©2018, Colleen Eakins Design

Have Fun with this Social Media Marketing Challenge

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So, you are excited about the benefits that social media marketing offers your business. Now you’re looking to launch a winning campaign that will help people find your brand. Great. The only thing left to do is to create compelling content that will attract shares and likes. Luckily for you, fantastic content doesn’t take long to construct.

Let’s take a look at a stress-free plan to create two weeks’ worth of lovable sharing ideas to help attract your ideal clientele. This strategy combines using common sense and a small bit of digital effort to help convey your brand message to an online audience.

#1 | Show People Who You Are and How You Work

People love images, especially ones that show people engaged in work that stokes their passions. That means coming up with the perfect share could be as simple as snapping a pic at work. Plainly you see pictures like this all the time, and there’s a logical explanation for that. Consumers need to trust your organization, and one way to help them do that is by showing them who you are and what you do on a daily basis.

#2 | Put a Customer or Vendor in the Spotlight

Interview a vendor or one of your customers to gain their insight and to share online. Adding a fresh, secondary perspective makes your content even more accessible. Communication with key personalities in your brand’s value chain will open doors. A loyal customer will probably love appearing on your profiles and will know that you value their opinion. Vendors bring industry-specific expertise to bear that enhance your corporate image.

#3 | Answer a Pressing Question

Fielding questions and relating comprehensive answers is another beneficial way to spread the word about your business. Potential clients want to know they’re dealing with an expert or experienced professional. Rather than tell them how amazing you are, why not show them instead? You can write a blog post or make a video on Facebook or Instagram that covers a common question for your industry. People who are searching for new vendors will often have these sorts of queries in mind, so you get a chance to introduce yourself to them quickly.

#4 | Introduce New Workers

Do you have any new employees? If so, now would be an ideal time to share the news. A smiling face could help start a conversation on the social networks that assist you in beginning a business relationship. Never forget that it’s always about people, so projecting a warm, friendly persona goes a long way towards brand acceptance.

#5 | Add Your Take to a Trending Topic

Now and then a trending, non-controversial topic will closely relate to your industry or you personally. When it does, share the issue with your audience and add relevant commentary.  Since the subject is fresh in people’s minds, your post will get more attention, which also draws eyes towards your brand.

#6 | Tickle Their Funny Bones

Believe it or not, funny cat images are still incredibly powerful! Occasionally sharing pictures or videos that you find amusing is a quick way to gain popularity.

#7 | Fill-In-The-Blanks Are Fun and Engaging

Making a Fill-In-The-Blank is a fun way to engage your digital audience. Any topic can work, but you may as well relate it to your industry and organization for maximum impact.

#8 | Tell the World Your Story

Tell your brand’s story whenever possible, in the most natural way possible. Explain how your company operates and detail your mission. Help others to become passionate about dealing with your company because they share your values.

#9 | Inspire Your Audience

Who doesn’t benefit from reading or hearing something inspirational? Depending on the nature of your business or organization, this could include progress reports on current projects, charitable work you’re involved in, or looking back on how far you’ve come.

#10 | Broadcast Live Video

Are you hosting an event or just having an awesome day at work? Consider doing a Live Video broadcast on Facebook or other Platforms to connect with your audience with the power of video. Ideas could include product demonstrations, client interviews, or broadcasting your event.

#11 | Recognize Another Business

As they say, ‘sharing is caring!’ If you stop by a local company or business, consider sharing a picture is a great way to recognize other companies and share the love!

#12 | Share an Interesting Fact

Almost everyone will agree that it’s refreshing to learn little-known facts. Infographics are particularly compelling for sharing statistics and other structured data.

#13 | Repurpose Like A Boss

Don’t overlook the body of work you already have at your fingertips. Instead of creating something entirely new from scratch, use a photo or other digital asset differently. (Think image filters, text, etc.)

#14 | Celebrate The Season

Join the crowd and help your followers celebrate the season – whatever the season may be! Commonly celebrated Spring holidays include Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter. Summer holidays include Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day. Autumn holidays include Halloween and Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas when winter arrives.

#15 | Share Your Newsletter Content in Your Social Circles

The chances are good that not everyone you interact with online gets your email newsletter. These days, most commercial email providers make it easy for you to share your email newsletter to your social media platforms. This feature empowers you to offer your friends and fans access to your newsletters from their favorite platform.

#16 | Do a Poll to Increase Engagement

One of the most fun ways to engage with your fans, and followers is by making a poll. People love to give their opinions and feedback, so this is an ideal way to energize and promote interactions with your audience.

#17 | Join New Platforms and Establish Your Online Presence

These days, there is always a new online platform to explore and establish your online presence. Embrace the opportunity to join and use these platforms to connect with people you may not know!

We hope that you find this post helpful for spicing things up on your social media marketing channels for the next two weeks!

Start Link Building Like a PR Pro [infographic]

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Denese EakinsDenese is a lover of knowledge and puts her research skills and creative eye to good use with her infographics. When she’s not researching and designing visuals to present data, she spends time volunteering in her other passion–health education.

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Let Log File Analysis Be Your Guide

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The ultimate goal of every successful online business owner is to extract as much value as possible from their website and other digital assets. However, this result usually isn’t something that happens by accident. In fact, it takes quite a bit of skill, knowledge, and time to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together in just the right way for the desired result to occur.

The most significant tool in demystifying what actions people are doing at your website is your log file. If you are unsure what a log file is, here is a simple explanation. It is a simple file output that originates from the web server. This file contains a record of all requests (or ‘hits’) that get sent to the server.

All data that’s received gets stored anonymously. The data file may include the time and date the request was made, the IP address the query was sent from, the URL or content that was requested, as well as the user-agent, browser type, and device information. These files usually are used for technical site audits and basic troubleshooting. Additionally, these log files are extremely helpful for auditing your web results and fine-tuning your pages to improve your metrics and your results.

Why is it essential to conduct log file analysis? There are a number of reasons. Since all requests to the host server are recorded, you get an extensive overview of precisely what type of activity is taking place on the site. Visits from search engine crawlers, robots, and human visitors are recorded every time they visit a page. For more precise information on website activity, operators can filter the user-agent and client IP range to see grouped actions. Using this information, you can get a better understanding of how your site behaves when crawlers or robots visit.

By analyzing your log file, you can pinpoint if website visitors, crawlers, or robots encountered any “bottlenecks” or “obstacles” on your site. The earlier that you detect these barriers in your website navigation, the better! You always want to provide a stellar user experience, so being proactive about fixing potential leaks on your sales and marketing funnel, the better.

If you notice low to no search engine crawlers on your website, this could signify a more significant issue that’s holding your site back from regular crawl activity. Low crawl activity could indicate that your site has thin or low-quality content, poor site speed and/or performance, lack of a Secure Transport Layer (TLS/SSL) connection, duplicate content, or a temporary or permanent penalty.

Another factor to consider is your crawl budget. If you aren’t familiar with what a crawl budget is, here is a brief explanation and some information on how this budget is calculated.

The first thing to recognize is that your crawl budget shouldn’t be confused with your ‘crawl rate.’ They are not one in the same. Your crawl rate refers to the speed that search engines request your pages. Whereas your ‘crawl budget’ refers to the maximum number of pages or documents a search engine crawls when it visits your site.

It’s believed that the crawl budget/allocation is determined based on domain authority. In days past, domain authority was decided by page rank or PR, as part of Google’s ranking algorithm. The higher the site PR, the more crawler activity the site received, so more pages, links, and URL’s were crawled regularly. In many cases, this meant that having a link – preferably one that utilized a keyword rich anchor text – could be the difference between getting first page rankings and not getting found in results at all. Another tactic was to amass many links from sites with lower PR to stimulate crawl activity and influence search engine results.

It’s worth noting that having a sizeable crawl budget should be treated with respect. If possible, you want to eliminate the need for valuable search engines crawlers to traverse thousands of irrelevant, links, especially if they lead to thin, outdated, or absent resources. By keeping your website and funnel content tight and error-free, you help build more authority and trust in your preferred niche. You’re also taking proactive action to prevent penalties or other ranking infractions that can negatively affect your website rankings, as well as free organic website traffic to your site.

Many people find it difficult to decipher the data that raw log files contain, so this is a time when using an internal statistics program is helpful for sorting and identifying areas in your funnel that can be improved for better results. For instance, if your Internal stat program shows that 50% of website visitors on your checkout page are clicking on a different link than the “pay now” button, this is enough evidence to warrant further investigation and the removal of the non-relevant link which blew out your sales funnel in one swoop! Once this leak is “fixed” so to speak – you can test and observe to ensure that the funnel is working as it’s expected.

You can also use a tool like Google Analytics and Google’s Webmaster Tools for further insights into the behavior and performance of your website as well. Setting these tools up takes some time and a bit of technical savviness, but once established, they offer a wealth of information about the activities, click paths, demographics, conversions, keyword rankings, and even live time website traffic data! Further, they collect log file information including where the visitor was referred from, so you can track the number of website visitors you get from social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter – just to name a few.

The devil is always in the details, so making sure that you get everything set up right in the first place is helpful in laying a solid foundation for online success. While this can be a painstaking process, having access to all of this beneficial information gives you a competitive edge in improving your website pages and sales funnels for more conversions and revenue!

SEO Steps Every Local Online Marketer Needs to Take [infographic]

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Denese EakinsDenese is a lover of knowledge and puts her research skills and creative eye to good use with her infographics. When she’s not researching and designing visuals to present data, she spends time volunteering in her other passion–health education.

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SEO and SEM Vocabulary Terms You Must Know To Succeed!

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If you are just getting started in the Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Marketing industry, you undoubtedly have a bit of a learning curve ahead of you!

In this vertical – more than any other industry vertical – you’ll come to learn all types of acronyms and jargon to describe almost everything!

If you’ve never given much thought to vocabulary like keyword density, internal links, landing pages, website crawlers, SERPs, local results, conversion goals, and other phrases, that’s about to change!

To help you get a better understanding for some of the most widely used vocabulary words used in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing, here is a short glossary of Industry related terms you need to know.

A/B Test or Testing

A/B Testing is conducted by showing two different layouts of the same web page to visitors. The software is used to track behavioral differences on Page A versus Page B. A/B Testing determines which web page is more efficient at making conversions or sales.

301 Redirect

A 301 Redirect Message gets displayed when a URL you’re attempting to access is permanently unavailable. This message indicates the destination URL changed location and won’t be shown again.

AdWords

AdWords is Google’s advertising network. AdWords gets used for reaching markets via display and video ads on their partner networks.

302 Redirect

A 302 Redirect is a form of redirection commonly used when an URL has temporarily changed location.

Anchor Text

Anchor text are the words used in the text area of a clickable hyperlink. Anchor text usually describes the subject of the resource to which it links.

Algorithm

An algorithm is search engine technology that’s used to determine a site’s ranking on search engines.

Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO is used to describe Search Engine Optimization tactics that do not adhere to ‘best practices’ in the Industry.

Backlink

A Backlink is used to describe any link to or from another referring website or resource.

Bounce Rate

Your Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors that only look at one web page and don’t view or visit any other pages.

Conversion Rate

A Conversion Rate is established by counting the number of visitors that complete a desired action or goal.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

Cost Per Click Advertising, also known as Pay Per Click (PPC), is a type of advertising where the advertiser pays a set fee each time their ad gets clicked.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand)

CPM is a type of online advertising where advertisers pay a set fee per 1,000 ad displays.

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)

A CPA Ad is measured by the total cost of each sale or leads throughout the sales funnel and ad campaign.

CTR (Click Through Rate)

Click Through Rate is established by calculating the percentage of users that click an ad.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

Cascading Style Sheets is a methodology for adding styles and changing document appearance seamlessly.

Domain Name

A Domain Name is the website address for the site you’re visiting.
(For example Facebook.com or Yahoo.com)

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

HTML is the website code that search engine crawlers and robots read and disseminate.

Indexed Pages

Indexed Pages are single pages on a website that get returned as results by search engines.

Infographic

Infographics are designed to illustrate various facts in an easy to understand and visually appealing way.

Keywords

Keywords are used to describe words or phrases people enter into search engines to find relevant results. Keywords are used for both advertising campaigns and to rank highly in organic search results.

Keyword Density

Keyword Density is used to describe the number of times a specific word or phrase gets used on a blog or a page. Keyword Density is calculated as a percentage by counting the number of times the keyword was used on a page to the total number of words on the page.

Keyword Research

Keyword Research is the process of choosing keywords or phrases that people are most likely to search for in any given market niche.

KPI (Key Performance Indicators)

Key Performance Indicators are methodologies for measuring online marketing goals.

Landing Page

A Landing Page is a strategically designed page that is optimized for results and conversions when a visitor ‘lands’ on the page.

Local Search Result

Local Search Results are search results that give preferential rankings to local companies, businesses, and service providers.

Long Tail Keywords

Long-Tail Keyword phrases are search terms that include more than two or three words.

Meta Description

Your Meta Description is a couple of sentences that display in search results describing the content of a page.

Organic Search Results

Also called “Natural” Search Results, Organic Search results are the unpaid search results. These listings appear underneath paid advertisements on the search results page.

Query(ies)

A Query (or queries)  is used to describe the keyword or keyword phrase a searcher inputs when using a search engine.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing is used to describe the different advertising techniques used to increase the visibility and ranking of a website.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is used to describe all of the processes used to assist a site in ranking higher in search engines.

Search Engine Ranking Page (SERP)

This acronym is used to describe the results page that web searchers see after they’ve put search queries or keywords in the Search Box.

Sitemap

A Sitemap is a page that offers search engine robots and crawlers access to all website pages on a website.

Social Platforms

Some of the most popular Social Platforms used today include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, and others.

Website Traffic

The overall count of visitors, spiders, and robots that visit your website.

User Engagement

User Engagement is the measurement of how people engage with your website once they’ve visited. Engagement is calculated using some factors including actions taken on the page, length of visit, etc.

We hope you found this glossary of SEO and SEM terms helpful and thanks for reading!