A keyword is an expression that an internet user types into the search bar of a search engine for his search. Each keyword has a certain monthly search volume.

SEO experts and website owners who do SEO work need to determine which keywords are used. If you want to determine these words, you should do keyword analysis.

When you do keyword research for SEO, you can improve your rankings. You should focus on the right keywords to drive more traffic to your website and gain new customers.

Keyword analysis in SEO always makes you stand out in search engines.

Why is Keyword Analysis Important in SEO?

SEO keyword research and analysis is necessary for better ranking. By analyzing your keywords, you can determine your SEO strategy, overall marketing strategy and content marketing strategy.

The focus keywords you determine by performing keyword analysis allow users to reach you in search engines. There are many different situations when doing SEO work on your site. However, the basis of every SEO work lies in content quality. Content is also shaped around keywords.

Correct keyword analysis can help you determine your website’s SEO strategies. This will help you determine how to direct your potential visitor audience and develop better SEO strategies than your competitors. Keyword analysis can also help you determine user needs and search intent.

You can use a free SEO checker for keyword analysis.

How to Perform Keyword Analysis in SEO?

You should professionally do keyword analysis in SEO. If you are wondering how you should do keyword analysis, let’s get into the details immediately;

Use Keyword Analysis Tools

If you are going to do keyword analysis in SEO, you can use many paid or free analysis tools. With these tools, you can see the user searches and the monthly search volumes of related words.

You can also follow statistical reports on these keywords’ competition status and user behavior. Thanks to keyword analysis, you can create a healthy SEO strategy.

The tools you can use are as follows:

• Google Keyword Planner
• Ubersuggest
• SemRush
• Google Trends
• Keyworddit

Take a Look at the Search Volumes of Words

While doing keyword research, look at the keywords’ monthly search volumes. This will allow you to drive more traffic to your website and convert more leads. Focusing on words that users search for can also increase your visitors.

Keyword search volumes may vary depending on industry and situation. Low-volume or high-volume figures are subject to change. Monthly search volumes are one of the key points when developing an SEO keyword strategy.

Examine the Words Your Competitors Are Ranking For

You should also find the words your competitors rank for and drive traffic to on Google. By competing for similar keywords, you can attract traffic.

Consider which word your competitors rank in and the competitiveness of this word. With paid analysis tools, you can see how much traffic your competitors’ keywords generate.

While doing this, determine the sites on Google that regularly publish content for the audience you will drive traffic to.

Analyze Your Target Audience and Focus on Search Intent

To complete the keyword analysis process in SEO, you must find the search purpose and content needed by the audience for which you want to appear on Google. At this point, you should know your audience and analyze their searches.

The website is established for a goal, and there is a target audience to which it plans to appeal during the design process. To produce content for this audience, it is necessary to know them. At this point, you need to focus on users’ search intent.

Check Click-Through Rate (CTR)

When doing keyword analysis, you should also consider the click-through rate. In this way, you can see the potential of your content to interact with users. The click-through rate will be better for keywords that have high conversion potential on a topic or have high compatibility with your website’s strategy.

It is essential to determine what percentage of your content will be clicked on by the audience you will focus on and will direct traffic to your site. At this point, you should find keywords with the best click-through rate.

Learn Keyword Difficulty (Competition)

One critical metric when optimizing keywords in SEO is the keyword’s difficulty. This metric contributes to the promotion of your website in the long run. Analysis tools can learn the difficulty level of the keyword. Thus, the quality of the websites on the first page for the relevant keyword can be determined.

If the domain authority, monthly traffic volume, general authority, and page rank values of the websites on the first page are high, the difficulty level of the keyword will also change. At this point, a newly established website can gain a certain website authority by focusing on long-tail keywords instead of these words. The free SEO checker also gives you information about the keyword difficulty rate.

Find Short-Tail Keyword Opportunities

Short-tail keywords refer to short and clear searches made by users. Google “What is SEO?” The search query is a short-tail keyword. Users use this type of search very often.

Short-tail keywords commonly contain one or several words and represent a general expression. By examining the search volume and competition rate of short-tail keywords, you can focus on the phrases that will present opportunities for you.

Focus on Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords offer good opportunities for low- and medium-sized websites. These word groups allow you to appeal to a specific and narrower audience. For example, “Is On-Site SEO Difficult Than Off-Site SEO?” The query is a long-tail keyword. Although these words have less search volume, they allow you to appeal to a wide base of users when you focus on more than one of them on your website.

By performing effective keyword analysis, you can leave your competitors behind and develop a strong SEO strategy.

Featured image provided by Tobias Dziuba, Pexels; Thanks!

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As OTT and Connected TV Proliferate

With the rise of over-the-top (OTT) platforms and connected TV (CTV), viewers now have more options than ever before for how they watch their favorite shows and movies. Most American households now have at least one streaming device, thanks to the proliferation of services like Netflix and Roku. There have been advantages and disadvantages for advertisers due to this change in consumer behavior.

Microsoft Advertising recently held a webcast to showcase its unique technology stack and how it helps with video ad buying in a fragmented market. Microsoft hopes to give advertisers more control over their campaigns by letting them use their advanced technology to create ads that fit their company’s needs and reach their target audience.

The Ad-Supported Subscription Tier Partnership with Netflix

Among Microsoft Advertising’s most important collaborations is with the industry-leading streaming service, Netflix. Microsoft has an exclusive arrangement with Netflix that allows them to power their ad-supported subscription tier. This allows them to reach a wider audience and gives their clients access to a global audience that is highly engaged.

For advertisers, this partnership means a whole new ballgame: they can reach Netflix’s enormous audience and use the platform’s fame to boost exposure and interaction with their brands. Thanks to this partnership, advertisers now have more chances than ever to reach their target audience through Netflix, which is used by the majority of US consumers.

Solving the Difficulty of Purchasing Video Ads

Advertisers may feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the video ad buying market. The good news is that Microsoft Advertising has come up with a thorough solution that simplifies and handles all of these issues.

Streamlining campaign management is made easier by Microsoft Advertising’s integrated unique data signals, collaboration with streaming services, and tailored video buying workflows. To make sure their video ad campaigns are successful, advertisers can take advantage of consolidated deal buying and cross-channel measurement solutions with this unified approach.

Advertisements That Can Be Scaled

The ever-changing video advertising industry is where Microsoft Advertising really shines. Microsoft offers advertisers a complete and scalable marketplace with over 1,200 always-on video deals, 100 billion weekly video impressions, and more than 860 CTV publishers. This allows them to maximize their reach and return on investment.

By enabling complex media buying strategies across different channels and formats, Microsoft Invest, their enterprise-level Demand-Side Platform (DSP) powered by Xandr, further expands advertisers’ capabilities. Because of its adaptability, advertisers can target certain demographics with their campaigns and make the most of their advertising budgets.

Changing the Face of Television and Video Ads

Video and CTV ads are about to undergo a revolution thanks to Microsoft Advertising’s extensive suite of solutions. Advertisers can find new ways to reach their target audience and accomplish their marketing goals by concentrating on scalability, premium placements, and customization.

Microsoft Advertising enables advertisers to tap into highly engaged audiences and unlock the potential of global reach through strategic partnerships with industry leaders like Netflix. Video ad buying can be complicated, but with the right technology stack, advertisers can make campaigns that stand out and increase engagement, brand recognition, and return on investment.

See first source: Search Engine Journal

FAQ

1. Why is video marketing becoming increasingly important for brands in the online advertising landscape?

Video marketing is gaining importance because it allows brands to effectively connect with consumers in the dynamic world of online advertising. Videos can capture attention, convey messages, and engage audiences in ways that text and images alone cannot.

2. What is Microsoft Advertising doing to modernize video advertising, and why is this significant?

Microsoft Advertising is forming strategic alliances with streaming platforms like Netflix to modernize video advertising. These alliances open up opportunities for advertisers to reach a global audience and get a return on investment, considering the growing popularity of streaming platforms.

3. How has the rise of over-the-top (OTT) platforms and connected TV (CTV) affected the advertising landscape?

The proliferation of OTT and CTV platforms has given viewers more choices in how they consume content. Most American households now have streaming devices, which has changed consumer behavior and provided both advantages and challenges for advertisers.

4. How is Microsoft Advertising helping advertisers navigate the fragmented video ad buying market?

Microsoft Advertising is simplifying video ad buying by offering a technology stack that streamlines campaign management. It provides integrated data signals, collaborations with streaming services, and tailored video buying workflows to make campaign management easier for advertisers.

5. What is the significance of Microsoft Advertising’s partnership with Netflix for the ad-supported subscription tier?

Microsoft Advertising has an exclusive partnership with Netflix to power its ad-supported subscription tier. This partnership allows advertisers to reach Netflix’s vast and engaged audience, providing them with access to a global user base.

6. How does Microsoft Advertising enable scalability in video advertising campaigns?

Microsoft Advertising offers a scalable marketplace with over 1,200 always-on video deals, 100 billion weekly video impressions, and numerous CTV publishers. This scalability allows advertisers to maximize their reach and return on investment.

7. What role does Microsoft Invest, Microsoft Advertising’s Demand-Side Platform (DSP), play in video advertising?

Microsoft Invest, powered by Xandr, is an enterprise-level DSP that enables complex media buying strategies across different channels and formats. It enhances advertisers’ capabilities, allowing them to target specific demographics and optimize their advertising budgets.

8. How is Microsoft Advertising changing the landscape of television and video ads?

Microsoft Advertising is revolutionizing video and CTV advertising by offering scalable solutions, premium placements, and customization options. Through strategic partnerships with industry leaders like Netflix, advertisers can tap into engaged audiences and achieve global reach.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Thibault Penin; Unsplash – Thank you!

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Full Funnel Media: Cross-Channel Targeting

Ads need a holistic strategy to reach their target demographic in today’s digital world, when 77% of American viewers are online at the same time they watch TV. Connected TV and Paid Search are just two of the many channels that can benefit from Microsoft Advertising’s unified ecosystem. Advertisers can now reach sports fans across numerous platforms, all in one convenient location.

Microsoft Advertising provides full funnel media solutions for MVP (key sports-related) brands, Veteran (brands with sports sponsorships across multiple industries), and New Kid (brand new to sports marketing) brands. Consider a consumer packaged goods company that saw a spike in traffic to their website and retailer pages after partnering with a big sporting event. This case study exemplifies the power of sports marketing in conjunction with the cutting-edge solutions offered by Microsoft Advertising.

Demographic Diversity and Audience Segmentation

Recognizing the varied demographics of sports fans is essential for successfully engaging with them. Advertisers can target specific types of fans through audience segmentation with Microsoft Advertising. Regardless of your desired audience—Enthusiasts, Tailgaters, Game Hosts, or even the Forced Fan—Microsoft Advertising provides a variety of targeting options to help you reach them.

Using genre targeting, you can reach sports fans who are interested in specific genres on MSN Sports. One more great strategy to reach people who are actively shopping for sports gear is to target in-market audiences. Furthermore, sports fans can be reached at the perfect moment with context-driven display ads. Onboarding your campaign onto the Microsoft Advertising Platform is a breeze when you integrate and repurpose existing content from other platforms. This ensures a cohesive and smooth approach.

Open and Clear Reporting: Optimizing Campaigns with Ease

Microsoft Advertising is cognizant of the significance of being open and providing assistance with campaign optimization. Their platform offers clear reporting, so advertisers can monitor campaign performance and make decisions based on data. If you want your sports marketing campaigns to be the most effective they can be, you can always rely on Microsoft’s committed team of experts for advice and assistance.

Improving the Outcomes of Sports Marketing through Collaboration with Microsoft

If you’re a marketer looking to maximize the results of your sports marketing efforts, partnering with Microsoft is the way to go. Your campaigns can reach sports fans on a deeper level with their full-funnel media solutions, audience segmenting capabilities, and transparent reporting. With their user-friendly platform and extensive knowledge of the field, Microsoft Advertising is the perfect partner to help you navigate the dynamic world of sports marketing.

If you are a well-known brand seeking to increase your sports sponsorships or a startup company hoping to create a big splash in the world of sports marketing, Microsoft Advertising can provide you with the resources you need. Campaigns that connect with fans and produce tangible results can be created by harnessing the power of sporting events and utilizing the reach of digital platforms.

See first source: Search Engine Journal

FAQ

Q1: What are Microsoft Advertising’s full funnel media solutions for sports marketing?

A1: Microsoft Advertising offers innovative full-funnel media solutions to help advertisers reach sports fans across various platforms. These solutions are designed for different types of brands, including MVP (key sports-related) brands, Veteran (brands with sports sponsorships across multiple industries) brands, and New Kid (brand new to sports marketing) brands.

Q2: How can Microsoft Advertising help advertisers reach sports fans across different channels?

A2: Microsoft Advertising provides a unified ecosystem that includes channels like Connected TV and Paid Search. Advertisers can leverage this ecosystem to reach sports fans on multiple platforms, all within one convenient location. This approach enables a holistic strategy to engage with the target demographic.

Q3: How does Microsoft Advertising segment sports fans based on demographics and interests?

A3: Microsoft Advertising recognizes the diversity among sports fans and offers audience segmentation options. Advertisers can target specific types of fans, such as Enthusiasts, Tailgaters, Game Hosts, or others. This segmentation allows for precise targeting to reach the desired audience effectively.

Q4: What targeting options are available for sports marketing with Microsoft Advertising?

A4: Microsoft Advertising provides various targeting options, including genre targeting on MSN Sports, in-market audience targeting for sports gear shoppers, and context-driven display ads to engage sports fans at the right moment. Advertisers can also integrate and repurpose existing content from other platforms for a cohesive approach.

Q5: How does Microsoft Advertising support campaign optimization and reporting?

A5: Microsoft Advertising offers clear reporting, allowing advertisers to monitor campaign performance and make data-driven decisions. The platform is designed to be user-friendly, and advertisers can rely on Microsoft’s team of experts for advice and assistance in optimizing their sports marketing campaigns.

Q6: Why should advertisers consider partnering with Microsoft Advertising for sports marketing?

A6: Partnering with Microsoft Advertising can maximize the results of sports marketing efforts. Their full-funnel media solutions, audience segmentation capabilities, and transparent reporting help advertisers connect with sports fans on a deeper level. Microsoft Advertising’s expertise and user-friendly platform make them an ideal partner for navigating the dynamic world of sports marketing.

Q7: Can Microsoft Advertising assist both well-known brands and startups in the field of sports marketing?

A7: Yes, Microsoft Advertising can provide resources and solutions for both well-known brands seeking to increase sports sponsorships and startup companies looking to make an impact in sports marketing. Their campaigns are designed to connect with fans and deliver tangible results by harnessing the power of sporting events and digital platforms.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Tadas Sar; Unsplash – Thank you!

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AI in PPC: Unleashing the Potential

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a hot topic in the PPC world, with new AI features and generative AI making their debut on PPC platforms. However, as the dust settles, it becomes clear that AI is not a universal fix. While some experts champion its benefits, others advise caution. The key is to understand the strengths and limitations of AI in PPC.

AI’s Strengths and Weaknesses

AI is excellent at specific tasks but falls short in others. It’s crucial to recognize these strengths and weaknesses to leverage AI effectively in your PPC campaigns. As one expert puts it, “AI is a square peg; beware of round holes.” In other words, AI is not a panacea and should be used where it shines. For example, automated ad campaigns powered by AI can be a multiplier of productivity and results. However, some processes require the human touch, as human thinking and creativity still drive online interactions.

Treading Carefully with AI

While AI presents exciting possibilities, it’s essential to tread carefully. Blindly relying on AI without monitoring its performance can lead to pitfalls. To make the most of AI in PPC, it’s crucial to use it strategically, understanding its limitations and complementing it with human expertise. Remember, the power of the human touch remains invaluable in crafting compelling ad campaigns and engaging with your audience authentically.

Controlling Budgets Amidst CPC Inflation

CPC inflation is a reality that PPC marketers have to face. As costs rise, it’s crucial to find ways to control your budgets and maximize the value of your CPCs. Instead of solely seeking cheaper CPC prices, focus on extracting maximum value from your CPCs as they are.

Cost-Cutting Isn’t Always the Answer

When dealing with CPC inflation, it’s essential to understand that cost-cutting isn’t always the solution. Instead of obsessing over what you can’t control, focus on making the higher cost worth it. This means optimizing your campaigns, improving ad relevance, and enhancing the overall user experience. By delivering value to your audience, you can justify the higher CPCs and achieve better results.

Validating Your Data

Another critical aspect of managing CPC inflation is validating your data. Don’t mindlessly follow the metrics fed to you; instead, take the time to validate your data and ensure its accuracy. By relying on accurate data, you can make informed decisions and allocate your budgets effectively. Remember, data validation is essential for optimizing your campaigns and maximizing your return on investment (ROI).

Embracing New User Engagement Channels

As technology advances, new user engagement channels emerge, shaping the landscape of PPC marketing. To stay ahead of the game, it’s crucial to embrace these new developments and diversify your marketing strategies.

Meeting People Where They Are

One key insight from the experts is the importance of meeting people where they are. While this concept isn’t new, it requires marketers to learn new platforms and adapt to new ways of engagement. As user behavior evolves, it’s crucial to be present on the channels where your target audience spends their time. By understanding their preferences and engaging with them on their preferred platforms, you can build meaningful connections and drive better results.

Diversifying Channels and Data Sources

Stubbornly adhering to one channel or one data source is no longer effective. To thrive in the ever-changing PPC landscape, you need to diversify your channels and data sources. This means exploring new platforms, leveraging emerging technologies, and drawing insights from various sources. By broadening your reach and tapping into different data streams, you can gain a more comprehensive understanding of your audience and refine your targeting strategies.

Embracing the New while Staying True

While it’s essential to embrace new user engagement channels, it’s equally important to stay true to the core principles of marketing. As one expert advises, “Embrace the new in service of what you’ve always known about marketing.” This means leveraging new technologies and platforms to enhance your marketing efforts while staying true to your brand identity and messaging. By striking a balance between innovation and consistency, you can build a strong foundation for long-term success.

See first source: Search Engine Journal

FAQ

Q1: What are the strengths and weaknesses of AI in PPC marketing?

• AI in PPC has strengths such as automating tasks and improving productivity but also limitations, particularly in creative and human-centric aspects. It’s crucial to use AI strategically, understanding where it excels and where human expertise is still needed.

Q2: How can I control budgets amidst CPC inflation in PPC advertising?

• Instead of solely seeking cheaper CPC prices, focus on maximizing the value of your CPCs by optimizing campaigns, improving ad relevance, and enhancing the user experience. Validating your data is also essential for effective budget allocation.

Q3: What should I consider when embracing new user engagement channels in PPC marketing?

• When embracing new channels, it’s important to meet your audience where they are, diversify your channels and data sources, and strike a balance between innovation and consistency. While embracing the new, stay true to core marketing principles and brand identity.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Austin Distel; Unsplash – Thank you!

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In fact, we’re confident that AI is rewriting the marketing playbook on how to plan, execute, and optimize winning campaigns. In hopes of adapting to these new technologies, today we’re exploring five practical ways you can immediately start to leverage free AI tools to elevate your marketing.

AI Prompting: Best Practices

Before we dive in, it’s important to understand how to prompt modern AI tools effectively. These large language models (LLMs) tend to respond better to certain prompt structures and phrasing. Here’s the rundown on prompt engineering.

Use [hard brackets] to separate instructions from context

When prompting an LLM with context, use hard brackets to clearly show the model where instructional input ends and contextual material starts. This can dramatically improve model outputs, so always inject this nuance into your prompts.

Be as descriptive as possible

While the prompts we use throughout this piece may not be uber-detailed, that is only in the interest of time. LLM tools typically output higher-quality responses when prompted with more details. Give the AI a background expert background, use adjectives generously, and be clear with your instructions.

Specify your desired output format and traits

Do you want the AI to output a tweet? Should its response be less than 140 characters? Maybe you want it to be at least 1,000 words? All of these characteristics, and more, should be included in your prompts to maximize the model’s odds of success.

1. Keyword Research: Unlocking Hidden Opportunities

Keyword research underpins any successful SEO strategy. By gauging what topics users in your target audience are searching for, you can get there first and capture value. That’s why most marketing teams try to optimize every piece of content for search engines. While this is typically a tedious process of brainstorming and research, AI-powered tools can supercharge the workflow by 10x — let’s find out how.

Open up your favorite LLM — some popular options are ChatGPT (OpenAI), Bing (Microsoft), and Bard (Google), all of which are free to use. Now, let’s get to prompting. Feel free to play around with our inputs to produce better responses for your use case.

Start by asking: “What are the most popular sub-topics related to [your niche]?” This should lead to roughly four to six relevant topics, and you can re-prompt to widen your scope. After compiling a list of broad ideas, let’s take it a step further; we don’t just want to know about adjacent topics but about high-value keywords within those topics. So, we’ll prompt the AI twice more to generate 10-15 short-tail and long-tail keywords for each of our sub-topics.

Boom! We’ve now created a 100+ keyword list, tailored to your niche and audience. You can prompt the LLM to curate a different subset of keywords (low cost, low-volume, etc.) to improve your targeting odds or revise your topic selection to better capture your goals.

Pro tip: After constructing your list of keywords in ChatGPT, you can ask it to output an Excel table of the keywords; this will enable you to quickly copy and paste it into Excel for future use.

2. Optimize Your Email Marketing

Email marketing is another powerful channel for modern marketers. It boasts a healthy 3,600% ROI, or $36 for every $1 spent on an email campaign, making it a prime avenue for us to optimize with AI. We’ll do that by dramatically expediting the process of crafting personalized emails.

Typically, this is a mentally taxing and time-consuming game; you have to first segment your audience into strategic profiles, then build email copy around each one to cater to their unique needs, all while selling your offer. Over time, this can grow to become tiring — let’s use AI to streamline the entire workflow.

There are countless ways to approach this, and it’ll take time for you to find your optimal prompt. However, here’s a short example that worked for us, that you can apply immediately apply to your brand and audience: “You are a 10+ year veteran email copywriter who has driven millions in revenue from your emails. Let’s write an email selling [your offering] to [your demographic].” You can even ask the LLM to utilize certain copywriting frameworks, such as AIDA, to maximize your email’s chances of converting. From here, you can export the system’s output and start tweaking it to your liking.

While the initial response may not be perfect, it’ll certainly go a long way in speeding up your writing process. Another pro tip: Tell the AI system you’ll also provide successful examples for it to imitate. Feed it your best-performing emails and watch the magic happen. Since LLMs are great at imitation, they’ll output uncanny emails that mimic your own successful drafts.

3. Streamline Your Topic Ideation

Our next AI application is simple yet straightforward: Brainstorming. It’s a foundational part of developing content and must be done time and time again at a high level to ensure quality ideas make it through. While we won’t be outsourcing the entire ideation process to AI, we can certainly help it guide our own efforts.

Start by feeding the AI all titles in your content library—all of it. Our goal is to familiarize the system with the style and nature of your topics. Here’s a sample prompt you can enter yourself: “Study the following titles from my content library for their style and nature, and respond ‘DONE’ when finished.”

After the LLM has analyzed your content, it’s ready to ideate on its own. Now, just ask: “Brainstorm 10 ideas similar to the content you studied.” This should result in a bulleted list of ideas that you can start crafting right away.

4. Repurposing Content: Maximizing Reach and Impact

Creating high-quality content for several channels is demanding — it takes significant time and resources to operate an omnichannel presence effectively. However, content marketing across multiple channels brings a myriad of benefits, too. With the power of modern LLM tools, you can start repurposing existing content to maximize its reach and impact. AI-powered tools can efficiently reframe your material for external channels, letting you focus on what matters most: Generating valuable ideas.

Navigate to your LLM of choice and input the following prompt to contextualize the model: “You’re a seasoned copywriter with 10+ years of experience writing for Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, and Facebook. Let’s repurpose the following blog into a post for each of those channels: [Your blog].”

Just like that, the AI system should output marketing collateral that you can deploy across various channels, all based on the input text you provided. Of course, you should always proofread and refine AI-generated content to ensure it reflects your brand authentically. Nevertheless, this simple workflow can 10x your output and expedite the process of maintaining an omnichannel presence.

5. Perform an SEO Audit

Our final method of leveraging AI to improve your marketing deals with SEO. It’s a game we’re all playing, and it’s necessary for any brand to flourish in today’s digital age. However, what if we could utilize AI to optimize SEO? That’s precisely what we’ll accomplish with the help of free LLM tools.

While there are several ways you could implement AI to boost your SEO, we’re going to start with enhancing keyword surface area. Remember that list we compiled in Step 1? It’s time to put it to use. We’ll revise your entire existing content library by having AI scatter those keywords throughout it.

The prompt is simple. Tell your LLM: “You’re an expert content strategist with dozens of years optimizing content for search engines. Optimize the following blog post with these keywords: [Your keywords]; [your blog].” Verify the AI’s work, then rinse and repeat. In no time, your content library will exert a much higher search authority thanks to this keyword boost.

You can further leverage AI to improve your formatting for SEO, too. You’ll ask it a similar prompt, except slightly tweaked: “You’re an expert content strategist with dozens of years optimizing content for search engines. Optimize the following blog post’s formatting using SEO best practices.”

Finally, you can have your LLM create an SEO audit checklist. Instruct the model: “Draft a checklist of SEO items I should verify before posting a blog.” Once it outputs the checklist, simply crosscheck your content with all the items to maximize your SERP potential.

Wrapping Up

That’s all we’ve got on leveraging AI to elevate your marketing. The landscape is shifting now, making it the best time for you to start adapting to new technologies and get ahead of the competition.

From keyword research to email marketing and SEO, modern LLM tools are capable of assisting marketers in a wide variety of use cases. It’s up to us to learn how these tools can add value to marketing initiatives, and then make it happen.

The post Adapting Digitally: 5 Ways to Elevate Your Marketing with AI appeared first on The Blog Herald.

So what makes some content better than others?

There are many variables to consider here, but engaging content always has a significant edge over content that isn’t engaging.

How do you write this type of content?

What Is Engaging Content?

First, what do we mean by “engaging content?”

Generally, we mean content that makes people want to pay attention. If your content isn’t engaging, people will probably skim through it or skip it entirely. If your content is engaging, people will read every last word – and possibly come back in the future to reread that content.

Also, if your content is more engaging, it’s going to increase dwell time, increase conversions, and improve your search engine optimization (SEO).

So what steps can you take to increase the engagement of your content?

Focus on Your Specific Audience

The best strategy is to focus on your specific audience. Too often, content marketers attempt to reach the widest possible audience by making their content generic and universal. But overly generic content reads as plain and uninspiring; you’re much better off catering to a specific niche, even if that means reducing the size of your audience.

Conducting market research can help you figure out who your target demographics are and how they see the world. From there, it’s up to you to come up with the creative approach necessary to write about topics they truly care about in a way that truly speaks to them.

Research Your Subject Matter

All your content will be more engaging if it is backed by sufficient research. It’s your job to become knowledgeable on this subject, even if you have to learn everything from scratch. Not every piece of content on your website needs to be a dissertation, but you should come off as a true expert who knows what they’re talking about. Be sure to cite credible sources and acknowledge different opinions.

Capture Attention Early

Most people visiting your website are going to have an attention span of around 8 seconds. That’s not much time to work with. If you can’t capture the attention of your users in the first few seconds of their visit, you’re going to lose them. That’s why engaging content typically starts with a strong headline, an excellent and original opening line, and an opening paragraph that practically forces people to read more. The beginning of your content is almost always the most important part.

Make Reading Easy

Next, try to make reading easy. The easier your writing is to read, the more engaging it’s going to be. These are just some of the strategies that can help you:

• Constrain your vocabulary. One of the easiest ways to make your material easier to read is to constrain your vocabulary. Use simpler words to describe things. Polysyllabic jargon isn’t doing you any favors.
• Write in short, punchy sentences. Want to be more engaging? Write shorter sentences. They may not be as poetic, but they’re much more palatable. Shorter, punchier sentences are also good for SEO.
• Use readable formatting. It’s also a good idea to format your work to make it more readable. That means using bolded headlines, using bold and italic formatting to emphasize key points, using bulleted and numbered lists to organize your information, and increasing the spacing between sentences and paragraphs. Additionally, make sure your website is optimized for mobile devices so mobile readers can still engage with your content.

Offer a Unique Take, a Unique Voice, or Both

Only original content is engaging. That means you have to offer a unique perspective, a unique voice, or preferably, both. Try to give people a perspective they’ve never heard before, or educate them on something they truly know nothing about. Failing this, make sure you’re presenting the topic in a way that no one’s ever done before.

Pay Attention to How Your Content Performs

Finally, pay attention to how your content is performing. There are several performance indicators that can help you figure out the level of engagement people feel with your content. For example, high dwell time is usually an indication that your readers are actively interested in the material you’ve provided them. Learn from your best-performing posts and replicate the factors that made them successful in your future endeavors.

If you can make your content more engaging, your entire content marketing strategy will improve. You’ll reach more people, be more persuasive, and easily outcompete your rivals.

The post How to Write More Engaging Content appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Twitter’s decision to block Google Search has resulted in a significant drop in the number of indexed URLs from Twitter. To grasp the magnitude of this change, it is crucial to examine the data. Previously, Google indexed approximately 471 million tweets from Twitter. However, after the implementation of the blocking feature, this number plummeted to around 180 million indexed tweets. This staggering 62% drop in index saturation raises concerns about the visibility of Twitter’s content in Google search results.

To further elucidate the impact of Twitter’s decision, let’s analyze the evidence obtained from Google’s site command. While it is important to note that site commands are not always accurate, they provide a clear downward trend of indexed URLs. A screenshot taken shortly after Twitter implemented the blocking feature displayed 471 million results from Twitter.com in Google’s index. However, a recent site command search shows a drastic decrease, with only 180 million results indexed. This evidence solidifies the fact that Twitter’s visibility in Google search results has indeed been affected.

To corroborate the findings, third-party data can provide valuable insights. An analysis of Semrush data showcases Twitter’s decreasing visibility in Google search results. The screenshot shared by Glenn Gabe on Twitter reveals a decline in Twitter’s visibility as measured by the third-party tool. This data further supports the notion that Twitter’s content is losing traction in Google search.

Despite the significant drop in indexed URLs, it is essential to recognize that Google Search can still display new tweets from Twitter. This is due to the long-standing agreement between Google and Twitter, which grants Google access to Twitter’s firehose. Consequently, certain Google searches may present a Twitter carousel, allowing users to view recent tweets. This arrangement ensures that the most up-to-date content is available to searchers.

While new tweets remain accessible through Google Search, the same cannot be said for older tweets. The decision to block Google Search has led to a gradual decline in the visibility of older tweets in the core Google web search index. As a result, Twitter’s overall visibility in Google search results has diminished. This has significant implications for brands that heavily rely on Twitter as a platform for content dissemination.

The impact of Twitter’s decision extends beyond mere visibility. Brands that heavily rely on Twitter’s content visibility in Google Search may experience a decline in their reach and audience engagement. Older tweets that previously ranked well in Google search may also suffer in terms of search ranking. This shift in visibility and accessibility can lead to a decrease in ad impressions for Twitter’s platform, affecting its revenue and overall performance.

At present, it remains uncertain whether Twitter will reverse its decision to block Google Search. However, there are potential solutions that could mitigate the impact on Twitter’s content visibility. One possible option is for Twitter to adopt supported markup for paywalled content. This would allow the content to remain indexed by Google Search, ensuring its visibility to searchers and journalists. Such a step could help Twitter regain its position in Google search results.

In a postscript to the initial decision, Twitter implemented some SEO changes to address the issue. These changes allowed the content from tweets to be visible to both Google and users, albeit with an overlayed modal asking users to register. This strategic move enabled Google to regain access to the content for indexing and search ranking purposes. As a result, Twitter’s visibility in Google search results has improved, and it appears more frequently in search queries.

Twitter’s decision to block not only unregistered users but also Google Search has had a significant impact on the visibility of its content in Google search results. The drop in indexed URLs and the decline of older tweets in Google’s index highlight the consequences of this decision. Brands relying on Twitter for content dissemination may experience a decrease in reach and audience engagement. However, with potential solutions and recent SEO changes, Twitter is on its path to recovery and regaining its visibility in Google search results. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the relationship between social media platforms and search engines remains a crucial aspect for brands and content creators to consider.

First reported by Search Engine Land.

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Social media continues to keep up with trends as they come and go. YouTube in particular is a place where creators and viewers of all walks of life are accepted and can create and view as much or as little in a single sitting that they desire.

These 10 YouTube channel ideas will help you get the ball rolling on your own channel development.

Channel Ideas

1. Streaming/Gaming

One thing that gamers love is watching other gamers navigate their favorite games. Streaming your own gaming adventures will allow others to tune in for a multitude of reasons. Some use it as a stress reliever because the game itself brings them joy, but by watching someone else play rather than themselves, they do not necessarily have to engage their brain in typical ways. They may want to tune into your stream for learning purposes on a particular game. Your strategies could help them pass a certain level, or see new ways of being successful in a game that had otherwise become stagnant for them. There are tons of different reasons that gamers, and non-gamers alike, enjoy watching a gamer’s stream.

2. Unboxing/Reviewing

Unboxing videos have been popular for years on YouTube. But more recently they have made their way onto other social media platforms, notably TikTok. It gained popularity in such a way that it’s made a full circle back to YouTube. So creators make longer videos and put their entire “haul” into one video. Then, they use it as long as needed to review it. Viewers will tune in to all kinds of unboxing videos, from clothing and makeup hauls to furniture that they put together on camera, to PR packages, and the list goes on.

3. Makeup Tutorials

Creators like Jeffree Star, Nikkie Tutorials, James Charles, and others made make-up tutorials not only popular but accessible. Before creators began making videos, viewers were forced to go out and have someone at a beauty counter in the mall or department store show them how to put their makeup on. While that is still very much an option, having it all in the palm of your hand on YouTube made it that much easier to try new things and become more comfortable and confident with your makeup.

4. Singing/original or covers

If singing is something you are passionate about, the greatest thing you can do for yourself is get your name into the hands of as many people as possible. The best way to do that today is through social media of all kinds. YouTube is the backbone of content creation. You can put snippets of your work onto Instagram and Twitter. But linking your full videos on YouTube will create a high traffic volume on all your accounts. Creating cover or original song videos for your viewers is a tried and true method of getting noticed by big names.

5. Fitness

For many YouTube viewers, knowing where to begin in the gym, and at home, with fitness is the hardest part. It is hard enough trying something new, but not being confident in the new activity you are doing is a whole other scenario. As someone who is confident in their own fitness journey, you could potentially be that stepping stone for someone who is just getting started. On the flip side, you may be able to create videos at all levels. For instance, you can help people who feel they have plateaued in their fitness journey.

Conclusion

The options are quite literally endless when it comes to content and video ideas for your YouTube channel. This list is only the beginning. Now, you have the tools to be successful and start your brainstorming process to create your new videos.

The post 5 YouTube Channel Ideas: Start Creating Now! appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Printing a double-sided business card is a tedious job, but when done correctly it can be very rewarding for your goal of extending your name and brand to your always-expanding network.

Step By Step

1. Create your Canva Account or open your account if you have already signed up.

Having a Canva account is a great way to always have options for designing anything from professional flyers to personal documents and social media posts. No matter what you are doing in life or what your profession is, a Canva account is a great addition to your personal toolbox.

2. Select Business Card

On Canva, there is a business card option. If you do not already have a free Canva account, create one and then select “Create a Design”. Once you’ve done that, select “business card” from the options and begin designing your personalized card.

3. Create From Scratch or Use a Pre-made Template

Canva offers a wide array of premade templates for designing business cards. If you have your own design you can start from scratch as well and customize from the ground up. No matter how you choose to design each side of your Canva business card, you will easily be able to combine both sides into one card.

4. Layout and Printing

To make those designs double-sided, you must select “Apply Both Pages” to edit and continue designing on both sides of your creation. When you click into the layout tab in the design after finishing, you will be able to “Double Sided” to ensure you print both sides of the business card, rather than having the two separate sides printed on two separate cards. Ensuring that your business card layout is correct for the measurements and material of your business card will make it so your design lines up evenly on both sides. Download and print your cards on cardstock for best results. Then, proceed to cut them out with a heavy-duty paper cutter or an old-fashioned pair of scissors.

          a. Paid Prints by Canva

A second printing option would be using Canva itself as your printer rather than downloading. Once you have completed your design, to combine those designs into a double-sided card, you must select each page on either the “Front” or the “Back” of the print options. When you click into the “Print Business Cards” tab in the top right of the screen, you will see the “Front” and “Back” options, along with all pages you created to choose from. At this point, you can decide how many business cards to purchase starting at $14 for 50 cards.

5. Be Proud

It is important to feel the sense of accomplishment that you deserve after creating a new article for your brand, business, or personal goals. A double-sided business card can open doors for you in infinite ways. That starts with a willingness to design a small 3.5”x2” card to support yourself. Whether you used your own printer and scissor combo to create the perfect business card, or through purchasing prints through Canva, you have much to be proud of through the design process.

Conclusion

The design aspect of content creation and blogging can feel a bit overwhelming. But when you have the best tools to succeed, you are able to see yourself shine much brighter! These steps have given you an avenue to success with creating double-sided business cards on Canva. Now is the time to put it into action.

The post How to Print Double Sided Canva Business Cards appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Drawing on Canva is a tool available for both free and pro versions. It is easy to find and does not have many restrictions. In fact, the only type of creation not able to use the drawing function is a document, which is restricted to mostly words and photo uploads due to the nature of most Word documents if you wanted to send it elsewhere, or on another device.

How to Get Started

1. Create a Canva profile, or log in if you already have one.
2. Select the “Draw” icon on the left-hand side. It is the 6th selection from the top and has a marker graphic on it.
3. Edit the color and thickness of your stroke. Plus, tell it if you want it coming from a pen, marker, or highlighter.
4. Tips and tricks for how to get creative with drawing tools

While it is entirely possible to draw on Canva without a touchscreen and drawing tool, those features make it a bit easier and more user-friendly. With a mouse, you lose a bit of creative control. When your hand is the one calling the shots with the stylus and touch screen, there is a far greater sense of control. A nice feature that Canva offers with the “Draw” function is that it will automatically fix any uneven or wonky lines with certain shapes. If you pause after creating a circle, square, heart, triangle, and many others, the shape will automatically even itself out and make the lines crisper. There will surely be more shapes added in the future. But, these are a great help for those of us with shaky hands and mouse movements.

If you do not love using your mouse, and you have the option to use a touchscreen, there are endless great options for stylus pens to draw with. Listed below includes some great places to find writing tools for iPads, tablets, and other touch-screen computers.

1. Amazon
2. Apple
3. Best Buy and other Tech Retail Stores

Other Canva Tools

1. Text

The classic type design feature gives you the ability to insert a text box, move the text around the design, and change to different fonts.

2. Upload

This tool allows you to upload any media from your computer or device library. This way you can then add those photos or videos directly to your design. You can even record yourself with any device that has a camera and it will automatically upload through the Canva application.

3. Brand Kit

For any brands that have specific color schemes and hex codes, Canva can create a Brand Kit consisting of up to 100 colors. It will automatically save and add those specific brand colors to each design underneath that profile if you choose to select that option. Along with colors, you can also add brand-specific fonts and logos to save under the brand profile. The catch to this tool is that it is only available with Canva Pro.

4. Elements

Similar to drawing, adding an element on the side toolbar gives you the ability to put in a pre-drawn shape to any design, as well as graphics, free app pictures, and stickers.

Conclusion

Using a stylus, Apple Pencil, or a traditional mouse on a laptop, desktop, iPad, or tablet will give you options to create a sense of personalized style in your creations on Canva. Whether you are working on a presentation, social media post, flyer, or countless others, you will now be able to put your own twist on it by using the drawing feature on Canva using these helpful tips.

The post Drawing on Canva – and 4 other Canva Tools appeared first on The Blog Herald.

About 93% of marketers are using social media for increased brand exposure. At the same time, 75% of social media marketers believe that social media helps them to increase site traffic.

Social media can help businesses connect, engage, and interact with their potential audience. Social media evaluation helps businesses rate their content’s accuracy, quality, and relevancy.

How can social media evaluation help in improved content marketing?

A social media evaluation is the best way to determine if your business content strategy needs help. Here is how social media can help you to improve content marketing.

Check your social media content performance more accurately

Likes and follows are the most common metrics people consider for social media success. Even though the graphs depicting changes in the followers’ count mean continuous progress, these aren’t the only things to consider for social media success.

You need to evaluate more than likes and followers to determine how your content performs here.

We don’t say that likes on your social media content aren’t valuable. It’s just that these likes are just a part of your broader social media evaluation and management strategy.

Appropriate social media evaluation can help you accurately measure your social media performance. You can determine the reach of your social media content more effectively.

Better understand your audience

The success of your content depends upon your audience. If you write and promote content according to what your potential audience is looking for, you’ll certainly achieve better results.

Everyone using social media platforms leaves a digital footprint in one way or the other. An evaluation is the best way to take advantage of that footprint.

Social media provides multiple amazing ways to engage your potential audience in real-time. Social media evaluation can help you better understand your audience’s content preferences. Using different metrics, you can determine the type of content that is:

• Best engaging your audience.
• Encourages more likes
• Get more post clicks, shares, and more.

Having a clear idea of what type of content your audience wants. Moreover, social media evaluation can help you understand this more easily.

Fine-tune your social media content strategy

A thorough evaluation with a few clicks will let you understand which of your content marketing tactics are working on social media. This practice will also help you to understand the content marketing strategies that show no results. Consequently, you can focus more on the best-performing strategies and change the ones that aren’t showing effective results.

For instance, if you’ve found that content with images engages more people and gets more clicks, then you can refine your content strategy accordingly. You will certainly attach an image with every content piece you want to post.

In conclusion, social media evaluation can let you understand the improvements your content strategy needs. Fortunately, you can evaluate all social media platforms to create content that can help you achieve your content marketing goals.

Check the relevance, appearance, and overall quality of your content

• It can also help you determine how your ad and other content appear in the stories and newsfeed. You can check whether it looks eye-catching and stand out among others. Is it motivating people to like and try to find out more about you?
• Besides that, it will also let you see if your content is relevant to your audience. Also, is it containing appropriate slang, terminology, or language?
• It also helps you to determine the overall quality of the content you share.

Measure your Return on Investment

Without social media evaluation, it would be difficult to calculate your return on investment. Social media evaluation is a lifesaver when determining your efforts and spending return.

It helps you to measure ROI for your business and present the actual figures to determine social media campaigns’ effectiveness.

A Quick Guide to Starting

Social media networks contain more than 3.5 billion users who love consuming, liking, and sharing content. Social media evaluation can help businesses and individuals to conduct social media analysis of each platform they use.

Using the information from social media evaluation, you can certainly identify your areas of strength. Moreover, you can also improve upon your weaknesses for a more effective and engaging content marketing strategy.

However, if you want to self-start the social media evaluation, here are some important things to do.

• Firstly, determine the social media platforms you already use for content marketing. For B2B promotion, you should prefer using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Besides that, you can also maintain your presence on various social media channels, including Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, etc. Check the number of social media channels you’re using.

• Now determine how often you post content on these social media channels. Determine whether it is moderate, too little, or too often. Do you have adequate resources to optimize your post frequency?
• Assess each channel for the following things to understand your social media performance:

• Performance of posts, including engagement, reach, site clicks, and impressions.
• Share of Voice
• Conversion
• Post Type, etc.

• Look at the quality of the content you share. Always use proper grammar and spellcheck. Misspelling always screams unprofessional. Keep the text sweet and short. Incorporate links to your articles and multimedia, like videos and photos.
• Determine ways to track your social return on investment to check your efforts’ effectiveness. Check the room for strengths and determine how to address content weaknesses effectively.

Final Thoughts

Social media evaluation helps content creators and marketers comprehensively understand their market. You can know what you are doing better and how to improve it. This level of knowledge can consequently inspire creativity. Consequently, you will better know how to keep your content marketing strategy ahead of the game.

The post How Can A Social Media Evaluation Improve Your Content Marketing? appeared first on The Blog Herald.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing differs greatly from traditional marketing in that it uses what is right in front of potential customers for a fraction of the cost. It is all about creating content on blogs, social media sites, or other online platforms by not explicitly showcasing a product, but introducing the product throughout the post as a means to draw attention to the product, as opposed to the traditional way of throwing a product in the face of customers and having a one-sided conversation telling them to buy it. Content marketing bridges the gap and brings the customer into the conversation.

Content Marketing Role Inside Tech Companies

Having a secure content marketing strategy is essential. The strategy needs to be secure, yet flexible to grow as you do. To produce great content marketing, you will need to start by creating social media profiles for your business if you do not already have them, and then you will need to make sure they are switched to a business profile in settings. This will help boost your posts as well as create trust from followers.

Budget

While budget stressors surely can apply to tech companies of all shapes and sizes, start-up tech companies tend to need to most support in regard to money spent and what is really worth it to get their company up and running. For marketing purposes, content marketing is the easiest of those questions. It costs virtually zero to begin making content on social media platforms, and begin writing for a company blog in order to organically drive traffic to your site. Of course, with increased demand and manpower, content marketing can begin to cost you several thousand per month, but to start out, it can be extremely affordable until you know exactly what you want for your team.

Why it Matters

So why do tech companies need to master content marketing? Effective content means more traffic to your site. The traffic does not have to be by one medium. Content marketing can drive traffic through social media, emails, blogs, videos, and more to reach your targeted audience. The importance of continuously working to expand your reach as a company is to attempt to keep up with the ever-changing trends and movement of the public. It is rare for your target audience to stay in one place, as it was in past years. Having marketing tactics and strategies to combat constant change that will be the difference between successful content marketing versus not.

Tech companies tend to have a difficult time with jargon and marketing specifically for technical professionals. In order to reach a wider demographic variety, tech companies will need to focus on using plain English to cater to all backgrounds and career fields.

It is also important to research trends for posting and set a schedule for how often your company will post on each respective platform. Once figuring out the voice you want to use with content, and how often to post, you will be ready to launch a brand new content marketing strategy for your tech company.

Conclusion

After reading this blog, you obviously know that content marketing is important for businesses, but you should also know the increasing pressure for tech companies to keep up due to their typically traditional strategies. Tech companies will thrive off of content marketing, and now you have the tools to get started for your tech company needs.

The post Why Tech Companies Need to Master Content Marketing appeared first on The Blog Herald.

How Web Design Impacts Content Marketing – First Impression

No matter how creative web designs are, if they do not appeal to the customers who are visiting the site, all the hard work done in content marketing is now irrelevant. More often than not, a website’s first impression is based on the design, showing that we as humans have an inevitable desire to judge things by the cover.

3 Notable Pieces of the Web Design Pie

 1. Accessibility and User-Friendliness 

How easy is it to use the website? If there are any holes in the design or clicks that lead to nowhere, it creates frustration for the user trying to use the website, again making the content marketing null and void. Humans desire ease, and when they have to work for something that seemed to be handed to them freely, it can create confusion and distrust.

Another point to consider about accessibility is the ability to grab the immediate attention of visitors. This could mean a strong banner or a brand image with content to back it up. Visitors are obviously more likely to stay when they like what they see. If your web design complements your content marketing strategies, it is almost a surefire way to keep visitors. In contrast, if there are gaps in the design versus the content marketing, visitors may be confused and abandon their search fairly quickly.

2. Readability and White Space

Besides the accessibility and user-friendliness of the web design, it is important to make sure the flow of content is natural and easy for the reader. It should never be difficult to follow a web page or figure out where the content is going. This can have to do with verbiage and jargon. But it can also have a great deal to do with the way the words look.

Fonts are one of the most important decisions a brand can make because that font will be associated with the brand. If readers have a hard time reading it, or just find it less than appealing, a rebrand may be needed which takes lots of time and is few and far between within companies. It’s important to keep the brand consistent across content marketing and the site itself.

White space and its placement of it is one of the key factors when determining the readability of a website. While the font must be attractive to the reader, the amount of wording before a break is important too. The spacing must be attractive. Website visitors do not want to see a mountain of words, or even pictures, with no breaks.
For those looking to embark on the journey of designing their online presence, understanding these foundational principles is paramount. If you’re wondering how to create a website from scratch, it’s not just about putting together some images and text.

It’s about ensuring that the user experience remains at the forefront. A seamless blend of design, content flow, font choice, and white space placement can be the difference between a site that visitors love and one that they abandon. As you dive into the world of web design, always prioritize readability and user engagement above all else.

3. Visual Appeal

Along with technical details like font and spacing, images are an important part of the visual appeal of web design. It is a good idea to find photos that best represent the content you are pushing out. If someone sees a great picture, but the content does not make sense with it, the reader or web visitor may not return. It’s crucial to their overall first impression, or second, third, etc. to continue to match up images and content provided so that everything flows naturally.

An easy way to check if your web design is visually appealing is to do a good old-fashioned survey with the people you know. Your company may be a bit biased, but your friends won’t be. It is important to get unbiased feedback when creating anything for the public. To keep visitors, the website has to be attractive, or at least as attractive as the content marketing strategy. If you want to know more, don’t hesitate to seek opinions beyond your immediate circle.

Conclusion

Looks are not always everything. But sometimes it is important to be a bit conceited about the image of your web design. Especially now that you know how web design impacts content marketing and once the work is successful. After reading this blog you should have a firm grasp on what visitors are immediately looking for. Plus, how to keep them around.

The post The Crucial Impact of Web Design on Content Marketing appeared first on The Blog Herald.

However, when it’s done well, effective writing by a realtor can break down walls, eliminate confusion, and build trust. Agents focusing on any client type or property speciality can benefit from writing content. All that’s needed to get started is a content strategy and a willingness to try new things.

1. Become a trusted resource.

A sea of smiling real estate agents can quickly be spotted on billboards, bus wraps, and grocery carts. Your face may even be among them.But a warm smile isn’t enough to indicate your competence, much less to incite action on the part of potential clients. However, demonstrating your industry knowledge by generating mortgage news content, how-to guides, and other helpful information resources can. Find examples of trusted real estate news sites like Mortgage Research Center and attempt to emulate their status as a mortgage news authority.

Most real estate offices monitor industry trends, review market reports, and share information critical to doing business. Why not leverage your inside information as a way to break down the industry’s complexity and establish your expertise?

Draft a summary of a relevant recent report and use it to generate an easy-to-understand blog post. Then develop social media content that links back to your original post. Charts and graphs tell a story, but don’t forget to provide a takeaway to consider. If increased interest rates mean that buyers have more negotiating power, encourage serious clients to act now.

You can keep content as simple or complex as you’re comfortable with, but it’s important to be consistent. Sample a few different approaches and pay attention to which feels the most like you. This will be the basis of your brand, so it’s important to establish a style that you can maintain consistently.

2. Establish expertise in your niche.

There are lots of people with real estate licenses, but you know that licensure does little to build your business. To stand out, you first should outline what type of real estate you specialize in and the clients you serve. Using strategic content creation, you can establish expertise in your niche no matter your target client or property type.

If your sweet spot is mid-century modern homes awaiting sensitive updates, exhibit your eye for potential online. Identify properties with good bones and unique features and share how prior clients have transformed grandma’s ranch house into something special. Use visual storytelling to prove that sunken living rooms and wall-length stacked stone fireplaces are nothing to be afraid of.

With agreement from prior clients, tout your track record of successful sales that resulted in thoughtful rehabs. Increase the reach of your blog posts by tagging the renovation companies that did the work. This can help reinforce your expertise, earn exposure among similarly interested people, and even earn referrals from contractors in your niche.

Once you have several written pieces on your focus area, see how else you can leverage your content. Explore traditional media like print, especially if your community has a local magazine. These publications regularly source unique content, which can even further expand your reach.

3. Demystify the real estate process for potential clients.

People typically go online to learn more about an unknown process, especially one that’s related to their finances. Use your platform to share the how, when, and why of the real estate business. Focusing on your target clients, use your expertise to demystify the real estate process and debunk misinformation.

Since personal finance, income, and other money matters are topics still avoided in group conversation, many people stay quietly confused. So when it’s time to initiate a home search, foundational knowledge about credit scores and debt-to-income ratios can be lacking. Develop expert content to walk potential clients through the financial aspects of the real estate process, offering definitions and examples along the way.

First-time homebuyers might need checklists to help them define what type of home they’re looking for. Calculators can help break down how much they can afford and expose the additional costs of home ownership. Optimize your content creation by developing an editorial calendar, establishing content standards, and sharing across multiple sites.

Use links in earned media to point readers back to your website and your contact forms. Include a call to action at the end of each piece. Your CTAs might encourage readers to download your onsite resources or set up a meeting to talk about their real estate goals.

4. Close more deals thanks to solid, helpful content.

The concept of adding writing to your skill set may incite a pause before it brings excitement. Yet you have valuable information to share, so you shouldn’t let that initial reluctance stop you. To maintain audience trust, ensure your content is factually and grammatically accurate by establishing a thorough review process. Use grammar plugins to help you identify errors that might otherwise distract from your expertise.

With consistent effort, effective writing by a realtor can create a knowledge base that rivals that of many well-known news outlets. Lean into your content strategy and be willing to write to your experience, using storytelling as a means to connect. Share updates about recently closed deals and break down challenges and how you and your clients resolved them. Soon, your content will have you attracting more clients and closing more deals, making everyone’s real estate dreams come true.

The post How Effective Writing as a Realtor Can Up Your Sales Game appeared first on The Blog Herald.

What’s the difference? Think of your organization like a large tree. A massive tree can’t keep getting taller (a.k.a., growing) unless it has a supportive, extensive root system. The intricate root system doesn’t just stabilize the tree, though. It keeps everything above the ground nourished and thriving so more growth can happen.

In terms of business, your reach serves as your roots. And as your brand’s reach broadens and matures, you can pull from a variety of areas to fuel your plans. As a result, you will be more able to control your scaling efforts.

What tactics can you use to widen your reach? Try these methods to give your corporation’s “root system” a serious boost.

1. Optimize your workflows.

One of the first steps toward extending the reach of your company is to make sure your team is as efficient as possible. By streamlining your employees’ operational workflows, everyone will have more time to devote to the most important tasks of their day.

For instance, if you sell goods online, you could consider outsourcing some or all of your logistical operations. According to Tradefull, a complete e-commerce solution, working with a third-party logistics provider can serve multiple purposes.

First, you’ll be able to optimize your warehousing, dropshipping, and returns. Just as importantly, you’ll be able to leverage the provider’s expertise to cost-effectively explore untapped markets. And if you can find a partner similar to Tradefull that has cutting edge technology like autonomous robots, you can minimize worker duties and boost efficiencies.

Supply chain management and logistics aren’t the only areas you can optimize. Financial processes like distributing payroll and logging invoices are often places begging for improvements. Overall, you shouldn’t be afraid to invest in technology to smooth out friction points so you’re primed for outward expansion.

2. Hone your customer experience.

Customers don’t just like working with brands that offer a consistent, reliable experience. They become devoted fans because they appreciate the way they’re treated.

Consider Disney World. People come back to the magical park year after year, even into their adulthoods. The Disney-themed site AllEars posits that one of the reasons is that Disney is synonymous with never-ending quality. Accordingly, people know that if something is related to Disney, it’s bound to be spectacular.

Your company doesn’t have to promise fairytale experiences, of course. However, eliminating all objections to working with your brand can produce appealing dividends. Not only will buyers rave about you online but you’ll start to build more of a brand cache.

Never underestimate the “reach” possibilities if your brand experience encourages positive buzz. A recent CNBC article chronicling Trader Joe’s rise shows how reputation can prompt empires. Trader Joe’s grew its reach by finding ways to exploit loopholes and bring customers exceptional merchandise at unexpectedly reasonable prices. As long as it met those shoppers’ expectations, it kept earning a mystique that made it popular. Your brand could do likewise by crafting an experience that helps you stand out.

3. Seek out new audiences.

Are you marketing your goods or services to everyone who could use them? Maybe not. Often, businesses overlook key audiences who might be interested. And uncovering an untested audience can stretch your reach and propel business growth.

Gather your team together and look at your Google Analytics as well as customer data. Brainstorm about who might find value in what you’re offering. Challenge everyone to get creative. Not coming up with much? You can always ask repeat buyers how they use your products to discover new marketing personas.

As soon as you come up with one or two audiences, test them out on a small scale. If you find out they’re gaining traction, you can invest more into your marketing.

4. Partner with a non-competing company.

Corporate partnerships aren’t anything novel but many small businesses overlook their value. When it comes to growing your reach, a thoughtful partnership can get your brand in front of a different set of people. Plus, it can assist you in deepening your network as an industry leader.

A prime example of this type of co-branding technique is the Doritos Locos Taco offered through Taco Bell. Though the final recipe reportedly took three years to perfect, the fast-food creation was a hit. Not only did it satisfy Doritos enthusiasts but it brought them into Taco Bell out of curiosity.

What are some ways to find the perfect “peanut butter” to match your “jelly?” Go back to your market research. Review your data to think about what would “go” with what you sell. Then check out other brands to figure out which ones might make good friends. When you make your pitch, be sure that the partnership you’re proposing promises a win-win.

Getting more revenue without acquiring more prospects or customers can be tough. Consequently, if you’re trying to scale, work on extending the reach of your company first. The more sweeping your brand influence, the easier it will be to nurture and sustain future growth.

The post Extending the Reach of Your Company: 4 Tips appeared first on The Blog Herald.

In 2022 social media is king, and video dominates social media. From Fortune 500 companies to food trucks, to junior high after-school clubs, people are using video to tell their stories and promote their products.  And most are using TikTok and/or YouTube.

So the question of “should you be using them” is obvious, but for you, which one wins out when it’s TikTok vs YouTube?   

YouTube was first beginning in 2005, and except for a few attempts from competitors along the way they have been the absolute leader in the field. Today they have over two billion monthly users and their name has become a verb.

But TikTok came along in 2017, and already has over a billion users themselves and is growing at a supersonic rate. Do they have the legs to overtake YouTube? Time will tell, but neither platform is going away anytime soon.

Let’s dig into each platform and figure out which one is best for you.

TikTok

TikTok is a short-form video sharing and social networking service that hosts a wide variety of short videos from a few seconds to three minutes.

The site was originally called Musical.ly and was used primarily for fun. Users used music and lip-sync technology to make short funny and entertaining videos. Over the years the selection of songs and sound effects and video-sharing features has grown, which has added to the site’s popularity.

Before long, other kinds of content started popping up. Food, fashion, dances, and even business-related videos started to populate the platform. And while it is used mainly to create content shared between friends, top brands started to notice and use it to increase brand awareness. Content creators, influencers, and bloggers weren’t far behind.

For those wanting to connect with a younger audience, TikTok is where you want to be. 60% of users are between 16-24 years old. But like most social media trends, older folks aren’t far behind. Recent trends show the app is gradually aging up, with about 31% of the audience now 40 and above.

Another attractive aspect of TikTok is that users don’t just use it, they LOVE it. The average user opens the app 8 times a day and spends an incredible 95 minutes per day on the platform. That’s saying a ton in the age of short attention spans.

If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, then TikTok is blushing bright red. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even YouTube are among the giants that have adjusted their own formats or even created new ones to compete with the hot up & comer.

YouTube

YouTube is an online video-sharing platform, that has grown to become the second most visited website on the planet, way ahead of Facebook and behind only Google.com.

The platform was already popular and growing in 2006. But that year, Google bought the platform for what seemed like an exorbitant 1.65 billion dollars. The site exploded from there and today is estimated to be worth at least 160 billion dollars.

YouTube’s continued growth is due to several factors including its ease of use, its massive user base, and the wide variety and volume of content. It’s hard to get your head around, but there are over 500 hours of content uploaded to the site…every minute.  Music, news, politics, and any and every topic finds itself on YouTube.

While TikTok features short videos, YouTube focuses on longer videos. Up to 15 minutes for all users, and even longer for verified accounts.

YouTube continues to expand on its original focus of just videos. With the introduction in recent years of YouTube TV, YouTube Music, and more, it’s obvious that the platform is not slowing down.

Using its parent company’s resources, YouTube for Business is another opportunity for brands to reach a bigger audience, boost their engagement, and build their brand.  It also helps businesses, big and small, monetize their content as their subscriber base grows.

In the demographics discussion, compared to TikTok, YouTube reaches a much wider audience. TikTok is big with kids, but 85% of teens also use YouTube. And it is the most used platform among adults in the U.S., with about 81% being active on the site.

YouTube really has a mass appeal, as its audience includes kids, teens, and young adults. Even many seniors are comfortable using the site.

In Conclusion  

As you can see there are many similarities and some differences between the platforms when compared. The bottom line is that they are both cultural and economic monsters. Plus, they both continue to grow with no signs of slowing down. And when comparing TikTok vs YouTube, both might come out on top for some and not for others.

A quick trial run of both sites should help you see which one you are more comfortable with. You can proceed from there. 

The post TikTok vs YouTube appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Content marketing allows you to push your brand through unique and informative content that both educates your audience and provides them a path toward becoming a customer.

There are many forms of content marketing that work, both simplistic and complex. However, many bloggers are typically lacking in two essential resources that are vital to a complete content marketing plan.

Time and money.

As a blogger with limited time and an even more limited budget, what can you do to help start the content marketing ball rolling?

Read on to find out.

1. Optimize for SEO

SEO is complex, which is why you have to take it one step at a time.

However, there are a number of tasks that bloggers can do on their own to get a jumpstart on a solid SEO campaign.

First up, there’s keyword research. Without keyword research, you’re essentially entering into your SEO campaign blind.

Through keyword research, you’ll be able to know what the highest volume and relevant keywords for your audience are.

Once that’s done, you can start creating blog content optimized for these terms. Make sure that the terms are featured in the body of the article, the headline and subheads, the meta description, and the image titles and alt tags.

After that, connect all of your various pages and articles together through a series of internal links. This helps your SEO score and makes your website easier to navigate for potential customers.

You’re also going to have to get links to your pages listed on other websites. It’s not easy to do, but if you create a series of informative guest post articles, each containing a link back to your page, then it becomes somewhat easier.

Do not hesitate to use the service of a marketing agency specializing in SEO to make sure your website is well optimized.

2. Create Round-Up Style Articles

It’s not enough to just create random blog posts. You have to be strategic and think about what adds the most value to your reader’s life.

This is especially true for bloggers who are taking these early stages without the help of a third-party marketing agency.

You can’t go wrong in terms of optimization opportunity and educational offering with a round-up style article.

Present a problem impacting your target audience. It should be something that directly relates to the services that you or your affiliates offer.

Then, provide a series of related solutions to said issue. This lets you cover a lot of ground. That also means you’ll have ample opportunity to include relevant keywords. Round-ups also give you a huge linking opportunity.

This detailed guide from Reply.io on how to choose an email finder tool is a good example. Although they offer an email finder tool, they also present the competing tools objectively and weigh out their pros and cons.

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If you’re starting a blog or review site, you might want to consider affiliate marketing on top of content marketing. You can run comparison articles like Best Nursing School’s article about accelerated BSN programs. The key to a quality blog is to review your alternatives diligently, and only accept those that you truly recommend.

Every piece of advice you list in the round-up could be its own blog article on your website. When you’re approaching these topics in the round-up, you have limited space. If your round-up article is only 2,000 words, you don’t have a lot of room to provide a ton of information on each item.

However, if you spin each item off into its own 2,000-word article, you’re providing more information while also getting another opportunity to rank for SEO. You can connect each of these “satellite” articles to the main round-up, creating a hub and spoke article series.

It ensures that if even one of these pages gets some SEO traction, you’ll have a chance to direct traffic to other areas of your site as well.

3. Create Different Forms of Content

You can’t expect to just write blog articles and get all the attention in the world.

Content means so much more than just the written word. There are so many different ways to put content together, such as video, audio, infographics, and much more.

If you’re focusing solely on written content, then you’re doing a disservice to your blogging ventures.

You could also combine different content types on a single page, such as the example below from this company selling a route planning software.

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This product page has just about everything. There are graphics, written content, an image, and even a comparison chart helping you make the right choice. You could also easily add a video onto a page like this to create some content that really pops and informs.

Nlyte’s article about colocation data centers is a perfect example of how embedding a video in a blog article can help your content stand out.

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The video featured above breaks up the text wall and provides good quality information to the target audience for the software Nlyte provides.

In fact, video has become one of the most consumed and shareable forms of content. Adding product videos, animated videos, or even instructional videos to your website is a great way to reach more people.

Besides video, podcasts are another popular form of content. They provide you with a platform to share your industry expertise and open up lines of communication with potential clients.

Starting a podcast is also an easy and inexpensive way to increase traffic to your website. Getting together with new co-hosts can be a good way to collect new ideas and expand your audience.

4. Create Content Specifically for Your Audience

Remember who you’re marketing to. As a blogger, it’s important that you don’t cast your net too wide when it comes to identifying who your target audience might be.

It’s important to refer to your buyer profiles when planning out your content in advance. (Also, you should be planning out your content in advance!)

Who are your ideal customers? What problems do they have? What kind of outside-the-box content can you create to properly serve their needs?

This informative article on current internet abbreviations answers a specific question that would impact a particular audience.

It’s important that you similarly examine what kind of problems your audience has and plan content around solving those issues.

5. Create a Content Library and FAQ Page

Remember, it’s not just blog pages or product pages that have a good shot at ranking.

FAQ pages are prime for optimization. Often, these pages can rank for Google’s featured snippets, a position even more coveted than the first result on page one.

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You also have to organize your content. In the example given above, SimpleMoney organized their financial articles into one centralized page, indexed by category.

It’s always a great idea to take a step like this, because it adds to the user experience of your website, making your content easier to find. A positive user experience is indicative of the quality of your blog.

Even more important, when you’re just starting out your potential customers are likely to have a lot of questions. Compiling a list of FAQs that help explain your business concept, like what finance startup EarlyBird has done here, is a good way to explain your business in an easy to digest format.

In Conclusion

If you’re a blogger, you can’t afford to ignore content marketing. You also probably can’t afford to go all in on it either.

Implement these five content marketing tips for your business, and you will see growth over a period of time. Then, once you have more money coming in, you can invest more heavily in content initiatives.

This guest blog was provided in collaboration with Joanne Camarce, a digital marketing expert specializing in SEO, eCommerce, and social media.

Related posts:

Content Marketing: Expectations Vs Reality

Why You Should Add a FAQ in Your Blog

The post 5 Content Marketing Practices for Bloggers appeared first on The Blog Herald.

SEO analytics involves knowing how readers got to a website, which parts of the website they are reading, how long they stayed exploring the blog, and so on. These kinds of information are critical for the improvement of any blog. It also gives bloggers a chance to curate their work specifically for what the audiences are looking for. Collecting these kinds of data is difficult. Processing them is much more so. Fortunately, Google Sheets have a variety of add ons to give ease to multiple specific SEO analytics functions.

Here are some of the coolest and most useful Google Sheets add ons for your SEO Analytics:

Search Analytics

This Google Sheet add-on is completely free and could easily be installed on any device. How could this help your page’s SEO analytics? It could do a straightforward retrieval of data for a variety of things like keyword queries, page clicks, positions, and CTRs. These kinds of information could tell a blogger which kinds of keywords are more searched, how performances between a certain period have changed, and even diagnose the performance of a landing page. What is even greater about this add-on is that it could do automatic backups for your data.

Google Analytics

This add-on is very similar to search analytics. However, since it is an add-on curated by Google for their products, there are more perks to this than others. For instance, there are more video tutorials online for Google analytics spanning from how to download and install, to getting the most out of the add-on.

Rank Tank

This is a great SEO analytics tool and it compares the performance of your blog to other domain names in the SERP. This is great not only for knowing your position in your SERP, but it also allows bloggers to find out which websites they could collaborate with to boost the popularity of their blog. Moreover, Rank Tank also does a keyword rank result in over 200 countries. This allows bloggers to know well the current keyword trends not only in one location but all over the world.

Moz

Moz actually has multiple products for different functions. But it is one of the most recommended SEO analytics tools in the market. It helps a blog owner in understanding the behavior of their audience. This includes how they got to the blog, which parts of the blog they read, and how long they stayed in the blog. It could also tell a blog owner if the audience got to the page through ads, social media, or keyword search. What sets Moz apart from other SEO tools is that they offer their own crawler for the blog. This helps in finding potential issues or errors and helping a blogger solve them.

SEOmonitor

This is finding the trends on the SERP but in a more detailed sense. It could help a blogger relate the trends to their website. Tells a blogger about the over-all visibility of their website.

Google Studio

This is more for creating proposals and documents than SEO analytics. However, it helps create easy-to-read reports of your blog’s performance. This way it is easy to present your blog to potential clients.

Hunter

This add-on verifies if email addresses on your files are verified or not. This is great for subscriptions, email blasts, and more.

AdStage

This add-on is more useful for advertisers than bloggers, but if you are a two-for-one this is a great function to add to your Google Sheets. It helps in exporting data from websites and blogs. AdStage could extract performance data from Google Ads, and Google Analytics. It even allows the extraction of data from social media like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Twitter Archiver

If you use Twitter to promote your content and your blog, this is a great way of learning how well your content performs in the Twitterverse. It allows a blogger to save queries, hashtags, and other similar tweets and compile them in one sheet. Twitter Archiver even gives forecasts of how well a hashtag or a query can perform in the future.

AppSheet

This is one of the latest add-ons of Google, there is one for Docs, Sheets, and Forms. It helps bloggers use data from their websites to build an app without coding.

Integromat

Integromat is more than just Google sheets, it helps in the overall processing of data from SEO analytics.

Also read: What the Instagram Live 4-Hour Limit Means for Bloggers

The post Cool Google Sheets Add-ons for Your SEO Analytics appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Imagine looking at an advertisement of a huge juicy patty burger only to have a swallowed looking mid-sized one. One often gets swept up in infomercials so much that the end result is never what they were hoping for. The same can be said for content marketing expectations and its reality. When it comes to content marketing, one needs to re-adjust their perspective in their approach to have a fresh perspective. 

Loss in weight can bring weightage in your personality

Expectation: I can write blog posts and articles as much as I want, using the same template every time

Reality: You don’t want your website to look like a set of people that creates mass production, preferring quantity over quality. When one uses the same content, it not only hampers the business in terms of business reach, growth, and long term-short term marketing objectives. This also makes a website feel mundane and eventually paves the way in losing your audience to read your blogs and articles. 

The solution is, it doesn’t matter the type of content you use, one must do some core research focusing on relevant keywords. Writing unique content, adding images, working on infographic content, and procuring videos. One can also evaluate the results by using Google Analytics to have a clear understanding of the weaker and stronger areas and create content using your audience’s interests and likings. 

We are aware of the importance of creating quality content but it is also important to be consistent with it. When one posts regularly to create content, it makes one be an excellent content curator for other readers to go through. The optimum goal of content marketing is to build brand awareness with authentic customer experience. 

Would be the talk of the town overnight

Expectation: I just have to focus on creating content that has a slap of humor with few images and will be instantly shared on other top platforms and my content will be viral in seconds! 

Reality: To ensure that many people read your content, it requires strategic planning to get shared on other platforms. There are numerous platforms like Hootsuite and Sprout Social to smoothen the process of business online in monitoring and managing the content. Such software allows one to analyze the metrics, response and even reschedule the posts weeks and months before. With such software, you just need to craft the posts as per the mode of social media platforms, there are times when some posts do great on certain platforms like Facebook and others don’t necessarily produce good numbers. To get a good response, one can follow the latest trends on different platforms to understand the advantages and disadvantages and how particular content can complement your social media strategy. 

Love at first sight 

Expectations: With the few added top-notch lines and ad lines in the blog posts, my readers are going to love the content. 

Reality: Your content could be great but while reading everyone goes through a different thought process like: 

• “I have read this somewhere”
• “Hmm…interesting” 
• “Not that great” 
• “I love this blog” 
• “This is so boring” 

When writing a blog, your inclination should be towards getting a response than making them love it. Your content should serve the purpose of educating on the topic and serving a meaningful Logue on people sharing and commenting on it. It could also be thought-provoking and can also trigger the negative reactions but when it is backed with research, facts, and quality, one can start with a full-fledged debacle. One should realize that not everybody is going to give you a gold star on your content and having criticism is OK. The goal here is to understand your audience’s reaction and how to turn them into a fruitful outlook. 

Libraries often go empty 

Expectation: Posting good content on the website can lead to maximum digital exposure and one can get massive traffic in one go.

Reality: The key to good content marketing is, one gets a lot of patience and hard work. In case you have a thought process that you’ll receive high conversions overnight, one will end up losing their patience even before getting a dime of the results. 

The idea is to publish and publish the popular content on the platform, one would get higher traffic with other traffic factors like backlinking, social media promotions and other interactive modes. This is where SEO plays a key role in generating traffic. One should always have patience and an understanding that it takes a concrete web of the network to yield results and it is a steep learning curve of trial and error. To analyze the results and edit it accordingly. It shouldn’t feel like a mass-produced factory, and wrong content marketing could hamper your business growth and long term marketing goals. 

Content should be well researched, with facts and figures that lays emphasis on proving the content matters. When it is focused on infusing the right content and keywords, the potential of SEO can boost with search rankings. More than this, it should be focused on people and content that one could actually enjoy. Your content marketing strategy should build the credibility of your brand with great user experience and gain the trust of the reader. There are numerous types of blogs available on the platform and it isn’t read by many people, it is an infallible wall of great content and with the growth, one would be able to get the premium readers with the quality. 

Also, one bad piece of writing can create a stir in your content growth and can dent the trust of your visitors. 

Author Bio

Kiara McColl is a content manager at Clickmatix digital marketing agency, where she gets to do what she loves doing- writing and managing content with smart digital marketers in the company. She also has expertise in web marketing, search engine optimization, social media, affiliate marketing. Her strong passion for technology always drives her to explore the changing trends in the digital industry and making people know about it through her blogs.  

The post Content Marketing: Expectations Vs Reality appeared first on The Blog Herald.

This marketing method relies on content creation and it comes in various forms, such as written articles, tutorial videos, infographics, and so on.

Sharing that content to targeted audiences is done with the purpose of generating leads, building your brand, and driving more customers to your website.

Let’s look at some proven tips that will help you create an excellent eCommerce content strategy that will bring you more customers and improve your business results.

Content as a referral engine

Did you know that your content can create a self-replicating referral engine?

Once a conversion is made, marketers should focus on post-conversion processes. To boost growth even further and make better use of an already converted customer, you should guide them through personalized content delivered at crucial moments to turn them into a different kind of customer.

This kind of customer becomes an active user who gets so much value from your product or service that the impulse to share it with others is irresistible. 

What you need to ask

To better understand how to further guide your new customer to become an advocate praising your products, ask these questions:

• How does the product make your life easier?
• What is it about our product that makes it adored among customers?
• How can our product or service assimilate into other aspects of customers’ lives?

The more customers feel like they have made a great purchase, and the more you are there to improve their experience after the sale, the likelier they are to spread the word about your product.

Gathered data

Use all the data you can gather and use it to set activation milestones. Then create content that changes existing customers’ behavior, like blogs, emails, case studies, and so on.

Your marketing team should devise personalized messages for users to stimulate them to take action.

Pro tip: Don’t make the referral process too complicated

Of course, you should also use adequate tools once you start targeting converted customers. In addition to your referral program software, you should try adding a contact picker so that your customers can input email addresses of their friends and family without having to type their names or leave your website.

See your content as valuable data

A good content strategy does not focus on quantity. It is not about the number of blog posts you write monthly, the time you spend doing Facebook Live, and so on.

The quality of your content is actually the only thing that has crucial importance. A great content strategy engages audiences at every turn, and to do this, a content strategist should know how their content is working.

When a marketer knows exactly how to create the content so that it is effective in one phase, then they can use the information as a customer moves to the next stage of the sales funnel.

Your strategy should be led by analytics. Monitor, track, watch, and report the numbers to refine and adjust towards better conversions continuously.

Track where the customers are coming from and where they are going. Assess traffic patterns consistently.

When you test what you are continually doing, you get an idea about your audience’s preferences, interests, and purchasing behavior. That is why you should know how your material is performing – to make it better.

Ask yourself these questions along the way:

• What can be refined and improved?
• What are the platforms that are performing best?
• What content is bringing the best results?
• How can all the content pieces be blended?

Only publish the best content you can produce

One infamous trend nowadays is that many businesses focus on producing large quantities of content. This ultimately leads to poor quality.

To stand apart from the ‘fluff’ content that is more or less useless, you should provide quality content that has value. So, do not hesitate to set the quality bar high and even try to exceed this standard.

It will be challenging for your marketing team members, but this is the only right way to stand out from an increasingly large crowd. Essentially, that is how you can make your voice heard.

Also, bear in mind that creating outstanding content takes time, effort, and money in some cases. Remember that there are no shortcuts.

Hence, always think well before you start creating content. Consider how it will help your audience and whether it is something they will find interesting.

Always keep in mind that your content should engage, inform, and help.

Hunt those keywords

SEO is here to stay and all professional marketers should care about it. In an ideal world, you would only have to publish excellent, insightful content on your chosen topics. But in reality, doing such a thing will have little to no significance.

That is because your content needs to find its audience. And that can’t happen if your website and posts are not placed high in the search results.

So, think carefully about keyword targeting. Target specific keywords that can attract a lot of traffic and then produce content with that goal in mind.

If you don’t know what keywords are trending in your industry, there are tools like Ahrefs or other SEO tools to help you find out what these words are.

By targeting keywords through your content, you make sure that your content is optimized and has a better chance to rank high.

Your content has to reflect your brand’s voice

To become a recognizable name and build your brand authority, you have to create a unique voice for your brand. 

However, the most challenging part of this story is that even big businesses often struggle with the identification and definition of their brand voice. It is often tough to know what your brand voice sounds like, especially if you have a large marketing team.

Try to ensure continuity of your brand’s voice, especially across more substantial teams. You need to constantly review editorial standards to ensure that both quality and tone are consistent, as well as a higher-level overview of your blog and content in general.

For every single post, consider how the content advances and develops your brand’s voice:

• Does the writing reflect your business’s values?
• What does the tone say about the way you do business?
• Is your brand’s voice sincere or forced?

These questions will help you take control of your brand’s voice and refine your messaging through the content you push.

Wrap-up

The tips you have just read about have worked for many businesses. Some of them may be deemed evergreen, while others are only picking up the pace now.

However, whatever you do, remember to remain unique. Do not copy other blogs. Of course, you may take a look at what others do to get some interesting ideas, but make sure to never copy or plagiarize someone else’s work.

The post 5 Tips for Creating a Content Strategy for Your eCommerce Website appeared first on The Blog Herald.

As a freelancer, you need to have a constant stream of clients to keep your income running. But with the constant quest to complete the deadlines and work on client satisfaction, the freelancers get little or no time to maintain the consistency. This is where email marketing can come in handy. 

With 68% of freelancers finding work online, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the competition is tough.  Moreover, with 86.5 million people expected to freelance by 2027, it is important to have a competitive edge over your freelancer counterparts. 

So, if you are a freelancer and wondering how you are going to do it, start leveraging email marketing right away. With ROI as high as $42 for every $1 spent, email marketing can be a great and cost-effective way of promoting your freelancing business. 

Further, do you know there are 5.5 billion email accounts across the globe? And, if that’s not enough, 61% of consumers like to receive promotional emails weekly. 

Source

Email marketing isn’t only cost-effective but has a wider audience reach too. So, if you haven’t already started extracting the benefits of email marketing for your freelance business, it’s high time you do it. However, before you do that, here’s a quick look at its various benefits.

Benefits of email marketing for freelancers

1. Increases the awareness of your personal brand

Email marketing works towards increasing your brand awareness with the help of newsletters. A good newsletter can help you in building a good brand reputation. So, if you send high-quality content on a consistent basis, you will be able to establish a direct and personalized connection with your leads. 

2. Facilitates trust-building with leads

Regular communication with your subscriber base can help you instill a sense of trust within them. Your high-quality content doesn’t only help them solve their issues but also gives them a way to accomplish their goals, thereby giving you an important place in their lives.

Moreover, consistent communication keeps you on the top of their mind. So, when they are looking to buy a product or acquire a service that you happen to offer, you will be their first choice. All you need to do is send engaging and relevant emails to them.

3. Provides easy open and structured feedback

Feedbacks are a great way of building your credibility. In this context, you can make use of surveys sent through email. It is a simple yet impactful way of garnering feedback. So, keep collecting feedback from your previous and current client base. It will help you sell your services to your prospective clients. You can even use it on your landing page or in your service pitch desk. 

4. Helps in building authority and charging higher prices

As mentioned already, email marketing helps you instill trust in your subscriber base through the engaging and regular content that you send. It can work in your favor and make you appear as the authority of the niche you work upon. To put it in other words, email marketing makes you appear like a brand. As a result, you get access to better quality and higher-paying clients along with diversity in work. You can even get the freedom to choose whom you want to work with and what you wish to work upon.

5. Assists in staying in touch with older clients

Email marketing assists you in reaching out to your client base, irrespective of them being a past client or a present one. From sharing your latest blog to discussing your favorite topic, you can keep in touch with them through regular emails. It will help you to update them about your availability, thereby curbing long periods of no business. 

Now, since you know about the benefits of email marketing, go ahead and use it for making your freelance business a success. Here’s how you can do it.

How can freelancers leverage email marketing?

1. Opt for an email marketing service provider

An email service provider can help you collect subscriber data through inline forms and web pop-ups. You can even make use of an email sequence to schedule emails for your subscribers. The email service providers also assist you in measuring the performance of your email campaigns while taking corrective measures when needed. So, choose an email service provider that best suits your needs. You can opt for a cheap or a free trial to get an idea of which plan works better for you while paving new avenues of growth.

2. Create buyer personas of your favorite customers

Buyer persona or customer persona is a customer profile that can be created by keeping in mind your prospective customer’s interest and expectations. To put it in other words, a buyer persona works as an imaginary ideal customer with different traits, location, gender, etc. This is how a buyer persona looks like. 

Source

So, you see, how this buyer persona gives a detailed idea about your prospective customer’s needs and wants? It will help you identify what kind of content, product, and services will work best for them. Remember, the more you know your subscriber base, the higher will be your chances of sending relevant content to them, thereby making your business prospects better. 

3. Work on a free leads magnet

You must know that giving before taking is the first rule of marketing. Hence, go ahead and start offering products, services, or high-end content for free. These free offerings are known as lead magnets. It entices visitors and prospective customers to join your email list. When they witness you giving freebies, they will be more than happy to join your list. 

4. Create an impeccable welcome message

A welcome email is the first email that your customer should receive once they subscribe to your email list. It is the best way to introduce yourself while telling them about your freelancing business and the products and services you sell. It wouldn’t only set a tone for further interaction but will also give your subscribers a clear idea about what to expect from you. There are a lot of free HTML email templates that can help you craft an impeccable welcome email in no time. It is highly recommended that you send out a series of two to three welcome emails.

5. Work on a content calendar

A content calendar works towards delivering high-quality content with a periodic timeline. Remember, the frequency of emails should be optimum. It should neither be too high nor too low. After all, you don’t want your subscribers to get annoyed and unsubscribe you or even worse, report the email as spam. So, make sure to keep a content calendar handy. It will ensure that you have control over what you send and when you send it. 

6. Analyze email metrics

You must keep a check on important KPIs such as open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, bounce rate, and spam reports. Having a clear insight into these metrics will give you an idea about what’s working for you as a freelancer and what isn’t. For instance, if there’s an email with higher open rates, use that business email template more often. Similarly, if an email has a higher number of spam reports, analyze it, and see what are the drawbacks. Try sending less of such emails in the future.

7. Consider email list limitation

It is important to filter your email list once in a while to remove inactive or unengaged subscribers otherwise they might ruin your open rate. Moreover, with email service providers charging you on the basis of the size of your email list, it becomes critical to keep only such subscribers in your list who are really interested in receiving your content. You can do so by including an unsubscribe button in your email. 

Wrap up

Email marketing comes with a variety of benefits for freelancers. So, start setting up your email marketing campaign right away. Sure, it does involve some setup and brainstorming but when you will see your efforts turning into results in the form of more clients, more work, and higher money, you will understand how it is worth all the efforts and investment you put in. 

Hope the points mentioned above help you in promoting your work as a freelancer. 

Author Bio

Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest-growing email marketing agency specializes in crafting custom email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion,  free HTML email templates and Mailchimp email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.

The post 7 Tips Freelancers Can Leverage Email Marketing appeared first on The Blog Herald.

5 Evergreen Content Marketing Ideas

Answer Customer FAQs

Though products and services may change with time, customers tend to ask the same sort of questions year after year. Therefore, it’s almost always a good idea to use blog posts as a platform to answer questions that you and your team hear all the time. These articles are most effective when they address FAQs directly. In fact, doing so could help a company achieve a featured snippet as well.

Behind-the-Scenes Features

Customers value transparency. Now more than ever, sophisticated consumers want to know how a company conducts business, what they value, and how they operate in a day-to-day fashion. There’s a lot of value in creating content that gives consumers the opportunity to see your team in action. This can actually help to humanize your brand, which is something that larger companies may struggle to do.

How-to Guides

Sometimes business leaders may feel reticent to share too much about their company’s process. They fear that their methods could be co-opted or stolen by competitors. Yet, the reality is that providing useful information to consumers –– and competitors –– is a great way to boost website visibility. And that is worth more than any “trade secret” a business leader may be holding in their back pocket.

Case Studies

Don’t be afraid to highlight your own success. When businesses perform well for their patrons, they should take the opportunity to let others know about it. Case studies are perfect for just such a scenario. Plus, case studies allow businesses to discuss certain products or features in an in-depth manner. For example, a company like Envision Security could use a case study to demonstrate how smart homes can save people money on utility bills.

Revise

While the majority of evergreen content should remain helpful to consumers over time, some aspects of a given piece of content may need to be updated. After all, if you have a blog with statistics from 2017, now may be a good time to look up more recent data. Revising old, evergreen content can help companies attract new clients and maintain a solid reputation within their field. Remember, nothing is static –– and that should include your existing content!

5 Skills All Successful Content Writers Have Mastered

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Now, let’s say your site is already optimized for SEO. You’ve done all of your legwork and you’re waiting for the results. How do you get your content in front of the searchers? In this article, we will cover top tips to optimize content marketing for SEO – tried and tested by many a local SEO agency. 

Let’s dive in.

How to Optimize Content Marketing for SEO

1. Do an SEO Audit

The first step is to use an SEO tool like Ahrefs or Moz to see which pages on your site already rank well. Perhaps there are several keywords that your site ranks for already. If there are pages that are showing up on the second page then you should start with those. There are several elements you can change to increase ranking. Add the specific keywords that you are already ranking for into the page title, URL, meta description, and the actual content on the page.

2. Do some A/B Testing

A/B testing is the golden cradle of marketing. You should look at all of your pages that rank on the second page of Google and then test a new version of their meta description. You should have one group be a control group – with no change – and the other group of pages with the new meta descriptions. That way you can compare the effects of the change properly. Once you conduct the first A/B test use the data and lessons you’ve learned to set up the next page. Through consistent testing, you can optimize your pages and actually have them show up on the first page of the search results.

Read: What is a Staging Site and Why Do You Need One?

3. Optimize for the Rich Snippet

The rich snippet shows up on top of the first organic search result. It always displays a list of items or steps and seeks to answer a specific question that is searched by a user. In the example below I found a rich snippet for the search query “How to Optimize SEO”.

This is the snippet that shows up before the first organic search result, right on top of the page. The way to optimize your articles to hit this spot is to use H2 and H3 tags for the headers. It’s also important to have the particular keyword(s) in your title, URL, and throughout the article. So start with those long-tail keywords that you are ranking on the first page for and see if you could optimize your article to show up in the coveted rich snippet.

Recap

We’ve covered three tips to optimize your content to show up on Google’s first page. First, look at what is already ranking on the second page and optimize those pages. Second, consistently A/B test to get better and better search rankings. Third, optimize your content for the rich snippet spot. If you follow these tips you will surely see your rankings improve.

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The Importance of Inspiration in Creativity

Inspiration can be defined as a motivational state that compels people to bring ideas into fruition. And while inspiration plays a role in many distinct areas of our lives, it’s especially valuable in stoking creativity. 

According to research from well-respected psychologists Todd M. Thrash and Andrew J. Elliot, there are three core aspects or qualities of inspiration. First off, inspiration is evoked spontaneously without intention. Secondly, inspiration is transcendent and usually involves a moment of awareness of new possibilities. Thirdly, inspiration involves approach motivation – a point where the individual strives to express or actualize the new idea or vision.

Creativity is all about seeing new and unique possibilities beyond what already exists. Inspiration serves as the springboard for creativity. In other words, it nudges the brain and puts the mind in a place where it can be imaginative and original.

5 Ideas for Finding Marketing Inspiration

Good marketing and writing require an endless supply of creativity. Thus as a blogger, you have to prioritize inspiration. And, thankfully, it’s all around you. Here are some unique and intriguing ways you can let inspiration drive your creativity and, ultimately, enhance your blog. 

1. Follow Creative Brands Online

You never want to copy another company’s branding, but there’s something really valuable about immersing yourself in what other brands are doing as a form of inspiration.

Develop a list of 10 or 15 brands that think outside the box and closely follow everything they do on a weekly basis. From the blog posts they publish to the social media content they share to the advertisements they run, everything is a potential source of inspiration. 

If you’re looking for content marketing inspiration, try following brands like Volkswagen, Starbucks, Sharpie, Oreo, and Whole Foods.

2. Spend Time in Nature

“In order for the brain to function at its highest possible level, you need to be able to reduce fatigue and boost your energy levels,” entrepreneur Dhaval Patel writes. “This allows your brain to restore itself so you can start thinking of new ideas and harnessing your highest analytical abilities.”

Research shows that spending just 20 minutes per day in nature is enough to boost your brain and provide inspiration. This inspiration can then be used to enhance your creative thinking.

3. Read Books on Leaders

There’s something powerful about studying what other successful people have done – both inside and outside of your field. Spend time reading books on leaders and making notes of all the times they’ve failed and succeeded. This will give you the inspiration you need to keep pushing through.

4. Consult a Horoscope

Seriously. Don’t be afraid to go outside of your comfort zone and pursue totally original ideas for inspiration. For example, try consulting a horoscope to gain a little inspiration from beyond the stars.

Read: How to Do Email Marketing in 2020: A Beginner’s Guide

For marketing-centric advice, check out BlueSwitch’s monthly horoscopes. If nothing else, you can use these two- or three-sentence anecdotes to find encouragement and motivation to push through.

5. Tie Your Hands

It’s possible that you have too many options, tools, and resources to work with. History shows that some of the most creative business and marketing ideas have arisen out of a lack of resources. In other words, we tend to be more creative when we’re forced to work within certain parameters.

Try developing at least one blog post each week where you purposefully tie your hands (not literally) behind your back. For example, force yourself to write a 300-word blog post in which you mention an animal, a piece of fruit, and a celebrity from the 1980s (or any other unrelated categories). The topic still has to fit your blog and readers, but it has to meet the requirements laid out. You’ll be amazed by how creative you can get when you’re forced to work within these constraints.

Stay on the Cutting Edge

You can’t remain stagnant or predictable for too long. If you do, your audience will become disengaged and you’ll find it challenging to consistently move people to action. By surrounding yourself with inspiration at every moment of every day, you can maximize creativity and get better results in your blog and your life.

The post 5 Ways Bloggers Can Find Marketing Inspiration appeared first on The Blog Herald.

According to a report by eMarketer, 60% of marketers create at least one piece of content each day. In such an immensely competitive market, you cannot afford to just churn out content and hope for it to work.

To help you create better content for marketing in 2020, here are 7 important tips you should follow.

1. Use social media to look for the latest trends in your niche 

Social media, today, is one place where you can reach out to a large audience. As of 2019, nearly 3.2 billion people were active on social media.  If you have been a content marketer for a while now, you already know who your target audience is. You could use social media to see what is trending among your target audience. 

According to Brandwatch, as of 2019, 96% of people who discuss brand on social media do not necessarily follow brand pages. So you have to look beyond your social media page and follow customers’ conversations to get more valuable insights. 

2. Create content optimized for voice search

The way people search for information online is changing. As shared by Google’s CEO, in 2016 20% of searches on Google’s mobile app and Android devices were voice searches. This number can only be assumed to be increasing since then. It is predicted that 50% percent of all online searches will be voice-based by 2020. 

So, it goes without saying that all your content has to be optimized for voice search now. The queries that people use in text-based search and voice search are quite different. You have to understand how voice search works and create content in line with it.

3. Mobile-friendly content is no longer just an option

As of 2017, internet users spend nearly 69% of their online time on smartphones. This number has only been increasing since then. It has become more than important to make your content mobile-friendly if you wish to get more followers. Optimizing your content for mobile screens will involve optimizing all elements, the text, images, videos and anything else, for mobile viewing. Other factors like page loading speed and user experience will also have to be taken care of.

4. Outsource and repurpose content as appropriate 

Marketers are always pressed for time and managing all the content on your own can be a huge challenge. For the year 2020, you can consider outsourcing some of your content creation work. This works best for long form seed content that takes extensive research and a lot of time to write. Such content can also be repurposed later into other formats as required. 

Freelance writers on platforms like UpWork, Narrato or WriterAccess can be of help in this kind of content creation and repurposing can be done by you, as you see fit. Tools like Lumen5 and Canva can be great for repurposing content in different formats. 

5. Video and audio content must be a part of your 2020 marketing strategy

Content marketing is no longer just about text-based content. The use of video and audio as content for marketing is gaining popularity and 2020 is going to be all about these forms. Videos have been found to get more views than other forms of content. 45% of people watch more than an hour of videos on Facebook or YouTube a week and that is why 87% of marketers are using video content today. 

Audio content too is becoming very popular. Podcasts have found a new place in digital marketing. According to a survey conducted by Statista in 2016, 45% of global internet users aged 25 to 34 listened to or watched podcasts. With Google adding playable podcasts in its search results, this form of content is now indispensable for any marketer. 

6. Try content cluster 

Content cluster is a great way of getting better ranking in search engine results pages and also of gathering a loyal following. Content cluster refers to writing a number of posts on a common theme. This theme should ideally be something related to your area of expertise so that you can use your knowledge and authority on it to create quality content. Content cluster is considered to be more valuable by search algorithms and help your pages rank higher in Google search results.

7. Optimize content for omni-channel marketing 

Content marketing today is no longer limited to the desktop. People surf the internet on multiple channels like mobile phones and tablets. That is why it is important that the content you create now is optimized for an omni-channel marketing strategy. This means that the content should appear uniform and consistent on all these devices. Everything from page loading time to the aspect ratios must be optimized for viewing on different devices if you wish to reach out to people on all channels.

Author bio:

Neelam Goswami is a Content Writer at Godot Media, a leading content writing services agency. Her areas of interest include digital and content marketing. She is also an amateur artist and loves to spend time on creative work.

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