Our roundup of research insights and best practice advice from the month

On the 30th April 2013 the WWW was officially twenty years old. We certainly owe a debt of gratitude to Sir Tim Berner’s Lee, not only for the invention, but also his dedication to keeping it open through his work with the The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and other non-commercial organisations.

He talked animatedly at TED about his experiences and what he hopes the web will bring in the future.

Strategy and planning

• The evolving skills of the modern marketer – one of most popular posts this month shows in a visual way what success on today’s WWW requires, particularly with integrating with other channels of course.
• The visual below shows how marketers need to be both creative and scientific in their approach to the web, something Target Internet has been talking extensively about over the past few years and we have a training module covering our approach to content marketing.

• In fact all web creation is becoming more an art form than a simple set of rules and terms such as ‘responsive’ and ‘user centred design’ are now everywhere when looking at how we build platforms and share information. Mashable have heralded 2013 as the year of responsive web design.
• The latest inbound content marketing research Marked by the Fifth annual Hubspot report, Smart Insights have provided a useful summary of this 175 page report to see the tactics which are working and the challenges to be managed.
• Benchmarking content marketing – in this post from Smart Insights Dave summarises the state of managing content marketing from their informal poll and Lee Odden’s content marketing webcast.
• If you missed it, Target Internet recently posted a useful template and instructions for managing content creation and publication.

Social media marketing

• Twitter ad targeting was launched – Twitter becomes more Google Adwords-like with the ability to target by keyword, but it’s still not open to all businesses.

• Get your videos to stand out with our top tips for optimising video content.
• Facebook Promoted Pages – This tutorial from Marie Page covers the new feature which is gradually being rolled out to more marketers.
• If you’re still struggling to get to grips with G+, this great free tutorial from Daniel Rowles shows you how to get started.

Search marketing

• This post from Target Internet gives you a chance to see the slides presented during a recent webinar for the CIM on Pay Per Click Advertising. 
• 5 approaches to improve Google+ Smart Insight’s new commentator on the intersection of search and social marketing, Rhian Simms, shared examples of 5 approaches based on her learnings from Brighton SEO. If you’re involved in SEO, don’t miss the round-up of presentations at the end of this post if you couldn’t attend.
• A briefing on Rel=“me” – A tutorial on using Google+ to protect your brand using this new Google authorship technique.

User experience, analytics and conversion optimisation

• 3 new features in Google’s Realtime analytics – Dan Barker’s post reminds us when it useful to use real time reporting for site tracking and what these features add.
• If you’re new to Realtime, Google’s support area gives you the help you need to make the most of it. While it’s not yet available to all customers it will be soon.

• 2 new tools in Google Analytics Social Report – this alert is about a minor update, but reminds us of the insights available in Google’s Social Reports.
• Universal Analytics vs Google Analytics – This is a question every business should be asking in 2013 if they’re serious about actionable business insights. Read our summary post for the Pros and Cons and check out what others are doing.

Email marketing and CRM

• Proving the ROI of Email marketing – Mark Brownlow’s summary shows that email marketing is second only to organic SEO for ROI. This is the approximate £ return for every £ spent according to the UK DMA.

• Email campaign tracking with Google Analytics – not a new technique, but it seemed popular as a refresher since this doesn’t happen by default so is often missed on many sites I review.

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Post tags: Analytics, best practice, Google, marketing, planning, Social Media

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Managing content for your website or social media can be a tricky business and time consuming especially if content is created by more than one person. Using tools to plan and manage your content can save you time and energy and often helps to generate ideas for future posts.

There are many online tools that you can use to manage your content such as the built in wordpress tool. However, if you’re just starting out or if you need to be able circulate to people outside of the team then a simple spreadsheet can do the job nicely.

To give you a head start, I’ve included a template you can download to edit and use for your own content planning. Your needs may vary slightly but the template covers the key planning tools to help you not only manage your content but also review the popularity and engagement rates which can help you to identify which posts are attracting the most attention.

I’ve laid out the table under the following headins:

Publishing date

Speaks for itself but you may also want to consider a ‘Submission date’ as well if you need to give yourself time to edit content before it’s published. This way, whoever is responsible for creating the content can plan for a set date and it doesn’t hurt to allow extra time for late submissions.

Author

This is the person responsible for writing the content, there may be an additional field for ‘Editor’ if you have more than one. Covering this in the planning stage means you can ensure the editing part is spread evenly.

Completed and Posted

Mark these off when posts are submitted and when they go live, you can add in ‘Approved’ if you have this step in your process.

Theme/Category

Hopefully you will have a list of categories already defined for your content. Enter these on the publishing schedule so you can keep track of which ones you are using the most. If you’re just starting a blog, always aim to get an even spread across 3 or 4 so users aren’t finding empty pages.

Blog topic

A brief description of the content in just a sentence or two. E.g. A review of Brighton SEO event. If you can’t nail it into a short description it may be that you’re aiming too big so consider splitting the content down into sections and publish them individually.

Blog Title

A working title for the post, doesn’t need to be exact just a general starting point. Always consider your keywords when defining the title as this will help with your SEO and also help the user to decide if they want to read it.

Topic notes

This is where you can make notes about the content e.g. For the Brighton SEO event we may have a review of 3 main speakers, links to video content from the day and an interview with the organiser. Again, once you start delving a bit deeper it can generate ideas for other posts which you can plan in for a later date.

Blog type

Define the type of blog you are posting, is it an article, a video gallery, a Q&A or a review? If you get stuck for ideas then check our our guide to beating bloggers block.

Keywords

Sounds obvious but define your keywords before you start writing. Asking people to keep these in mind when they are writing content can save you time editing later.

Links and Images

Any key links or images you want to use or that your content managers want to include can be included here.

Tweet

Most blogs will predefine the Tweet text from the post title so if you want it to say something else just write it out here.

Time

Keep a track of how long each piece of content takes to produce, edit and upload, this will give you an idea of the value you are getting back when it comes to review stage.

Monitoring

The last four columns are for monitoring feedback, keep a track of the number of comments, tweets, pingbacks and pageviews each piece of content generates so you can spot which content attracts attention from your audience.

You can download the template and start using it or recreate it as an online version such as Googledocs. It’s simple and straightforward and can really help you get organised if you don’t have anything in place at the moment.

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Post tags: Content Marketing, planning

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These are the slides for the Chartered Institute of Marketing Pay Per Click webinar that more than 500 of you attended. Thanks! Even if you didn’t, I hope you find them useful! They cover the fundamentals of PPC advertising. For CIM members you can find the recording on the CIM site under Marketing Expert.

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Daniel talks to Ciaran about the process of publishing an Amazon Kindle book in the Amazon Market place, with top tips on how to promote your book and ensure it gets attention from the right audience soon after publishing. We look at formatting challenges, talk through the software we found worked best, and explain some of the pitfalls to avoid when publishing to a global audience.

Amazon KDP

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin

Jutoh Ebook creation software

http://www.jutoh.com/

Calibre Ebook reader

http://calibre-ebook.com/

Amazon Kindle Previewer

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765261

Purchase and Download the book  we are talking about from Amazon here:

http://amzn.to/ZVv9n5

Don’t have a Kindle?

Download kindle reader for PC, Mac IOS and Android here!

http://amzn.to/OmP9uu

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Post tags: Content, Content Marketing

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Strategy and planning

This year it seems that Omnichannel is the new term for managing multichannel marketing to emphasise the growing importance of social media marketing. If it’s new to you or you’re looking for examples, read more in our Introduction to Omnichannel marketing and these examples of Omnichannel retail.

One of Smart Insight’s most popular posts on planning this month is the Digital media introduction infographic courtesy of Hallam Internet Marketing.

We think this is a great visual way of introducing the digital media channels to non-digital specialists. I’m not sure whether SEO should be at the centre though?

Social media marketing

The main developments on the social media platforms this month were these developments on Facebook and Pinterest.

• Facebook Lookalike Targeting launches – advertisers can now upload customer emails or phone numbers and then Facebook will automagically find audiences sharing similar profile characteristics. Marie Page will be writing more about her experiences of using Lookalike targeting in April in a tutorial – watch out for that if you’re considering this option.
• New Pinterest Analytics – a free tool within Pinterest for reviewing the popularity and reach of your Boards and Pins.
• We have a new podcast published in the past few weeks; Social Media Disasters and How to Avoid Them as well as a 2 minute interactive learning tool, Why Use Google +
• For advice on social media and content marketing I recommend this post on a common marketing challenge for all companies: How do you persuade others in your organisation to create content for you? Thanks to all the marketers who contributed ideas for this.
• If content creation strokes fear into the hearts of your team then take a listen to our poadcast 15 Ways To Cure Blogger’s Block which gives some hints and tips for creating quick content that doesn’t have to take hours to write.

Search marketing

The main SEO change to watch for in March was the latest in a long line of Google Panda updates – #25 penalising low quality content. It is thought that this will be the last of the major notified Panda updates. Meanwhile in the SEO Zoo, this analysis suggests that Google’s Penguin update penalising low-quality links is getting stricter.

Of course social signals are becoming more important within SEO and it’s worth planning for how you can increase the ranking of your site on this basis. We had a popular guest post on the importance of engagement in Social SEO this month.

Another more strategic post on SEO that provoked a lot of comments this month was Gavin Llewellyn’s post on Forecasting the benefits of SEO for investment.

At a less advanced level, providing advice on SEO for non-specialists, you may be interested in Google’s latest guides and videos on how Search works and SEO – we’ve added them to end of the SmartInsights SEO hub page.

If you work in SEO then you’ve probably come across the Brighton SEO event run yearly by SiteVisibility. Daniel caught up with Kelvin, the man behind this hugely popular event to talk about how he approached organising what is now recognised as a world class SEO conference.

Image credit: Panda and Penguin

User experience, analytics and conversion optimisation

What is an average conversion rate? is a FAQ whether it’s for Ecommerce sites or other types of site. I updated our compilation of conversion rates

I’ve also included a compilation of rates for non-ecommerce sectors.

In March James Gurd updated our guide for landing page optimisation and to support this I recommended this formula for landing page optimisation to help guide CRO planning. How well do you think this works?

Email marketing and CRM

If you work in Email marketing check out this infographic on Email design best practices – it’s a neat summary.

We also covered What Email marketers need to learn from retailers in this post from Ed Hallen suggesting 3 phases of Behaviour email marketing.

I hope you found this compilation of latest alerts and advice is useful. Please get in touch if you’re interested in sharing your experiences, views or examples on best practice through a guest post. Alternatively, ideas on what you’d like us to cover or questions on Best Practice – see our Marketing Answers forum.

Massive thank you to Dave Chaffey of Marketing planning advice site SmartInsights.com his contributions towards this latest update.

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Post tags: Google, Google Plus, inte, marketing, planning, Social Media

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With over 4 billion hours of video being watched every month on YouTube alone it’s clear that the popularity of video content is at an all time high. But with 72 hours of video being uploaded every minute how do you make sure yours is seen?

It’s not enough to just post a video on YouTube or your website and hope that people watch it, making sure your content is optimised for search will increase visibility and help search engines to match your content to user searches.

There’s a lot you can do to encourage views on your video content but if you’re not a tech wizard here are the main things you’ll want to cover off.

Title, description and tags

Whether you’re hosting your video on YouTube or your own site, giving it a great title and description are a must. Not only will it help Google to understand what your content is about, it will help users to identify quickly if your video is relevant or of interest to them.

Consider your keywords just as you would any other content and make sure your title is descriptive enough to capture the viewer’s attention. Think about what your target audience may be searching for, don’t try and cover too many audiences at once. Also consider including ‘video’ in the title, while search engines allow you to filter these results, many people still include it in their search phrase.

Keep keywords to a minimum, usually 2 or 3, and stay relevant to your content, you can widen the topics by using tags to reflect additional topic areas that might be relevant. If you’re embedding video content from YouTube onto your webpage, remember to include the key word in the onpage text that surrounds it. This helps search engines to understand the content better and rank it higher in search results.

Host or third party

Deciding to hosting video on your website or posting it on a third party site such as YouTube depends on your end goal. Hosting on your own website is a good idea you’re looking to increase traffic and improve your performance in search results. Video content is a great way to get your website ranking higher for organic searches. However if you’re looking to get the maximum exposure for your video then a third party such like YouTube or Vimeo may be a batter choice. Google and YouTube are a match made in heaven and you won’t have to worry so much about creating a video site map or keyword saturation as YouTube automates this for you.

There may also be considerations around your target audience that will affect your decision. For those who communicate or market to the public sector and NHS, hosting may be a better option as many government organisations block access to social video sites.

If in doubt do both, host the video on your site and upload it to third parties. Just remember to include your website details in the description or in the video itself so you can drive traffic back to your website.

Rich snippets

If you’ve not come accross Rich Snippets before, they are a tool you can use to highlight specific bits of content for search engine’s to display alongside results. Highlighting video content and descriptive text allows Google to display a thumbnail of your video and a short description which can massively boost your CTRs. Google has them all ready to go so you just need to copy and paste the code into your webpage. If you want to know more about using Rich Snippets, we have a more detailed post with some examples.

Make sure it gets seen

Once you’ve uploaded your video content it’s time to start pushing it out to your networks. With so much video being streamed every minute, cutting through the noise means you need to be actively getting the word out.

Post links to your video on Facebook and Twitter and ensure they have the right number of tags in YouTube to show up in searches. Encourage your viewers to post comments, these act as cues to Google that your content is good quality. While viewing numbers are important, encouraging comments and sharing are the things that will boost your video up the search rankings and bring more high quality customers to your content. Make sure you’re targeting your video content to people who will find it interesting and use the tags that truly reflect the content focus. Then sit back and let your audience do the work for you.

Things to avoid

Whatever you do, don’t give your video a misleading title in the hope of gaining more traffic. It won’t help your search rankings or your customers. Don’t overdo the tags, and definitely don’t use popular tags that have no relevance in order to get seen. Your customers will not be impressed and Google may actually penalise your content as a result.

Of course the most important tip I can give is to make sure your content is good quality and will appeal to your audience. Without that you stand little chance of getting it seen by more than a handful of people. But it’s important to remember that just having great content isn’t enough, combining it with a good social sharing strategy will maximise visibility and improve your customer experience.

Written by Felice Ayling 

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Post tags: marketing, Online Video, Social Media, Video

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Why should you use Google+ if very few people are actively using it? In the first of our free 2 minute interactive posts we’ll tell you why. Click on the image below to launch our 2 minute interactive learning:

Click on the image to launch the 2 minute interactive learning on why you should use Google+.

This is the first of our 2 minute FREE digital marketing online training – we hope you find them useful. In case you’re interested they are all HTML 5 compliant so they’ll work on most mobile devices too.

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Daniel catches up with Kelvin Newman who runs the highly successful Brighton SEO event. BrightonSEO sets itself apart from other events by filling its time with bags of personality and fun ( other digital marketing events take note!) Kelvin, who you may know from the Internet Marketing Podcast created this event with some like minded SEO friends a few years ago. We explore how the event came to life and hear some behind the scenes stories from the event archives.

Exclusive Offer:

The free event is fully booked but Kelvin has reserved a limited number of tickets for the free event available for listeners of the Digital Marketing Podcast. If you’d like to try and get tickets and are free on 12th April, email your request to kelvin@brightonseo.com mentioning Daniel sent you. But be quick…These tickets are limited and offered on a first come first served basis.

Find out more about Brighton SEO at http://www.brightonseo.com/agenda/

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daniel@targetinternet.com

http://www.twitter.com/danielrowles

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Digital-Marketing-Podcast-2785308

http://www.facebook.com/digitalmarketingpodcast

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-digital-marketing-podcast/id373596600

Daniel’s Bio

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The key developments in digital marketing in February 2013

It’s not every month a new currency is launched. In February Amazon announced a new virtual currency called Amazon Coins (a genius moniker) and an interesting promotion where customers will be given money (virtual). Watch out from May onwards. Some are calling it the Bank of Jeff…

Image credit: Mashable

Strategy and planning

• Did you notice the emergence of the term “growth hacking” for describing a “new” marketing approach in 2012 and continuing into the start of 2013? I initially dismissed it as a fad most relevant for SaaS (Software as a Service) / single product startup businesses. But recently, I’ve noticed some new job descriptions in this area which prompted me to take another look. In particular, I noticed that The Guardian is currently advertising for a Head of Growth Hacking – read more in my briefing on what traditional businesses can learn from growth hacking. If you’re looking for more traditional advice to create a marketing plan check out our new 7 Steps Guide to creating a marketing plan. This blog post also links through to free webcast from Annmarie Hanlon introducing her guide.
• Digital marketing is now bigger than Internet marketing – Does it matter what you call Digital Marketing. Well yes, and no…
• New year often gets us thinking about a new job so here are some resources to get your started. Smart Insights have produced a great infographic looking at the split in digital marketing roles and there are even some samples job descriptions available.

Social media marketing

• Google + introduces Social Sign-In and a new way of sharing Social Sign-In has been available for Facebook and Twitter for several years now, so this was a big gap in the Google+ offering.
• Establishing your brand’s social media voice – Daniel Rowles explains a technique for developing the right tone for social media communications.
• Latest podcast episode – Social media disasters and how to avoid them. The team discuss risk mitigation, social media policy and setting guidelines for your internal teams.

Search marketing

• Google Clarifies its Assessment of which Links are Valid – A big story in the UK with worldwide implications as Google removes Interflora from its index and penalises numerous media sites.
• Google introduces Product Listings Ads. This only impacts retailers, but it’s a big impact. From February 13, Google will phase out free listings in UK Shopping searches. As Google Shopping changes, marketers will need to budget for clicks they previously got for free and get to grips with the Merchant Center, product feeds and product listing ads.
• In case you missed it, don’t forget to check out the slides from the CIM’s SEO webinar which Daniel hosted. It was as popular as ever and apparently broke a record for audience numbers!

Of value to a wider range of companies, in February Google also improved support for local targeting of mobile users with the new Adwords Enhanced campaigns.

User experience, analytics and conversion optimisation

• Writing a website design brief that gets results – This post from agency marketing specialist Mark Kelly shows how to get your web redesign project off to a positive start. It supports two new templates to help companies and agencies plan and manage website redesign projects.
• Google Analytics Change history – a simple change, but useful in large companies and in agencies where multiple people are working to update

Email marketing and CRM

• Boosting revenue from Email marketing Richard Austin talks us through a new spreadsheet for modelling Email campaigns.
• Proving the value of Email ROI in organisations Mark Brownlow explains the value in Email marketing using the latest research from the DMA.
• The role of social in CRM (SCRM) - We’re looking at how social supports customer relationship management and customer service.

Produced in partnership with Dr Dave Chaffey; a Digital marketing author, consultant and trainer and CEO of Smart Insights.

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Post tags: best practice, Google, marketing, online reputation management, Social Media

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Ciaran and Daniel discuss Social Media Risk Mitigation, Social Media Policy, and how you go about setting guidelines and expectations for your internal teams. Follow our recommended key steps to lower risks and make life in social channels plain sailing. Ciaran gets slightly over animated about steak restaurants and we also discuss how best to deal with any negative feedback on your social media channels.

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daniel@targetinternet.com

http://www.twitter.com/danielrowles

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Digital-Marketing-Podcast-2785308

http://www.facebook.com/digitalmarketingpodcast

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-digital-marketing-podcast/id373596600

Daniel’s Bio

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