By now most everyone is aware of SEO tactics (search engine optimization) that make websites get found easier by search engine robots and bring more traffic to business-based sites. SEO is excellent and necessary to market a brand or business to those potential customers who know what service or product they want but don't know who makes or offers it. A simple search on Google, etc. and myriad sites can be discovered that offer what is being sought, effortlessly.
But for those individuals who already know of a business website and may not feel the need to return to it again and again, content marketing is a powerful and effective set of strategies to cultivate loyal readers and develop brand dedication. Content marketing is the use of content to increase brand value and website revisits, as well as industry authority and rankings with search engines. Below are three effective and vital strategies using content marketing to increase your website audience.
- Blogging. At least twice a week, create a blog post about industry news and analysis, current events or helpful commentary on your business' topics. Not only do you add new content to your site with each post - which search engines love - but you create informative copy that will keep your readers coming back for more. This is a fine way to establish your "voice" in your industry for greater respect and appreciation from your past, present and future customers.
- News Rooms. Thanks to the Google "freshness" update in latter 2011, Google search robots constantly search the web for fresh news and content, eschewing old and mildewed copy for newer material. Creating a news room or press room where you display press releases, announcements and articles from industry sites and journals about your business - each featuring the date of the release - helps to keep your website current and valued by the engine robots. Human readers can also see quickly that your business is continuing to hum along and is vital and active by such news bits released on a continuous basis.
- Resource Sections. The art of content curation is growing rapidly as companies seek to provide value and service through their websites on factual subjects related to their industries. Readers are always looking for sites that they can mark as "favorites" for resources that they can turn to for helpful information. Companies that produce cooking equipment can develop menu sections, while automotive parts sites can create resource sections featuring "how-to" articles on car repairs ansd the history of different vehicles and models. In reality, the sky is veritably the limit when it comes to providing informative and entertaining information culled from various sources that relate to your business. One caveat - always make sure to include credit for where the information has come from - plaigerism will never be an acceptable part of any business model!
Is your interest piqued by content marketing? Fathom can help you develop strong and fresh content on a number of topics for your business. Check-out more blog posts on content creation by Fathom here!
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »With YouTube’s new design layout came a new look for YouTube Analytics, previously known as “Insight.” These metrics break your performance down into three sections - Earnings Report, Views Report and Engagement Report. Today I’m going to focus on the Views Report and will cover the Engagement Report in a later Entry.
The Views Report is broken down into five sections: Views, Demographics, Playback Locations, Traffic Sources and Audience Retention. Each section provides a unique insight into your video’s performance.
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Views: This section shows the number of views, by date, your channel accumulated as a whole and the number of views, by date, for each individual video.
What You Can Learn: This is an easy way to gauge how well each video is performing on a basic level. Pay attention to when your videos see the most views. Do they get a lot of views when first uploaded, and then trickle off, or do they constantly receive a steady stream of views?
Tip: Also take note if there are certain days of the week your videos are viewed more often. This may indicate the best time to post new videos.
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Demographics: This section shows you the age and gender of your viewers as well as their locations down to country and state.
What You Can Learn: This is an important piece of the analytics if your product/service is catered to a specific age, gender or locale. These numbers can tell you if you are on the right track with your videos and that you’re reaching the right target audience.
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Playback Locations: This section, formally part of the Discovery Report in Insight, lays-out where/how online viewers are watching your videos - for example, on a YouTube watch page, mobile device, channel page or on another site with an embedded player.
What You Can Learn: The two important features of the playback locations are the number of views on mobile devices and the number of views on embedded players. If the number of views on mobile devices is low or non-existent, check to make sure your videos are playable on mobile devices. This setting can be found in the Edit Info and Settings on each video in the Video Manager section. If you, or someone else, has embedded your YouTube player on another site, this section can tell you how many views have been seen there compared to on YouTube itself.
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Traffic Sources: The traffic sources, previously known as Discovery in the old YouTube Analytics, tell you how people are discovering your videos - from YouTube, from outside YouTube on other portals or websites, or from Mobile Apps and direct traffic.
What You Can Learn: There are a couple key insights you can make from this section. The most important may be how many views are coming from YouTube or Google searches. If the percentage of these two sources are low, that means your videos are either not coming up when people search for your topics, or your audience isn’t searching for what your videos offer. If these numbers are low, you may want to try and better optimize your YouTube title, descriptions and tags. Another key insight is the Home Page feed and subscriptions sources. If these numbers are low, that may mean you either don’t have enough subscribers or you don’t have the right subscribers because they aren’t interested in your content. The last big source, if you participate in it, is the YouTube advertising. This will show you if your advertising spend is successful or not. Knowing where your traffic comes from helps you to know how to best market your videos.
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Audience Retention: This section, formally know as Hot Spots, is only for individual video data. It tells you how much of your video your viewers are watching and at what point in the video they stop watching.
What You Can Learn: By studying the audience retention, you can understand if your video is engaging enough to keep the attention of your audience or not. If people are dropping off early in the video, this could tell you that the beginning of the video isn’t engaging enough or if your video isn’t what people expect when they click on it. If people are dropping off somewhere in the middle of your video, you may want to consider that your video is either too long, or not entertaining or educational enough. This section is really important to monitor so that you can know if you should edit your videos or not.
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It’s important to periodically sign into YouTube and spend some time checking-out your analytics. Video marketing isn’t nearly as effective if you can’t tell if it’s successful. It’s also a marketing source that is hard to put a financial return upon, so consider setting a “social” return goal on your vides that measures things like views, interaction, shares etc.
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »The Company Profile – Why you’re missing the mark for SEO
On my down time, I read a lot of press releases, product announcements and general business news. I must have issues, because it’s something I really enjoy! Point being, I often read a piece of interesting content, e.g. a new product announcement, and am intrigued to learn more about the company. Within the announcement, the company information is most often contained in a standard footer paragraph that has been approved by PR, and is very, very bland. Not only bland, but it’s not catered in ANY way to the audience reading the given announcement, i.e. me. Here are some ideas on how this could be done better, and why:
Positioning
Part of my job is sales. I work for a company that has a great deal of experience with technology and education clients. If I’m speaking to an organization in the education industry, do you think I’m telling them about our wonderful experience and history with tech companies? Of course not! Take the same course with your public-facing content on the Web. If you’re sending a press release about your new software product, then you might want to cater the company information to the audience that is reading the press release. Instead of regurgitating your company history, ticker symbol and basic information – perhaps you could give the background of the product’s history and how it was created, with sprinkles of ticker symbols and company info to appease your PR and exec teams. Think of this as your first impression with a potential prospect. How much of the information within your “About Us” paragraph does the prospect really care about?
How does this help with SEO?
Typically, every press release, article, blog post and any other content on the Web has the exact same company info paragraph with the exact same links pointing to the homepage. Boring! Mix it up, and your readers (along with Google) will thank you for it. You’ll have a better range of anchor text and diversification of incoming links, both good for SEO.
Conversion
This goes hand-in-hand with the positioning bullet point. If I’m reading about your new product (this is a good time to clarify that it doesn’t have to be a press release ... it could be a summary of one of your products on another external site or a video about your new features, etc.), then I’m also going to read about your company. Typically, that’s when I’m going to click on a link to learn more. If your company description is not catered to my needs, or if your website content doesn’t match the product I was previously reading about, then I’m likely to go away. However, if I’m reading an external article that highlights a company’s attributes, then sends me to a corporate webpage that also speaks to this, your conversion rates will increase.
Implementing something like this can be tricky—I get it! Start small. Write a few versions of your company boilerplate and walk over to the PR office and ask for approval. They’re busy folks, but are more likely to green-light something like this if you’ve taken the initiative. Or, if you’re working with an agency like Fathom, we’ll take the initiative, and you can take the credit!
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Image courtesy of joshme17 via Flickr.
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Happy new year! Every month at company meetings, a handful of Fathomers are recognized in front of the group for extraordinary manifestations of our four core values ("everyone a leader," "be the consigliere," "make order from chaos," "reward sustainable results"). This space will immortalize their accomplishments for the world to see. I hereby present the 3rd edition of Core Value Stories:
- Everyone a Leader, Stacey Stingley -- For organizing Fathom's most recent "brown bag" internal training sessions.
- Be the Consigliere, Clinton Dugan (pictured) -- For helping with Fathom's December Facebook campaign for Cleveland Foodbank donations.
- Make Order from Chaos, Amanda Bastock -- For stepping in to help out with many aspects of a key account in the education industry.
- Reward Sustainable Results, Anna Eytchison -- For persevering in link-building initiatives, most notably in the furniture company “Elements of Style” campaign.
To the victors go the spoils ... huzzah!
For helping with the Cleveland Foodbank donation campaign, as part of the Fathom Unleashed Facebook priority
My trusty iPad or iPhone rarely leave my side at client or internal meetings. Not only do they increase my productivity, but they keep me sane, organized and on track. Over the year I have compiled a list of my favorite iPhone and iPad apps used at Fathom for managing tasks, and at home while reading about the industry. Other Fathom iOS (iPhone and iPad) users have helped contribute to this list, and I would love for others to leave a comment below with your favorite apps that help with online marketing. We will look to continue adding to this list, so please bookmark this post and stay tuned!
Last updated: 12/22/2011
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