Which approaches work best to take your traffic to the next level?
What should you do once you have your inbound marketing up and running? The scenario is that you're creating or maybe curating great new material on your corporate, brand or business blog, you're in the content marketing curve and all's well in the world, the content feels right and peer feedback is generally great too.
Yet traffic from your blog seems to be a tad slow, or simply not growing like you thought it might based on the size of your market and the blogging competition, maybe you're getting the wrong traffic and the page bounce rate seems high? Most of us have been here, are currently here, and will be here again - so don't worry!
Whether you're improving SEO, social media marketing or content creation and content marketing, it's a process and so improvement never stops, neither does the…
and is it something we should be doing?
Social media optimisation or SMO isn't a new term or a new approach, far from it. As the Wikipedia definition of SMO explains, it's been around since 2006 when the search engine marketer Danny Sullivan first used it and Rohit Bhargava developed his 5 rules of SMO which are featured at the end of this post with my suggestions on how to scope SMO activities more broadly.
With many companies now having social media marketing in place, SMO is a logical next step to improve the effectiveness of social media marketing. So I thought it would be interesting to see marketers views on SMO - is it a narrow view about optimising integration with a website, is it mainly related to SEO or is it a broader view?
What do you understand by SMO?
These are the results of the poll - thank you to…
Google has updated two of it's main sources. I thought I'd alert readers to them since I often find that people reach for their pens to make a note of these on training courses.
Google Agency Toolkit
Many readers will know the many great tools Google provide to encourage marketers to spend more with advertisers. The ones we've written about before and recommend are most useful are:
The Google Keyword Tool - for seeing the number of searches on a topic
Google Keyword Planner - a new tool supplementing the keyword tool
Google Ad Preview tool - shows marketplace players in different countries
Google Trends - for spotting search trends by country
Google Ad Planner - for finding site popularity and audience composition for media sites/publishers
But I find many don't know about the Google Agency Toolkit which groups these together and provides many others - check it out!
…
Wondering how to get started with QR codes? Our guide showing the marketing applications and campaign examples
QR Code Billboard
As Smart Phones and Smart Phone Apps increase in usage we're seeing a lot more interest in how to use QR codes (also known as 2D barcodes or mobile tagging) as a part of the marketing mix. This in-depth discussion on how to use QR codes for marketing on our Smart Insights Linked In Group is an example of this interest.
Late last year Nielsen predicted that smart phones will be the dominant device by the end of 2011, so there's certainly a reason to be taking this area more seriously.
What are QR codes?
Firstly, in case you're not 100% clear on what QR codes…
What does your email signature say about your brand?
A signature is like a snapshot of your personality. Do you know when you sign your name in a personal or professional communication unknowingly you disclose much more about yourself, than you want to.
In this post I surface some recent examples of the email signatures in customer service and offer thoughts about the personality of those behind them and the brands they represent.
As a security conscious citizen I rarely disclose my signature for others to see. So increasingly I have become surprised when I see what seem like genuine signatures being used within customer service communications, particularly email. It also strikes me as odd that companies continue to 'sign off' their emails as if it is a traditional letter. Don't get me wrong - of course your email needs a footer and further contact information but when is it appropriate to add…
Facebook is today launching Places Deals in the UK and Europe, I posted on Facebook Deals in early November launching the the USA with Gap and Starbucks, amongst others. Well, as of this week it's in the UK. Facebook users will be able to get discounts and targeted deals in shops and eateries by checking in on Facebook Places using their smartphone. European partners include Starbucks, Yo Sushi, O2, Argos, Debenhams, and Alton Towers. All making offers based on Check-Ins.
To remind you, the concept is simple enough "€“ users look for the yellow icon when they Check In using Places. You then click on the deal to claim it, and simply show it to the cashier to cash in. Deals that a user claims will also be shared on your Facebook News Feed, which will allow your friends to reap the same benefits should they want to.…
How organisations have to change mindsets to reap the benefits of social media marketing
"If you approach social media with the hope that you can either discipline or control it then you really shouldn"€™t approach social media at all.
It"€™s wildfire. You need enough confidence in your brand and in what you do to be resilient to the slings and arrows of online users "€“ they won"€™t like everything"
This quote from Matt Thompson, the group marketing directer at Trader Media Group really resonated with me since I've listened to so many frustrated marketers who know the potential of social media, but the HiPPOs in the organisation or corporate communications don't have the confidence in their brand and don't seem to realise the potential missed.
Those who seek to minimise the potential reputational damage from social media by excluding other social media activity don't seem to realise:
The importance of social channels - these are…
As part of my series of blog posts on link building techniques I have decided to look at how we can use tools and build a process to analyse a competitors backlink profile to help create a list of target sites for you to approach. After all, if your competitor can be on that website then why can't you?!
If you're new to the term "backlink" it's simply a link from another site to yours which Google may count to boost your ranking if it considers it's a quality link.
The key to this process is getting the appropriate data about yours & your top 5 / 10 competitors (in search) back links so you can filter & prioritse the actions off the back of it. Both you and your competitors are going to have backlinks which do very little for your website…
No keyword searches to build a strategy off? No problem! Or an opportunity at least
Value: [rating=5]
Our commentary: A recent blog post from Rand @ SEOMOZ really caught my attention this week. In many markets for natural search there is data & tools that can help you plot a strategy and get rough ideas of potential results (in terms of traffic). See Dan Barker's post on keyphrase gap analysis.
But for the remainder where a service or product is new, so there is low awareness, or the audience is not yet online SEO may appear to not offer an opportunity to generate awareness about your new products.
This case where there is little or no data specifically about it, is more interesting / exciting to me and forces people in the search industry to think a lot more…
A list of services to use for DIY press-release submission for small businesses
While many large companies use a PR agency to manage their press-releases, it's now easy to do-it-yourself and go direct to an online service for distribution. There are also some free options available which can give some SEO benefits with backlinks and through featuring in Google News. Don't expect lots of journalists to pick up on your press release though if you use these services, a more personal approach once you have identified a specialist through a tool like Vocus will work better here.
There are a growing number of websites where news and press releases can be submitted online.
The main business model is to offer a free, but upgradable service. There are limitations as the sites vary in terms of layout and "how to" submit, there are issues when adding images (some are free, but very small) and…
