Developing a Joined Up Approach to your Social Media and Customer Communications
In this post I show how we use different tools and plugins for our different social platforms to let software services take some of the key pounding out of online publishing.
Here is my summary of our process and the tools we use. We're always interested to learn about new tools or other approaches, so let us know if you have other suggestions.
The diagram shows the approach we use on Smart Insights to support content sharing across the main social networks while minimising the resource needed. We aim to publish two to three posts daily as a target, balancing advice and updates on major developments in digital marketing. These are posted to our blog and then we use tagging of topics in different categories to surface the advice in…
The top skills and attributes of an effective in-house SEO Manager
To be a truly effective digital marketer in today it’s become more important than ever to develop a good range of skills and experience across a variety of different disciples. The ability to work with different teams and specialists enables marketers to collaborate effectively, empathize with colleagues and spot new opportunities.
Over the last five to six years I’ve been using the T-shaped marketer approach to guide my professional development, a concept Rand Fishkin outlined in detail back in 2013. As Rand himself explains:
“T-Shaped basically refers to having a light level of knowledge in a broad array of skills, and deep knowledge/ability in a single one (or a few)"
The key takeaway for marketers is that breadth breeds respect and overlapping knowledge yields creativity. There are…
A three-step approach to check for paid search campaign mistakes
In an ideal world, enterprising entrepreneurs would only need to set up shop, open their virtual doors, and find customers lining up to buy their products. Of course, it’s never that easy. Digital marketers have to actually go out looking for them. And once you find them, you need to convert them.
While conversion methods vary, many digital marketers arrive on a seemingly perfect solution when looking to invest to boost their visits: pay-per-click campaigns.
PPC campaigns can work, and some work quite well. But they can be minefields for mistakes, and the most common is the marketing equivalent of 'keeping up with the Joneses.' Many digital marketers think they should run a PPC campaign because everyone else is doing it.
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Chart of the Day: Social network popularity based on share of social media minutes
You will have noticed that Facebook isn't getting the best press at the moment with the latest lack of data privacy revelations... This is on top of the latest statistics showing that Facebook usage is declining in younger audiences according to eMarketer. This raises the question for marketers that if Facebook is declining in popularity in younger age groups, are there other social networks that warrant more attention?
The latest insight from the comScore panel in their 2018 Global Digital Future in Focus comparing the overall popularity of social networks by share of time (for December 2017), suggests the options.
Most popular social networks based on share of minutes
You can see this is a sea of Facebook blue, so this shows that despite the negative media hype…
Unsure about how to use Google Analytics? Need some guidance on how to navigate around it? Learn how to set-up a GA demo account
Jill Quick originally wrote this advisory for our blog in July 6th 2016 based on a briefing with Google.
A while back Google launched a new string to their analytics learning bow. A fully functioning Google Analytics account that anyone with a Google account can access. This is a wonderful education tool for any marketer, or business owner, who wants a better understanding of how to use Google Analytics.
One of the problems my clients and delegates face when I deliver training on Google Analytics is a real-life example. Something to play around with, learn from and use to back up your measurement plan to educate your team on the insights they could be getting and showing your boss what your time and budget is paying for, especially…
Research giving benchmark of most successful acquisition channels for retail
It's useful to know how your business compares to competitors in terms of the mix of online traffic. You can use the Google Analytics benchmarking feature for companies of a similar size and sector and that can be useful for arguing the case for reallocation of acquisition budgets, for example, more investment in organic or paid search.
It's rare for data to be published which compares your digital media mix, i.e. the relative importance of different traffic sources driving visitors to websites. So, I thought it would be interesting to share this data from US Ecommerce sites.
Location: US Retail
Date: Published Autumn 2017
Sample: Top 250 US retailers (so representative of common consumer behaviour)
Source: Adobe Retail Industry report
This retail visitor acquisition data shows that organic search is in the number…
Examples and best practice advice on how to maximise your digital marketing reach with an integrated PPC and SEO approach.
When it comes to digital marketing, pay per click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimisation (SEO) are arguably two sides of the same coin. However, all too often companies will focus on one at the expense of the other.
At ClickThrough Marketing we provide an integrated digital marketing approach. Working with large-scale e-commerce sites, we have learnt the importance of combining PPC and SEO activities to gain greater client and market insight as well as streamline our own internal activities.
Here, we look at four ways in which PPC and SEO can work together to deliver better results across the board.
1. Finding SEO opportunities with PPC data
There are many ways in which PPC can support SEO and digital marketers should explore ways…
Search Marketers Are Embracing Online Reviews
Evidence of the growing importance of online review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google, and Facebook is hard to ignore.
According to research by ReviewTrackers, 49 percent of consumers always or often check online reviews, and Search Engine Land reports that 72 percent trust reviews as much as they do recommendations from friends and family.
Reviews have also shaped search algorithms. And with Google explicitly indicating that reviews play a role in one of its three primary local search factors, an increasing number of marketers and local SEO professionals have been crafting strategic approaches to reviews in hopes of improving local SEO performance.
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Do you work in SEO? This infographic maps out the skills you need to develop
SEO combines such a huge range of skills it is tricky to know where to start when looking to enhance your abilities. For those people looking to make a career in SEO, they need to make sure they're covering all bases and not neglecting any areas of their skills. If they focus entirely on outreach, they might lose some of their technical expertise, whilst if they do nothing but look at analytics all day they won't be building links.
If you're looking to move up the career ladder an exec to a manager to a departmental head, then check out this infographic to see what skills you'll need to focus on most at different stages.
If you're interested in developing your digital skills more broadly, did you know we have a free research report on digital marketing…
Learning How to Construct a Keyword-Savvy SEO Strategy
For SEO professionals, keywords are the foundation of every tactic and digital marketing initiative we perform. If you’re looking for a stronger understanding of how SEO strategy works – you’ve come to the right place.
In the blog, we’re going to break down the elements of a digital marketing strategy and emphasize how to optimize your website’s “on-site” copy for search engines.
At this halfway point in the year, it’s time to assess how well your keyword strategy is contributing to your organic search rankings and site traffic performance – and most importantly, how you can improve it for the remainder of the year.
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