to-be-readers gather, you can start participating. Create an account, read what others have written and don’t jump in the conversation until you’ve got a good feel for what’s appropriate and what’s not. I’ve written a post here about rules for comment marketing, and all of them apply. Be a good web citizen and you’ll be rewarded with traffic, trust and fans. Link-drop, spam or troll and you’ll get a quick boot, or worse, a reputation as a blogger no one wants to associate with.

#3 – Make Your Blog’s Content SEO-Friendly

Search engines are a massive opportunity for traffic, yet many bloggers ignore this channel for a variety of reasons that usually have more to do with fear and misunderstanding than true problems. As I’ve written before, “SEO, when done right, should never interfere with great writing.” In 2011, Google received over 3 billion daily searches from around the world, and that number is only growing: how to get traffic to your blog

sources: Comscore + Google

Taking advantage of this massive traffic opportunity is of tremendous value to bloggers, who often find that much of the business side of blogging, from inquiries for advertising to guest posting opportunities to press and discovery by major media entities comes via search.

SEO for blogs is both simple and easy to set up, particularly if you’re using an SEO-friendly platform like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. For more information on how to execute on great SEO for blogs, check out the following resources:

Blogger’s Guide to SEO (from SEOBook) http://www.seobook.com/bloggers
The Beginner’s Guide to SEO (from Moz) http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
WordPress Blog SEO Tutorial (from Yoast) http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/
SEO for Travel Bloggers (but applicable to nearly any type of blog – from Moz) http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-101-for-travel-bloggers

Don’t let bad press or poor experiences with spammers (spam is not SEO) taint the amazing power and valuable contributions SEO can make to your blog’s traffic and overall success. 20% of the effort and tactics to make your content optimized for search engines will yield 80% of the value possible; embrace it and thousands of visitors seeking exactly what you’ve posted will be the reward. how to get traffic to your blog?

#4 – Use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to Share Your Posts & Find New Connections

Twitter just topped 465 million registered accounts. Facebook has over 850 million active users. Google+ has nearly 100 million. LinkedIn is over 130 million. Together, these networks are attracting vast amounts of time and interest from Internet users around the world, and those that participate on these services fit into the “content distributors” description above, meaning they’re likely to help spread the word about your blog. This method is an easy and free way how to get traffic to your blog. How to get traffic to your blog

Leveraging these networks to attract traffic requires patience, study, attention to changes by the social sites and consideration in what content to share and how to do it. My advice is to use the following process:

If you haven’t already, register a personal account and a brand account at each of the following – Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn (those links will take you directly to the registration pages for brand pages).
Fill out each of those profiles to the fullest possible extent – use photos, write compelling descriptions and make each one as useful and credible as possible. Research shows that profiles with more information have a significant correlation with more successful accounts (and there’s a lot of common sense here, too, given that spammy profiles frequently feature little to no profile work).
Connect with users on those sites with whom you already share a personal or professional relationships, and start following industry luminaries, influencers and connectors. Services like FollowerWonk and FindPeopleonPlus can be incredible for this: [how to get traffic to your blog]

Start sharing content – your own blog posts, those of peers in your industry who’ve impressed you and anything that you feel has a chance to go “viral” and earn sharing from others.
Interact with the community – use hash tags, searches and those you follow to find interesting conversations and content and jump in! Social networks are amazing environment for building a brand, familiarizing yourself with a topic and the people around it, and earning the trust of others through high quality, authentic participation and sharing

If you consistently employ a strategy of participation, share great stuff and make a positive, memorable impression on those who see your interactions on these sites, your followers and fans will grow and your ability to drive traffic back to your blog by sharing content will be tremendous. For many bloggers, social media is the single largest source of traffic, particularly in the early months after launch, when SEO is a less consistent driver. how to get traffic to your blog: how to get traffic to your blog

#5 – Install Analytics and Pay Attention to the Results

At the very least, I’d recommend most bloggers install Google Analytics (which is free), and watch to see where visits originate, which sources drive quality traffic and what others might be saying about you and your content when they link over.

As you can see, there’s all sorts of great insights to be gleaned by looking at where visits originate, analyzing how they were earned and trying to repeat the successes, focus on the high quality and high traffic sources and put less effort into marketing paths that may not be effective. In this example, it’s pretty clear that Facebook and Twitter are both excellent channels. StumbleUpon sends a lot of traffic, but they don’t stay very long (averaging only 36 seconds vs. the general average of 4 minutes!).

Employing analytics is critical to knowing where you’re succeeding, and where you have more opportunity. Don’t ignore it, or you’ll be doomed to never learn from mistakes or execute on potential. how to get traffic to your blog

#6 – Add Graphics, Photos and Illustrations (with link-back licensing)

If you’re someone who can produce graphics, take photos, illustrate or even just create funny doodles in MS Paint, you should leverage that talent on your blog. By uploading and hosting images (or using a third-party service like Flickr to embed your images with licensing requirements on that site), you create another traffic source for yourself via Image Search, and often massively improve the engagement and enjoyment of your visitors.

When using images, I highly recommend creating a way for others to use them on their own sites legally and with permission, but in such a way that benefits you as the content creator. For example, you could have a consistent notice under your images indicating that re-using is fine, but that those who do should link back to this post. You can also post that as a sidebar link, include it in your terms of use, or note it however you think will get the most adoption.

Some people will use your images without linking back, which sucks. However, you can find them by employing the Image Search function of “similar images,” shown below:

Clicking the “similar” link on any given image will show you other images that Google thinks look alike, which can often uncover new sources of traffic. Just reach out and ask if you can get a link, nicely. Much of the time, you’ll not only get your link, but make a valuable contact or new friend, too! how to get traffic to your blog

#7 – Conduct Keyword Research While Writing Your Posts

Not surprisingly, a big part of showing up in search engines is targeting the terms and phrases your audience are actually typing into a search engine. It’s hard to know what these words will be unless you do some research, and luckily, there’s a free tool from Google to help called the AdWords Keyword Tool.

Type some words at the top, hit search and AdWords will show you phrases that match the intent and/or terms you’ve employed. There’s lots to play around with here, but watch out in particular for the “match types” options I’ve highlighted below: how to get traffic to your blog

When you choose “exact match” AdWords will show you only the quantity of searches estimated for that precise phrase. If you use broad match, they’ll include any search phrases that use related/similar words in a pattern they think could have overlap with your keyword intent (which can get pretty darn broad). “Phrase match” will give you only those phrases that include the word or words in your search – still fairly wide-ranging, but between “exact” and “broad.” “how to get traffic to your blog”

When you’re writing a blog post, keyword research is best utilized for the title and headline of the post. For example, if I wanted to write a post here on Moz about how to generate good ideas for bloggers, I might craft something that uses the phrase “blog post ideas” or “blogging ideas” near the front of my title and headline, as in “Blog Post Ideas for When You’re Truly Stuck,” or “Blogging Ideas that Will Help You Clear Writer’s Block.”

Optimizing a post to target a specific keyword isn’t nearly as hard as it sounds. 80% of the value comes from merely using the phrase effectively in the title of the blog post, and writing high quality content about the subject. If you’re interested in more, read Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization (a slightly older resource, but just as relevant today as when it was written). Original Article

How To Get Traffic To Your Blog… Part 2…Stay Tuned

The next post for “How To Get Traffic To Your Blog” will cover guest blogging, doing Q&A’s, Commenting on other blogs, social sharing and much more. I’ve got lots of ideas to show you how to get traffic to your blog. (how to get traffic to your blog)

Stuart Springfield

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