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The Four Types of Bloggers You Need to Work With

The Four Types of Bloggers You Need to Work With

When you run a blog, you’re essentially running a self-made magazine. There are a lot of unspoken rules. Between formatting, how many pictures per post, subject matter, the keywords you should use, and more. If you’re looking for consistent blog readers, you’ll need to keep a high level of content.

One of the best ways to maintain quality content is by guest bloggers. But, who do you pick to blog for you? First, you need to make sure the guest blogger adds value to your blog. They need to be a part of your niche community, or they need to have something of value to share.

One big misconception about blogging is that a guest blogger and a thought leader are the same thing. They’re not. A guest blogger can be anyone with an unusual perspective or a tip they’d like to offer to your readers. Maybe they have a blog that gets a lot of readers, and they want to expand their audience.

A thought leader is a proven guru in their field of study. A thought leader provokes insight or explains processes that are deeper than what you could offer. A thought leader needs to have credential that vaults them above the crowd.

These four bloggers are sure to add value and substance to your blog:

Technical experts

Maybe you run a blog dedicated to Nintendo and old school gaming culture. Why not hook up with someone who knows the in’s and out’s of the hardware? A total pro who can help readers understand why games work a certain way or offer a solution to a machine that’s stopped working. Maybe this blogger can teach your readers tips and tricks to clean their Sega Genesis or keeping their Turbografx 16 in working order when parts are scarce.

Everyone loves How To’s or a niche-related pro-tip. Expert advice is an easy win and always gets a lot of readers. If you play your KEYwords correctly, a blog that offers evergreen content will always rank because the value never diminishes.

Essayists

In years past, newspapers and magazines swore off the long form, kicking it down to two or three pieces per issue. Now that everything is digital, writers have complete freedom to go as long as they like. If in your adventures of gaming, you stumble upon a blogger who can offer a deep cut into gaming history, readers love learning about their niche. If you can mix up the usual content with a few longer pieces, the effect can satisfy many readers tastes because of the options.

As long as the essay adds value and the writing is solid, adding long form could be an excellent way to separate your brand from the pack.

Celebrities

There’s famous and then famous to particular groups of people. Sure, would getting a piece written by Brad Pitt get you some readers? You bet it would. But, let’s be realistic, if you run a blog dedicated to a niche community, it’s best to find the people who stand out, and everyone knows them.

By tapping that celebrity culture, it brings an instant gratification that your blog is cool. No one with a following will just blog anywhere, or so it’s perceived. If you can land a popular gamer or someone who’s well known in the industry, people will view your blog in a much different light. Despite actually not having any significant bearing on your content’s quality, this move works best for gaining awareness with a whole different set of people who didn’t know your blog existed.

Thought leaders

We touched on them earlier, but thought leaders are a crucial score for the success of any blog that deals with a particular community. A thought leader, like a celebrity, lends a different level of credibility to anyone’s blog. Because they’re considered an expert in their field than just famous, the degree of respect is different.

Negotiating terms with a thought leader can be lengthy, but most of the time, having their name attached to your blog is a worthy pursuit. If you want to have a more professional, critically-minded tonality to your blog, working with thought leaders is an awesome way to access knowledge and get content people are excited about.

If you put in the work and mix these personality types in with your content, there’s a great chance you’ll see unique visitors to your blog each week. Just remember to keep the quality high and the reader’s value in mind.

If you’ve got any blogging pro tips, we’d love to hear them. Shoot us a Tweet or leave a comment.

Machielle Thomas, 
Influencer Marketing: Is It the Right Tactic for Your Blog?

Influencer Marketing: Is It the Right Tactic for Your Blog?

By Machielle Thomas, Content Manager

In an ever-changing digital marketing world, bloggers and brands alike are looking for the next big way to generate revenue and website traffic. In 2017 (and for the foreseeable future), that tactic is influencer marketing. As reported by a 2016 TapInfluence study with Nielsen Catalina Solutions, influencer marketing content delivers 11 times higher return on investment (ROI) than traditional digital marketing methods.

With such a drastic ROI, it’s no wonder bloggers are jumping on the influencer marketing train, and from both angles, too. Bloggers are transforming their website and marketing efforts to position themselves as influencers, while also targeting and working with other influencers to promote and distribute content.

As a result of the skyrocketing popularity and success of influencer marketing, you may be wondering: Should I become an influencer? Is influencer marketing the right tactic for my blog?

The answer is a resounding it depends. For some industries, blogs, and brands, you’d be crazy not to take advantage of influencer marketing. However, for others, influencer marketing would be a waste of precious marketing funds.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Defined by TapInfluence, influencer marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using key leaders to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. Rather than send promotional content directly to consumers with traditional digital marketing tactics, such as email marketing and display ads, influencer marketing relies on outside individuals known as influencers to deliver a message.

Influencers are individuals with moderate to large fan followings on top social media and content marketing platforms including Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. In addition, many of these influencers operate and maintain a blog.

When a brand decides to use influencer marketing as part of their promotional strategy, they must target, connect with, and properly compensate influencers. Often, influencers will create sponsored content featuring the brand and product/service to share on their respective social media channels and blog.

Why Do Brands Use Influencer Marketing?

In an age where anyone can become an advertiser, we are more skeptical than ever about our online activity and purchases. It has been reported that 96% of people believe the advertising industry does not act with integrity, with 69% of these people attributing their mistrust to the advertisers’ desire to sell more effectively.

With this in mind, we look to our friends and trusted sources for recommendations and advice, as well as for guidance on purchases. In fact, 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on a social media reference.

When brands partner with online influencers, they are looking to prove to customers why they are a trusted company and product or service. With 49% of people saying they rely on recommendations from influencers when making purchase decisions, it’s easy to see why companies hop on the influencer marketing bandwagon.

On top of online sales, brands use influencer marketing to:

  • Drive social media engagement on their brand channels
  • Gain quality backlinks for their online content
  • Generate consistent website traffic
  • Foster a connection with targeted audiences
  • Improve awareness of a brand or specific campaign

While influencer marketing can be beneficial for both parties involved, you need to determine if it is the right course of action for you and your blog before jumping in head first.

How to Determine if Influencer Marketing is Right for Your Blog

First, let’s approach the question from the standpoint of becoming an influencer.

To become an influencer, you must regularly create quality content on your blog and on social media. On top of developing and distributing content, you need to regularly interact with your audience and generate a loyal following of fans. This is not a small feat.

Plus, you must determine if you have a competitive edge in your particular market or niche. What makes you stand out as a blogger or influencer? Can you carve a place for yourself as an influencer? If so, have at it! Work to position yourself in the market and begin partnering with brands as an influencer.

On the other hand, if you are not ready to become an influencer, you can partner with relevant influencers to improve awareness of your brand and blog. However, while a 2015 Forrester report claims 73% of marketers say they have an allocated budget for influencer marketing, it’s not the best tactic for every blog.

To determine if influencer marketing is the right path for your blog, complete the following steps.

1. Ask “Why?”

You shouldn’t invest in influencer marketing because everyone else is. You need to identify why influencer marketing will be an advantageous marketing strategy to accomplish your objectives.

Are you looking to have influencers share and link to your blog content for search marketing purposes? Are you looking to drive more targeted customers to your blog? Perhaps you’re looking to grow your social media following and share your content with a larger audience. All of these goals can be accomplished by collaborating with influencers in your particular market or industry.

2. Set Goals

As with all online marketing tactics, you must set objectives for your influencer marketing strategy. Goals can include:

  • Increasing your social media following by X% over a specific period of time
  • Improving the amount of website traffic from a specific online source
  • Raising the number of brand/blog mentions online
  • Adding more quality backlinks to your blog link portfolio

Without outlining your goals, you will spend money on influencer efforts without being able to quantify the results. This may lead to short-term gains but not long-term outcomes.

3. Ask if Influencer Marketing Makes Sense for Your Industry

Also, before giving the “go ahead” on influencer marketing, you need to identify if the right influencers for your industry exist. Some industries, such as the lifestyle products and travel industries, are overwhelmed with influencers. These blogs and brands have thousands of influencers to vet and choose from. On the other hand, manufacturing businesses and the pharmaceutical industry will have a harder time finding the right influencers to partner with.

You must also determine if influencer marketing truly makes sense for your industry. Do customers rely on the opinions of influencers before purchasing your products or services? For commodities, certain B2B markets, and other industries such as manufacturing, this may not be the case.

Take the time to research your industry and identify influencers that would partner well with your marketing objectives.

Tools to Help You Win at Influencer Marketing

Should you decide that influencer marketing is the way to go, use these tools as part of your strategy:

Followerwonk by Moz

Followerwonk is a free tool from Moz which allows users to search for Twitter influencers based on a number of filters including topics, followers, and social authority.

UTM Parameters

UTM Parameters are tiny bits of code added to the end of a website URL to help marketers track results. Use these parameters when working with influencers to identify how much traffic their content drives to your website or blog content.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is an in-depth content marketing tool which allows you to research topics, influencers, and so much more. This robust tool helps marketers find ideal influencers based on keywords, hashtags, and social media metrics.

SEOquake

If using influencer marketing for SEO and link building purposes, you’ll want to know more about the influencer’s website. SEOquake is a browser add-on that delivers robust information about websites with a few simple clicks.

CrowdFire

CrowdFire enables users to identify people to follow based on interests, industries, and more. In addition, this tool is great for influencers who need to manage their personal social media following and unfollow irrelevant or dormant accounts.

BuzzStream

As one of the leading blogger outreach tools, BuzzStream is an essential asset for influencer marketing strategies. With BuzzStream, brands can analyze influencers, reach out for opportunities, and manage relationships in one place.

Will You Invest in Influencer Marketing?

So, is influencer marketing right for your blog after all? Let us know in the comments section below.

How to Identify Your Social Media Influencers

How to Identify Your Social Media Influencers

By Alex York for Sprout Social

If you hang around a social media marketer long enough, you’re bound to hear the term social media influencers tossed around in conversation. Social media influencers are the bread and butter to marketing strategies and help brands build valuable relationships on social media platforms.

Most social media managers prize their social media influencers because they can drive engagement and word-of-mouth communication to your brand at a higher rate than standard organic methods. At the same time, some managers are hesitant to deem someone a social media influencer just because they have thousands of followers.

There has to be a middle ground toward influencer marketing and it starts with you understanding the goals of your brand and what the influencer will accomplish. Creating goals and outlining each party’s responsibilities, possibly including it in a social media proposal, is essential to see results.

In this article we’ll discuss three key subjects to get your influencer marketing campaign up and running. Click the links below to jump to each section of this article:

  • Why You Need Social Media Influencers
  • How to Identify Social Media Influencers
  • Creating Campaigns Around Social Media Influencers

What Are Social Media Influencers?

Social media influencers are power users who can help your potential customers make a buying decision through social networking. Whether they’re a blogger, product reviewer, industry expert or a trusted source of information, your social media influencers are unique to your field and product or service.

For example, if you’re trying to find a social media influencer on grilling and barbecuing, you’ll want people such as:

  • Food critics in the industry
  • People with popular outdoor cooking Instagram accounts
  • Grilling bloggers who write for major recipe sites
  • Grill and barbecue pit builders
  • Ribs and barbecue contest judges
  • TV chef personalities (i.e. someone who won Chopped)

The best way to find your social media influencers is by thinking about whose voice you trust. If you were searching for a reason to buy or try out a service, wouldn’t you want the most trusted and reliable source?

A survey from Nielsen showed only 33% of consumers trust advertisements, while 90% put their faith in peer recommendations. Getting influencers to persuade consumers can drastically work in your favor when correctly executed.

Why You Need Social Media Influencers

Like we previously mentioned, people tend to trust peer recommendations over any company advertisement. Working with social media influencers is another step toward humanizing your brand.

If you have social media influencers with loyal audiences, a brand mention goes much further than a Tweet from your company account. These followers trust the influencer’s opinion, which is why they follow in the first place.

Reputation plays such a key role in buyer decisions. Here we can see aerial photographer, Ryan Patterson, boosting the presence of United on Instagram. These types of mentions spread awareness faster and more efficiently. Even United often Regrams content from its biggest followers.

Here are a few more reasons why you should trust social media influencers:

Influencers Reach Core Demographics

More so than anything else, social media influencers are great at speaking to their core demographic. For some marketers, there has been success with the adoption of influencers over traditional marketing techniques. One area you can see this happening is with visual media.

The popularity of Instagram and Facebook Video has marketers looking for more opportunities with social media video. A report from Cisco’s Visual Networking Index claims online video traffic will account for 80% of all web traffic by 2019.

Adding influencer video content can help you reach more of your core demographic. Just make sure you adjust your traffic wants, goals and needs to your influencers so everyone is on the same page.

Your best social media influencers are going to be the ones that already share content that is similar to your brand. You want to be in the same circle so it doesn’t seem like a stretch when you ask influencers to talk about you. Again, this idea usually comes back to humanizing your outreach and content.

Influencers Build Relationships

Some influencer naysayers believe these trendy social experts aren’t as effective as working with brand advocates because they’re short-term solutions. However, working with influencers builds meaningful relationships over time, while brand advocates are more short-term solutions. The worst thing you can do while searching for influencers is to rush the process.

Both are great options for your marketing strategy, but each has their place. Advocates are more likely to be your happy customers, while influencers reach direct audiences with their social media skills.

It might seem difficult to build relationships when you don’t even know the specific audiences. But with the help of Sprout Social’s Audience Targeting, you can post influencer posts to specific audience groups all within the compose window.

This will help you reach, build and engage your followers across all channels. And like any relationship, it takes time and dedication to build trust. This same logic fits perfectly with your influencers.

Influencers Increase SEO Value

It’s a smart idea to constantly look for new ways to create awareness around your brand. And using influencers to build your SEO value is a great way to do it. According to Moz, some of the most prominent ways Google leverages ranking in its algorithm is from domain and page-level links and keyword and content-based features.

Essentially quality of links, quantity of links to root domains and optimization of keyword usage within your content are some of the most essential aspects to better rankings. Influencers with well-trusted and established sites can bring a ton of value to your own.

Also, social media influencers can impact your SEO through:

  • More brand mentions: The more people are talking about your brand, the likelier they are to share, post, comment or cite in a blog. All of these lead to higher organic traffic.
  • Increased backlinks: A pillar to SEO is obtaining backlinks, which essentially help show the popularity and importance of your site. With links from websites considered authorities or influencers in your industry, your site becomes more credible.

While it’s safe to say not every piece of social media content is indexed, it’s still beneficial to be present, active and engaging to increase links to your site. Influencers can help with this and even possibly get other larger entities to share your content or link back to you.

How to Identify Social Media Influencers

You might be thinking, “Okay, great—I know why social media influencers are important, but how do I find them?” We like your eagerness, but before you can start interacting and working with your influencers, you have to do some research. For starters, here are a few different tools you can use to find the perfect influencer for your brand:

  • Audience targeting
  • Twitter analytics

BuzzSumo

A tool that continues to help brands find true influencers in their field is BuzzSumo. With this content marketing tool, it’s simple to discover, measure and monitor content to be one step ahead of the game. BuzzSumo also has an influencers and outreach feature that is made specifically for finding the top writers, bloggers and publications in your field using the same keywords you’re trying to reach as well.

BuzzSumo gives you the option to sort via influencers, bloggers, companies and regular users who might not have the status of an influencer. But if you ever need to find who is an expert in your industry, this is the tool.

Remember that influencers are not just those who have a high number of followers. Instead, it’s more efficient to look at their total number of shares per article, site domain authority, Retweet ratio and page authority. BuzzSumo makes it absolutely painless to search, find and analyze the top influencers in your industry.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is built specifically for helping you network with others in and around your industry. So why not use the social media platform to help find influencers? Social Media Examiner recommends you enter specific keywords or phrases within the search box to pull up second-degree connections and those who are directly related to your search.

Don’t be shy about reaching out to those who you feel would be great influencers. However, you don’t want to be too forward with what you want from them. Avoid sounding spammy or too needy as well. Instead try some of these icebreakers on LinkedIn:

  • Start liking their shares and posts before adding them to your network.
  • Send a meaningful message about their content.
  • Ask them to join one of your LinkedIn groups (or join theirs).
  • Let them know how you found them (be honest).
  • Explain you’d just like a moment of their time (value their time).

The worst thing you can do is sound robotic and dehumanize the conversation. Secondly, put some effort into your research and have something specific and nice to say about what they do. The last thing you want is to seem rushed and that you only want something from them because they were the first result in your search.

Twitter

As we’ve mentioned before, Twitter is a great space to find, interact and converse with your social media influencers. Twitter’s advanced search options give you a lot of opportunity to reach specific audiences or find those who are addressing niche crowds in your industry.

If you need more help with advanced search, check out our Twitter Search Operators Cheat Sheet.

Twitter is great for pushing content and measuring how much traction you gained from a specific post or article. Using Twitter analytics tools from Sprout Social provides huge benefits into finding trending topics and hashtags with your brand. Once you can determine the subjects revolving around your brand, you can easily search for influencers with these key topics.

Use Twitter’s data to help you make better decisions on how you’ll search the network for social media influencers.

Building a Campaign Around Social Media Influencers

Once you understand why social media influencers are important and how to find them, it’s time to construct a campaign around them. When you’re building your campaign, you have to identify the goals you want to reach through your influencers.

You can ask influencers to interact with your campaign by:

  • Guest blogging
  • Sponsored posts
  • Collaborate on an event
  • Becoming an affiliate
  • Asking for product reviews
  • Giving products to influencers

It’s smart to move through the noise of standard advertising and to focus on creating a message your audience actually wants to hear. This is exactly where your influencers can help with your marketing process.

Use Influencers for Niche Audiences

Influencers have the ability to reach very specific audiences. Instead of you relying on thousands of followers, influencers will help you ensure people read and engage with your content.

If you’re going after a niche audience, make sure your influencers know your plan and how they will interact with their followers.

Create Mutual Goals

Your social media influencers need to get something from working with you as well, so again, make sure you have mutually beneficial goals. It’s important that both sides of the party work to post content each day to help build awareness to each audience.

You can’t simply rely on one party to do all the heavy lifting when you’re working together. Map out each side’s goals and work from there. It’s also a good idea to work in the same social network groups so each side can provide insight to discussions and conversations.

Get Started

Creating thoughtful and engaging content isn’t the easiest job on the planet. However, influencers can help you get your brand in the right direction. Remember to think about social media influencer relationships for the long run.

It’s important to know that if you use or abuse your influencer relationships, it can come back to bite you and your brand in the worst way. With a little hard work, research and collaborative efforts, you can be well on your way to boosting your brand’s identity.

Think we forgot something? Feel free to add your own insights and start the conversation below!

 

4 surefire ways to skyrocket your online sales

4 surefire ways to skyrocket your online sales

With the plethora of eCommerce websites vying for people’s attention, it’s getting harder to not only find a unique niche, but also to turn a respectable profit. Of course, if you aren’t able to attract customers, your eCommerce sales will undoubtedly suffer.

The good news is that there are some sure-fire ways you can bolster your sales income, and you likely already have all the tools and expertise you need to implement them. You might need to introduce a new business strategy or tweak your home page’s effectiveness, but a high-converting website is well within reach.

In this post, we’ll take a look at four ways you can maximize your eCommerce sales without resorting to unethical or overly complicated methods. Let’s get started!

Maximize your eCommerce sales with these 4 steps

  1. Sell to your existing customers first.

  2. Introduce a Pay What You Want strategy.

  3. Optimize your home page for increased conversions.

  4. Introduce Micro-Moments for mobile users.

1. Sell to your existing customers first

Traditionally, you conduct business by encouraging a constant influx of new customers. However, many businesses have discovered that their existing customer base offers a better opportunity to bolster sales.

For starters, your existing customers should already be onboard with your philosophies, meaning they enter the sales funnel later in the process. Also, it’s actually cheaper to sell to your current customers than to acquire new ones.

Fortunately, this strategy is well within the reach of most businesses, and it all starts with your email list. First, target your email list subscribers consistently and often, as they’re ready-made potential customers. Next, make sure you’re automating your emails to follow up with new customers, as this is a great opportunity to turn them into regulars.

2. Introduce a Pay What You Want (PWYW) strategy

This is a concept that on the surface seems to devalue your offerings, but could actually help business boom. A PWYW strategy is just what it sounds like: you give the customer the opportunity to name their price for your products or services.

Before you dismiss this approach, consider the benefits. You’re enabling more customers to enter the sales funnel and boosting your reputation by displaying generosity. If you sell digital products, you can even reduce piracy by making your product easily obtainable.

There are plenty of tips for implementing this strategy. First, you’ll want to find out what the relevant options are for your current eCommerce solution (for example, WooCommerce has a Name Your Price extension). Then, promote urgency by limiting the offer to a set time period. Finally, it’s smart to still set a minimum price for your product to make sure you’re earning something from every customer, although this will obviously impact conversions.

3. Optimize your home page for increased conversions

Your home page is akin to a storefront. As such, it needs to be deftly laid out to maximize conversions. It makes sense to offer an entry to your sales funnel here, which can supercharge your eCommerce sales figures if done correctly.

This isn’t simply about tweaking your call-to-action (CTA), although that’s a good start. After that, here’s our advice on how to improve your home page:

  • Offer a Unique Value Proposition (UVP). You shouldn’t assume visitors will understand why they should buy from you. It’s important to add content to your home page outlining why you’re the best.
  • Introduce risk reducers. The goal here is to make purchasing less risky. Including prominent verbiage — for example, referring to your free shipping and returns options, or adding a lowest price guarantee — can make all the difference.
  • Split test your changes regularly. Making site tweaks without judging their effectiveness is akin to throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks. Testing and refining your changes will pay off in the long run.
The takeaway here is not to rely on your product pages to do the heavy lifting.

Your entire website should get customers moving through the funnel, starting with your home page.

4. Introduce micro-moments for mobile users

Micro-moments is a fairly new concept from Google. It considers the number of engagement opportunities a potential customer experiences before making a purchase, and aims to take advantage of as many of them as possible. For example, think about how people use Google and Amazon on mobile devices when shopping for in-store items. Given the dominance of mobile browsing, this is a simple way to slot into the customer’s buying process.

The idea of micro-moments is still a developing strategy, although there are some key aspects to consider. You’ll want to make sure your mobile search engine optimization is solid, then consider these four key micro-moments:

  • I-Want-to-Know moments. This first moment is the customer’s curiosity phase when they’re searching for any worthy information on the product they’re considering.
  • I-Want-to-Go moments. If you have a physical store, getting your details in front of curious visitors at this point can net you a sale.
  • I-Want-to-Do moments. This is the how-to phase — i.e., when people do research on how the product will be used — and could come either before or after the purchase. Your site’s content is key here.
  • I-Want-to-Buy moments. The customer is in buying mode in this phase, and it’s now up to you to help them make a purchase.

There’s a lot more you can do with this burgeoning conversion strategy, so we recommend delving into the Google microsite to find out exactly how you can maximize your eCommerce sales using micro-moments.

Conclusion

eCommerce is more competitive than ever before, which means you’ll have to pull out all the stops to make sure your store turns a profit. Failure to keep ahead of your competitors could see you enter a lean period you might not recover from.

This post has looked at four different ways you can maximize your eCommerce sales. Let’s recap them quickly:

  1. Focus on selling to your existing customers, rather than trying to constantly gain new ones.
  2. Implementing a PWYW strategy could see your profits rise, but requires an invested customer base.
  3. Your home page should be optimized to convert as many customers as possible.
  4. Micro-moments is a new concept, but could be the difference between mediocre and bolstered sales.

Editor’s note: Just getting started and need a platform that can handle your eCommerce sales? Check out GoDaddy’s Online Store. You can have a site running in less than an hour, and it’s fully equipped with multiple payment and shipping options, inventory tracking, eCommerce design features and more. Best of all? You can try it for free.

How small business can find the right social media influencers

How small business can find the right social media influencers

I’ll let you in on a little secret — traditional marketing alone is dead. Gone are the days of solely relying on TV ads to showcase your business. Now, your brand is up for debate. Blog posts, product reviews, insider tips, social media sharing and more. Consumers can take to the streets and share their opinion, even if it’s different from yours. So how do you spread a positive message in this type of environment? You find social media influencers who are passionate about you, your brand or your business.

When starting a business, relationships are everything. There’s a reason word of mouth is still the best form of marketing. If you use large, impersonal channels, your results will be sterile and disappointing.

Small businesses that put love, care and quality into their products should put love, care and quality into their marketing.
Social media influencers are a great way to get your clear, personal message out there.

Social media influencer evolution

If you think back to the early days of social media, which wasn’t all that long ago. It was typical for businesses, brands and peddlers of products to virtually shout at people to buy their wares. Sadly, some still continue to do this and then wonder why their sales aren’t going up.

Think of it like this: Would you run up to a stranger on the street and scream in their face about your product? Probably not. It’s ineffective, not to mention annoying, and it causes people to tune out, or run away if you’re standing on a sidewalk.

Since those early days, it’s been realized that consumers still want to be treated like humans (surprise!) and not invisible beings on the interwebs. Businesses and brands have leveraged brand advocates to serve and influencers to attract more people authentically to their products.

What is a social media influencer?

Social media influencers are a marketing channel just like TV or radio marketing. This type of marketing leverages the captive audience of “influencers” (people with large, passionate followings) on social media platforms. For example, when one of the Kardashians posts about the product of the moment on their social media channels, their followers listen, subscribe and purchase.

You’re probably thinking, “Well, I can’t get one of the Kardashians. Now what?” You don’t need someone with millions of followers.

If you can find a social media influencer to promote your business in an authentic way, with even 5,000 highly engaged people as their core audience, that’s 5,000 people who likely haven’t heard of your business or product before.

And they’ll be more likely to buy because they trust their “friend.”

Why are social media influencers hot right now?

Customers are more likely to purchase something based on a friend’s recommendation than an ad. Social media influencers have become people you look up to and view as friends. People always trust their friends more than brands.Influencer marketing is hot because traditional advertising can’t meet all the demands of today’s consumers. Many use a second screen, like a smartphone or tablet, while watching television, causing traditional advertising to miss the mark.

It doesn’t make sense to pay for TV time when no one is paying attention.

People don’t want to be disrupted — meaning, they don’t want to watch a beer ad during their favorite TV show or sniff a cologne leaflet while reading a magazine. They want a seamless experience. Social media influencer marketing intertwines “ads” (sponsored content) within that influencer’s life.

Finding the right social media influencer

Now what? How do you find the right people to represent your business? Here are some tips:

  • Determine what your brand stands for. What is your business or brand really about?
  • Find social media influencers who share your values and already use your product. Search on social media channels like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
  • Make your messaging as authentic as possible. In other words, find or create brand advocates and give them a megaphone.
  • Empower them by giving them free products, politely asking or offering payment. Just remember that if they receive something from you in exchange for their review, they’ll likely disclaim that.

Social media influencers are not a magic pill or a cure all. They’re simply a magnifying glass.

Find the right people who are already loyal to your brand or niche and empower them to spread your message. Authenticity is the way of the future. Consumers have the power. People have the power — brands and businesses don’t. When you make a great product and have the right people shout about it from the rooftops, you really can’t lose.

What is Google Data Studio and how can you use it?

What is Google Data Studio and how can you use it?

Google Data Studio allows you to create branded reports with data visualizations to share with your clients. Columnist Sherry Bonelli explains the benefits and how to try it out.

Analytics has always been a challenge for most digital marketers. It can be confusing, overwhelming and, quite frankly, difficult for the ordinary human to understand and decipher. In many cases, marketers don’t even report back their clients’ analytics because they’re just not sure where to start — partly because of information overload and difficult-to-understand data.

To make matters worse, there was really no easy way to provide their local SMB clients with an overview of how their site or campaigns were performing that was easy to read and understand. If you’re like most agencies that do provide clients with analytics reports, it typically means laboriously downloading Google Analytics data and putting that data into Excel spreadsheets to create charts and diagrams from there.

Google now allows you to create reports that even your clients will understand — thanks to Google Data Studio.

Google Data Studio is part of the Google Analytics 360 Suite — the high-end (i.e., pricey) Google Analytics Enterprise package. Since most of us can’t afford to spend that much money for an analytics tracking tool, we typically opt for the free version of Google Analytics. But Google has decided to give those of us using the free version of Google Analytics a taste of what’s possible.

What is Google Data Studio?

Google Data Studio (in beta) gives you everything you need to turn your client’s analytics data into informational, easy-to-understand reports through data visualization.

The reports are easy to read, easy to share and even customizable to each of your clients. You can select how you want to present the data — bar graphs, charts, line graphs and so on. You can even change fonts and colors and brand the reports with your logo.

One thing that’s cool about Data Studio is that you can pull in more than just Google Analytics data – you can even import Facebook data, as long as you put that information into a Google Sheet. (That’s right. Any reporting information you have on a Google Sheet can be pulled into Google Data Studio — and your beautiful reports!) If you can get your data into Google Sheets, it can show up in your reports.

The reports are also dynamic, so when there’s an update to the data source, the updated/new information automatically shows up on any reports that reference the source. Additionally, the reports are shareable, so you can grant people permission to view the reports and/or allow them to make changes.

Google Data Studio uses the same functionality as Google Docs and Google Sheets, so all you need to do is press the “Share” button to let your clients or other members of your team view or edit the reports.

How to Access Google Data Studio

To access Google Data Studio, visit https://www.google.com/analytics/data-studio and log in using your Google Analytics login information. Right now, if you’re using the free version of Google Analytics, you get a limited version of Data Studio. You can create up to five custom reports for free.

Note: This program is currently only available in the US, but it’s expected to be rolled out to other countries throughout the rest of this year.

When you first log in. you will see some sample reports that will give you a good idea of the look and feel of the reports and the types of information you can pull into your custom reports once you get going. Go through each of these sample reports so you can see all of the possibilities.

Welcome Data Studio

When you click on the “Welcome to Data Studio! (Start here)” link, you’re taken to a visual, interactive tutorial that will walk you step-by-step through what Data Studio can do and how to get started. Be sure to check this out.

Click Data Studio

Google also provides you with a YouTube video that you can watch to get a quick overview of the tool, and it gives you a walk-through on how to connect your data sources and create your first report.

In the upper left-hand corner of the home page, you will see Reports and Data Sources. Reports lets you create reports and data visualizations. Data Sources are reusable components that connect a report to your data, such as Google Analytics, Google Sheets, Google AdWords and so forth.

Report Data

Google Data Studio uses the Google Drive interface, so it’ll be familiar to you if you use Google Drive. If you DO get lost, all you need to do is click the home button:

Google Data Studio Home

To create a new report, click on the blue plus (+) button at the bottom right-hand corner and accept the terms and conditions:

New Report

Then you’re off!

Is Google Data Studio right for you?

If you’re the type of person who likes working with spreadsheets, you might not think that Data Studio is a big deal. But for the huge number of us who hate spreadsheets, this is a godsend. (Finally! You can take a look at your analytics data — and it makes sense.)

Now, when you’re talking to your local clients, you can easily show them the results of your efforts in an easy-to-understand, brandable report! By sharing these reports with your clients, they will be able to see how your digital marketing efforts are paying off — which is definitely good for your business.

By Search Engine Land

5 Tips to Create a Compelling Call to Action That Gets Clicked

5 Tips to Create a Compelling Call to Action That Gets Clicked

*Buy now!* *Sign up today!* *Join our mailing list!* Blah blah blah… Oftentimes, call to actions are bland and fail to do their intended job: getting people to engage in an action of your design. Luckily, there exist quick fixes to save your call to action (CTA) and make it more effective. For example, by adding one single call to action on your web page or in your email, you can increase your sales by 1617%!

This is just one of many ways you can improve your CTAs. Read on to discover some of our top tips to get the best out of your call to actions:

1. Design and position your call to action wisely

Design a clickable looking call to action and position it carefully so that your readers can’t miss it. Always keep in mind that for your customers to take action, your CTA needs to be appealing and stand out from the rest of your page/email. Here are some of the best tips to achieve this:

  • Use a large rectangular or oval button
  • Position it on a clean, contrasting color background
  • Surround it with blank space
  • Fill it with an inviting text that tells your visitors the action they are about to take

Then, it’s time find the best position for your CTA. A study conducted with over 232 users showed that people generally scan a web page in an “F” shaped pattern. Now, what does that mean?

F-Shape Heat Map
Heat maps show that people read web pages in an F shape.

Essentially, it means people scan a website in 3 steps:

  1. They begin scanning horizontally across the upper portion of the page content, hence forming the top piece of the F.
  2. They then move a little bit down and once again read horizontally, but this time not as far across as the first portion; this makes up the second horizontal bar of the F.
  3. They finish scanning the page by reading the bottom left content, in a vertical movement,  completing the F shape.

Of course, these are general reading patterns as people do read differently; but essentially, the F shape is mostly used. That being said, where should you then place your CTA? Although anywhere within the F shape would be fine, some studies have shown that placing it at the bottom left section of the page can increase your conversions by 304%, but there are arguments for placing your CTA above the fold as well. Placing your CTA above the fold draws immediate attention to it without going into any explanation. Studies have shown that people will only scroll below the fold if the information above the fold is promising enough.

2. Use the right content

Having the right copy for your CTA can make the difference between a click and a pass. CTA copy needs to be compelling, yet short and to the point, if you want people to click and not lose interest.

Use short words – in fact, no word extending beyond 3 syllables. But yet, don’t settle for “Buy now” or “subscribe” either. Your CTA should tell visitors exactly what they will be getting by clicking on that button. For example, when Fitness World changed their CTA button from “Get your membership” to “Find your gym & get membership”, they increased their conversion numbers by over 200%!

You will also want to consider using “power words” – words that writers use to instill emotion in readers. It can be as simple as changing “win” to “victory” or “triumph”. Power words, in general, have a little more pizazz than regular copy. For more on the subject, have a look at this SmartBlogger article which lists different power words, each for a different emotion, and see how you can apply them to your copy.

3. Create a sense of urgency

Without urgency, there’s a great chance your visitors won’t click the CTA right away, which in turn lowers the probability they will ever click it. Improve your CTA’s urgency by using buzz words that inspire visitors to act immediately. Words and phrases like “buy now”, “limited time offer”, “the first 100 customers only”, or “subscribe today” can help create that urgency and push viewers to click.

Amazon does a great job of creating a sense of urgency: when browsing products on their site, you’ll find some of them have a limited time offer, coupled with a countdown clock informing you of the time left to take advantage of the deal.

What’s important to remember is that urgency is created when a product appears to be limited in supply or an offer is limited in time. Your message should make viewers feel like they are missing out on a fantastic opportunity if they don’t quickly click on the CTA.

4. Don’t spam!

Spam is the most annoying thing for any user, whether it appears in their inbox or while browsing. Keep your viewers happy and spare them the spam. For example, never send customers more than 1 email a day about any special offer or product, and even that might be too much. Surveys show that 53% of email subscribers say they get too many messages from retailers. To resolve this, ask your subscribers their preference in terms of email frequency – once a week or month?

You’ll also want to avoid displaying pop-ups on your website. Ever tried reading an article and then part way down the page you get interrupted by a pop-up pushing a product you haven’t quite finished reading about? Yes, quite irritating! Give your readers the information they need and then present them with your CTA.

5. Test your work

Just because you created a CTA that looks great doesn’t mean it will be effective. You will need to test which CTAs work best with your visitors by trying out several of them: A/B testing pits two of your webpages against each other to see which one gets better conversions. There are many A/B testing softwares available on the Internet like VWO or Optimizely to help you with this task.

Try as many different CTA variants as you can: change the text style, size, color, placement and the message. Compare the results, check which CTA produces the most conversions and then choose the one that works best for your business.

A call to action is crucial to the success of your business as it drives conversions. Because of that, always keep in mind that the smallest mistake can drive visitors to ignore a CTA. Thankfully, minor adjustments can fix it: try out different CTA variations with the tips we provided and select the one that will drive your business results.

Be sure to visit Wise Host Blog often for more helpful business tips.